The Medieval Era

A Medieval Atlas: The Cradle-Web

The forests, mountains, deeps, and river basins of the cradle-web, region by region, with the sites where their tensions gather.

The map of the mapped world: every region where its neighbours put it, linked to its entry.

Overviews

• Regions of the Cradle-Web 72The 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…

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.

Most Named in This Part

• Dwarves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, a dense and durable people stabilized under the Ironspine from an inheritance marked by the Iron Backbone; their branches are the Ironspine and Stonewake Dwarves.
• Humans PeopleThe young, fast people of the cradle-web's basins and headwaters, of the balanced adaptive field, who emerged c. 300,000-c. 220,000 BR; what marks them is pace, and they form regional peoples rather…
• Elves PeopleOne of the oldest peoples of Caeldon, stabilized in the Elderweald from an inheritance marked by the Verdant Expanse that shows in presence more than in anatomy; their branches are the Wood, Thorn…
• Kobolds PeopleA small, careful, underwork-adapted people who live wherever surface and underworld meet imperfectly, in mine-edges, drains, vents, and ruin underlevels; their civilization is the Underhouse Compacts.
• Goblins PeopleA ruin-adapted people, not a malicious one, who live well in abandoned works, failed towns, and road shadows and know every gap and culvert in them; their strongest country is the Broken Marches and…
• Ogres PeopleA load-bearing people, living where settled worlds need heavy work but will not let the workers belong; their custom is hearth-weight and their civilization the Hearth-Weight Compacts.
• Reedfolk PeopleA secondary species of the wet threshold, at home where land and water never settle which is which, and no branch of Humans, Elves, or Dwarves; their strongest country is the lower Confluence Basins…
• Trolls PeopleA people of wounded frontiers, whose bodies carry Failed Mending, found where land and works refuse to heal and holding the crossings no one else will keep; their civilization is the Crossing-Oath…
• 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.
• Lowbank SettlementThe Marches side of Greyford, also called the Fordbank, lower and wetter, which holds most of the people who keep the crossing working.
• 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.
• Highbank SettlementThe Headwater side of Greyford, a walled town in small on a terrace above the flood line, which holds the bridge, the Bridge Hall, and the toll.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Terms

The Ashen Lantern · Boughways · The Bridge Hall · The confluence chamber · The court season · The Deep Stair · The Fordside Compact · The Graft Terrace · The Grey Line · The Greyford Bridge · The Greyspan · Guarantee · The guarantee roll · The Hauling Stair · Hobgoblin · The keeping · The Known Ways · The Last Water · The Law of the River · The Laying Stone · The Leave Stair · The Listening · The Long Tread · The Lying Shoals · The Maintenance Reckoning · March-towns · The March Wall · The Mixed Bridge Oath · Oath-right · Orrin Talloway · The outer fire · The Root Course · The root-year · The Sallow · The Serath · Serathic Humans · The Sheaf Road · The Slowwater · Stillgate · The Tallgrade · Tenders · The threshold chamber · The threshold watch · Toll's End · The Tollwardens · The Undrawn Seal · The Weatherline

In the Writers’ Guide

• The Forest Heartlands
• Stone and the Deep
• The Basins and the Marches
• Sealed and Silent Places