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{{State
{{State
|name=Scorval Blight
| name = Scorval Blight
|capital=Veilspire
| capital = Veilspire
|located in = Western Continent
| located in = Western Continent
|population=300000
| population = 4600000
|geography=A frozen, griefglass-scarred wasteland on the northwest edge of the western continent; polar ice to the north, Mellheiller’s violet tides to the west, and resonance storms bleeding down from the Aethergrave to the east.
| geography = Scorval Blight is a scarred expanse of broken plains, trenchlands, crater fields, and overgrown fortifications where war reshaped both terrain and memory. The land bears layered battle-scars that never fully healed: collapsed redoubts, vitrified killing fields, and forests grown through mass graves. Entire regions remain tactically frozen, as if awaiting orders that never came. The Blight occupies a wide southern interior basin of the western continent, ringed by low mountains and old supply roads.
|people_culture=Castaways, exiles, raiders, griefglass cults, covenant-warriors, and echo-guides living in a land where memory fractures and truth carries weight enough to kill.
| people_and_culture = Scorval is inhabited by veterans, descendants of soldiers, refugees, and communities that learned to live alongside unresolved conflict. Humans, Orcs, Earthkin, Halflings, and Elves coexist in cultures shaped by command structures, unit loyalty, and moral consequence. Identity is tied to service, decision, and survival rather than victory.
|hazards=Resonance storms, glass-jackals, mirror pilgrims, griefglass poisoning, shifting city architecture, covenant wars, silence pulses, and the Aethergrave’s creeping incursions.
| hazards = Command Echoes; Battlefield Loops; Griefglass Shrapnel Fields; Trench Collapse; Tactical Possession; and Morale Drain.
|landmarks=Veilspire; Storm-Bastions; Null Psalm Enclaves; Aethergrave Verge; coastal shadow ferries
| landmarks = [[Veilspire]]; [[The Unending Line]]; [[Graves of the Ninth Advance]]; [[The Broken Banner Fields]]
|other_settlements=Veilspire; outlying griefglass camps; storm-bastion enclaves; echo-guide caravan rings
| other_settlements = Holdfast Grey; Lastwatch; Cinderline; Mercy’s End
|coords=
| coords=-50.5140,121.4048
}}
}}


'''Scorval Blight''' festers in the northwest corner of the western continent, where the polar ice sheet presses from the north and Mellheiller’s western tides batter the coast in cold, violet-streaked waves. Once a green littoral of pine forests and cliffside towns, Scorval shattered when resonance storms bled down from the [[Aethergrave]]’s northern bay, searing soil into griefglass and twisting rivers into poisoned skeins. Today it is a realm of black ridges, frozen marshes, and glassy wastes where memory itself grows brittle.
= Scorval Blight =


Its people are castaways from the rest of Velthuryn: [[Gravenreach]] oath-breakers, exiled [[Lexharrow]] archivists, [[Fleaspark Union|Fleaspark]] inventors too volatile even for spark-guilds. Many fall into cult-circles that revere griefglass storms as omens or drift into raider-bands that scour neighboring borders for grain, lawstone, and spark-goods. What other nations call a curse is here a commodity: griefglass shards, echo-storm prisms, and memory-tainted relics smuggled to [[Sunlash Coast|Sunlash]] markets or [[Fleaspark Union|Fleaspark]] workshops.
== Overview ==
Scorval Blight is a land where the war ended, but the decisions did not. Treaties were signed and banners lowered, yet the ground itself continues to argue over what should have happened. Here, resonance binds not to ancestry or time, but to command. Orders given under fear, pride, or desperation replay endlessly, shaping terrain, Echoes, and lives.


