Talingarde

The continent of Talingarde is the focus of our story, and is the northernmost continent on the surface of Uskara, with the base of Turunsul, the World Tree, located within its borders. A temperate land of highly variably geography and cultures, it is isolated from the rest of the world not only by distance but circumstance, as whether through the rough Nacurias or the icy Alburias, travel there is difficult. Only the relatively calm and clear waters of the Lazurias made for easy travel, but over the past centuries even these have become haunted by the Kraken Toll. Despite this isolation, the presence of the World Tree and its site as a battlefield between divinities for the fate of the world has caused it to loom large in the histories of this World and the ones before it.

Geography

Talingarde can be divided into roughly seven portions. In the northeastern corner, Brecheliant is a land of taiga forests, chilly moors, flowery heaths and incredible "floating mountains" called the Aeryri. Following a circuit first heading southwards, the highlands of Rusante form a rugged borderlands between the less civilized corners and the wider continent, hugging the coast and known for its alpine ridges, unquiet earth and stormy weather. Sarum is often considered the heartlands, hugging the River Weal which is fertilized by the World Tree, making it the most fertile land in all of Uskara. The southeastern portion of Agurain, bounded by the volcanic mountains known as the Massif, is dominated by a subtropical desert.
The southern river deltas, fed by the lakes known as Heavens Tears, are called the Ninevar and were the cultural center of most of Talingarde's long history. The swampy and wild Laithlind lay in far southeast, separated from the sea by towering column-like karst mountains called the Cairnglas. North from that, across the wine-colored fields of Cimmeria, is the Cadar Idris, the "foothills" formed from the roots of Turunsul, and beyond that is the The Shade-lands, named such for the fact that the World Tree casts a long shadow over them, a still unsettled, dangerous and primeval land with various regions, bounded to its south by the the Blasgaunt and to its west by the Fusques, with the rugged coasts of the Alburias elsewise.