The Splintered Mountains are one of the relatively Stable Points of the Far Dreaming.
Overview[]
The Splintered Mountains range across a thousand leagues and cut a bold path through the Dark Lands of the Far Dreaming. Here, the giants of legend and the monsters of yore make their homes and seek as sustenance any foolish enough to enter their domain. Harpies ride the frigid winds of the stone canyons, eager for changelings to torture, and basilisks lurk in the shadows of the broken towers. A great many Kithain have met their deaths in the Splintered Mountains, where once Tuatha de Danaan ruled in the time before the Shattering. There are treasures hidden away in the caves of the mountains, and some believe the way to Arcadia can only be found by seeking those treasures that the Tuatha de Danaan abandoned when they left their now-ruined palaces. This may be a lie or may be the truth, but all of the sidhe remember passing through the range of treacherous, thrusting stone towers on their way back to the Waking World.
The dangers are great, but many believe the rewards are worth the risk.
This range of peaks rings the Far Dreaming in all directions, forming the natural and largely impassable boundary between the Hearthlands and the Deep Dreaming itself. In general, the Splintered Mountains offer a fantastic landscape almost beyond the imagination: massive, jagged peaks of naked stone jutting skyward in utter defiance of gravity, coming impossibly close to bridging the gap between earth and heaven. From afar, the Splinterpeaks (and particularly the giant in their midst, Mount Chakravada) appear daunting, a literal empire of peaks and valleys. Closer, the daunting panorama dissolves into an endless network of passes and slopes, an entire world to become lost in, where altitude and seasons are transient phenomena at best.
Beyond the undeniable wonder of Mount Chakravada, the Splinterpeaks are an endless land of stark, elemental contrasts, all bright sun and icy glacier, high cliffs and windswept void. Here lies the Red Court of the Fomorians, part of the mythic origin of the mountain range. In the Nine Last Battles, when the fomorians were finally defeated, the force of the blow that struck them down was such that the firmament of the Dream splintered and warped. Thus were the Splinterpeaks made... through the rupture and upthrust of the Dreaming. Because the Arcadians did not possess the ability to kill the fomorians, they instead chained the Red Court to the starkest peaks of the new mountains. The fomorians are still there, and the sound of their fury is as thunder.
Old Magic from Before Time[]
As the firmament and circular spine of the Dreaming, the Splintered Stone Realm is a refuge for all chimerical creatures and mythic entities so fantastic that they must flee far from the banal Earth. In the valleys and lowland slopes, the trolls have built their cities and walled fortresses. On the high crags, the Great Dragons and gryphons nest. Elsewhere still, in the abandoned places, the giants and hermits cleave to their isolated holdings, while on Chakravada itself, the metallic spirits of the Alchymical Court dance their eternal dance of alloyance and transmutation.
The Splinterpeaks are, however, as much about air as stone. Birds are everywhere, with representatives of all surviving mythic species gathering on Chakravada for the Feathered Parliament of the King of Birds. Above even the dragons, the myriad creatures of the Wind Court have their complicated arguments and play their invisible games, and there are even stranger chimera to be met in the atmospheric reaches, between the highest peaks and the lowest stars.
The Alchymical Court[]
Elusive noble families of the nature spirits, each of these entities takes its body from alchemically pure substances: gold, silver, other metals, and basic matter. The exquisitely arcane politics between these families apparently mirrors the essential chemical processes that slowly transform the Splinterpeaks, repairing the cataclysmic damage caused in the Last Battles. Even if the Earth has suffered wounds past repair, the Dreaming contains within itself its own process for healing the catastrophic damage of long ago.
At one time, one of these families took its husks from Cold Iron, but, needless to say, they are no longer overtly extant. The loss has made the remaining families sleepy and the alloyances between individual Alchymites impermanent and somehow desperate. It has become difficult for the metals to concentrate, and most now can manage little more than faltering conversation.
Glomes[]
Rocky beings akin to the oldest giants, the Stone Men pursue existences of solitude and intensely slow interaction with others of their kind. Their long lifespans (Glome husks endure for millennia and handful claim to remember the birth of the oceans) make extended communication or friendship with more ephemeral beings difficult, and some Glome conversations take centuries to get past the pleasantries. What does a century or two of silence really matter to a being who can remember dinosaurs?
The Wind Court[]
After the Shattering, all too many of the Stormdancers who remained on Earth went mad. The majority of these beings have since found their way back to the Dreaming, but the results have been disastrous for the Wind Court. Always given to a certain vagary, with attention spans that could be described as limited at best, the silfar have since allowed their society to dissolve. Meanwhile, as the Earth's atmosphere continues to collapse into an anarchy of delinquent smokes, malicious clouds of ash, and untrustworthy hazes, the situation only grows worse. Denied the sight of starlight by the magical Wall Across the Sky, the minds of the air become increasingly poisoned and malicious.
