Ilos Valley
Ίλος Βαλέ
The Ilos River Valley is the central most river valley of the Aeillan region and indeed serves as the heart of the Aeillan civilization, being heavily cultivated wherever possible, and with more than a few settlers. The Ilos is also the only place in the known world where the Illiowiné fruit is cultivated by people. The Ilos is also densely populated by holy sites of the Pandroi faith, and two of Aeilla's four most imporant city centers.
The Ilos River Valley itself is home to some 11,500,000 people with a few million more in adjoining areas, making it by far the most densely settled region in Aeilla. There are several large towns, and cities, including some of the most populated in the region located there. Additionally, virtually the entire length of the river is cultivated except where the terrain makes large scale agriculture impossible. This makes the Ilos a major economic, cultural, and political center.
The Ilos Valley has been home to a number of civillizations throughout its history, though the past two millennia have seen it gradually become more and more firmly placed in the hands of the Ilosi peoples. The Ilosi who have forced out the Grecci, and Cyrenic people over the past millennia established the Aeillan Empire since the fall of the Yulan-Tai Empire and incorporated the few surviving Yulani into the Ilosi fold. Even since the fall of the Empire itself, Aeillan, and specifically Ilos civilization has dominated the region of the vale.
Geography
The Ilos Valley is practically defined by the Ilos River, with its course winding its ways through the ancient and weathered Kyroi and Menaulatoi hill ranges which demarcate most of its western and eastern border regions. Towards the coast, the valley widens signfiicantly as the hilly terrain of Aeilla's interior gives way to a much wider coastal plain. The river itself, for most of its course is broad and flat, with few waterfalls, instead carving through the highlands. This means that most of the Ilos is navigable by oceangoing ships, up to the Falls of Orestes.
In the northernmost areas, the valley is rather narrow, with the nearby hills and mountains, much closer to the Ilos itself, and indeed with steep cliffs much more common. As the river runs further south the valley opens further and indeed this is where much of the Ilosi heartland lies. At the mouth of the river, the valley is very wide, having joined with the plains along the coast to form Alysia, which has some of the most fertile and thus productive lands in Aeilla.
Most of the land around the Ilos has rich soil that makes for excellent agricultural land, and indeed the lands are densely cultivated with a number of cereals, vegetables, and fruits including the rare Illiowiné fruit being grown in large quantities in the valley. This is particularly true in the lower valley, especially Alysia, The high productivity of agriculture in the region has also made it some of the most densely settled land in Galisea. Though not as productive as the lower Tyros, the Ilos Vale produces plenty of food and other agricultural product for export as well as use.
Ecosystem
The Ilos River Valley's natural ecosystm has, in may ways been completely subsumed by the settlement of sentient beings, though, particularly on the fringes of the territory are more wild, and home to more of the indigenous life that existed in the valley before the settlement of sentient beings. In the wilder parts of the valley small forests dot the landscape, especially in the north, to the south the lands become more open, and even uncultivated regions tend to become grassy plains thanks in large part to the relatively fierce winds that make it difficut for trees to take root, especially since the region was deforested for building materials over the course of the habitation of the land.
The river itself is broad, mostly flat, and slow flowing throughout most of its course, making it ideal for marine life. This has resulted in a largely uniform riverine ecosystem with the same species of aquatic plants, aquatic reptiles, fish and amphibians living throughout. In many ways the Ilos' ecosystem resembles a freshwater mirror of the Yulan Ocean's ecosystem, though smaller streams do feed into the Ilos and the lands north of the Orestes do as well.
Ecosystem Cycles
In the Ilos there are two primary seasons, summers and winters. The summers tend to be quite hot and dry, with comparatively little precipitation. The winters are somewhat cooler, and much, much wtter with intense storms blowing in from the sea on a regular basis. Coastal climates are moderated somewhat though storms are in fact, more intense throughout the year.
Fauna & Flora
The Ilos River region grows more of the rare Illiowiné fruit than most other regions in Aeilla, thanks to human cultivation. It is also home to a few unique olive and grape plants, on top of other fruit plants, cereals, and wild grasses and trees that grow in the hospitable climate and good soils of the Ilos river region. Wailing Willows are less common here however, being largely found in the more westerly Spartharii River Valley, with other, stronger plants taking root by the riverbanks
The Ilos River valley is home to a comparatively smaller number of Aerial predators, particularly in the south, as a result of extermination campaigns carried out by the human population of the region, with Wyverns in particular either being domesticated mounts used by the various military groups in the region or outright killed, and giant eagles having been driven away from the animal herds husbanded by people. Similarly, other predators have been culled in great numbers by the sentient populace. Competition has also driven out a number of herbivorous animals as well, leaving the bulk of animal life being domesticated.
In the river, there are a number of riverbound fish, marine reptiles, and plants. The most noteworthy of these is the Ilosi Salmon, one the largest examples of salmon in the known world. A more dangerous creature the Ilosi Caiman prowls the brakish waters of the Ilsoi's mouth, though few live further upstream. Several smaller fish, live throughout the course as well as a fair number of fresh water turtles, with river reeds making up the majority of plant life.
Natural Resources
In terms of organic resources, the Ilos River Valley is first and foremost a prized agricultural region with the rich soil and plentiful waters (provided by the Ilos itself) resulting in fairly consistently bountiful crop harvests over the course of two primary growing seasons. Additionally, there is ample grazing land and a few species of animal that make for excellent livestock. This massive amount of food has arguably been entirely necessary for the dense populataion and intensive level of urbanization found in the area.
Mineral resources are somewhat rarer on the Ilos with much of wider Aeillas mineral resources being scattered throughout other areas in Aeilla. As a result most of the Ilos' mineral wealth comes in the form of the tougher types of stone that can frequently be quarried closer to the edges of the valley and in the surrounding hills.
History
Though there is some surviving archaeological evidence of sentient beings inhabiting the Ilos for thousands of years, the earliest written records concerning the Ilos were written by the Yulan-Tai, sailing up the river roughly 2,300 years ago from their homelands along the coast. The Yulan-Tai favored this region importing large numbers of slaves to develop it quickly, and made the land profitable for the coastal cities, with a vast network of farms providing food and textile materials for the center of the Empire.
When the Yulan-Tai Empire collapsed after the War of Frozen scales, the Ilosi River Valley, already densely settled by the enslaved people became the bedrock of the Ilosi culture which had developed under the thumb of the Yulan-Tai during the three centuries that the Empire had controlled the territory. Thanks in part to the help of the Cyrenic peoples to the north, the Ilos River Valley's communities developed more quickly than those of other areas in Aeilla, allowing the Ilsoi peoples to establish a powerful civilization of their own, and eventually to unify the whole of the Aeillan region under the Aeillan Empire.
Under Aeillan rule the Ilos Vally underwent explosive population growth, in spite of a fair number of significant depopulation events, with several cities being established in the valley. During the early Imperial period the Illiowiné was cultivated en masse in the large latifundia that were dotted throughout the region, which contributed to the steadily lengthening lifespans of the Ilosi elite. The Fall of Aeilla as a unified state and the resulting political instability however, saw many people leaving the area for safer regions in land, and many more dying in the violence and privation of the time. As conditions stabilized in the last couple centuries however, the Ilos has seen a rebound as the powerful and influential states in the region expended resources and effort into redeveloping the territory.
Type
Valley
Location under
Included Locations
