Torral

Torral
Capital	Greatshell Haven
Located in	Western Continent
Population	3,200,000
Landmarks	Greatshell Haven; Chrono-Reef; Sunken Star-Gate; The Shell That Waits
Settlements
Factions	The Echohunters (Type: Mercenary) The Glass Market Syndicates (Type: Criminal) The Luminous Archive (Type: Religious) The Pale Accord (Type: Religious) The Stormcall Circles (Type: Religious) The Unsealers (Type: Criminal) The Vigilant Concord (Type: Political)
Coordinates	-48.7298,-36.2147
Campaigns

Torral

Torral rests like a granite triangle at the northwestern edge of the eastern continent, its cliffs and shoals braced against the Bangrave Sea. To the south it meets Tarkhos's ember-forged savannas; to the east, the storm-sculpted mesas of the Velkar Spires. Torral is shaped as much by tide as by stone, its people trace their lineage to the Galapa, the great world-turtles whose shells still drift in slow convoys across the Bangrave, bearing cargo, homes, and shrines upon their living backs.

Torral's lifeblood is tidesilver, a mutable alloy dredged from abyssal rifts and tempered by moonlit tidepools. In the Vale and beyond, it is said no weapon sings truer or ship-keel lasts longer than one laced with Torral tidesilver. Mining guilds anchor chains into the cliffs to lower entire foundries into tidal caverns, where smiths time their work by the surge and ebb of Solivar's pull. Each forge is both workshop and shrine, for to waste tidesilver is sacrilege, its glimmer is the ocean's memory of moons long past.

Culturally, Torral is maritime and ritual-bound. Tide-priests read the Bangrave's surf like scripture, marking omens in the foam. Convoy-clans of Galapa-riders and shell-carvers bind themselves to oaths of tide and current, often voyaging for years before returning to landfall. Outsiders view them as austere, yet to Torral, every breath, every tide, is part of a covenant, with the moons, the sea, and the shell that carries them all.

Spiritual Fabric

Faith / Order	Core Belief	Notable Rite
Dreamtide Chorus	The tides are the breaths of sleeping stars; each ebb and surge is a cosmic hymn that shapes mortal fate.	Song of the Sixth Wave: Choristers, led mostly by Galapa tide-chanters, wade waist-deep at dawn and harmonize with shell-horns; their song predicts which drowned ziggurats will rise that cycle.
Bone-Root Way (minority among human settlers)	Ancestors ride the currents in driftwood coffins, guiding their descendants by tide and wind.	Return of the Bark: Families commit elders to the sea on memory barges; the tide casts back water-logged relics or story-shards months later, believed to be wisdom distilled by the ancestors.
Shellbound Scribes (Galapa-anchored order)	Every tide carves a verse into the shell of time; to record is to endure.	Neap-Inscription: During the still tides, scribes carve concentric chronicle-rings into the carapaces of sacred Galapa elder-turtles, binding the Brotherhood's history into living flesh.
Infernic Ember-Cults (suppressed minority)	Fire must be chained to tide lest it consume all.	Secret Ash-Vigils in drowned forge-ruins, where Infernis burn offerings to balance the Forge-Soul against the sea.

Torral faith is neither swift nor rigid, it is tidal, slow, and enduring. To the Galapa, worship is patience: the wave always returns, and every memory endures if anchored in shell, stone, or tide.

Trade & Materials of Torral

Torral's commerce is shaped by the tides, the great beasts of the deep, and the strange alloys drawn from its surge-terraces. The kingdom's exports are coveted far beyond its waters, but each carries quirks and dangers that only Torral's artisans know how to master.

