The Dawnreach

Overview

The Dawnreach is the land across the Unrun Sea, north-east of the far side: a long, wet coast of terraced river valleys under monsoon rains, with mountains behind it and an archipelago of island kingdoms off its southern capes. The name is a far-side one. Pilots of the Tidelace swear that after a great storm they have seen lights low on the horizon where no isle is charted, and the tale-tellers of Lastlight put a whole shore of lanterns there, out where the dawn comes from, and call it the Dawnreach. Nobody on the far side has seen that shore, and nobody there knows that the tale is true.

It is one of the four lands beyond the old world's maps (see the extent of the map). Its own peoples know the old world no better: to them the west, across the sea, is where the dead sail.

Lay of the Land

The Dawnreach lies east of the Unrun Sea and faces it along its whole western coast; the far-side harbours that face the sea from the south-west are a voyage nobody has made away, months of open water at the least. Behind the coast rise the Bell Peaks, a high range running north to south, and from them two great rivers and many lesser ones come down west and south to the sea through terraced valleys. Off the southern capes the Lantern Isles string out into the sea. How far the land runs north, east, and south is unmapped. See The Lay of the Land.

What Happened Here

Nobody crossed to the Dawnreach on purpose, and nobody came back to say it was there.

Its Humans descend from the coast-drifting bands of the Unrecorded Age (c. 120,000-c. 40,000 BR), who went island to island along a way no one remembers, and from older peoples the shore's own songs keep without names. They have been apart from the cradle so long that they share nothing with it but their bodies and some of the gods: the sea is Maris here as well, under a name of their own.

The Unreturning Runs came before them. Late in the Far-Side Terms and into the Unrecorded Age (c. 140,000-c. 100,000 BR), some Thaluren Outer-Route runs pressed past the Far Set, rode the deep currents east behind the migrations of the deep-witnesses, and found rivers on the far shore they could spawn in. They never came home. In the Tidebound Reaches they are spoken of as the unreturning, and the presence Outer-Route runs feel on the farthest roads, the Unreturned, is taken there for theirs.

What Is Known

To the old world, almost nothing: a few lights, a few wrecks, and a sea of tales. To canon, the broad strokes.

• The terrace thrones. In the river valleys, rice-like water grain grows on terraces stepped up every hillside, and two great thrones hold the rivers, each claiming that the sky has granted it the Favour.
• The bell monasteries. High in the Bell Peaks, monasteries hang great bronze bells in the passes and ring them against avalanche, raiders, and the long-tailed snow-leopards that take travellers on the high paths.
• The Scattered Crowns. The island kingdoms of the Lantern Isles are sea-kingdoms of many small crowns, each reckoning its standing by its fleet.
• The Sihri. In the wet forests between the valleys and the peaks live the Sihri, an insect-like people the height of a child, with jointed limbs and hard, many-coloured backs, whom no other land has.
• The Runs That Arrived. The descendants of the Unreturning Runs live along the archipelago and the river mouths, a sea-folk now, with their own river returns on the shore's rivers.
• The brass instrument. The instrument no Gnome made, which a Truesound gauge house keeps locked away (see the Unrun Sea), is island work: a current-wheel of the Scattered Crowns' pilots, made to read the Long Going.

Settlements

The terrace thrones each have a royal city at their river's head of navigation, with river-towns below and terraced villages on every slope; the Scattered Crowns have island harbours, and the bell monasteries hang on the passes. None of them is named in the old world, which knows no settlement of the Dawnreach at all. The last far-side settlement facing that way is the outer-isle harbour of Lastlight, across the whole Unrun Sea.

The People

Perhaps one and a half to two million people live in the Dawnreach, most of them Humans of the terrace valleys, with the island kingdoms behind. The Runs That Arrived number in the tens of thousands, and how many Sihri sing in the forests is not known to anyone outside them. Their dress, lifespans, and naming customs are left open.

What Is Not Known

Most of the shore is left open on purpose: the names of the two thrones, their rivers, and their dynasties; how many Scattered Crowns there are and which of them is strongest; what the bell monasteries keep in their chronicles, and whether any of it tells of the far side; what the Sihri are beneath their shells, how they bear their young, and what their songs remember of the land before Humans came; who the older peoples are whom the shore's songs keep without names; which gods hold the shore beyond the sea; where the Long Going ends, and whether every nameless hull reaches the Tidelace or most go down on the way; what lies north, east, and south of the shore; and whether anyone in the Dawnreach has ever followed the dead west and come back.

Tensions

• A throne in a dry year. The monsoon has failed twice on the northern river.
• Axes at the singing forest. A Favour-lord has promised new terraces to the families that clear a Sihri valley.
• The living on the Long Going. An island queen means to send a fleet west down the Long Going, alive, to learn where the dead go.
• Prayer to the great ones. Among the Runs That Arrived, some lines now ask the deep-witnesses for fair currents and good catches.