Setting & Location
Valmorren lies in the north-east of Gildraen, the bright heart of the northeastern uplands. Though “upland” to southerners, Valmorren is the gentlest edge of the chain — a basin of turquoise lochs and pale cliffs before the land grows harsher. Asmerel, the Evergild town, stands on its threshold.
Landscape & Sacred Resonance
Valmorren is carved from grey limestone: ridges pale as bone, scarps ringing like struck glass. Rain and snowmelt pour into lochs that overflow into cliff-walled rivers, cascading terrace by terrace until they vanish into gorges.
Sacred sites are everywhere, and rarely tame:
- Vanishing rivers that roar into caves and reappear miles away.
- Jewel pools sunk deep into cenote pits, still and impossible to measure.
- Terraced lakes like a stair of turquoise bowls, each spilling into the next.
- The Ridge of Two Spirits, where Valmorren’s limestone and the granite of neighbouring Camorren meet, and the wind speaks in twin voices.
History
Before Asmerel, Valmorren belonged only to its stone and its keepers. The Vythans dwelt here in quiet, tending the resonance and guiding those who braved the climbs to drink from its waters. Pilgrims came early, poor and sincere, some leaving charms of bone or cloth, some returning with nothing but clearer eyes.
When the Evergild first reached Valmorren they stood in awe beside the Vythans, listening and learning. For a time there was kinship, songs shared by the fire, both peoples tending the same waters. But ambition seeps. Lodges were built at the lowest turquoise loch, pavilions of mosaic and echo. In time those lodges became Asmerel, the Evergild jewel, and the partnership became something more strained.
Vythans & Their Hubs
The Vythans remain in Valmorren, not in towns but in camps scattered among ridges and pools. Their ethic is to listen, balance, restore. They mend the flow where it falters, ease the Hum where it strains, guide pilgrims through with care.
Pilgrimages help sustain them: coins, supplies, and reverence trickle from the roads into the camps, buying time for wardens to walk further and listen longer. Yet their presence is light: a canvas shelter struck and gone, a fire-pit cold by morning, a cairn of stones to show they passed.
Pilgrims
Pilgrims come with many purposes: to atone, to heal, to find clarity, to prove themselves by effort. Some arrive in processions led by Evergild guides, banners bright, paths swept clear for them. Others come by the Peasant’s Path, rough and unadorned, a hard trudge through scree and mud.
The land makes no distinction. But pilgrims do, and so do the townsfolk of Asmerel.
Present Tension
To the Vythans, Asmerel is both a wound and a necessity. They do not waste themselves inside its walls, where the Hum is bent into courtyards and echo-chambers, but they know the coin it draws helps them continue their work.
Some years the resonance in Valmorren rings clear — waters bright, dreams vivid, balance easy. Other years it feels thin, tired, strained by the weight of Evergild channeling. The balance slides back and forth, and so too does the mood of those who keep it.
