The Yaro River Valley - Cradle of Lashunta Civilization
The Yaro River forms the lifeblood of Lashunta civilization on Western Asana. For Lashunta, it is their Nile. It defines their Mesopotamia and the cradle of their civilization. Despite this, most of its thousand-mile length is wilderness, and of the cities that stand along its banks, the abandoned ruins number almost as many as the live ones.
The geographical name Yaro is so old that its origins are lost. As such, few express concern with its grammatical irregularity as a neuter noun (although the objective case is ‘Yaroa’), whereas most river names belong to either the masculine or animal genders. As an honorific, Lashunta name it Dia-Yaroas: Father-Yaro.
The Yaro runs 270 sem (~1,000 miles) from the central Stormshields to Qabarat, where that mountain ranges ends at the Shattersea. Its northernmost headwaters spring from the slopes of Ta-Anossu, which stands at the head of Western Inaeusama Spur. It rushes torrentlike and through many falls and rapid through the Dale of Amaea, which is held sacred in Lashunta mythology, though this is the home of the Stormshield Elves (note: a Lashunta temple on Ta-Anossu, long abandoned, stands over a spring that flows to the river, though none know the tale of its building). Here it is swiftly fed by the rainstorms constantly pounding the Stormshields, making it an almost impassible whitewater (except for a couple natural stone bridges) for its first 250 miles, as it turns southeastward from Amaea and tumbles over a mile in altitude, until it meets the Retaea Moorlands southern edge against the mountains’ feet.
Once upon the lowlands and the Yaro Strath proper, the river’s waters spread southeasterly over a massive seasonal floodplain that stretches over two hundred miles at its widest spots, forming a shifting spiderweblike complex of oxbows, marshes, and giant tree swamps, whose slow-seeping waters never see the sky and team with frogs, amphibious tentacled eels, and razorclaw salamanders before funneling back toward the great rivers’ mouth. Its main bed, already almost a mile wide, runs south by southwest, closely following the Stormshield’s foothills. Here the river finally slows enough to allow passage. The holy city of Son, standing upon the rocky isle of Alau, marks the northern limit to where large river flatbarks from the lower-strath cities can reliably reach, seeking trade from the northern moorlands that must either be hauled in Shieldneck caravans during Heaventide’s brief dry season, or smaller stump-skiffs during the wetter rest of the year.
Three days’ bargefare downriver from Son, the Yaro is joined by his son, the Laul, a tributary almost as mighty running out of the mountains from the Dale of Eiema, which swells the main bed to over a mile wide. The Lashunta city of Mahya stands on the northern point between the two rivers. Yet the Yaro’s eastern shore here is all marsh and swamp, impassable but for the great tree-paths that Lashunta and the Shotalashu steeds can navigate (if they know the way) along their limbs. This unbroken wilderness continues another two days until the Isle of Keu rises low on the river’s eastern side, holding the sunken ruins of Old Hanat and its daughter city just southward, Hanazhyana.
Somewhere east of Mahya and Hanazhyana, among the eel-haunted swamps, the giant mangroves, and the lurking baletoads, lies the ruins of Lost Hoshiasa, chief city and last stronghold of the extinct Moqeva, which the ancient, united Lashunta tribes under the Warrior-Queens razed. The site was deemed cursed, and its location forgotten, left to be swallowed by the jungle. Weird things and eldritch horrors, however, occasionally come out of the jungle swamps and are attributed to Hoshiasa’s lingering corruption.
A day further south from Hanazhyana on the western shore, stand the ruins of Thesanya mostly hidden by the mountain jungle, a Lashunta city sacked and razed by the Thief-Queens.
Another day southward stands Eiha, which though it is large enough to be reckoned a city in its own right, is actually a client-town to Qabarat, and thus marks the northernmost reach of its direct authority. It is also the southernmost settlement that stands outside of the Yaro’s delta further southward, which all falls under Qabarat’s sway.
The Yaro’s delta holds its own complex of sidestreams and marshes, mixing mangroves and farming settlements growing riceberry and catcorn crops to feed the largest Lashunta city in the world. Odd ruins jut forth from the lowland, or occasionally become uncovered when a streambed shifts. Yet all the water eventually funnel to the Yaro’s mouth, where they are received by the harbor-lake of Qabarat, where it stands against the Stormshield’s last spur before the Shattersea, and which bores a narrow throat through the headland to spill the great river’s waters into the sea. Qabarat and its harbor exist within a great bowl, which some say is a collapsed sinkhole, and others say is a submerged volcano mouth. Loremasters say the harbor is bottomless.
Further east from Qabarat, at the delta’s far end, lies a dry, silted up inlet that used to be another rivermouth to the Yaro. Among its banks are buried the ruins of Reyefya, once the chief Lashunta port on the Shattersea but destroyed in an earthquake.
The pic with this is by the artist Djahal. You can see more of his work at https://www.deviantart.com/djahal/gallery.
Type
Valley
Included Organizations
Related Tradition (Primary)
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