Notable places and Cities

The Twilight Fort | Anvil of Blood and Stone | Gate of New Fire

There is a chill that never leaves Arta Uial, though snow seldom falls. It is not the cold of ice or sky, but the weight of expectation, of footsteps walked by thousands, and of names chiseled into stone long before the warhorns sounded.

Built upon a wind-scoured plateau at the rim of the western marches, Arta Uial—“Fortress of Dusk” in the old tongue—rests forever in the shadow of the surrounding highlands. Even in summer, the sun lingers low, casting long shadows through the blackwood arches and ash-grey walls. Here, the empire does not shine. It endures.

Lakeborn and Timber-Fed | Jewel of the Sirion Shore | The Whispering Vale

Nestled between the still waters of Lake Sirion and the shadowed boughs of the Sirion Woodlands, Crickhollow is a town of misty mornings, humming sawmills, and nets strung with silver-scaled bounty. It is a place of lantern-lit piers and moss-covered cottages, where fishers, loggers, and rivermen ply quiet trades beneath canopies of birdsong and drifting fog.

Though modest in size, Crickhollow is economically vital—a waystation for both timber and lake harvest, ferrying its goods southward via the River Ciril. Its barges and rafts supply everything from firewood to carved ship spars to the workshops of Arossaich, and even further downriver to the forges of Emerie.

The Warren is a labyrinth of warmth and flickering flame, shaped by generations of clever kobolds who have carved their lives into the bones of the earth. Its halls echo not with malice, but communal chatter, stone flutes, and the clatter of communal cooking fires.

The kobolds of the Warren, known among themselves as the Emberkin, are deeply communal, fiercely loyal, and guided by ancestral traditions tied to flame, craft, and memory. Their raiding stemmed not from cruelty, but desperation: logging camps encroached on sacred nesting trees, and smoke scared away the lake-fish they once traded.

The Town of Gentle Hands | Where the Hills Sing Low | Thread of Vine and Fleece

Tucked among the rolling greenfolds of the southern Hills, cradled by ancient olive trees and golden-tufted pastures, lies the town of Withywool—a place where time hums softly, the wine flows slowly, and the sun always seems to be setting.

Here, the air is perfumed with lavender and pressed grape skins, and every hill bears the quiet labor of centuries: flocks of dusky-coated sheep drift like clouds across the high meadows, and low stone villas rest under tiled rooftops the color of dried rose petals.

It is said that nothing truly begins in Withywool, nor ends—everything simply continues.

The Granite Sentinel | Bastion of Forgotten Watchers | Stone Crown of the Wind-Ridge 

Perched high above the West Anduin, its walls are like cliff faces themselves: jagged, rain-slicked, and unyielding. Once, its narrow towers bore watchfires that burned white with rune-oil, visible even from the gates of Amon Lhaw on a clear night. The fortress wasn’t built to inspire—it was built to endure, and to warn.

Raised in the waning days of the Sundering War, Arta Glaw was not intended to be glorious—it was to be grim, stalwart, and final. Its blackstone gates were shut with the weight of empire. Its floors were etched with the names of the dead. Within its barracks and halls, there was no feast, only firelight, drills, and silence.

With the downsizing of the Imperial legions under Emperor Trajan, and peace settling upon the northern heights, Arta Glaw was quietly decommissioned. Not abandoned—never that—but reduced to a caretaker garrison, its once-mighty forges now cold, its signal fires quenched.

The Listening Forest | Veil of Hollow Paths | Where Time Grows Slow 

The Sirion Woodlands stretch like a velvet shadow between the shores of Lake Sirion and the lower teeth of the Ered Lindon, a vast and ancient forest of ash, beech, and black-pine, where the air is cool even in summer and the ground drinks sound like memory.

These are no savage wilds, nor are they tamed—they are old, and in their age they have learned to bend without breaking, to observe without interfering. The forest is not hostile, but neither is it welcoming. It watches, always.

Man is not a stranger here. The forest has heard the tramp of boots and the thrum of axes for generations. It remembers when Imperial scouts carved logging paths through its outer reaches and when kobold warbands scuttled beneath its roots. Hunters, druids, poachers, pilgrims—many have passed beneath the boughs of Sirion.

The Empire’s Vein | The Voice of Stone and Sea | River of Crowns

The West Anduin is more than a river. It is the lifeblood of Egladil, the thread that stitches hill to sea, fortress to village, past to present. From its glacial source in the high passes of the Ered Lindon, it carves its way southward, through sheer cliffs and fertile valleys, until it widens and slows in the shadow of Amon Lhaw, before finally spilling into the silver maw of the sea.

It is said that when the gods of old walked the land, they sang the river into being—not as a barrier, but as a blessing. And though men now chart its length in leagues and sketch its bends on maps, the Anduin does not belong to them. It is older than the Empire, and will outlast it.

The Hollow Crown | Shrine of the Dimming Star | The Black Tomb Beneath the Heather

Hidden in the wind-scoured moors, where no birds sing and the heather grows black-veined and brittle, lies a barrow that was never blessed, never named in the rites of men or elves. It crouches like a wound upon the land—a half-buried dome of stone and root where the earth itself seems reluctant to settle.

Few speak of it, and none linger long. But in the right twilight, beneath the rising of Mithrillóth, the moonlight falls just so, revealing a cracked slab of obsidian carved in an ancient, whispering tongue:

    “Herein lies Amoteph—

    Trapped Prophet of the Dark Lord,

    Servant of the darkness beyond the edge of tomorrow.

    The darkness shall consume all again—

    I await Melkor, true lord of all.”