The Wider World¶

What lies beyond the Frostspine, as well as anyone in the north knows. The whole cold landmass has a proper name — Umbrath, the shadowland, the chained god's shadow given a coastline, but you will meet it only in a surveyor's hand or a scholar's margin; to a northerner there is the mountains, south, and the ice, and that is map enough. The north's maps are good for three days' travel and become folklore after that. The thin places on this page are thin on purpose: every region below is sized to hold future zones, and the "room to build" notes summarize what the canon already implies about each.

The official macro-geographic view is the illustrated atlas of the Hearth and Umbrath. It fixes the continent's broad bearings and climate without pretending that the room graph is a mileage survey.

The Frostspine: the known world¶

The rampart itself: Kordran's mountains over the Wyrm's vault. It is hook-shaped: the western spine runs broadly north–south, then bends east across the high northern crown. Coldhollow occupies the inner basin east of that western arm, but west and south of the long Highreach–Wyrmcrown shoulder. The playable world today — Coldhollow, the western trail-country and Pale Steps, the Emberrun road south, and the Ore Road that climbs north before traversing east — follows the rampart's inhabited inside edge. The World section maps it properly.

Worth restating as geography: the towns are not the region's centers. They are its exceptions — a scattered chain of lit rooms in a very large cold house.

The Wyrmcrown: far northeast, beyond the Iron Gate¶

The high northeastern heart of the range, where the hooked crown reaches its darkest culmination and the peaks cease behaving like ordinary terrain. The walked approach first gains the Highreach north of Coldhollow, then runs far east along the Wyrmshoulder. The Iron Gate at the shoulder's end remains caulked from within, but time has opened a gap beneath its leaves. Expeditions now pass into the Wyrmcrown: struck-flint air, unreliable silhouettes, the Ramparts, the prison-margin and the empty roost of Ashwing. The deep charts' claim that the Veins converge here can now be followed to the Eye of the Chaining, where the road ends in sight of the work that holds the Wyrm.

Room to build: the Crownward road is walked. Through the graven door behind Old Graven's tally room — sealed at the Closing in 651 SR, and opened at last — the Wyrmshoulder climbs through the Flint Fells, Silhouette Ridges, God-Barrow Field and Gatewatch Line to the Iron Gate. Beyond its gap, a thin chain of staffed returns supports the high ladder through the Underchain margin, Perch, Root Hang and Crack. These are expedition stations, not towns. Still unbuilt: passage beyond the Eye, entry into the prison proper, and whatever lies outside the surveyed margins. The sealed gate leaves remain evidence of the first Gatewatch's older withdrawal, not a barrier to the present gap route.

The Pale Steps: west, over the passes¶

Glacier country: shelf above shelf of old blue ice, stepped like a stair built for something patient. The western passes out of the trail-country are summer-only and not always then; beyond them the Steps run to the edge of the map and, the dark-elves imply without confirming, under it — their halls are somewhere below, and invitations are not applied for. Under the range's western spurs sits Hammerdeep, the dwarven mother-hold that sealed itself through the Long Winter and has never fully reopened. Frostmaiden weather. Unkindled stories. A silence with weight.

Room to build: well begun, and now high and deep both. The Sunstead Pass crosses from the trail-country to Thornfold's hearth, Sunstead Abbey's ruin, and the first shelf of the Steps — Mother Rime's court, the frost-sworn, and Hammerdeep's West Postern. Behind the postern, the hold itself: the West Hall, and the Underways below it, where the Sundered Kin sing the grudges. Above the shelf the High Shelves now climb into the glacier's own belly — the under-ice, the dark-elf halls' outermost margin (lit, attended, and not receiving), and the Western Door, of no material the north can name, depicted and shut. And past the Deep Road Gate the word SINGING finally has a country. Still unbuilt: the halls proper, whatever the watch keeps watching for, and everything the Western Door is a door to.

The Skorl Floes: east, the frozen sea¶

Where the land gives out into Morvach's country: pack ice, black leads of open water, and the skorl fleets that live on both. The floes are a worked landscape — hunted, fished, feuded over — with laws older than any town's and enforcement considerably faster. Under them, sailors used to merely insist, lies the Drowned King's lit and perfect court, and since 1212 SR a peak of that country stands above the water again: Kingsholm, the Drowned Isle, green against all latitude where maritime moderation and the island's warm springs meet, the wreckers' Shingle on its strand and the packet Kittiwake working the leads to it. It has no mainland road: the scheduled ship is the connection. The island's Wrecktithe Hall, Pilot House, Kelp Exchange, Boilhouse Council, Spring Ledger, and Archive govern the salvage, navigation, freshwater, industry, and remembered obligation behind its apparent wildness. The shore's one fixed point is Brinemoot, the seasonal ice-market where the Salt Peace was sworn in 790 SR; its public hall now leads through the stake archive, salvage court, winter quota chamber, ice hospice, and treaty vault. Brinemoot caravans reach Emberford's markets in most years, smelling of salt and refusing to be hurried.

