Erak
Year 568, era of the Movement
Nature and lost faith
The body of the mountain protects us, the celestials watch over us, nature tempts us, and the corpses wait for a moment to break us all. This stone is part of the mountain, of the Giant, and it shall guide you for the rest of your life.
Erak is one of the biggest islands in the Shattered, with proportionally big flora and fauna that make people's life hard. Its forests of giant trees surround yet don't step on the singular mountain in the centre of the island, where People have found a small haven to live in at the top.
It is a place attuned to nature, where it's important to know what is bigger than you (both physically and metaphorically), and a place where people have found comfort on faith surrounding the Giants.
Geography
Erak's surface is a wide giant tree, with trees and plants of vibrant greens and colourful fauna. It has the most diversity of life in the region, and many of its trees reach past 50m tall. From broadleaf trees to mosses and ferns, the forest has a lot of layers to give home to plenty of giant fauna of different types.
The forest itself is quite hot and humid in general, yet two seasons can be seen: dry and wet. The wet season takes most of the year.
The dry season start is usually warned by giant schools of fish passing by, causing non-herviboure fauna to be much more aggressive and daring as they try to catch some of the fishes. The season itself is easily seen, as leaves get a yellowish tint and every flora becomes crunchier and dry, almost giving a fragile or sick aspect to the forest. It is a season where animal life slows down and relax, making it the safest season too.
Vines
Four tower-like structures raise from the top of the mountain, each one attached to one giant vine that connects Erak with the four surrounding islands. These vines are taller than wider and are hollow, they are very light and would be floating if they weren't attached to the other islands as well. Because their connection and size, they are often used as bridges to walk between islands, but it becomes quickly unstable with enough weight on them, so the usage of the vines is controlled.
When the vines break, they tend to grow outwards where the wound is, so people quickly add patches to them and sew them so the vine heals the wound instead of growing to where people don't want to. Because of this, Erak has a big cultivation of vines that were grown out of broken pieces of the giant vines. These cultivations, other than being used to fix the vines, are also used sometimes as medicine or clothing, and in times of famine, food.
Not a lot is known of these vines, they have been here since before people arrived and will probably last for longer as they seem quite resilient. It is believed that they feed of Lidust that is caught by the flowers and mushrooms that grow on the outside walls of the vines, catching the Lidust out of space.
Mountain
The mountain in the center of Erak has a queer shape. It's almost an irregular half circle with a very thick middle, yet one end quickly becomes thin and the other end ends abruptly in a thick part. At it's base, the "centre" that the mountain makes at it's base has a strange deep brown, almost black, hard rock soil that shimmers in a myriad of colours when the Creator's light reaches it. That black rock "climbs" up the mountain as a "line" of sorts up to half the mountain.
The people of Erak claim the dark spot of the mountain as sacred and will not mine any black stone, except as part of their coming-out-of-age tradition, where they climb down the mountain and collect one lose pebble that will be turned into a jewelry of chosing and become part of the person's identity.
Both flora and fauna avoid the black stone, although some birds have been seen to rest in there and fly away with pebbles. Neither behaviour is understood and it's just assumed its caused by the holyness of the place.
People
The people of Erak are resilient and firm believers of their own gods, who are based on the Giants. They have made the mountain their home as the forest was too dangerous to properly live in, yet that didn't stop them to have incursions to the forest from time to time.
The mountain is big part of their beliefs and has become sacred and an honour to be able to live in it. Part of the mountain, where there's black rock, is considered sacred group and is only able to touch in special occasions, being the "coming out of age" tradition the main one.
That tradition revolves in the person climbing down to the valley, where the black rock lies, and they must search for a loose pebble or rock that they believe fits them or who they want to be. That rock will be turned into a jewellery of choosing and will be considered part of the person and their personality. Very rare occasions allow for a change of rock, and losing or denying the rock is believed to be heresy.
For the past few centuries, their beliefs have been put to test multiple times as the foundations of them keep being shaken.
People believe that the mountain they live in is a sleeping Giant, one that has yet to wake up for the first time and join its siblings.
Some bad voices claim its a corpse instead. One that crashed into the island, before people reached it, and bleed out, corrupting the fauna and flora in the island that drank from its blood.
The Giant belief was the most extended up until the news of Nera's death reached the islands. Since that, a slow long religious crisis has been slowly brewing.
Fruits and vegetables are the staple of Erak's cuisine, one side of the mountain is dedicated to terrace farming to feed the whole town. It was hard to set up at the start of the settlement, but has since grown to have a lot of diversity of foods.
Animal products are rarer, but still take a fairly important portion of their diet as they have a great variety of domesticated animals, yet it is much more expensive.
Meat is a luxury, often only consumed in important moments, events, and celebrations. They prefer keeping the animals for the renewable products than to spend that much time, food, and effort just to kill them, and hunting is too much of a dangerous profession, making the catches too expensive for most people.
Fish is another rarity, but more common than meet. They fish from out the sky, on the rare occasions where big schools of fish get close enough to the islands. This method of fish, while inconsistent, can get enough fish to feed people for a couple weeks.
Most of the buildings are made of stone or grown wood. Early in their history, they used to take wood from the forest, but because superstitions and often injuries, they quickly considered the forest out of reach and have since then grown their trees.
The grown trees have shown proof that they'd never be able to grow as big as the ones in the forest, and thus aren't allowed to grow for much more than a few years, enough time to considered big enough, based on how much wood they might yield.
Stone is becoming less and less used. They have to be careful mining for it on the mountain and refuse to even touch black rock when found, so it's use in construction has been diminishing for the past centuries.
Some have recently (for the past hundred years or so) been trying to convince people to use black rock on the construction, as they believed that the mountain was a Corpse and thus doesn't deserve to be treated specially and claim rock foundations would improve the town immensely.
History
After spending some decades fighting to get some territory in the forest to call home, the people of Erak finally decided to try finding a place to live in the mountain.
It was harsh, though not harsher than their experience in the forest, food was the most problematic issue, learning to change from gathering and hunting to farming in such a harsh soil took a long time, which was to be compensated with long periods of hunt and gathering. But these resilient people believed their gods were on their side, and it helped them found the city that they now live in.
One year, Snake, while swimming around the island, got stuck in a vine and, while trying to free itself, the vine broke on accident. He seemed to understand the degree of the disaster it meant, as he stood between both islands, making a bridge with his body, closely following the original shape of the vine.
It took a few years to fully repair the vines, to which Snake stood almost immobile until the vine was usable once more. It was the longest time Snake was ever seen staying still, and, when he left, he slow and sluggishly crawled towards the Creator and stayed with it for much longer than usual.
This is such a great article, Cato. You've obviously put so much thought into the culture and how it would work with food and stuff. <3 I love the shape of the mountain.
Explore Etrea | WorldEmber 2025
Thank youuuuu <3 I did have fun pondering about all I could think of when I had to take train rides daily :D
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