To its neighbors, Scorval is both '''scar and lure'''. [[Lexharrow]] denounces griefglass but secretly buys it. [[Fleaspark Union|Fleaspark]] smugglers race patent-kites through its storms. [[Gravenreach]] sends oath-choirs to burn corruption, though every thaw reveals new shards rising from beneath the ice. The Blight endures as a wound at the edge of the continent...one that remembers every broken promise.
Unlike Sunlash, where emotion loops time, Scorval locks moments of choice in place. The land does not repeat battles. It repeats decisions. Every trench, ridge, and shattered fortress remembers the instant someone chose to advance, retreat, hold, or sacrifice others.


== Capital – Veilspire, the Shard-Forged City ==
== Geography ==
At the jagged heart of the Blight rises '''Veilspire''', a city born of griefglass and unquiet memory. By day, its towers stand like blackened spines against the polar wind, scattering Solivar’s light into cruel violet rays. At dusk, the city convulses: walls soften into molten cascades, alleys flow like rivers of glass, and districts slump down cliffs as though grieving. By the time Cyressel completes her second arc, the city re-freezes into a new labyrinth no map can capture.
Scorval Blight spans wide plains fractured by trench networks, shell craters, and half-reclaimed fortresses. Grasses grow in regimented lines following former troop formations. Rivers bend unnaturally around old supply routes, as if still obeying wartime maps.


Key features include:
During longbright, the land appears bleak but inert. During deepglow, moonlight reveals spectral formations: ghostly ranks, flickering command flags, and invisible front lines that still exert pressure on the terrain.


* '''Memory-Veils''' – Citizens wrap themselves in gauzy shrouds etched with their strongest emotion from the previous day. Going unveiled risks having the city overwrite one’s identity during its nightly transformation.
== People & Culture ==
* '''Nocturnal Markets''' – Open only after deepglow, trading in soul-charcoal, resonance-gnawed relics, and griefglass pigments that shift with the artist’s mood.
Life in Scorval is shaped by inherited command and unfinished duty.
* '''Cartomancers''' – Scribes who carve “living maps” into griefglass with blood-ink. Each atlas redraws itself at dawn.


== Covenants of Power ==
'''Humans''' — Former officers, tacticians, and civilian survivors.
Three rival covenants shape Scorval’s spiritual and civic life, carving dogma directly into griefglass:


=== The Pale Accord ===
'''Orcs''' — Disciplined veterans and oath-bound unit leaders.
Whispering ascetics who believe identity is a burden to be shed. Followers carve their names into griefglass prisms and abandon them; to speak one’s name again shatters the prism and the self it held.


=== The Choir of Glass ===
'''Earthkin''' — Engineers stabilizing fortifications and memorial works.
Fanatics who etch hymns into tall griefglass spires and weaponize resonance. Agony is liturgy; storms are scripture. Their hymns can drive listeners into ecstatic madness.


=== The Null Psalm ===
'''Halflings''' — Medics, couriers, and morale-keepers.
Masked zealots who pursue absolute negation. Their faces blur, shadows fade, and they chant erasure into being. To them, the purest faith is dissolution.


Their covenant-wars scar both sky and land with prisms that bleed light, charcoal veins of sorrow, and wind that carries lament thick enough to choke breath.
'''Elves''' — Chroniclers and memory-wardens cataloging unresolved orders.


== Spiritual Fabric ==
Communities organize around watches, shifts, and preparedness drills. Memorials are functional, doubling as shelters, armories, or supply caches.
{| class="wikitable"
! Religion / Sect !! Tenets !! Practices
|-
| Pale Accord || Identity is a burden. || Names carved into prisms; self shed at moonrise.
|-
| Choir of Glass || Pain reveals the divine. || Hymns etched into shards; singing consumes memories.
|-
| Bone-Root Way (outlying farms) || Sorrow grows renewal. || Root-crypts absorb grief; thorn-vines harvested as balm.
|-
| Null Psalm || Perfect emptiness is truth. || Silent processions; ash lacquer masks; erase expression.
|-
| Echo-Guides (Ribbet & Simiah) || Voice anchors across silence. || Harmonic chants guide caravans during Silence Pulses.
|}