Now, only a few silfar remember the old grandeur and purity of thought for which they were once famous among their faerie cousins, and the old courtliness and celestial etiquette have almost been forgotten. Of the ones who remember the stars, the most important are probably the Knights of the Shape of Air, the last of the chivalric orders of the atmosphere. Reduced in numbers to a motley assortment of winds, clouds, and perfumes, the Order of the Shape roams the Dreaming as solitary individuals or in small bands, seeking justice and the reform of the upper atmosphere.
While they have grown shabby since the Shattering, these silfar knights are still unearthly gracefully, deathly quick, and fragile in their beauty, and they resemble delicate watercolor paintings, when they deign to put on visible bodies at all, that is. The armorial insignia of the Order is invisible to heavier eyes, being a representation of the "shape of air" itself.
Parosemes[]
Parosemes are extremely rarefied creatures, tricksters who take special delight in the spoken word. Of all chimera, they are the best liars known, rivaling the eshu for sheer ability to tell stories that may or may not be true. Many parosemes manifest in human form in order to confuse, play tricks, and spin riddle-webs among the "heavy people" of changeling society, and they are particularly dangerous when they pretend to be "wise old" philosophers.
With the most delicate tastes and metabolisms of any known chimerical race, the Parosemes can always be identified by their extreme horror of "heaviness" (by which they mean anything that requires concentration, solid purpose, or passionate feelings) and Banality.
- NB: These Parosemes appear to not be the Inanimae of the same name who are truly fae. The Silfar above are, but the names can be used interchangeably by the true parosemes (perhaps to further their own trickiness).
Red Winter Approaching[]
Bound into the still-steaming rock of the then newly splintered Mountains, the Red Court of the Fomorians have never yet managed to escape. Instead, they bide their time, summoning Great Dragons and other creatures of the Elder Dream to their places of imprisonment to share counsel and secret wisdom. Perhaps they still plot against the Arcadians who jailed them in the rock. Perhaps they have already had their revenge and now need only sit and scream their laughter from their stark prisons.
As of yet, time and Banality have had only the most superficial effects within the Splinterpeaks. This deep in the Dreaming, Winter is only a vague rumor, almost a ghost story, but still, the most sensitive of the great, magical creatures of the peaks can feel the first signs of Winter coming. For these rarest and most fragile of chimera, even the slopes of Mount Chakravada have begun to feel unpleasant and dull.
This development alarms the sidhe sorcerers, who worry that if the force of Glamour is decaying even in the Splinterpeaks, the bonds keeping the Red Fomorians imprisoned will weaken accordingly. When and if that occurs and the Red Court walks the Dreaming again, the faerie dream may well be doomed. Already, the old dragons and other behemoths are gathering and watching, waiting for their old allies to break free and lead the way to a new Red Dream of Fire.
The Moirae[]
The Splintered Mountains have become cacophonous, even deafening since the Week of Nightmares. Claps of thunder peal ceaselessly throughout the realm, creating a backdrop for myriad other sounds: the clash of sword on armor, the hooves of clattering war-beasts, and the screams of the dying rising from Kureksarra's endless war below.
A temple of moirae in the Splinterpeaks, renowned as healers and oracles, holds the Triumph Casque of Sorrows. Exempt from the war at Kureksarra by ancient treaty, their Grecian-style mountainside temple is neutral ground and sometimes used for meeting between the warring parties of the Red Plains. The moirae here will only surrender the casque to the one who holds the complete key. Despite this potentially cataclysmic trust, they are generally "Seelie" in comportment and gracious hostesses, lending advice and sanctuary to those in need.
The Fir-bholg[]
The fir-bholg have had soldiers on every side of the Kureksarra combat, leading some to cynically conclude that no matter who wins, the beast-kings plan to come out on top. While most of them have a brutish edge, they pursue varying philosophies and life-ambitions. Some are violent and brutal to extremes: murderers, rapists, and torturers. Others merely wish to ensure their own security and pursue the natural freedom that is their animal birthright. In the great Kureksarra war, fir-bholg have served both marginally Seelie causes and made alliances with the worst of the region's cannibal redcaps. Currently the best known clans extant in the Splintered Mountains are the Silver River fir-bholg (also called the Corca-Oidce) who retain a rough independence in alliance with several of the thunder giants, and the Dark Vale fir-bholg who serve Harroth Balor. Of the Five Great Beasts, it is a curious development that Harroth has recently retired from the field, leaving the battle to Icthyus, a competent if uninspired fir-bholg chieftain of the Dark Vale. Whispered rumors have it that Harroth now furthers the Red Court's fell designs in the Autumn World.
References[]
- CTD. Dreams and Nightmares, pp. 48-49.
- CTD. Denizens of the Dreaming, pp. 31-32.