Regions of the Cradle-Web

The regions of Caeldon are the great lands where stories happen: forests older than any people, mountains hollowed into holds, river-country thick with walled towns and drowned dead, wind-scoured uplands where a broken escort is paid for in blood, and ruin-belts where the elder world lies open to anyone brave or hungry enough to dig.

Cradle-web · Between · Beyond

Cradle-web

• The Elderweald RegionThe old-growth forest at the centre of the Elven world, home of the Wood Elves and the Rootcrown Concord; it has no roads, only paths walked open.

  Sites: The Sunken Stairs, The Long Stair

  Settlements: Oldstand, Silthollow, Fernrest, Eddymill

• The Crownboughs RegionThe cultivated canopy forest in the south-eastern corner of the old Elven world, where trees have been trained into halls and terraces, homeland of the High Elves and the Crownbough Courts.

  Sites: The Verge Stair, The Understorey Courts

  Settlements: Amberbough, Highbraid, Willowstep, Lowgarden

• The Roothollows RegionThe root-caverns beside and beneath the forest, where the forest's roots come down through the ceiling and grow into the stone; the country of the Dark Elves.

  Sites: The Rootstone Heartwell

  Settlements: Threewater Turn, Paleseep, Sapfall

• The Ironspine RegionThe long mountain belt beside the forest and the oldest Dwarven homeland, its holds cut into the mountain faces and its mines and underways running down into the rock.

  Sites: The Hollow Bell

  Settlements: Anvilwake, Thrumgate, Seamhead, Barleystep

• The Stonewake Deeps RegionThe deep central hold-cluster below the Ironspine, where more of the lower world's routes and water converge than anywhere else, and where a sealed door is at once an oath, a prayer, and a border.

  Settlements: Stairdeep, Blackbasin, Knockrun

• The Headwater Marches RegionThe foothill country between the Human farmland and the Dwarven mountains, the oldest shared country of Humans and Dwarves, living by the escorted exchange roads to the hold gates.

  Sites: The Wrongwood

  Settlements: Oathfoot, Snowshut, Notchfield, Winterfire

• The Confluence Basins RegionThe broad lowland heartland of Humans: wide valleys, deep fields, and linked rivers gathering towards the Serath.

  Sites: The Paling, The Turning House

  Settlements: Sheafmeet, Chaffbridge, Fallowrise, Ninefloods, Flockturn

• The Lower Serath RegionThe lower course of the Serath and the crowded corridor of walled towns strung along it, bound into the Serathic League.

  Settlements: Correth, Pellith, Oldchannel, Towrest

• The Briarreach RegionThe belt of thicket and wet ravine at the forest's harder edge, home of the Thorn Elves of the Thornbound Circles, where Troll houses keep the ravine crossings.

  Settlements: The Waitfield, Wovenbrake, Deadweave, Sevenbreak

• The Broken Marches RegionA ruin-belt of failed works and broken roads beyond the March Wall where nobody rules, the main home of the Goblins and of the salvagers, fugitives, and outlaws who live in the works of vanished…

  Settlements: The Undercroft Fair, Wallbreach, Twohalves, Halfroof

• The Greyford Reach RegionThe wide gravel valley where the Headwater and Broken Marches meet and one river breaks into many, with its patched bridge, its two banks, and its quarrel over who owes the crossing what.

  Settlements: Greyford, Highbank, Lowbank, Onefire Terrace

• The Hushvale RegionA basin and valley chain under fog that never lifts, at the foot of an unnamed range on the edge of the Glassbelt Interior, sealed since a waking Record-engine and the rite that hid its survivors c.…
• The Stormcrown RegionThe high country above the Ironspine holds, bare ridges and storm shelves where the Upland Colossal world left its terraces, ridge roads, and weather shrines; the colossal heartland still.
• The Upper Roothollows RegionThe upper storey of the root-cavern world nearest the forest, drowned in the Roothollow Rupture and sealed ever since: a layer nobody enters.
• The Witnessfields RegionThe terraced upland east of the Lower Serath, the sealed homeland of the elder Archive-Law world: marker roads lined with inscribed stones and archive-cities whose gates have been shut for more than…

Between

• The Glassbelt Interior RegionCaeldon's first true desert, which nobody holds; a single overland route across it is the only thing joining the cradle-web and the far side.

Beyond

• The Dawnreach RegionThe monsoon land across the Unrun Sea, north-east of the far side, of terraced river valleys, bell monasteries, and island sea-kingdoms; the source of the nameless hulls, known to the far side only…
• The Shadewells RegionWalled oasis cities built deep around their wells on the Salt Road, south beyond the deep Glassbelt, where magic takes its cost first from shade and the cities keep shade as other lands keep grain…
• The Rimefold RegionThe polar ice coast north of the cradle-web, where the Long Tread ends at the White Stair; home of seal- and whale-hunting Human clans and of the Rimewrights.
• The Green Deep RegionThe jungle across a strait south of the cradle-web, river-mazes over the drowned stepped cities of an elder world, held by the Sollun; the old world knows nothing of it.