Kaith (Old Lore)

## Introduction

Kaith is one of the eight major dimensions and home to the Deepwalker tribe. It mainly consists of a huge range of mountains aswell as a few cold steppe planes.

## Enviroment

### **Under the crust**

Most of all life in Kaith exists inside of the mountains, in giant caves and caverns deep below.

#### **The Lightless Ocean**

The deepest part of Kaith, close to the worlds roots, is the Lightless Ocean. A huge system of caves completly flooded with water. This ocean is very different from usuals. It is not only far more salty but filled with all sorts of minerals, above all carbon and sulfur. The base of the ocean build black smokers and clefts boiling the water. The living conditions down there are extreme and the entire ocean is devoid of any sort of light. Still it is filled with life. Most of it are huge colonies of bacteria, either covering the black smokers or floating around, turning the minerals into compley organic molecules.

The bigger lifeforms are well adapted to the extreme conditions down there. Most of them simply filter the bacteria from the water but there are also many hunters and stationary organisms. There are many creatures that are almost a kilometer long, patrolling the endless, boiling night. Thew few that made it to the surface through Asguri or Redlaf hunters are described as a pale and deformed mix of molluscs, worms and fishes.

The main part of the Lightless Ocean is located extremly deep in Kaith, but it is connected to the complex systems of water tunnels and hot founds streaming through the mountains. This sometimes creates seas and rivers further up in the caves, filled with descedants of the titanic life deep below. Those sees are usually used by Asguri boats and fishers and make up the majority of their diet.

#### **The Paleweb**

The Palewebs are giant organisms that range across the entire mountains. It is unkown what kind of lifeforms they are since they show features of fungi and plants. A paleweb has its roots in the Lightless ocean deep under Kaith where it feeds from the heat and the minerals in the black water. From there it grows across the entire dimension, converting carbon and minerals in the cold stone into nutriens. The majority of this organisms consist of long fibrous sprouts, usually 5-20 meters in diamter, conducting nutriens and water in a pressure based system across the mountains. The rest are thick bulbs that are far less hard convert the minerals into organic molecules. This reaction produces a relativly bright light, enlightening the dark caves. These tubers can grow up to 50 meters in radius and are able to illuminate entire caverns.

### **Above the surface**

The majortiy of Kaith consits of mountains, one towering over the other. Most of these mountains have a height of 6 kilometers, the biggest of them all, usally known as *Starscraper*, is over 24 kilometers in height.

#### **The Snowclad Mountains**

The peaks of the mountains aswell as most of the valleys between them are covered in thick snow, usually multiple meters in height. Even though Kaith has seasons that rapidly change the enviroment, the snow on most mountains never melts and gets harder every year.

The only thing that enables some lifeforms to survive the icy enviroment are the Mistmaws. Those are cracks and columns from which the hot water of the depts of Kaith enters the surface through massive pressure, either in the form of hot gas or boiling water. There it forms hot ponds or rivers runing down the mountains and melting the hot snow. Around these cracks the water freezes again, forming strange ice structures and giant icicles, sometimes bigger then trees.

Between the Mountains huge glaciers sunder the mountains, slowly but steadly moving the icy rocks. These glaciers, also known as *Glassgardens*, form strange structures. The Spirits that dwell in the ice and the snowy mountains give the ice shape and let it move slowly. This way they build up strange threatres with statues of moving ice, sometimes combining each other to alien structures in constant movement. These Spirits also form glass like tunnels in the glaciers which change their structure, sometimes forming giant mazes that constantly reconnect, trapping careless visitors for ever. Snowwalker tribes often tell stories of giant specacles the Spirits arrange when the coldest snowstorms rage across the mountains with ice figures moving faster then humans and clashing against each other.

#### **The Greenglens**

The Greenglens are valleys and glens within the Snowclad Mountains. Their size ranges between three and threehundread kilometers. They are feed with hot springs from the caves under them, expelling the cold and creating warm shelters in which life can grow. Those glens can be easily spottet by the warm mist rising from them to the skies like a pillar.

Inside these glens grow trees, bushes, herbs and huge mosses that cover almost everything like a thick carpet. There is a vast amount of animals that life in these glens, either those who wander the mountains and seek shelter or specialised organisms that adapted perfectly to their local enviroment and never leave it.

#### **The Saltlakes**

The hot springs and rivers that stream out of the higher mountains often flood valleys and create big seas. They usually are filled with minerals from the depts, thus called saltlakes. The water can not be drunken but is often warm enough to melt snow and make it drinkable. Some of these lakes are really hot, even boiling, others cold and full of floes.

These lakes are usually inhabited by fishes and temperature resistant crayfish, providing food to the animals and Snowwalker tribes that life in the Snowclad Mountains.

#### **The Forstplains**

The Frostplains are tundric fields on the foot of the mountains. Most of the ground is frozen in winter so that only grass, moss and liches can grow there. In the summer the forstpains are often flooded by mountains streams, changeing most of the plains into hot swamps. In warmer regions there are even small forests.

The Frostplains host the majority of the animals that life on the surface and most animals overwinter in these warmer regions.

#### **The Rattling Sea**

In the east of Kaith lies the Rattling sea, a small salty ocean that is almost completely covered in floes for the majority of the year. Only in the summer the ice melts, flooding large regions of the coast and turning the ocean into a green paradise full of life.

Even in the colder months the Rattling Sea is inhabited by large wales and fishes aswell as a few blind descedants of the creatures that dwell in the Lightless Ocean.

## Cities of Kaith

The entire organised civilsation of Kaith is located under its mountains with big cities claiming thiefdom over large underground regions.

### Asguri cities

Each Asguri city is a state of its own rigth with its own set of laws, money and goverment. They are only connected through their ancestorial cult and the Dawnbringers.

#### **Ravinhold**

Ravinhold is the biggest Asguri city and can be considered their captial.