Gazetteer

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:

3 Responses to “Gazetteer”

  1. Daniel Cullifer says:

    I just finished your third book. I truly enjoyed all three books and own all three on my Nook Color. I was a little disappointed with a few parts in your last book, but overall i was greatly thrilled with the storyline as well as the character development! Thank you for bringing another new twist to the story of Dragons in the world, it is most welcome in my life! I’ve already told my brothers and friends to buy this current trilogy as well as the other book series you started, the thief-takers apprentice. Keep them coming and i will keep reading!

  2. Yohann Vissault says:

    Hi from France ! Just finished The Memory of Flame trilogy and it is…woua ! Really, really good job, a new vision of dragons, a sad story of the end of the time… You get to make us hate a character (Jehal rrr) then to love him (Jehal again!)
    Read your books was a real pleasure ! I hope your other books also release in France !

  3. Elena says:

    Hello from Russia! I have just finished reading the Memory of Flame trilogy and I must say I really loved it. The story, the characters’ development. Well, the ending was a bit too pessimistic with so many characters dying, especially my two favourite ones. Still I really enjoyed it. Jehal kept being my favourite throughout the three books. Really a complicated character.

Leave a Reply