The Unified Plateau

Notable Locations

Sky-Bite Rim

Sheer, black-glass cliffs scabbed with fossil honeycombs where ancient climbers set ironwood pitons; at noon, crosswinds sing like flutes.  

Thunderlake

Also known as The Basin, this is the concave crown’s heart; reed-girt and mirror-still between storms. Its surface repeats true calls and true names but garbles boasts.  

Baslizard Court

A ring of bone-pale menhirs on a fern mesa where Farraj appears as a colossal tyrant to weigh disputes; the loser owes safe conduct or labor, not blood.  

Nest-Shelves

Layered ledges warm as hearthstones where eggs are sworn under guest-right; harm here turns paths treacherously long.  

Vine-Helix

A spiral of root-caverns, quartz chimneys, and breathy updrafts linking the jungle floor to the crown; waymarks knot vows into the living wall.  

Stormstep Flats

Thunderherd country—broad, baked plates where stampedes roll like weather.  

Stone-Ledger Groves

Basalt stelae overgrown with strangler figs where names and a single praise-word for the dead are added and never erased.  

Travel and Access

Climb or Wing

The rim resists cheating flight; true wings, climbing kit, or the Vine-Helix get you up.  

Root-Roads

Breath-shafts and lava tubes thread the pillar; Stone-Wardens keep them safe when guest-right is honored.  

Okyanus Reach

Calm reaches near the pillar act like a gentle planar current; ferry-songs sometimes pull skiffs directly to the pillar’s root-caves.  

Tree-Gates

Rotating hollows in giant trees near the base open to Arvandor (silver beeches/lightning-scarred oaks), Elysium, or the Outlands (Sylvania)—as in Krigala generally.  

Overthreads to Brux

Knife-edge cliff paths and vine tunnels sometimes slip into perpetual dusk; another seam will bring you home.  

Inhabitants

Petitioners of the Plateau

Bayjanese and Catfolk, alongside Stone-Wardens: dwarven petitioners who remained after Magrim's passing, reborn with patient eyes and jungle sense. They maintain ledgers, mend tools, guide newcomers, and enforce the right to flee/feed.  

Terror Beasts

Terro beasts in dizzying variety; elders are sacrosanct unless the balance demands a cull.  

Azatas and Agathions

Bralani arbiters of the chase; lillends who keep mural-law and song-maps; leonine/raptor-hearted agathions guarding guest-right at water and ford.  

Good-hearted fey

Canopy sprites, strangler-fig dryads, rain-naiads as mischief diverts harm rather than causes it.  

Way Guests and Rumors

Beastlands wardens, Okyanus ferrymen, the rare Psychopomp witness, plus whispered beastmen clans (left deliberately undefined) deep in the basin.  

Divine Presences

Farraj prowls in tyrant form when troubled or at rest; Magrim’s hand endures as ledger-law and the custom of finishing the work of the fallen.

Stampede weather rolls out of the heat-haze as whole thunderherds, where panic invites trampling but a steady stance carries you through.   When judgment is called, the realm answers false witness with the roar and anvil, a twin peal of every dinosaur’s call and a forge’s boom, after which the next words must be truer or not spoken at all.   Once the daily rain bell fades, sunfall mists pearl the basin, sharpening hearing and softening tempers so bargains struck in the hush tend to hold. Cruel intent triggers a quiet maze-shift that redraws paths into harmless detours which seem sensible until the lesson lands, and in the Unfinished Groves, tools and half-songs of the fallen hum; take up their work, and the routes ahead grow shorter.   The land grants keen sense to honest purpose: divinations that track spoor, wind, or approach ring clear, while glamers that excuse waste or spite unravel.   Magic worked while singing lineage, knotting vines, carving praise, or sketching a plan runs steadier, its benign cast read as part of the rite. Lend a lifeline to the stranded and the next climb, ford, or canopy run carries farther than effort alone could manage.   Undeath that harms life, soul-theft, slavery, and fear compulsions strain or fail here, even as rites that lay the dead to rest take gentle hold. And for those who travel with a declared purpose and hour, way-walks and teleports arrive with uncommon precision, while casual flits wander as the jungle wills.