The Great Plains
A region of wide, open plains in northern parts of Eukye, spanning from the Spine to the eastern coast, where the landscape turns to tall, imposing hills and small mountains worn down over many millennia. Grasslands, semi-arid steppe and rocky highlands flow seamlessly together, shifting from one to another with the changing elevation.
A few, wide rivers glide effortlessly across the region, formed by small streams stemming from the mountains in the west. By the time they reach the steady, even fields the flow might have grown to wide one cannot see the other side without climbing a hilltop.
Small mountains in the eastern coast dry up much of the southern Great Plains. There, in the fields of sand and rock stands an ancient, lonely mountain named Kau'ateu, "the Heart of Fire." Though respected as an ancestor spirit and child of earth itself, the true meaning of the mountain's name had been lost to memory until the Second Age.
Heart of Fire stirs
The deep sleep of Kau'ateu was suddenly disrupted with the end of the First Age. Tremors from the far north shook the land, and moments later the ancient mountain came to life once more. It spewed out black, foul smoke across the entirety of the Great Plains, spreading sickness and panic throughout the region. The nomadic Yuhua Yohau people who had thrived in the vast fields, were forced to leave the central plains, splitting into those who travelled north and those who went south. Most of the wildlife had already left by the time humans followed.
Kau'ateu continued to foul the Great Plains throughout the first decades of the Second Age, turning the region into an uninhabitable wasteland where even grass struggled to grow. Sunny days of summer turned gray, with noxious clouds hanging overhead and covering the sun and the moon alike. And although the first roar of the Heart of Fire had been the most violent and life-changing, smaller eruptions continued to plague the Great Plains for decades, and even afterward the effects lingered until late into the Second Age and beginning of the Third Age.