Abellio

Features

Hex-Orchards and Meridian Roads

Hills are terraced into hexagonal orchards aligned to stone meridians. The grid isn’t sterile; it’s legible, bee-lines, windbreaks, irrigation and footpaths all agree. Way-stones (waist-high pillars) list public vows sworn there.  

The Just Rivers

Blue-green waters keep their own ledgers. Licensed cargo flies its banner and arrives on time; dumped refuse returns at dawn, neatly stacked and itemized at the dumper’s gate.  

Concord Groves

Living courts of oak and linden where agreements are witnessed. Each ring glows faintly for a kept pact; leaves gray when guest-right is betrayed within sight (until reparations).  

Star-Pastures

At night the grass pricks with aether motes. Constellations brighten over hamlets that met their tallies; travelers navigate by kept promise.   Horizon Causeways. Sky-straight whiteways between bell-towns. Footfalls there never fatigue the traveler (ignore the first forced-march check each day while on a causeway).  

Notable Locations

The Great Mother's Garden

The Divine realm of Thea co-exist here.  

Mandible and Mercantus

  The hive-city’s surface district serves as the layer’s open port: countinghouses with immaculate ledgers, inns that change linens at the same hour each day, and market stalls rated by posted measures of weight and quality.  

The True-Bark Orchards

Groves of metal-barked trees whose fruit yields potion-like effects when harvested in the right measure and season; over-picking causes the boughs to lock until the next cycle.  

Trellis Gates

White-ivory and black-steel portals shaped like flower arches stand at fixed sites along processional roads, opening by schedule to the Heavens, to Mechanus, or (rarely) Outlands.  

Lanternfast

Port-market where the Just Rivers meet. Contracts are sung and rung when a clerk strikes a chime to seal; forged ink refuses to set beneath the note.  

The Golden Mean

Terraced valley-city of colonnades and bell-towers. Seats the Court of the Third Way, which arbitrates disputes between Heaven’s compassion and Mechanus' procedure.  

Palatine Orchards

Estates that are also academies of civic magic; graduates receive seal-rings (permanent arcane mark and 1/day status to their cohort).  

The Dovetail

Covered bridge-market famed for apprenticeships; a pledge made here becomes a bond-geas that cannot mandate cruelty and ends harmlessly if terms turn unjust.  

Hall of the Bellfounders

Workshop-temple where sequence-bells are cast; wrongfully used sequences sing with a sour overtone for the next bellkeeper you pass.  

Travel

Roads here are more than dirt: they’re promises kept in stone, graded for steady passage and lit at even intervals. Milestones cite distance and time to the bell. Trellis Gates (ivory for merciful routes, black steel for martial ones) open on posted hours; a traveler who arrives on time with papers in order seldom waits. Mandible maintains formian way-patrols that can escort caravans, and stablemasters rent sure-footed mounts trained not to shy at the Orb’s sudden switch from day to night.  

Inhabitants

First and foremost are the Archons who keeps the peace, marching as needed and invsible when not. The countryside teems with metallic-hued animals, copper rabbits, golden foxes, silver-fleeced sheep, whose white, pupil-less eyes see through deceit; they are native to the Outer Planes, unaffected by magics that sway Prime beasts, but can be trained into immaculate watch companions. Formians from Mandible move with hive precision, trading, repairing, and measuring, while dwarven envoys from Mount Angradd carry contracts stamped in steel and sealed with rainwater.

The Binary Switch of the Orb brings sudden change, as day flips instantly into night without any twilight. Highways, fields, and orchards may plunge into darkness in a heartbeat, and wise travelers always carry lamps and count the bell. Civic Scrutiny shadows those who would sow confusion or deceit in public and then first a single warden will appear, then a company, and finally the gates themselves may close. The orchards yield Potion Boughs, fruits infused with virtue, but they cannot be stolen or plucked out of turn; a hand that takes without the tree’s leave finds itself refused for a tenday.   The Fruit of Office offers the flavor of cool rain and clean copper, and with a vow of honest use it becomes a draught that echoes the effects of a simple potion. Craftsman’s Rhythm sustains the labor of the towns: when work is done in true cadence, once each day a crew or single craftsman may turn a failed effort into success, as though aided by skilled hands. Clarity of Record pervades the land, lifting divinations that seek fact rather than rumor, and marking forgery by touch alone, the parchment or seal feels wrong even before the clerks confirm the lie.