Azhōkha (Kōbō, 甲卯)

A southern continent known to the High Elves as Kōbō (甲卯), homeland of the Azhōkha-speaking peoples   Kōbō is a vast, cold, and ecologically diverse continent situated in the far south of Erthas. Its bulk stretches from approximately -45° to -67° latitude and -50° to -90° longitude, with a broad triangular extension running southwest from -67°,-67 to -70°,-110 all the way to the South Pole. Though largely unknown to outsiders, it is home to a deeply rooted Mesolithic culture, distributed across fjords, bays, steppe, forest, and tundra.  

Geography

  Kōbō is a continent of deep antiquity and layered landscapes. Its western half is an ancient craton—one of the oldest exposed rock regions on Erthas—deeply eroded and shaped by glaciation and time. Two massive bays have been carved into this landmass: a northern bay between -50° and -55°, and a southern bay beneath the -67° parallel. These regions are true tundra, comparable in ecology to the far north of Old Earth’s Canada or Siberia.   North of the craton lies a younger chain of coastal mountains, sheathed in boreal forest, which runs across the width of the continent. East of these mountains lie older, crumbling highlands cut through by rivers, which host a patchwork of boreal forest in the south and cold steppe in the interior. The northern coast of Kōbō faces the stormy southern ocean and experiences a marine climate, supporting mossy headlands, conifer groves, and stone beaches.   Kōbō’s northeast is defined by a massive peninsula that connects—via ice and land bridges in the east—to the Chijin Archipelago. Its eastern coast is boreal forest turning to tundra after -67°, stretching uninterrupted to the edge of the world at the South Pole.  

Peoples and Languages

  The native peoples of Kōbō speak branches of the Azhōkha macro-family, a Mesolithic language continuum (inspired by Proto-Muskogean). These peoples are semi-nomadic, seasonally migratory, and adapted to a world of ice, forest, wind, and sea. They dwell in temporary structures—hide tents, bark shelters, and stone-lined hearth-pits—and practice lifeways centered on fishing, birding, sea mammal hunting, root foraging, and reptile drives.   The Azhōkha family consists of eleven languages, loosely grouped by region:  

• Yelkhani Group: Eastern peninsula peoples — Narásha, Eltahi, Zhekwari
• Dolzuna Group: Peoples of the narrow sea gulf — Awishi, Kashtara
• Vulri Group: North-peninsula coastal dwellers — Tūrana, Askweni
• Cholkari Group: Steppe nomads — Bahnata
• Shekawi Group: Western tundra people — Duwēra
• Ulxeni Group: North bay tundra dwellers — Thēkhara
• Kahrashi Group: Eastern tundra and polar fringe — Noqwenna

  Though distinct in dialect and territory, all Azhōkha peoples share core cosmologies, gift-based seasonal diplomacy, and systems of kin-naming that include spirits, landmarks, and weather phenomena. They preserve stories in gesture, drumbeat, and breath across generations, often reciting lineages of birds, reptiles, and ancestors in one breath before sunrise.  

Fauna

  Kōbō is home to an entirely non-mammalian native fauna, as it was separated from the mammal line over 300 million years ago. The land is populated by:  

• Featherless gliders and cliff-dwelling saurids in the boreal forests
• Cold-adapted, furred reptiles used for meat and hide in tundra zones
• Massive seabound tetrapods hunted for oil, bone, and skin
• Pack-hunting scaled runners and slow-shelled burrowers
• Migratory sky-forms (non-avian flappers) tracked for their eggs and flight patterns

  Marine mammals—seals and small whales—have only recently reached Kōbō via cold ocean currents from Dainan, and their presence remains rare and mythic to many Azhōkha.  

High Elven Contact

  The High Elves of Daitō refer to the continent as Kōbō (甲卯), a calendrical designation under the Kanshi Chihyō coordinate system. While the Elves have no permanent holdings here, fragments of song and glacial jade have entered Elven trade networks, and there are whispered reports of a deepwater expedition mapping the magnetic anomalies beneath Kōbō’s southern cliffs.   To Elven cartographers, Kōbō is both a land of silence and a final limit: a place where breath freezes and the stars swim beneath the sea.