Terasil
| Terasil | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Size | 1,278,911 Square Miles |
| Spirit | Varunel • Oras |
| Native Races | Orasians • Duranthi |
| Significance | The oldest physical realm • home to ancient societies and foundational spiritual influence. |
Terasil is a realm of enduring stone, fractured memory, and ancient presence—situated within the wider material plane of Orethil. While the primordial spirit Oras shaped the world itself, it is within Terasil that the principles of History, Memory, and conversely Stagnation have taken deepest root. Once shaped by the force of earth alone, Terasil has become a place where time is preserved in form, and where the past is not merely remembered—it is layered into the land.
At the core of Terasil stands the Citadel Mountains, an unyielding range that forms the last untouched expression of Oras’s intent. Within these mountains lies the Last Bastion of Oras, a region of elemental stillness. Surrounding this sanctuary, the broader realm of Terasil unfolds in dry valleys, weathered hills, savannah expanses, and deep-cut gorges—all imprinted with the slow erosion of change and the stratification of events.
Terasil is now mostly shaped by the influence of Varunelthe Ascendant Spirit of Memory. Unlike the silent permanence of Oras, Varunel’s domain is the record itself: events inscribed, truths preserved, and names carried forward through ritual and stone. Her presence is felt in memory caverns, inscribed ridgelines, petrified ruins, and in the daily practices of the realm’s mortal inhabitants—particularly the Duranthi, stone-skinned humans who serve as keepers of lineage and structured remembrance.
To live in Terasil is to walk upon a living record. The stones carry not only names and moments, but also the burden of unalterable memory. While the realm provides stability and clarity, it also resists transformation. Innovation is viewed with suspicion, and even necessary change is often filtered through layers of precedent, ritual, and ancestral permission.
Terasil’s cultural and spiritual structures reflect this duality. The realm is a bastion of memory, but also a mirror of spiritual inertia—a place where history both illuminates and weighs down the present.
History
The Great Migration (c. BME 50,000-20,000)
Trueborn humans migrating from their ancestral home of Awenelir, moved throughout the newly formed Orethil. In Terasil humans formed two distinct races over time. The keepers of Memory, the Stoneborn Duranthi and the followers of Greed and Desire, the Minthari.
The Age of Deep Roads (c. BME 20,000-0)
As surface erosion intensified, subterranean life expanded. The Minthari forged extensive tunnel networks. The development of the Deep Roads facilitated trade and cultural exchange between the Minthari and Duranthi.
Modern Terasil (0 ME-Present)
Terasil today endures as a realm defined by continuity and resilience. Its landscapes—mountains, valleys, and underground cities—bear the imprint of aeons of transformation. While the Duranthi maintain ancestral customs rooted in spiritual attunement with stone, the Minthari continue to expand and explore the depths of the subterranean world. The realm stands as a testament to endurance in the face of elemental change.
Geography
The geography of Terasil is a physical record—its terrain acting not just as space, but as a layered archive of history and memory. From the impenetrable stone flanks of the Citadel Mountains to the weathered expanses of its valleys and steppe lands, Terasil reflects not only geological time but cultural stillness. Its surface is inscribed by ancient movement, collapse, and ritual intervention, while its subterranean spaces carry the weight of passage and preservation.
Its features hold both practical and spiritual significance. Duranthi communities treat the land as a medium for ancestral record, while the Minthari continue to navigate and reshape its lower strata through excavation and trade.
Mountain Ranges
- Citadel Mountains: The central range and the heart of the Domain of Oras, these mountains are the most ancient and spiritually inert landforms in Terasil. Largely untouched since the Great Erosion, they house the last of the Orasians and remain inaccessible to most. Their imposing elevation casts a literal and metaphysical shadow over the realm, generating the rain shadow that created the Zanarak Desert to the east.
- Anvil Range: A mineral-rich range located east of the Citadels. Over generations, Minthari mining has transformed these mountains into a web of extraction tunnels and processing chambers. The range’s surfaces are scarred with abandoned shafts and smelter ruins—some now regarded as haunted by forgotten contracts or dishonored spirits.
- Murazkar Range: Situated along the western border, this mist-wreathed range is shaped by residual elemental influence. Though less rigid in spiritual structure, it supports hybrid ecosystems and outpost settlements that rely on intermittent trade and cautious ritual neutrality.