== Trade & Materials ==
== Governance & Postwar Authority ==
{| class="wikitable"
Scorval has no monarch and no standing army. Authority rests with councils of veterans, engineers, historians, and caretakers whose legitimacy comes from lived experience rather than rank.
! Export !! Buyers !! Perils
|-
| Griefglass Ingots || Sunlash chronomancers; Aeterron data-oracles || Shatter violently if exposed to feigned joy.
|-
| Soul-Charcoal || Thirasil mourners; Tarkhos forge-priests || Ignites near unresolved guilt; burns hotter with regret.
|-
| Resonant Inks || Lexharrow archivists; Fleaspark inventors || Spills can rewrite local architecture.
|-
| Ash-Veil Cloth || Null Psalm cults; Fleaspark shadow-brokers || Dissolves in full sunlight.
|-
| Silence Shards (contraband) || Aurex and Velkar black markets || Breaking one mutes sound in a 20-foot radius for an hour.
|}


== Routes & Smuggling Networks ==
=== Capital — Veilspire ===
* '''Frostwaste Trail''': Hidden polar caravan route; griefglass disguised as ice-ore.
Veilspire rises from the ruins of Scorval’s former high command complex, a tower-city shrouded in perpetual haze created by layered griefglass veils and suppression wards. Once a center of strategic coordination, it now serves as Scorval’s administrative heart and moral anchor.
* '''Lexitunnel Vein''': Secret tunnels into [[Lexharrow]]; banned relics hidden in false libraries.
* '''Fleaspark Skyrunners''': Goblin storm-barges trading mid-air.
* '''Coastal Shadow Ferries''': Oathless Orc and Drakona crews running griefglass through violet fog.


== Hazards & Hospitality ==
Within Veilspire’s inner halls are sealed orders that were never carried out, each inscribed in griefglass and bound with resonance dampeners to prevent reactivation. Councils meet beneath these suspended veils, debating every major decision with a single guiding question: Will this choice echo?
* '''Resonance Storms''': Psychic tempests weaponizing sorrow; hurl shrapnel of remembered shame.
* '''Wailing Tithe''': Taverns require guests to bottle a secret; breaking the seal releases grief.
* '''Glass-Jackals''': Crystalline predators echoing doubts before they strike.
* '''Mirror Pilgrims''': Fractured doubles of travelers caught in silence pulses.
* '''Guest Law''': Shelter granted only if you present a truth-token. A false token reshapes streets into traps.


== Aethergrave: The Shattered Verge ==
== Hazards & Lingering War Threats ==
The [[Aethergrave]] tears openly into Scorval. Each thaw collapses another cliff into jagged griefglass; rivers hum with resonance; snow falls violet-tinged.
The Blight’s dangers are tactical, psychological, and relentless:


Three forces dominate here:
Command Echoes — Spectral officers issuing compulsive, half-finished orders.


=== Storm-Bastions of the Choir of Glass ===
Battlefield Loops — Zones where tactical decisions replay endlessly.
Cliffside forts carved from griefglass. Hymns etched into the walls resonate when lightning strikes, turning storms into weaponized liturgy.


=== Null Psalm Enclaves ===
Griefglass Shrapnel Fields — Crystalline debris inducing combat flashbacks.
Ascetics vanish into resonance rifts for seasons, returning faceless and shadowless, chanting negation.


=== Griefglass Smugglers ===
Trench Collapse — Sudden ground failure along buried fortifications.
Scavenge prisms from shattered bays; a single cracked shard can spill storms that replay broken vows across leagues.


Walking the Verge is to wander a geometry that hates you—glass labyrinths, violet chasms, whispers of ancestors you never had.
Tactical Possession — Echoes seizing control of individuals during stress.


