Terasil

Terasil
Size	1,278,911 Square Miles
Spirit	Varunel • Oras
Native Races	Orasians • Duranthi • Minthari
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

See also: Geography of Terasil

The Yalta Expanse

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.

• Minthal 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

A Slateback Behemoth

See also: Flora and Fauna of Terasil

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 governed by a stratified ecology of spirits that reflects the realm’s deep alignment with earth, memory, and the burden of continuity. While the primordial spirit Oras anchors the foundation of Terasil, much of the realm’s living spiritual dynamic is mediated through the Ascended Spirits—chief among them Varunel, the spirit of Memory and History, and Desame, a spirit of Desire and Accumulation, whose influence shapes the Minthari. Together, these forces define Terasil's spiritual logic: to remember, to preserve, and to reckon with the unchanging weight of what has been.

The spirits of Terasil range from momentary flickers of awareness to enduring entities inscribed in cultural and geological memory. Their interaction with mortal life is structured and deliberate—spirits are neither worshiped casually nor summoned lightly, and all rituals are shaped by archival precedent.

Nascent Spirits

Nascent spirits are newly formed, unstable presences. Often tied to minor geological actions, they manifest from shifting sediment, mineral formation, or momentary resonance. These spirits are brief and reactive—invoked in basic rites by novices or used as indicators of change in a deeply static world.

Examples:

• Flickerlings – Subtle glimmers along mineral veins, associated with small shifts in the stone’s memory field.
• Dustforms – Ghostlike movements or shapes formed from freshly disturbed ash or sand; often interpreted as signs of spiritual agitation or misalignment.
• Slope-Runners – Brief spirits that race along gravel inclines, seen as erratic messengers or expressions of unanchored intent.

Mature Spirits

Mature spirits arise from repeated patterns and communal recognition. Unlike nascent spirits, they possess defined personality traits and limited agency. They are invoked in everyday Duranthi and Minthari life to maintain social balance, craft legitimacy, or spatial continuity.

These spirits are neither fully autonomous nor entirely symbolic—they occupy the middle realm between presence and concept, often entangled with local rites or vocational traditions.

Examples might include:

• The spirit of a particular quarry that yields flawless stone.
• A vault-door guardian spirit bound to a family’s ancestral record chamber.
• A stone-spindle spirit who guides precision in tool-making or stone-carving.

Ancestral Spirits

Ancestral spirits are the oldest and most deeply rooted entities in Terasil, often embodying events, lineages, or epochs. Unlike gods or elemental lords, they are not omnipotent—but they are vast, weighty, and embedded in the realm’s long memory.

They are rarely invoked directly. Most communication occurs through layered rituals, intercessors, or environmental omens. Appeasement, not command, defines the relationship.

Examples:

• Tharoz-Mir – The spirit of the Deep Roads and the memory of every journey beneath the realm. Felt more than seen, Tharoz-Mir listens across distances, recording the passage of all who travel the underpaths.
• Orak-Thun – Revered as the first sentient mountain, Orak-Thun serves as a point of lineage realignment and generational reckoning. Its presence is marked not by voice, but by seismic stillness and unchanging shadow.

Together, these spirits define the spiritual ecology of Terasil. In contrast to realms where spirits are animated by vitality or conquest, Terasili spirits act as archives, anchors, and curators. They bear forward the full weight of what has come before, reinforcing Terasil’s identity as a realm where memory shapes matter—and forgetting is nearly impossible.

Notable settlements

See also: Cities and Towns of Terasil

The ancient city of Kar-Thal.

• 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 Minthal 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. As the first formed landscape and the place where matter held its shape, it represents more than endurance—it serves as a repository for memory, lineage, and spiritual inertia. Every stone ridge, chiseled vault, and faulted pathway contributes to an ongoing cultural and spiritual record. Nothing in Terasil is merely present; everything is layered, archived, or weighed against what has come before.

The realm is shaped by two dominant spiritual influences: Varunel, the Ascended Spirit of History and Memory, and Desame, the Ascended Spirit of Desire and Accumulation. These two aspects are not seen as enemies, but as opposing poles within the structure of Terasili life. Varunel imparts stillness, clarity, and reverence for what is known and sealed. Desame introduces motion, ambition, and the potential for transformation. Together, they create a cultural tension that defines how the realm moves forward—cautiously, deliberately, and always in dialogue with the past.

Among the Duranthi, this duality is formalized in civic ritual. Progress is encoded through annotation of precedent, and even minor public acts are inscribed, archived, or reenacted. Stone memory is considered a civic duty. Oral histories are repeated verbatim, and innovation requires documented lineage to prior wisdom. Among the Minthari, Desame’s influence permits greater flexibility—but even here, change must be negotiated through ritual acknowledgment of cost and disruption.

Public monuments often reflect this balance: half-constructed bridges, sealed doors beside open stairwells, or mirrored inscriptions split by fissures. These are not artistic flourishes, but statements of unresolved cultural motion. The past is omnipresent in Terasil, and the future is built—stone by stone—only when the weight of memory can be responsibly borne.

Outside Terasil, its influence is seen in practices of oathkeeping, stonecraft, and echo-based recordkeeping throughout Orethil. To other realms, Terasil represents the danger and the dignity of unbroken memory: a land where change is real, but slow; and where forgetting is never an option.