Aren Hillside

Origin of Floating Cities, part 4

Back at the beginning of the Age of Witches, specifically before the Three-Colored hunt, Aren Hillside was still a normal, uncorrupted area, a home to many different tribes.

The past

Aren's landscape consisted of gentle, but tall forested hills. Numerous rivers were flowing through it, either between the hills or cutting through them. Thanks to the many types of soil present here, the fauna was varied, with the mixes of deciduous and coniferous trees growing together. This also led to a rich fauna living there, with some species not being present anywhere else in the Urnketh, such as Aren's green spotted deers, southern hornbacks, and lesser tree crawlers.
While no towns or cities were ever created there, it was home to inhabitants of many villages and tribal settlements. There were many disputes, fights, and even wars between them, at least until the three Aren Bandit Witches showed up. Once they did, all the tribes slowly started to unify against their common enemy until they couldn't tolerate its presence anymore.

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After the hunt

Everything changed when the inhabitants of the Aren tribes decided they had enough of the oppression from the localWitch Coven. When the Witches were killed, the Colors sealed within their bodies spilled out, oversaturating most of the area of Aren Hillside, completely changing and corrupting it. Due to its unique composition (being made of three different Colors) and shape, it has been nicknamed a Three-Colored Maze.

Landscape

Aren Hillside lost its charming sights of gentle hills. Instead, they were replaced by chaotic mess, each Color changing its structure in its own way. But just as the three colors, the maroon, grape, and cream, clash with each other, the features created by each one of them do it too. It doesn't help that the three are spread around the area as if someone started using random tools and swinging them blindly. In the places where the three Colors lie the closest to each other, the area starts to resemble abstract paintings. It is only in places where one of the three Colors dominates more than its siblings that the structures become more orderly. Everywhere where bigger areas of Color neighbor each other, there's a big chance of multicolored clash showing up in any of its forms - the twister (tornados of Colors), a duel (structures created by Colors smashing into each other), or a whirlpool (Colors getting sucked in with the land underground).
The soil of the changed Aren Hillside also went through a transformation. It's constantly wet and it sags under the weight of anyone going through it. It tends to wrap around one's shoes with a disgusting noise.

Dominating Colors

Maroon Maze

In places where Maroon starts to dominate, it tends to create structures resembling spheres with spikes growing out of them in every direction. These sections require squeezing through or climbing over the areas where the needles become too dense. It is important to watch out, as the spikes here are really sharp.

Cream Maze

When Cream becomes a main Color, it starts to create tall, smooth walls that bend just enough to make it impossible to climb on them with any tool. If seen from above, the walls form senseless labyrinths that in the worst cases could be kilometers wide.

Grape Maze

Contrary to its sibling Colors, when Grape dominates, instead of creating protruding structures, it creates either clusters of small holes in the ground or wide pits with narrow ledges between them. Just like with Maroon, one needs to watch out, as the walls of each hole and pit are covered with tiny extremely sharp jagged formations that could clean one's arm or leg to the bone after one unlucky slip.

Location under

Urnketh

Related Ethnicities

• Areners

Living on the borders

While most of the Aren Hillside has been oversaturated, there still are some descendants of the original tribes living on the borders of the contaminated area. Both they and the ones whose ancestors left that area are still called Areners. They still cherish the tales of how Aren used to look in the past, some of them swearing that they will find a way to undo the damage that has been done to the land of their predecessors.

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Poor visibility

In normal cases, where the area is oversaturated by a single Color, aside from dealing with Color Blue which tends to affect one's sight, there aren't really any problems with visibility, aside from some time needed to get used to seeing things only through a monochromatic lens. But when multiple Colors create a single oversaturated area, just like it is with the ground, the air also becomes affected by Colors. This makes it impossible to see over a long distance as seeing through each Color is like looking through many layers of not completely transparent sheets of stained glass.

Fauna

Thanks to its unusual mixture of Colors, and its constantly changing structure (mainly thanks to Beast That Spurts), there are no living beings living currently in the oversaturated parts of the Aren Hillside. There's just no animal that would be able to constantly adapt to changing concentrations of three different complex Colors.