== Living Mysteries ==
Morale Drain — Environmental despair eroding Hope and resolve.
{| class="wikitable"
 
! Enigma !! Hook
== Economy & Recovery ==
|-
Scorval’s economy focuses on salvage, stabilization, and remembrance. Griefglass fragments, battlefield relics, and fortified construction techniques are traded cautiously. Many citizens work as guides, Echo containment specialists, or caretakers of unstable zones.
| Stone Infanta || A child-statue weeps prophecy shards beside new graves.
|-
| Heart-Eclipsed Sun || Veilspire’s sunrise fails for seven dawns; who stole the light?
|-
| Null Choir’s Last Note || A psalm said to mute the Aethergrave; every singer vanished.
|-
| The Violet Oath || A mercenary’s oath-anchor vanished with him—can vows be eaten?
|-
| Echo-Floods || Inverted rivers pour upward, drenching travelers in whispered regrets.
|}


== Relations & Reputation ==
== Relations & Reputation ==
* '''Gravenreach:''' Provides resonance dampers; fears Scorval covenants may unleash Silence intentionally.
 
* '''Sunlash Coast''': Buys griefglass pigments; wary of storms poisoning star-iron veins.
Aeterron — Shared expertise in Echo containment and hazardous terrain.
* '''Aeterron''': Publicly condemns Scorval; secretly purchases contraband for chrono-tech.
 
* '''Tarkhos''': Respects soul-charcoal but distrusts Scorval raiders.
The Bastion of Aurex — Tense cooperation over sealed orders and suppression ethics.
* '''Lexharrow''': Uses resonant inks in forbidden rune-work.
 
* '''Remainder of Velthuryn''': Views Scorval as a cursed scar and a treasure chest of illicit power.
Tarkhos Dominion — Mutual respect between oath-bound warriors.
 
Lexharrow — Ongoing disputes over the interpretation of wartime decisions.
 
Scorval is respected for endurance, pitied for its burden, and feared for what its land can still command.


== Ancestry Distribution ==
== Ancestry Distribution ==
'''Predominant & Integrated:'''
=== Predominant ===
* Orcs: Exiles who become raiders or covenant warriors.
 
* Humans: Refugees carrying fractured memory-songs.
Humans, Orcs
* Faeries & Infernis: Outcasts who find grim belonging in the Blight.
 
'''Minorities:'''
=== Significant Minorities ===
* Ribbet & Simiah: Echo-guides offering survival through harmonic chants.
 
* Dwarves: Shattered fragments of [[Gravenreach]] lineages.
Earthkin, Halflings, Elves
* Drakona: Oathless wanderers seeking meaning or death in storms.
 
 
=== Transient Populations ===
Scorval Blight is a crucible where secrets forge heroes or shatter them into echoes. In this land, memory is a weapon, silence a scripture, and truth a force that reshapes stone.
 
Echohunters, historians, military scholars, pilgrims, and relief workers
 
== Fauna & Echoes of Scorval ==
 
Banner Wraiths — Echoes bound to fallen standards.
 
Trench Hounds — Beasts adapted to cratered terrain.
 
Griefglass Scarabs — Insects feeding on emotional residue.
 
Command Shades — Manifestations of unresolved leadership decisions.
 
Ironroot Stags — Creatures grown around embedded shrapnel.
 
== Decision, Duty, and Aftermath ==
In Scorval Blight, choice is the true weapon. The land remembers not who won, but who decided and who paid the price. To live here is to accept that victory does not end responsibility, and that some wars only conclude when their decisions are finally answered, amended, or forgiven.

Latest revision as of 23:20, 13 January 2026

Scorval Blight
Capital Veilspire
Located in Western Continent
Population 4,600,000
Landmarks Veilspire; The Unending Line; Graves of the Ninth Advance; The Broken Banner Fields
Settlements Holdfast Grey; Lastwatch; Cinderline; Mercy’s End
Factions
Coordinates -50.5140,121.4048
Campaigns The Echo Below



Scorval Blight

Overview

Scorval Blight is a land where the war ended, but the decisions did not. Treaties were signed and banners lowered, yet the ground itself continues to argue over what should have happened. Here, resonance binds not to ancestry or time, but to command. Orders given under fear, pride, or desperation replay endlessly, shaping terrain, Echoes, and lives.