Export	Primary Buyers	Hazards & Quirks
Tidesilver - A moon-quenched alloy hammered from veins exposed by the surging terraces.	Velkar sky-smiths, Sunlash chronomancers	Corrodes into salt if carried above 100 ft elevation for more than a day.
Whalebone Ink - Bone-etched with tide-glyphs, used for prophetic charts and temporal codices.	Lexharrow scriptoria, Aeterron code-scribes	Sings faintly in starlight; archivists wear wax plugs to avoid sleepwalking into the sea.
Coral Clay - Bioluminescent clay workable only underwater.	Gravenreach seal-makers, Nokhul temple-masons	Hardens only while submerged; perfect for vault-sealing, useless in arid climates.
Brine-Glass Lenses - Algae-fed, translucent saltglass shaped in tide-kilns.	Fleaspark optiks, Aurex beacon-smelters	Shatter instantly on contact with fresh water; must be stored in brine vats.
Ambergris Candles - Rendered from deep-beast spoor, their flames burn with cold moonlight.	Thirasil druids, Sunlash dream-monks	Smoke induces vivid prophetic dreams; overuse erases recent memory.

Imports: Torral supplements its maritime crafts with drift-timber from Thirasil (for hull frames), wind-silk sails from Velkar, and resonance dampers from Aeterron to stabilize surge-forges.

Hazards & Hospitality

• Undertow Shades: Drowned memories manifest as translucent figures that seize swimmers and drag them into the deep ruins.
• Surge Quakes: Tectonic "breaths" tilt entire districts 30° in minutes; locals wear keel-belts to stay upright when the shelf heaves.
• Guest-Current: Visitors must release a personal memory into the tide on a lantern-buoy; refusal invites Echo-Eels that whisper secrets back at night until appeased.
• Saltmirror Fever: Still pools reflect not just the body but the soul; drinking from them risks trading places with one's reflection (+1 Stress, possible trait inversion).
• Shell-Tithe: By law, every foreign merchant must donate a carved token of shell or bone to the Greatshell Archives, binding their trade to Torral's tidal memory.

Living Mysteries

Enigma	Hook for PCs
Chrono-Reef	A coral ridge that remembers tides as crystalline spirals, glowing in moonlight. Galapa shell-scribes whisper that a newly forming "future spiral" predicts a great calamity, but the reef lies in waters swarmed by undertow shades and volcanic vents. Scholars and scribes need escorts to retrieve it before the next surge-breath buries it again.
Sunken Star-Gate	Once every thirty years, at the lowest tide, a ruin rises: pearl doors set in a barnacled arch, leading to a place utterly dry, utterly silent… and echoing with a voice that is not the sea. Galapa tide-priests believe it is a wound in the Forge-Soul itself. Explorers who step inside vanish for entire Solivar-turns before stumbling back, changed.
The Turtle's Lament	Each year, Greatshell Haven's ancient host grows slower. Druid-chanters suspect a curse or parasite embedded deep in its carapace, perhaps tied to griefglass fragments wedged beneath its shell. Can heroes dive beneath the drowned ziggurats and soothe, or sever, the affliction before the city itself founders?
The Songless Wave	One seasonal tide arrives utterly silent, muting not only the crash of surf but also song-magic, shell-horns, even ancestral whispers. The Galapa say it is a theft of memory itself, stolen by an unquiet force beneath the surge-terraces. To restore the tide's voice may mean facing a being that feeds on silence.
The Shell That Waits	A newly uncovered drift-shell is larger than any ever seen, its spirals vast enough to walk inside. Galapa scribes claim its inner grooves hold verses not yet sung by the sea, some swear they've heard their own future selves speaking from its depths.

Trade Routes & Tidal Convoys

1. Surge-Terrace Convoys

Description: Flat-bellied tide-barges crawl the Bangrave's continental shelves during Solivar's longbright, anchoring at tidesilver obelisks that glow faintly to mark safe terraces. Crews wait for Tassaryn's pull to drop the water, harvesting drowned ziggurats and hauling salvage into caissons that float up with the returning tide.

Goods Moved: Tidesilver ore, coral clay bricks, ambergris candles, storm-salvaged relics.

Hazards: Surge-quakes tilt barges without warning; undertow shades haunt the drowned avenues; Drakona mercenary-divers contest salvage claims with blade and breath.

