Eolith (territory)

A land of stasis and preservation, where the remnant Relict opposes entropy. Features in the Shards & Fragments: Eolith episodes.

## Landscape, mood, and conditions

Eolith is like the world's wildest natural history museum. It is a busy, beautiful, thriving landscape in which everything looks like it's been dead for along time. It is a landscape of ebony, browns, whites and greys, all shot through with green, blue, and pink. At night an unbearable hot, dry, salt wind blows. During the day the landscape is tolerable, but the living is hard. A few small settlements of people exist, slowly eking out a living in the treacle-like atmosphere of the landscape.

## Flora and Fauna

* Wildlife is present, but mostly dormant in a sort of semi-permanent hibernation with only short periods of activity.
* Bees are one of the few creatures that the Remnant, Relict, permits to roam freely.
* Plants do grow, but are mostly the kinds of plants that are well-suited to arid landscapes and periods of dormancy: Ryne equivalents of the desert rose or the tumbleweed

## The Salt Lake

Less a lake and more a salt crust under which lies slightly boggy seawater. This lake in the north-west corner of the Territory is where Relict used to dwell, and it often returns there.

## The Petrified Forest

A wedge-shaped and beautiful forest of petrified wood towards the east, in which some villagers seek calm and refuge.

## The Army of Statues

The 40,000-strong army of the first neighbouring Territory to have time siphoned away, sent by the queen of the aggressive merchant republic to dispatch Relict. Not understanding how the time disruption would affect the army, they now move at the speed of a glacier through Eolith, furious but helpless.

## The Amber Mountains

In the south, a mountain range through which one can pass into Eolith. The mountains are mostly made of stone, but they are covered in fragments of fossils. Great shards of amber run through the mountains like veins, distorting and reflecting sunlight. The mountains are a site of natural beauty, but they also serve as a fortification if needed.

## Akómi̱

In the shadow of the mountains lies a glacier around which a settlement has grown as it is slightly cooler and there is a source of water. The people live a slow and calm life, not meddling in other things and untroubled by outside affairs. Some inhabitants have moved to Eolith specifically to recover from trauma, time or entropy and to move through what life they have left more slowly; others were born here. In the village is a hospice of sorts.

## The Salt Flats

In the middle of the territory is a flat, white expanse of salty plain. Roving packs of hermit crab walking-stones travel the deserts like tiny Relict facsimiles, leaving tracks but never seen by the locals.

## The Argon River

At the bottom of a canyon once carved by fast-flowing water languishes a slow-moving river of argon gas, preserving all that falls into it. Relict's Envoys take creatures that stray into Eolith, drag them to the ravine, and cast them into the Argon River. Anything that enters the gas stops decaying and the silent canyon is full of dead creatures: everything from gigafauna to tiny insects. Many of the flora and fauna that have been cast in are the last of their kind, now long-since extinct, and in the eyes of some, priceless. When the river reaches its mouth at the end of the canyon, it blows out across the salt lake where Relict makes its home.

## Rush

On the northern side of the ravine is a settlement of collectors, scientists, and taxidermists. Part of the town is next to the ravine, and part of it juts out over the canyon, perched on a giant pulley system that fishes out these long-dead corpses with nets and hooks. Collectors pay specialist operators to find and extract particular specimens of interest, and competition and skirmishes are common. Since the activities of the inhabitants are not in Relict's interests, the whole town is on wheels so they can make their escape en masse should Relict or one of its Envoys try and intervene.
Power, both to keep the town on the move, and to provide light, is generated by rendering and burning fat from the creatures hauled up out of the argon river, in large copper vats.

## The Moth Rocks

A sedimentary rock formation of pock-marked sandstone and limestone once formed in shallow sea is the home of little grubs that pupate in the holes and alcoves. When conditions are right- something that occurs roughly once a decade, or less- the insects emerge as face-sized white moths that form a huge swirling cloud around the rocks near the petrified forest. Due to the time-distorting effects of Eolith, they fly very slowly and form a spectacle that people come from near and far to see. On the ground below the swirling cloud, the petrified, salt-encrusted husks of previous generations of the moths form a strangely beautiful mound

## The Conch

In a fork in the river lies a huge, discarded conch shell. People and Envoys alike can enter the shell, which has excellent acoustics for meetings or performances. It also forms a refuge from the wind or from attack. Plants grow inside the shell alcoves, forming a kind of greenhouse.

## The Peat Bog

In the north east of the Territory, is a peat bog of sorts, compressed by time into fossil oils. Pits of tar and crude oil bubble languidly, and rafts of petrified white moths from nearby sit upon the surface.
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Between the petrified forest and the ravine are vast towering cairns of shells of extinct species that have been sorted and stacked by Relict or one of the Envoys. They are considered precarious by Eolith's inhabitants, and people avoid them for fear of them all crashing down.