Unlike Sunlash, where emotion loops time, Scorval locks moments of choice in place. The land does not repeat battles. It repeats decisions. Every trench, ridge, and shattered fortress remembers the instant someone chose to advance, retreat, hold, or sacrifice others.

Geography

Scorval Blight spans wide plains fractured by trench networks, shell craters, and half-reclaimed fortresses. Grasses grow in regimented lines following former troop formations. Rivers bend unnaturally around old supply routes, as if still obeying wartime maps.

During longbright, the land appears bleak but inert. During deepglow, moonlight reveals spectral formations: ghostly ranks, flickering command flags, and invisible front lines that still exert pressure on the terrain.

People & Culture

Life in Scorval is shaped by inherited command and unfinished duty.

Humans — Former officers, tacticians, and civilian survivors.

Orcs — Disciplined veterans and oath-bound unit leaders.

Earthkin — Engineers stabilizing fortifications and memorial works.

Halflings — Medics, couriers, and morale-keepers.

Elves — Chroniclers and memory-wardens cataloging unresolved orders.

Communities organize around watches, shifts, and preparedness drills. Memorials are functional, doubling as shelters, armories, or supply caches.

Governance & Postwar Authority

Scorval has no monarch and no standing army. Authority rests with councils of veterans, engineers, historians, and caretakers whose legitimacy comes from lived experience rather than rank.

Capital — Veilspire

Veilspire rises from the ruins of Scorval’s former high command complex, a tower-city shrouded in perpetual haze created by layered griefglass veils and suppression wards. Once a center of strategic coordination, it now serves as Scorval’s administrative heart and moral anchor.

Within Veilspire’s inner halls are sealed orders that were never carried out, each inscribed in griefglass and bound with resonance dampeners to prevent reactivation. Councils meet beneath these suspended veils, debating every major decision with a single guiding question: Will this choice echo?

Hazards & Lingering War Threats

The Blight’s dangers are tactical, psychological, and relentless:

Command Echoes — Spectral officers issuing compulsive, half-finished orders.

Battlefield Loops — Zones where tactical decisions replay endlessly.

Griefglass Shrapnel Fields — Crystalline debris inducing combat flashbacks.

Trench Collapse — Sudden ground failure along buried fortifications.

Tactical Possession — Echoes seizing control of individuals during stress.

Morale Drain — Environmental despair eroding Hope and resolve.

Economy & Recovery

Scorval’s economy focuses on salvage, stabilization, and remembrance. Griefglass fragments, battlefield relics, and fortified construction techniques are traded cautiously. Many citizens work as guides, Echo containment specialists, or caretakers of unstable zones.

Relations & Reputation

Aeterron — Shared expertise in Echo containment and hazardous terrain.

The Bastion of Aurex — Tense cooperation over sealed orders and suppression ethics.

Tarkhos Dominion — Mutual respect between oath-bound warriors.

Lexharrow — Ongoing disputes over the interpretation of wartime decisions.

Scorval is respected for endurance, pitied for its burden, and feared for what its land can still command.

Ancestry Distribution

Predominant

Humans, Orcs

Significant Minorities

Earthkin, Halflings, Elves

Transient Populations

Echohunters, historians, military scholars, pilgrims, and relief workers

Fauna & Echoes of Scorval

Banner Wraiths — Echoes bound to fallen standards.

Trench Hounds — Beasts adapted to cratered terrain.

Griefglass Scarabs — Insects feeding on emotional residue.

Command Shades — Manifestations of unresolved leadership decisions.

Ironroot Stags — Creatures grown around embedded shrapnel.

Decision, Duty, and Aftermath

In Scorval Blight, choice is the true weapon. The land remembers not who won, but who decided and who paid the price. To live here is to accept that victory does not end responsibility, and that some wars only conclude when their decisions are finally answered, amended, or forgiven.