The Shadewells

Overview

The Shadewells are the oasis cities of the deep south, beyond the farthest sand of the Glassbelt: walled towns sunk deep around their wells, their streets roofed with great awnings, strung along a great salt and caravan road through a desert harder than the Glassbelt itself. Their markets sell carpet, tile, and shade-cloth; their star-reckoners steer caravans across sand that has no landmarks; and in the dunes between them walk things that were never born of any mother.

The name comes from the old world, which has never seen them. One Edgeway kindred's longest circuit ends at a well in the deep south where strangers wait in the cool months under an awning of pale cloth, in shade so deep that stepping into it is like stepping down into a well, and the kindred says that people who carry their own shade must come from cities built of it. It is one of the four lands beyond the old world's maps (see the extent of the map).

Lay of the Land

The Shadewells lie south of the Glassbelt, past a sand sea that no crosser from the north has walked across; the Bright Well lies in its northern edge. The Salt Road runs east to west through them, from salt pans in the east to wells in the west, and the cities stand on it a fortnight or more apart, each at its own well. South of the road the dunes rise into the deep sand, which nobody crosses. From the last Glassbelt well that the Edgeway kindreds know to the strangers' well is about two months; how far the land runs east, west, and south is unmapped. See The Lay of the Land.

What Happened Here

The desert was there before anyone, and its peoples came into it late and from the north.

Its Humans say in their songs that they came out of the north-west long ago, in the age the old world calls the Unrecorded Age, and found the wells already old. Their cities grew on the wells and the road, and shade became their wealth.

The Shorn came from the far side. After the Rimward Passage War (c. 135,000-c. 128,000 BR), the Orc escort bands that had taken water by force and were cut from honour for it, struck bands with no well that would open to them, went south-west out of the Rimward country along the Glassbelt's eastern edge. In the Shearing (c. 128,000-c. 115,000 BR) they walked on until they found wells nobody held. The Windscar Pacts remember them, if at all, as far-track kindreds that belong to history.

What Is Known

To the old world, a cloth and a well. To canon, the broad strokes.

• Shade and its cost. Here, as everywhere, a working takes its cost from the world around it (see Costs and Side Effects).
• The Salt Road and the star-reckoners. Caravans go between the cities by night, steered by star-reckoners who read the turning sky the way a Gnome pilot reads water and are paid like princes.
• The Shorn. The Orc camel-clans of the deep sand, descendants of the struck bands, are the only people who live in it.
• What walks in the dunes. In the deep sand lie old, lasting Resonant Zones, some like the Lucid Wastes, where the grey dunes breathe, and things born of the zones come out of them: shapes that walk the glare-fields, drink the shade out of whatever they pass, and follow caravans by the cool under their awnings.
• The strangers' well. At the end of the Edgeway kindred's longest circuit, past the last mark the kindred gives other crossers, the strangers meet them at a well the kindred calls the Bright Well, under an awning they raise when they come and strike when they go, and trade shade-cloth for Glassbelt salvage, slag-glass, and news.
• Foundling shade. The cloth the kindred carries back passes through the Lastwater Wells, Orc escorts, and the Soundchain quays to the harbours of the Tidelace, where it is called foundling shade because nobody can say where it comes from.

Settlements

The cities stand on the Salt Road at their wells, each walled and built deep, with courtyards sunk below the street, weavers' halls, carpet halls, and star-towers; the Shorn camp at the wells of the deep sand. None of them is named in the old world, which knows only the Bright Well, and that only to one kindred. On the Glassbelt side, no settlement faces the Shadewells; the nearest are the Lastwater Wells, months to the north-east.

The People

Perhaps two to three hundred thousand people live in the Shadewells and along the Salt Road, nearly all Humans; the Shorn clans of the deep sand number some tens of thousands. Their dress, lifespans, and naming customs are left open, except that no one there walks under the open sun if they can help it, and a guest is offered shade before water.

What Is Not Known

The land is left open on purpose: how many cities stand on the Salt Road, what they are called, and who rules them; where the road ends east and west; which great workings burned the glare-fields, and when; how deep the zones of the deep sand go, and what the things that come out of them are; whether a working can be fed from kept shade on purpose, and what that costs; what the star-reckoners know of the sky that the old world does not; how far south the deep sand runs; whether the Shorn remember the Windscar, and whether any of them would go back; and whether the Glassbelt lamps that crossers see at night have anything to do with the strangers under the awning.

Tensions

• A city in the sun. A city on the Salt Road has let its great awnings fray through two lean years, its weavers unpaid and gone to richer cities, and its streets lie open to the sky.
• The price of the Shorn. The camel-clans have raised their price for crossing the deep sand.
• The kindred's secret. The Edgeway kindred that trades at the Bright Well has kept the way there to itself for generations, and a foundling-shade merchant in the Tidelace has offered a fortune for it.
• The hide-trade. Shorn hunters sell zone-thing hides on the road for armour.