Room to build: opened, and now worked. The seafaring register has its first pages — the isle, the crossing, the court below it, and past the far pans the ice-bridge now crosses to the Reaver Skerries: the skerry chain, Gravskarr Hold (a war-hold; the moot's outcasts, at home), and the green dark of the under-floe down to the Pale Bull's ground. Still unbuilt: the mother-holds of the skorl proper, Morvach's deep beneath the under-floe, and whatever the wave-road behind the Drowned King's throne runs down to.

The Thawlands: south, down the Emberrun¶

From Coldhollow, the surveyed Long Road spends forty-two measured miles descending through snow gates, avalanche shoulder, divide, thawing larch, mixedwood rainline, hayroad, and orchard before reaching Emberford on the Emberrun. Its quiet maintained trunk, six refuges, mile workers, and closure ledgers make climate and distance playable; the older icy road remains the learned dangerous shortcut. Follow the river south and the world turns gradually kind: river-meadow, orchard-shire, barge-town, grain. The Thawlands are the north's larder and its gentler neighbor, the first country the Long Winter released and the reason bread reaches Coldhollow at all. Halfling kitchens, human market-towns, Tallyman fairs, and a general conviction — maintained with some effort — that the mountains' business will stay in the mountains. Oldest of the river towns is Runmede (founded 141 SR), the grain-and-orchard settlement a day south of Emberford, where the north's bread is grown and its retired surveyors garden. Its Water Ledger, compact archive, barge guild, lock court, common granary, and standards loft make the river's rights and obligations public rooms, not background claims.

Room to build: begun, and now the shire is real. The barge road runs south from Runmede's docks to Southmere and the Deep Wold, and past the Mireback Sink's second arm the causeway now reaches the Sunfall Shire: hedgerow grain-country, the Tallyman's road, and Millharrow market town — halfling kitchens and all. And the politics of people who fund the frontier while preferring not to visit it now have their oldest unpaid bill on the map: the Marchhold, the river-lords' march-castle on the east bank above the old moorings, held nine winters past the Sundering and never relieved — the account the grange has carried, open, for three hundred and twenty years. The inhabited road now continues to Aldermouth, the warm tidal-river threshold. Still unbuilt: the delta, open coast and the barge-towns and kingdoms beyond that threshold.

The Sunward Lands: far south, mostly rumor¶

Past the Thawlands, over the world's shoulder, lie the old kingdoms: cities that never met the Long Winter at full strength, roads with names, courts, colleges, and wars conducted indoors. The contemplative Sunward Houses stand at their far edge; the Lanternkeepers' mother-houses are somewhere within them; and northern opinion of the whole region is compressed into the standard carter's blessing for southbound travellers: "Mind the soft ground." It is not entirely about mud.

Room to build: the northern threshold is walked. Aldermouth stands at the Emberrun's tidal head, reached by the eighteen-mile Sunward Road from Millharrow. Its relief courts, canal market and pilot school give the north a first warm southern town. The delta, open coast and deeper kingdoms remain offscreen: room for future pilgrims, exiles, expeditions and trouble with good manners.

Below: the Delvings, the Veins, the Underchain¶

Down is a direction too, and in this canon the most loaded one. The Delvings and reopened Deep Delvings are the Highreach mine's shallow and deeper workings. Under Hammerdeep, the Singing Veins expose the world's living heat. Farther northeast, the Crownward digs reach the Underchain, the prison-margin and the chains. These are separate walked approaches to the same deep cosmology. The Deep Mother's etiquette is the passport, and the Forgefellowship's old report — "It was warm, and it should not have been" — remains the beginning of the explanation.

Room to build: three approaches are charted. The Deep Delvings end below the Highreach mine. Hammerdeep's Deep Road reaches the Quiet Shift, still working since the western sealing around 1480 b.S., and the First Chord; the song beyond the Choirmaster remains impassable. The Crownward route reaches the Underchain margin and continues through the Root Hang and Crack to the Eye of the Chaining. No direct playable tunnel joins these three fronts. Still unbuilt: the Delvings' deeper bore, the road beyond the First Chord, and the prison beyond the Crown's last sight-line.

The shape of it¶

The main surface routes and their branches, with crossings named:

 Hammerdeep ← Thornfold ← Coldhollow → Lanternwatch → Wyrmshoulder → Wyrmcrown
                              │
                              S                         Marchhold
                          Emberford                         ↑
                              │       ferry                 │
                              ├──────────→ east bank → Old Moorings → Brinemoot
                              │                                      │
                           Runmede                        Kittiwake (sea passage)
                              │                                      ↓
                          Southmere                              Kingsholm
                              │
                          Millharrow
                              │  Sunward Road
                          Aldermouth
                              ·
                      delta and deeper south (unbuilt)

 Separate descents:
 Highreach mine → Deep Delvings → unwalked bore
 Hammerdeep → Singing Veins → First Chord (walked endpoint)
 Wyrmcrown → Underchain margin → Root Hang → Crack → Eye (walked endpoint)

The Perch branches upward from the Crown; return through the Crownward network to descend into the Underchain and Root Hang. These route lines describe connections, not distance or a safe path through every hunting band.