Nefyran

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Shifting Landscapes

The lands of Nefyran boast a breadth of diverse regions, people, and histories, the latter of which range from ancient to newly emerging. Many of the regions within Nefyran undergo regular cycles of transformation, some being more sudden than others, resulting in drastically altered landscapes, shifting populations, and ever-evolving populations of people surviving in the world.

Northeastern Nefyran

Northeastern Nefyran features regions such as the Kingdom of Arsavela, Nimavi, and Uris Braena, and is not known for widespread magical influence. The exception to this is found within pockets of the Hearthwood of Nimavi, in which magic runs rampant. These lands, however, are largely inaccessible to the average denizen of the surrounding regions, who remain in many cases ignorant of the true nature of leyline magic within the world at large.   The lands of Northeastern Nefyran are lands dominated primarily by the magics of faith, and not of the leylines or the primals. Divines shape the lives of the people who reside here; many who live in lands beyond these borders often theorize that these Divines have played a hand in the very nature of the lands over which they preside, causing the relative stability of the leylines that they never overturn the lands by emerging within. This, of course, is mere speculation.   The stability of the landscape within Northeastern Nefyran is what has afforded kingdoms such as Arsavela to thrive and develop uninterrupted since the dawn of the new era. Such long-standing kingdoms are exceptionally rare in other parts of Malkora, through they are not unheard of.

Central Nefyran

Though many consider Northeastern Nefyran to shift to Central Nefyran at the towering Rhonsoril mountain range, Uris Braena claims its sister region on the western side of the mountain to be the second half to one united Kingdom. Likewise, this sister region of Uris Halnaa claims Ba'Logor to the north to be an extension of its own forests. These regions would draw their borders with Central Nefyran claiming only the lands including the great Caldera and what lies south of it, including even Leechsea, which most would argue should be seen as a territory connected to Hearthwood and not one separate from it.   All maps of Central Nefyran do, however, include the regions from Vynarsa, which borders Southern Nefyran, to the Caldera in the north, as well as including the island region of Undmar. Undmar's proximity to Leechsea does often pull this large swampland into common maps of Central Nefyran as well, despite the aforementioned common claims that it ought to be categorized as a Northeastern territory.

Southern Nefyran

Southern Nefyran is marked by harsher landscapes, featuring the nightless deserts of Everbright, the forever-burning Bolkan, and the treacherous lurching cliffs of the Earthen Kingdoms. The people who reside within the lands of Southern Nefyran are among the world's most resilient; these are hardy folk who survive in environments which seldom provide a safe place to stay for very long.   The primals found purchase in these tumultuous lands, feeling at home in the more rugged, underdeveloped and less-explored places found within them. Likewise, many of those who reside within these lands may trace their ancestry to primal bloodlines, which only serve to aid them in their quest for survival. Those settlements which do exist in the harshest of these lands are often brimming with worldspirit folk, those naturally adapted to living every day exposed to the elements which would bring other humans great harm.

Western Nefyran

Western Nefyran is known to most as being an inhospitable zone, more chaotic in its transformations than even Southern Nefyran. Whereas regions in the latter shift almost as if in cycles, through long periods of transition, with stages of stability throughout, the regions of Western Nefyran appear to turn and shift sporadically and without warning. Lands explored a mere several days prior could be wholly unrecognizable, even as other pockets of various regions within rest unchanged for millennia. This unpredictable nature has prevented the development of any expansive population zones, cities, capitals, kingdoms, and the like, but there are still those who manage to find a life within these unstable lands. Some exceptions do include large cities and surviving populations, but reaching them safely is often the greatest obstacle in the quest to find them. Only the sharpest and most adaptable of beings can expect to survive in the farthest reaches of Western Nefyran.   The leylines appear to lose their stability the farther west one travels in Nefyran, the nature of these ever-changing regions being a testament to this phenomenon. Their lessened stability, however, does mean that the raw energies of the leylines are more easily exposed and, in turn, utilized by those with an affinity for magic. Though extremely dangerous, many who seek to understand the mysteries of leyline magic ultimately set out on journeys into the unstable lands of Western Nefyran in order to test their ability and to make new discoveries. Likewise, magical reagents are exceedingly common in these lands, although with the environments shifting as often as they do, it is often impossible to track any specific targets. What was once found upon the grassy cliffs of a region in the west may very well disappear in the following days, replaced with anything from frigid waterfalls to barren flatlands.  

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