BEYOND THE VALE ; FANTASY VERSE HOME
The Vale sits the furthest North beyond an icy and difficult storm filled sea, where the maps believe the word ends. Few navigate these waters, sometimes the odd fisherman will come across the cloudy shore line only for it to never reappear. Between ship wrecks and towering cliffs, there is one calm bay on the islands East side where the shore meets the tree line. Here, along the towering pines that lead to a thick grey fog, witches can cross the barrier into a safe haven for all those who practice magic. There's currently a population of around 5000 witches, and about 5 adult dragons that roost in the mountains and hills to the West side. Nothing about the island is flat, it's rolling hills that give way to rocky mountaintops. Generally it's fairly cold, they have about eight months of winter and a few sunny days but is does mean that rare herbs and plants not found in the south grow here in the extreme conditions. There are a couple of settlements, some of the witches choose to live in caves amongst the mountains where the practice more extreme forms of magic, although the Moran's grew up in the fairly safe valley away from that. They are about 4 miles from the magic border, in a small cottage wiht a thatched roof close to the town hall. Most of the holmes are mud huts based on timber frames with a few stone cottages strewn around from the first settlers. They have to keep expanding as more regugees are added. Both common and vale are spoken on the island, some of the older residence struggling with the new langauge. Most kids only learn to read and write in vale as it is the anchient runic language most spells are kept in. They keep to tradition, money isn't really nessecary as they share what they have. The island runs as a democracy, the leader Thomas Moran was elected by the people of the island after killing a dragon that was terrorising them. Generally speaking, the dragons now live in peace as the witches give them space and leave a field of sheep for them to snack on. The Vale originally had it’s own people. They lived beyond the borders of the known land, beyond the magic and chaos of the kingdoms below. They existed on a rocky shoreline that protected them, at one with the fey and dragons that existed along their small island. The people were largely nomadic, hunting to eat the strange beasts that existed. They worshipped the dragons as gods, sparring tribes that existed together. They braided their hair, painted their faces with dye and inked their skin in ways the Southern witches couldn’t understand. When the first witches arrived, nearly 500 years ago fleeing for persecution in the south, they brought with them the sickness. The sickness took indiscriminately, killing both the strong and the weak. Where the witches had the ability to heal and access to magic, the natives suffered. They died in their hundreds, driven mad by the sickness. It infected the mind, many throwing themselves from the rocky cliffs to the stewing waters beneath. Eventually, all the native settlements were left abandoned on the west side of the island. This is where the hills give way to mountain peaks, it’s common to see the dragons roosting in what was once a town for the native people. Vale children are forbidden from going into these settlements, skulls of the dead still line the walls as a warning to any who would dare. The few who survived the worst of the sickness married into the witches, their cultures merging somewhere in the intertwined history. It’s said that madness still runs in those with light eyes and fair hair, the common look of the original Vale people. It’s far removed form the days of worshiping the dragons gods and berserker armies but it’s there, somewhere. In the half a millennia, the line between the now Northern witches and the Vale people has disappeared.
