Nomsyulhan (roughly meaning “Where Sky Touches Earth” in Hobgoblin) is a region of Haless that sits at the intersection between the rest of Gozengun, the Forbidden Plains, and Rahen. Nomsyulhan is characterized by its high elevation, geographic isolation, and strange wildlife. The region also contains the source of the Kharunyana river.
History[]
Stone Giant Rule[]
As evidenced by the plentiful archaeological remains scattered about the region, it is apparent that the first civilization to make its home within Nomsyulhan was a powerful Stone Giant kingdom. Chroniclers presume that the kingdom was more focused on scholarship and the arts as opposed to warfare, best evidenced by their lack of troll subjects, the number of academic records kept by their former ogres, and the sheer volume of left-behind artwork that still endures to this day. By way of outside connections, the Nomsyulhani Stone Giant kingdom presumably had warm relationships with the hill giants to their east and south, the fire giants to the west (with connection facilitated by the Salvation’s Promise pass), and the cloud giants above. Their relationship with the cloud giants in particular is of note, as the most-well preserved cloud city “dockyard” is present in the west of the region; a place not only to trade with and repair their skyborne brethren, but to build the floating cities themselves.
At some point, the stone ogres revolted against their masters in a similar manner to their brethren across the globe. However, unlike their scattered kin, the stone ogres were unsuccessful in totally devouring and supplanting their creators. The defeated ogres were forced to flee eastwards, wandering through the rest of Gozengun until finally settling within what are now known as the Demon Hills. Today, we know these former stone ogres as the Horned Ogres, or Oni.
Though the rebellion was undoubtedly disastrous for the Stone Giants, their demise would come at the hands of another foe.
Precursor Empire[]
Looking to assert their dominance over Halann, the Precursor Empire subjected the Stone Giant kingdom to the same fate as the Hill Giants of the rest of Haless: total destruction. Due to the Stone Giants’ tendency to lithify after death, many of the casualties of this conflict are still present in the region, their anguished final moments immortalized in unliving sculpture. Utilizing a magically-potent True Giant corpse located in the center of Nomsyulhan, the Precursors constructed a portal with which one could open gateways to other planets. Lodged into the skeletal maw of the long-dead titan, the portal was fed by the energies of the Halessi spirit grid. The remote location allowed for the Precursors to use Nomsyulhan as a sort of test bed for interplanetary exploration. Before being cleared for connection to the interplanetary hub – the Pillar of Heaven – located in their empire’s heartland, adventurers and expendable settlers could be sent from the Nomsyulhan portal to tame new locations, and potentially-dangerous specimens could be taken back to Halann and researched far away from where anyone important could be negatively impacted.
When the Call of Reflection was sent out recalling all elves back to Aelantir, Nomsyulhan was abandoned, portal and all. Perhaps out of respect for future inhabitants of the region, but more likely to keep their holdings secure until their perceived eventual return, the many laboratories and containment facilities found throughout the region were equipped with dangerous wards and defensive magics – the portal itself receiving the most intensive protections. To dissuade the curious from attempting to gain entry, the Godswall was constructed to the south, blocking off any natural passages between Shamakhad and Nomsyulhan.
Soulseeker Arrival[]
Millennia after the Precursors had abandoned the region, a new civilization would make their home in the forbidden valley. Fleeing from the rise of the Nadimraj, the ogres of north Rahen circumvented the heavily-warded Godswall by directly climbing over the eastern Serpentspine, crossing directly into Nomsyulhan. As ogres are wont to do, these newcomers immediately went about building new homes for themselves amongst the many ruins of the region. Now known as the Soulseeker Ogres, many of their first holdfasts were constructed in the shadows of abandoned Precursor outposts. To any elvish-speakers looking at a map of the region, the first thing that will stand out to them are the unwelcoming names of many of the locals' settlements; hearing the disembodied voices of auditory illusions urging listeners away from particularly dangerous locations led to names that translate to “stop,” “caution,” or “turn back” in Common.
Life in the ~1,000 years between the Soulseekers’ arrival and the Day of Ashen Skies was otherwise mostly peaceful. The ogres settled into a network of theocratic monastery-holdfasts connected by roving pastoralist tribes. For the most part, the magical defenses the Precursors applied to their left-behind infrastructure held, shielding the ogres from the worst of the extraterrestrial dangers locked in their depths.