2. Greatshell Caravans

Description: Settlements lash trade-carts and shrines to the backs of younger world-turtles, creating slow-moving "living caravans" that wander the Bangrave shallows in the wake of Greatshell Haven. Galapa scribes treat the shells as both kin and archive, etching runes and family histories during trade halts.

Goods Moved: Brine-glass lenses, whalebone inks, tide-etched scripture shells.

Hazards: Saltmirror pools split convoys into doubled reflections; sea-wraiths bore into shells to feed on ancestral memory.

3. Moon-Current Regatta Lanes

Description: Seasonal flotillas of catamarans and reed-prow skiffs race along tidal currents synchronized with Cyressel's arcs. Both convoy and ceremony, these regattas stitch Torral's coast to the Sunlash Coast and the western continent, carrying prestige as much as goods.

Goods Moved: Rootsteel from Nokhul (via Tarkhos brokers), chronal pearls from Sunlash, Torral tidesilver (often given as regatta prizes).

Hazards: Chronal eddies accelerate or stall craft unpredictably; chrono-corsairs exploit flux windows to strike from nowhere.

4. Storm-Path Ferries

Description: Wind-barge ferries and Galapa-guided drift-rafts cross eastward into the Velkar Spires, following beacon-lights strung between mesa peaks. The ferries are half raft, half living mangrove, piloted by tide-priests who "listen" for the Breath within the storm.

Goods Moved: Tidesilver ingots, brine-glass, and scripture shells east; windsteel, stormglass, and resonance prisms west.

Hazards: Echo-eels whisper stolen secrets through the hulls; root-blight spores rot the ferries mid-journey unless anointed with Galapa sap.

5. Tide-Fire Forge Route

Description: Along volcanic rifts south of Torral's shoals, Infernis and Galapa smiths maintain floating crucibles moored over fire-vents. Convoys of forged goods, moon-tempered weapons and ember-glass armor, are buoyed in caissons to coastal forges, then hauled inland toward Tarkhos for trade.

Goods Moved: Covenant-steel, ember-glass arms, volcanic salts.

Hazards: Fire-spirits demand offerings at vent-altars; slag geysers scald unprepared barges; memory-ore leakage from Aeterron experiments causes blackouts in tide-organs.

Dangers to Outsiders

• Guest-Current Law: Foreign traders must submit to the Lantern Memory Rite, releasing one personal truth into the tide before joining convoys. Refusal draws Echo-Eel infestations that plague their vessels.
• Shell-Tithe: Each convoy is expected to gift carved shell-markers to the Greatshell Archives; failure brands them oathless, barring entry to Torral's surge-terraces.
• Silent Waves: Rogue tides strip sound, disabling horns, spells, and command signals; locals carry brine-glyph charms that preserve a single spoken word against the silence.
• Scavenger Rivalry: Not all Drakona divers or Infernis forgesworn are loyal, some raid outsider ships, claiming "the tide takes what it wills."

Ancestry in the Tide-Forges

• Galapa (Predominant) - The steady heart of Torral. As smiths, salvagers, and tide-scribes, they embody patience and endurance, binding the Brotherhood with slow, deliberate strength. Their long memories anchor the Forge-Soul faith.
• Dwarves (Integrated Minority) - Revered as metallurgists and covenant-steel crafters, but defer to Galapa tide-law. Many serve as forge-chanters who blend hammer with hymn.
• Humans (Integrated Minority) - The traders and market-wardens who manage the rapid tides and ferry networks. Their flexibility balances the Galapa's patience.
• Infernis (Marginalized Minority) - Fire-blooded smiths conscripted into flooded crucibles and sea-forges; both feared and relied upon for their resilience against heat.
• Drakona (Distrusted Minority) - Ritual divers and mercenaries tied to volcanic cults. Allowed within the Brotherhood but closely watched, their oath-scars mark them as both protectors and potential heretics.

Torral is a nation that never stands still, an ever-changing shoreline where water is teacher, judge, and archive. Adventurers who master its rhythms may ride the tide to revelation… or be swept away with forgotten tomorrows.