Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Adamaro23 05-22-07, 10:46 PM	i've been wondering, what is the general type of terrain in the mournland? Are there any types of forests? if so are any normal? Are there any bodies of water, or oasis, etc...? Is the mournland mostly a huge barren wasteland? or is it desert-like? Because of the Mourning did it affect Khyber? if so would it only affect the upper levels? The reason i'm wondering is i only have 3 pics of the Mournland, and i can't really make out the general type of place this is. My PCs are going there Saturday and i want to know how to describe it to them.
The Fireballed Mage 05-22-07, 11:32 PM	A vast open, desecrated grave. Those are the words that come to your mind as you finally leave the cloying dead-grey mists behind. While the physical mists are behind you, a strange half-light still emanates from them leaving the land of old Cyre under a kind of twilight. This false dawn does nothing to make what you see any better. The ground, cracked and split in places, is littered with the remains of bodies. Animals and people lie where struck down by unknown forces so many years ago, their bodies not decayed in the slightest. Soldiers and civilians, adult and child, all still intact... all still wet. The air itself contains that coppery smell that as adventurers you know too well: the scent of spilled lifeblood. The land shares the same grey palour of the corpses that litter its surface. Grass that once might have been green is now barren rock and choking dust. The only thing you see clawing life from this place are small patches of rough, thorny shrubs; more thorn than plant. Off in the distance you see the skeletal remains of a grove of trees, their empty limbs like finger bones reaching out from their unmarked grave. A few hundred feet away a number of jagged rocks has burst up from the otherwise gently rolling plain; like a cancerous growth rupturing forth from beneath skin. There is no sun, no warmth, only an artifical ceiling as the dead-grey mists curl overhead to form an unnatural cap several hundred feet or so above the land. That strange half-light also shines down from this roof bathing everything in that same grey light, as if awaiting a dawn that will never come. It is quiet. There is no sound of animals, nor of wind. Only the soft jingle of your equipment as you shift in place. Perhaps the land is as dead as those bodies that lay broken and discarded over her corpse. Welcome to Cyre. Welcome to the Jewel of Galifar. Welcome to the Mournlands.
_Radagast_ 05-22-07, 11:39 PM	Excellent description.
elbrop 05-22-07, 11:42 PM	For me to picture Mournland you have to first image what Cyre was like. (Note, from here on a lot of this is my own thoughts and not supported by the books) In my mind Cyre was old. While not the head it certainly was the heart of the old Kingdom. From border to border it was civilised, tamed lands. Mostly farmlands and small forests all connected by a web of well maintained roads and bridges. Hills have been mastered, in some places terraced for farming. Mountains have safe roads and well worn trade routes. Cyre towns and cities are old and well established. There were no untamed borders, no point where the rule of law broke down. Then the war. Everything that made Cyre great made it vulnerable. It was ravaged along the borders. It would have been forced to amputate its own infrastructure to slow down the advance of their enemies. They would have burned their own bridges and smashed open levies and ruined roads. Centuries of civilisation building was lost in the name of survival. Mournday. You know what the books say about Mournland, what makes it unique. The Planes of glass, the ruined cities, the constant fog and so on. But Mournland (in my setting, a lot of the following isn’t in the books) is also a snapshot of Cyre in the final days. Once past the battlegrounds of the border wars you find the farmlands. They aren’t overgrown because nearly everything in Mournland is dead but does not decay. Vast fields seem to promise ripe harvests but the plants are dead. Buildings are collapsing from neglect. The rivers run sluggish with oily, tainted water. The forests are dead but like the fields this only becomes apparent when you get close. The leaves still hang from branches. Everywhere you go you find death. Birds lie where they fell on Mournday. Above all Mournland is quiet.
Adamaro23 05-23-07, 09:00 PM	Ok, so do any novels describe any parts of the Mournland? Like, what does the Plains of glass look like? or any of the ruins? Does the Plains of glass look like a frozen glimmering sea (but glass)? Also does the plain of glass have any significance?