Day of Ashen Skies[]
As was the case anywhere else in the world, the Day of Ashen Skies shattered the idyllic interlude of Nomsyulhan’s history. Crop failures threatened the Soulseekers with the return of the dreaded Hunger on a civilizational scale. Earthquakes wracked the land, shaking the holdfasts to their foundations; so great were their intensities that a hole was torn open in the mountainous ring that surrounded Nomsyulhan, forming what is now known as the Copper Pass. In addition to the “natural” dangers posed by the cataclysm, yet more exotic threats menaced the Nomsyulhani ogres. Firstly, the many warding enchantments keeping the Precursor’s legacy under lock and key faltered – unshackling the alien horrors kept within. The ogre settlements built atop or alongside Precursor ruins were particularly devastated, with some alien infections lingering for centuries in depopulated holdfasts. The surge of magical energy likewise sent a power spike to the interplanetary portal, temporarily powering it back on and throwing wide the gate for extraterrestrial life to flood into the surrounding badlands.
To the west, driven to Hunger-madness by the resultant food shortages caused by the explosion, the Sandmaw ogres of the Forbidden Plains were busy going extinct. The worst affected by the madness simply turned on one another in their frenzy, while others scattered to the plains in search of centaurs and other wildlife to sate their appetites. In an act of desperation, a handful of Sandmaw clans with enough food to stave off the madness set their sights eastwards on the ruined pathways up into the mountains. Though they knew not what lay at the end of the journey, they assured themselves of the salvation that awaited their people at the end of the path. The realm they arrived at was by no means a peaceful one, but the Sandmaws that survived the voyage were nonetheless saved, forever immortalizing the path they took as “Salvation’s Promise.” Too besieged to contemplate fighting a new foe, the Soulseekers quickly welcomed the Sandmaws as potential allies against the dangers that roamed the valley.
Not two generations later, yet another group arrived in Nomsyulhan: the Eagle Hobgoblins. Much like the Soulseekers before them, the Hobgoblins were fleeing their home in north Rahen in the wake of a unifying empire – the first Harimaraj in this case. Cut off from the Serpentspine by a thrust of Harimar’s armies, a great many hobgoblins fled to the base of the Godswall. Amidst the chaos, a chieftain remembered only as Kuense discovered a secret passageway within the Godswall, obscured by potent illusion magic. Upon his return to Rahen, he first led his clan to the refuge above the clouds, making return trips until all of the refugee clans had made it to safety. Once the evacuation was complete, Kuense fused the entrance of the passageway shut, ensuring that none could pursue him. No longer under an existential threat, the Eagle Hobgoblins collapsed back into their constituent clans, displacing the ogre population at the upper base of the Godswall.
Around the same time, harpies that had set off from the north of Siadan arrived in the southwest of Nomsyulhan; due to incompatibility with ogres, they were forced to move onwards in search of new partners with which to maintain their flocks. Continuing to the northeast, they finally came in contact with the newly-arrived Eagle Hobgoblins. The two peoples were natural allies; the harpies needed the hobgoblins for a stable supply of mates, while the Eagles needed every advantage they could get to carve a homeland out from the numerically superior ogres. The Nomsyulhani harpies adopted the religions and customs of their new allies, and came to be known as Highsong Harpies.
The fragmented and chaotic nature of Eagle Hobgoblin politics contributed to a constant need for new lands for ambitious mages to establish themselves and seek enlightenment. Over the centuries, the Hobgoblins secured more and more of Nomsyulhan for themselves, steadily moving north along the banks of the Kharunyana river, harpy allies never far behind. By the ninth century After Ash, hobgoblins had pushed into the Green Vale, quickly displacing the ogres within and securing the whole of the subregion for themselves.
Geography[]
Nomsyulhan can be further broken down into three geographic subdivisions: the Green Vale to the northwest, the Badlands to the northeast, and the Upper Kharunyana Basin to the south.
