Aethergrave Verge
| Aethergrave Verge | |
|---|---|
| State | Scorval Blight |
| Region | |
| Feature type | Aethergrave incursion front |
| Nearby Settlements | Veilspire |
| Coordinates | |
Aethergrave Verge is the shattered frontier where the Aethergrave gnaws openly at Scorval’s land. Here, the Grave bleeds through the northern bay and creeps into coastal marshes, each thaw shattering another cliff into jagged griefglass. Storm-veins radiate outward across the Blight like fractures in bone.
Snow falls violet-tinged, rivers hum with resonance, and thunder frequently carries echoes of oaths long broken. What other states call a catastrophe, many in Scorval treat as scripture.
Geography
The Verge runs along Scorval’s northern bay and western coastal shelf, a broken line of cliffs and marshes where conventional geography fails. Ice floes grind against griefglass shelves; shattered bluffs glitter with exposed prisms. Chasms pulse with violet glow, and labyrinthine caves echo with voices that do not belong to any living lineage.
Storms rolling in from the Mellheiller Ocean break differently along this edge. Lightning lashes from cloud to shard instead of ground, stepping across the landscape in jagged strides. Each strike leaves fresh fissures and fresh echoes.
Cult-Circles and the Verge
For many of Scorval’s cult-circles, the Verge is not a wound to be healed but a scripture to be read.
- Choir of Glass devotees carve hymns directly into cliff-faces and tower-shards, turning storms into liturgy as resonance amplifies their songs.
- Null Psalm enclaves vanish for seasons into resonance rifts, seeking to strip away identity within the Grave’s relentless silence.
- Smuggler bands scour shattered bays and tide-pools for prisms reputed to contain “pure” echoes, untempered by law or oath.
Each group scrawls its doctrine into the land—etched glyphs, ritual scars, and shattered promontories that tell overlapping, conflicting stories of what the Aethergrave means.
Griefglass Smugglers
Griefglass smugglers pick through the Verge’s rubble, seeking prisms and ingots that have not yet been claimed by covenants. They whisper that shards nearest the rift hold the strongest echoes: vows never sworn, regrets never confessed.
Such shards fetch ruinous prices in Lexharrow’s forbidden archives, Sunlash dream-schools, and Fleaspark’s more reckless workshops. But carrying them south risks contagion: a single cracked prism can spill a storm of echoes that replay broken promises across leagues, until beasts and bearers alike collapse beneath the weight of relived shame.
Walking the Verge
To walk the Aethergrave Verge in Scorval is to enter a place where the land disagrees with you.
- Paths wind in directions no compass accepts.
- A cliff that seemed solid at dawn may be a glass canyon by dusk.
- A river that flowed seaward yesterday may hum upward in violet cascades tonight.
Travelers say every oath broken within earshot of the Verge is answered by distant thunder, as if the land itself has taken note. Some claim that if you lie too often here, your shadow detaches and walks away toward the Grave, leaving you a little less anchored each time.
