Venya

Venya presents as rounded, arable ranges, hills that swell to soft-backed mountains, cut by broad, warming rivers and terraced fields. Market-towns perch on saddles; monasteries nestle by tarns; miles of orchards and meadows stitch everything together. In hidden folds lie mirror-lakes and green commons where petitions and weddings are witnessed.   Market-towns: 6,000–25,000 souls with halls, mills, levees, and wayside hospices. Village greens: 300–1,200. Monasteries and quiet houses: courtyards and cloisters sized for dozens to a few hundred. Halfling hamlets of the Greenfields quilt the low slopes; ferry-towns span rivers with timber trusses and shrine-piers.   Warm springs rise in riverbeds; milk-white mists roll at dawn through Listening Hollows where spoken regrets thin to forgiveness. Root-caves under ancient orchards hum with bees year-round—keepers say they remember everyone’s true name.  

Notable Locations

The Glass Tarn

A cold mirror-lake with conduits to the Astral Plane, the Plane of Water, and Ysgard; sincere offerings earn visions or counsel.  

Xiranthador

Erathaol’s under-sea library-fortress—scrying halls, tide-script archives, and sea-lantern ways; audiences are given to those whose errands serve harmony.  

The Seven Bridges of Fair Toll

A string of ferries and truss-bridges where cheating weighs heavier than coin—tolls diminish when communities help each other.  

The Orchard Courts

Crown rows where treaties are read aloud under fruit boughs; a lie drops fruit unripe and bitter on the speaker’s shoulders.  

Governance

Erathaol, the Seer, rules Venya, advising through letters, dreams, and envoys. Witness-Elders arbitrate locally, with fair-saying courts in each market-town. Angelic scribes ride circuit to record settlements and deliver redress where needed.   Venya is arranged into seven Shires of Concord, each shire keeping four circles: the Green (fields/orchards), the Craft (mills/markets), the Quiet (shrines/monasteries), and the River (ferries/levees). Each circle selects a Witness-Elder who reports to the shire’s hall. Erathaol, the Seer presides from Xiranthador, a library-fortress beneath the sea, sending sword-archon messengers and angelic tutors where foresight directs.  

Travel and Access

Travelers take bearings from pearl-bands in the sky that brighten by quarter: Dawnband (east), Southglow, Duskband, Northgleam. Unpurposed wandering settles into pleasant loops between villages within 8–14 days; declare a true errand, reunion, atonement, treaty, fostering and new lanes open through hedges and hills.   Gates favor ferries, commons, and cloisters; many arrivals step through market archways or bridge-portals with bread in hand. The Glass Tarn answers most readily to honest petition; quiet houses keep guest books that double as gentle oaths. Shrine-rows along lanes can elongate to make room for festival processions or relief caravans.  

Access from Venya

The crown-gates to Venya lie beyond the Crown Passes, where honor-roads climb toward orchards and villages. Mortal pacing is 3–6 days by causeways and switchbacks; service-shortening applies, measured restraint, keeping a hard oath, honoring the fallen, or sparing the defeated makes the crown seem nearer and the grades kinder.  

Ascent to Solania

The Crown Orchards hold the gates to Solania. Mortal pacing is 3–5 days along orchard lanes and stair-terraces. Service-shortening applies strongly here: mediating a feud, completing harvest for a widow, fair dealing at market, or mending a public work draws the crown-rows nearer.  

Inhabitants

Lantern-bright petitioners become neighbors and craftsfolk first; Archons serve quietly as wardens and recorders; angels (particularly sword archons and devas) act as tutors, midwives of treaties, and keepers of the peace. Halfling pilgrims are common, along with fosterlings from harsher planes seeking rest and learning.

Guest-right geas: bread-and-salt binds host and guest against intentional harm until the next bell after dawn. Treaty-warmth: ink stays warm on just treaties until their first clause is fulfilled.