Valleys and Plains
- Sanctuary Vale: A semi-arid expanse and spiritual basin located between the Murazkar and Khargaath Ranges. It serves as the heartland of surface-dwelling Orasians and Duranthi, marked by ceremonial routes, agricultural stoneworks, and boundary observances. The landscape itself is treated as a memory vessel, with cairns, marker stones, and echo sites used to document both civic and personal events.
- Emerald Valley: Once desolate, this valley was gradually restructured through layered stonework and water channeling. It is now cultivated with care by Duranthi lineages seeking to demonstrate controlled adaptation. The land is considered a “memory in transformation” and is heavily recorded across seasonal cycles.
- Yalta Expanse: A dry, wind-scoured plain that bears the imprint of both tectonic and spiritual recession. Though inhospitable, it is home to enduring Duranthi enclaves that maintain oaths tied to ancient migration lines. Its stone ridges often feature inscribed paths visible only in angled light—used for ancestral navigation rather than direction.
Underground Networks
- The Deep Roads: A network of subterranean routes carved primarily by Minthari labor during the Age of Deep Roads. Initially commercial in purpose, these tunnels gradually absorbed Duranthi influence, becoming sites of ritual marking, passage rites, and lineage recording. Some passages are now closed by ancestral decree, considered “sealed threads” of unrepeatable history.
- Caverns of Echoes: Natural acoustic chambers where sound repeats and degrades over time. Duranthi use these spaces for memory rites, judicial recitation, and spiritual calibration. The echoes are believed to reveal inconsistencies in recollection or emotion, and access is often restricted to trained Keepers of Record.
- Strata Vaults (optional addition): Deep-tiered crypt structures where historical objects, stone tablets, or spiritual fragments are sealed. These are rarely accessed, except during generational transitions or moments of civic uncertainty. Many are buried intentionally to preserve knowledge from misuse.
Climate
Terasil exhibits a range of climates based on altitude and terrain. Mountains experience cold, arid conditions, while valleys maintain temperate climates with seasonal rainfall. Plains are generally arid with sharp temperature variation. Subterranean regions retain consistent, cool temperatures year-round.
Flora and fauna
The biodiversity of Terasil reflects its elemental alignment and geological age. Its ecosystems are home to resilient species adapted to rocky, mineral-rich environments. Life forms range from surface-dwelling herbivores to deep-dwelling predators, with many possessing unique traits influenced by the realm’s spiritual energies.
Native Races
Orasians
The Orasians are ancient beings formed from conscious stone during the earliest moments of Terasil’s creation. Originally vast and immobile, their earliest forms were mountain-sized intelligences that communicated through seismic resonance and subterranean vibration. As Terasil’s environment evolved—shaped by erosion and the incursion of other elemental forces—most Orasians receded from the surface or diminished in form. Today, only a few are known to persist, believed to be embedded within the deepest chambers of the Citadel Mountains, still maintaining spiritual cohesion but rarely, if ever, interacting directly with mortals.
Culturally, Orasians are revered but distant. They are considered the original record-bearers, their thoughts and memory embedded into the stone around them. Rituals invoking their presence are rare and solemn, typically led by Duranthi elders and only undertaken at sites where seismic stillness is preserved.
Duranthi
The Duranthi are a human-descended people native to the high valleys, ridge cities, and plateaus of central Terasil. Shaped by prolonged exposure to memory-rich stone and the spiritual influence of the Ascended Spirit Varunel, the Duranthi are marked by their stone-hardened skin, high endurance, and cultural dedication to remembrance and ritualized continuity.
Duranthi society is organized around lineage, historical accuracy, and civic restraint. Memory is formalized through vocal rites, stone carving, and structured reenactment. Social advancement is not tied to wealth or conquest, but to custodianship of preserved truth. Elder-recorders serve as living repositories, and archival oaths are taken upon reaching civic maturity. Among all peoples of Orethil, the Duranthi are considered the most attuned to spiritual inertia and the weight of the past.
Their settlements often align with geological formations believed to resonate with ancient truths—such as faultlines, memory-terraces, or echo caverns. Even everyday tools, dwellings, and paths are inscribed to function as living documents. Change, though not forbidden, is always processed through ritual context.
