Vir el Mari heights
What begins as a small, clear, boulder-strewn stream high in the mountains near Windaria, quickly grows into the large silt-laden torrent known as, simply, The River. Winding its way past the wooded Vir el Mari heights, Abaka and by the mighty city of Alebad, it hungers for the sea.
Its cold, steady force has been used to quench fields and fire, turn millstones and winepresses, and to wash newborn infants clean before being handed over to their joyfully weeping mothers. The River has a long history and an even longer memory. If given voice, its waters could sing of being drink for black and grizzly bear, sheep, wolf, caribou, goat, moose and men. Its stones, of being bathed in the blood of valiant warriors and noble beasts. Some have even been plucked from the deep riverbed and fitted, along with thousands of their brothers, into Vir el Mari height’s fortification, Michisuru's Wall.
Perhaps no region on the island has been more significantly impacted by The River’s unyielding power than Vir el Mari heights. The mighty oak trees of this region and the tender crops dig their roots deep in fertile soil deposited when The River abandoned this watershed long ago. Through a complex system of irrigation canals, The River’s waters have fueled the growth of provisions, population and commerce; transforming Vir el Mari heights into one of the realm’s most reliable sources of raw materials and food.
Much of both is shipped downriver by barge to the realm capital Alebad, where the barges are disassembled and brought back on ox cart to “the Heights”, as its residents have affectionately dubbed it.
Intelligentsia has a home in the Heights as well. Lured by mild winters and cool summers, many of the realm’s brightest scholars and architects remained after the Michisuru's Wall Reconstruction Project was completed. The small Order of the Doughnuts guild house, another popular destination for visitors, sits on the southwest corner of the Heights and overlooks The River and mountains beyond.
