The great alchemist and philosopher Kyamberan has said that places should be judged by two things: their geography, and their culture. In creating this gazetteer I have endeavoured to follow this, and I have found that the two go frequently hand in hand. Thus the great impenetrable mountain range of the Worldspine, with its innumerable and unmapped steep-sided valleys and thick forests, becomes home to the equally impenetrable Outsiders. In the dry and arid north, the Realms of Sand and Stone and Salt give rise to peoples who, despite their deep and bitter enmity, are more closely related in traditions and customs than to their late-arriving neighbours in the dusty hills around Evenspire. In the more amenable climates south of the Purple Spur, a culture of river-people has grown up around the vast waterway of the Fury River. Near the spur itself, where the Fury River Gorge divides the realms in two for those who cannot fly on dragon-back, different peoples from different realms have different customs; further down the river, where it flows broad and sluggish in Bonjanland between the Harvest Throne and the River Throne, towns and villages on either side of the river owe more to each other than to their fellow kinsmen living further west on the edges of the Raksheh Forest or east around the Oordish Moors. Furthest to the south, the citizens of Furymouth have quietly picked up the customs and habits of the Taiytakei, their ever-present guests from across the Endless Sea, while those just across the water on the isolated Tyan’s Peninsula have not.

While this gazetteer is not in any way intended as a history of the dragon-realms, a little knowledge is sometimes necessary to understand the culture of a place; even, in locations such as Tyan’s Peninsula, the geography. Thus we shall touch upon the coming of the Silver King and his demise, the rise and fall of both the Empire of the Blood-Mages and the Order of the Dragon, the foundation of Evenspire, the coming of the speakers and the War of Thorns. However, I have not engaged with these matters in any depth, and scholars wishing to do so are advised to seek the many alternative and much more penetrating treatises freely available at the Sand Monastery. This short compendium, rather, is intended to accompany the alchemist on his inevitable travels and offer what little guidance and advice I have learned from my own.

Bellepheros

Senior alchemist

From this page you may:

• Read the real author’s notes
• Read the about the copyright applicable to the gazetteer content, preferably before you
• Download the PDF version of the gazetteer (all 180 pages  – you have been warned)
• Visit the printable map.
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