Minthari
The Minthari are a subterranean people whose origins trace to human lineages spiritually altered by compact with lesser spirits of ambition and desire. Initially drawn to Terasil for its mineral wealth, the Minthari developed a deep kinship with stone—not as a vessel for memory, but as a medium of transformation, extraction, and refinement.
Over time, their culture matured from acquisitive independence to one centered on mobility, craft, and spiritual containment. Today, Minthari society is marked by artisan traditions, decentralized governance, and a high value placed on negotiation, both economic and spiritual. The Minthari maintain a network of underground towns, trade outposts, and vaults woven into the Deep Roads, and serve as the realm’s primary facilitators of movement and exchange.
While they are more adaptive than the Duranthi, they share a mutual respect for structured process. Trade between the two groups is often bound by multi-generational accords and ritualized forms of record, overseen by neutral tonekeepers or archive liaisons.
Native Spirits
Spiritual life in Terasil is shaped by a complex hierarchy of native spirits, each reflecting the elemental nature of the realm and its enduring connection to the primordial spirit Oras. These spirits range from minor, recently-formed presences to ancient entities embedded in the cultural memory of its inhabitants.
Nascent Spirits
Nascent spirits in Terasil are newly-formed entities of limited awareness and minimal influence. Typically emerging from minor geological or environmental features—such as shifting gravel, falling stones, or condensation on cavern walls—these spirits are highly responsive to external stimuli. Their presence is subtle, often sensed more than seen, and they are frequently drawn upon in basic ritual practices by initiates among the Orasians and Minthari.
Examples:
- Flickerlings – Spirits manifesting as faint glows within mineral veins.
- Dustforms – Ephemeral spirits shaped from disturbed soil or ash.
Mature Spirits
Mature spirits emerge from recurring experiences and collective recognition of localized phenomena. Though lesser in scope than ancestral spirits, they are semi-conscious and often associated with physical objects or places of symbolic significance. Unlike nascent spirits, mature spirits possess defined identities and are regularly invoked in cultural practices tied to memory, craftsmanship, or ritual grounding.
Ancestral Spirits
Ancestral spirits represent the oldest and most powerful entities within Terasil. Some are believed to predate the Great Erosion and embody collective memory or ancient identity. These spirits are often localized in singular sacred sites and rarely engage directly with mortals. Rituals involving ancestral spirits are restricted to elder practitioners and are performed to seek counsel, protection, or long-term omens.
Examples:
- Tharoz-Mir – Spirit of the Great Tunnels, Tharoz-Mir embodies the enduring memory of Terasil’s subterranean veins. Said to span the entirety of the Deep Roads, this vast ancestral spirit is less a single entity and more a presence felt in the stone itself—steady, resonant, and ancient. Orasians and Minthari alike revere it as a silent witness to all passage, trade, and migration beneath the earth.
- Orak-Thun – Revered in legend as the first sentient mountain, now a spiritual locus of Orasian lineage rites.
These spirits, together, form the spiritual ecology of Terasil—reflecting its role as the realm of endurance, continuity, and elemental consciousness.
Notable settlements
- Kar-Thal: An ancient Orasian city carved into a mountain. It houses governing elders and sacred spaces.
Notable Features: The Great Hall of Oras and the Catacombs of Eternity, both central to Orasian ritual and governance.
- Minthal: A concealed Minthari city within the Anvil Range, renowned for its luminous crystals and artisanal output.
Notable Features: The Crystal Market and the Hall of Ages, centers for commerce and cultural education.
Cultural significance
Terasil is regarded as the foundational material realm within the cosmology of Adaris. Its creation marked the transition from formless potential to structured existence. The presence of Oras imparts continuity and stability not only within Terasil but across Adaris.
To its inhabitants—especially the Orasians—Terasil is more than territory; it is a spiritual and existential anchor. Its natural features are seen as sentient entities or repositories of memory. Life in Terasil follows the rhythm of stone, echo, and deliberate transformation.
Outside Terasil, its geomantic influence persists. All realms intersect with stone in some form, affirming Terasil’s symbolic centrality. As such, Terasil is seen as both foundation and frame—unchanging in essence yet receptive to the forms layered upon it.