Green Vale[]
The Green Vale is a geographic fortress within a fortress. Only accessible from the rest of Nomsyulhan through a pair of narrow passes, the isolated Green Vale is best recognized for its strange ecology. Despite being located at high elevation and surrounded by arid desertland, the Green Vale is home to a lush arboreal environment. Demographically, the subregion is dominated by Hobgoblins, with only small pockets of ogres located in monasteries clinging to the walls of the lesser valley. The mountains that separate the Green Vale from the Badlands are also occupied by small flocks of Highsong Harpies. Demographics aside, the most unique feature of the Green Vale is the composition of its flora and fauna. Those unknowledgeable about the Vale’s ecology will still likely be able to recognize its most renowned export: the dragonnel; native to the high peaks that ring the valley, Hobgoblin newcomers trained the draconic look-alikes to serve as airborne mounts. The valley floor is flush with a wealth of ecological diversity, home to plant life both native and foreign to Halann.
Lying in the very heart of the subregion is a Precursor structure known as the Garden Spire. From the outside the structure looks identical to precursor towers found elsewhere, albeit standing at a much greater height than any comparable building on the elven homeland. However, on the inside, the seemingly endless floors are each home to a dizzying array of stasis cells and gardens, each host to some exotic strand of plant life unseen anywhere else on Halann. Over the millennia, degradation has exposed many of these units to the outside environment – contributing even further to the biodiversity of the Vale than was likely intended by the tower’s architects. In addition to serving as a repository for alien plant life, the Garden Spire acted as an observation post; through a sizable array of scrying mirrors attuned to points throughout the vale, the spire’s occupants can safely observe their surroundings without exposing themselves to the dangers of the outdoors.
Badlands[]
The Nomsyulhani Badlands are a roughly elliptical geographic feature, centered around the Precursor’s left-behind extraplanetary portal. Near the fringes of the subregion, the terrain is mostly flat and sandy, broken up by an occasional mountain. As one approaches the center, the land becomes much more craggy and uneven, as flat land gradually gives way to labyrinthine passageways between rocky outcroppings. The Badlands are the bastion of Soulseeker Ogre civilization, and contain only small outside minorities of Rünsukhi humans and Eagle Hobgoblins. Most of the ogre holdfasts in the subregion are located to the edges of the Badlands’ borders; not only is the interior’s geography unconducive to urban development, extraterrestrial threats and dangerous Precursor ruins become increasingly more common closer to the labyrinth’s heart – a problem only worsened by the damage caused by the Day of Ashen Skies. For this reason, safe and reliable passage to the center of the Badlands was first charted in the 18th century, and only after generations of toil and sacrifice on the part of ogrish pioneers.
Upper Basin[]
The Upper Kharunyana Basin is the most populous geographic subdivision of Nomsyulhan, and home to the most diverse demographics within the region. The banks of the Kharunyana are majority-hobgoblin in makeup, the west of the area closest to the mountains is majority ogre, and the mountain peaks are held by the Highsong Harpies. Both of the mountain passes that connect the Forbidden Plains to Nomsyulhan have their entrances in the Upper Basin. Due to their positioning, the ogrish population of the basin has a much higher concentration of Sandmaw blood, reflected by a strong regional accent and a much more zealous adherence to Sudomeg’i anti-Hunger practices.
The heart of civilization in the Upper Basin lies in the former precursor outpost known as The’as Aschur. Comprised of five subsections aligned in an 'X' shape and abruptly cut into the local topography, the city is by far the largest grouping of Precursor architecture found on Halcann. At the time of its construction, it served as the population center of Precursor activity in Nomsyulhan, and as a central point for spirit energy to be routed throughout the region. Now, even with the numerous refurbishments made by the Convocation of Kuenan Nirokyu, The’as Aschur would not look out of place amongst the preserved precursor cities of South Aelantir. The heart of the city boasts a central tower used as a place for mages to meet and as a palace for the most enlightened to devote themselves to their studies unshackled both from material needs and outside distraction. The early ogre occupants of the The’as Aschur regarded the construction as five separate cities – each subcity of The’as Aschur is separated by a significant stretch of undeveloped land disrupted only by the odd ruin or broken containment facility – but the hobgoblin conquers saw it as a cohesive whole. The southeast subcity is built atop Lake Syul itself, and is connected to the mainland by a bridge built under hobgoblin rule; the highlight of the southeast district is the Great Spirit Kharunyana’s palace, where the land-bound can seek audience with the mighty spirit. In the northeast, a large hill bounds the city which features a number of homes carved into the cliffs above.