# Koranthia - Maps & Charts - Angrean Atlas :::section ## Koranthia :::subheading{level="2"} **Status:** Imperial Reserve | **Climate:** Perpetual Twilight | **Type:** Single Island ::: :::intro *A quiet island under a permanent ceiling of low cloud. Fishing villages line the coast, a long-dormant volcano stands at the heart, and between them sits Koranth; a lifeless city of pale crystalline spires that no living thing cares to linger in. The Empire draws its arcane orbs from here and otherwise lets Koranthia keep to itself.* ::: :::intro "Koranth is the only city I have ever walked through where I could hear my own footsteps in every alley. I left before dusk. The fishers down in Emberhaven poured me a drink before I had even ordered and I did not ask why." — Tessen Aravorn, surveyor's apprentice ::: ::: :::section ## Overview Koranthia is a sparsely populated island whose character is defined by two things: the perpetual twilight that pools under its cloud cover, and the lifeless city at its interior. Most of the island is an ordinary if quiet place. Small fishing ports and a handful of crofting settlements ring the coast. Boats go out on the morning tide and come back in the evening. Visitors who never leave the coastal road come away describing Koranthia as merely bleak. The interior is where the island’s reputation lives. At the heart of it rises **Mount Vethar**, a dormant volcano whose last serious eruption lies well over a thousand years in the past. The cooled lava fields on Vethar’s rimward slope run down to the walls of **Koranth**, an entirely lifeless city of pale crystalline spires whose original builders are unknown and whose stone pre-dates the Empire by ages uncounted. Nothing moves in Koranth. The doors stand open. Travelers who spend a night there rarely spend a second. There is, by general agreement, something thin about Koranthia. Scholars who have ventured to describe it speak of a veil. What lies on the other side of that veil is the subject of theological argument, philosophical speculation, and remarkably little active research. **Population:** Modest. Coastal settlements hold a few thousand residents between them, supplemented by the standing legion garrison and the manufactory’s resident personnel inland. ::: :::section ## Notable Locations :::intro *A single island, traversed on foot or by coaster. The cities of the coast are reached along a pleasant if gloomy shore road; the interior is reached only by those who have a reason to go.* ::: :::card-list :::card{title="Koranth"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Lifeless City | Population: None** ::: A crystalline metropolis of unknown age and unknown builders, its spires visible for miles despite the perpetual gloom. Koranth holds no permanent residents and no Imperial facility within its walls. The city is open, in the literal sense: its gates have no guards, its doors no locks. It is also empty, in every sense. Visitors may walk the streets freely. Few stay long. Whatever quality the city has, the living do not care for it. ::: :::card{title="The Vethar Works"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Imperial Manufactory | Status: Restricted** ::: The Empire’s principal source of arcane orbs, operated by House Neuros under a standing legion garrison. The Works sit in the saddle between Koranth’s heartward wall and the lower slopes of Mount Vethar; deliberately outside the city itself; for all its preference for discretion, the House declined to quarter its work inside Koranth’s walls. The facility is an open secret: its existence is undisputed, its interior is closed to anyone outside House Neuros. Finished orbs are carried by escorted road to Emberhaven for shipment. ::: :::card{title="Emberhaven"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Port Town | Population: Small** ::: The largest settlement on the island, set in a sheltered cove on the sunrim coast. Emberhaven is an old fishing port, centuries older than the Works it now serves, and its harbor still smells of the morning catch before it smells of anything Imperial. It is also the embarkation point for every arcane orb the Empire uses: the crates travel down from the interior under garrison escort and leave the island on Emberhaven’s wharves. The town keeps its fleet, its taverns, and its temperament; the orb traffic is treated as one more cargo to load on the evening tide. ::: :::card{title="Quenhaven"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Coastal Town | Population: Small** ::: Set along the slow water of Quenhaven Creek a day’s walk from Koranth’s sunward gate. Quenhaven serves as supply town and customs post for the garrison inland, and its residents pride themselves on being unambiguously alive. It keeps daylight hours by lamplight and is where most travelers sleep before turning back. ::: :::card{title="The Liminal College"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Independent Scholarly Society | Status: Loosely Organized** ::: A small fellowship of arcane academics, founded in 3113 CR, who have made Quenhaven their base and Koranth their subject. The College is not a chartered institution and holds no Imperial accreditation; its members study the island’s strange properties, catalog its anomalies, and publish irregularly. Their work on local optics, acoustics, and the geology of the Crystal Spires is well regarded. Inquiries into deeper matters; the question of the veil, are politely deflected. ::: :::card{title="The Thin Weave Shrine"} :::subheading{level="4"} **Type: Sacred Site | Status: Open to Respectful Visitors** ::: A weathered crystalline marker at the boundary between the Whispering Woods and the cleared land beyond Koranth. Pilgrims leave letters here, addressed to the departed. Whether the letters are read on any side is not known. ::: ::: ::: :::section ## Geographic Features ### The Eternal Murk The perpetual cloud cover that defines Koranthia’s character. Scholars debate whether the cause is meteorological, magical, or something else entirely. ### Mount Vethar The dormant volcano at the island’s heart, broad-shouldered and quiet. Vethar has not erupted in well over a thousand years, and the old lava fields that spill from its rimward slope are now weathered rock threaded with hardy lichens. By oral tradition the pale crystal of Koranth’s spires was quarried, or more likely gathered, from those fields in some era long predating the Empire; the geologists of the Liminal College regard this as possible but unproven. ### The Whispering Woods Ancient forests on the sunward coast, where the trees are older than most historical records. Travelers report hearing voices among the branches. The voices are not always unfriendly, but they are always unsettling. ### The Forgotten Roads A network of paths that predate the Empire and connect the interior to the coast. They generally lead where you need to go, but “where you need to go” and “where you want to go” are not always the same thing. ### The Crystal Spires The defining architecture of Koranth, reflect light oddly. The same crystalline material surfaces in outcroppings across the Vethar flats and is, by long Imperial custom, not to be cut or removed by private parties; the Works’ needs are met from sources the Works do not discuss. ::: :::section ## Travel Information ### Getting There - **By Airship:** Scheduled service to Emberhaven, weather permitting (it often does not) - **By Sea:** Regular coasters between Emberhaven and the Wolf and Snake Isles; other coastal landings possible ### Travel Advisory :::travel-advisory{level="caution"} ##### EXERCISE CAUTION The coastal towns of Koranthia are unremarkable to visit beyond the gloom; fishing communities, modest inns, quiet evenings. The interior, and Koranth in particular, is another matter. The city is not dangerous in any conventional sense, but it has effects on the disposition of the living that the Empire does not pretend to fully understand. ::: **Local Cautions:** - Carry your own light source; the cloud cover does not lift - Do not approach the Vethar Works; the garrison’s instructions on the matter are firm - If you visit Koranth, plan your departure before you arrive; visitors rarely wish to put off leaving - Rumors that Koranth is haunted are unsubstantiated; the city is simply empty ::: :::section ## Historical Notes Koranth’s spires were standing when the first Imperial surveyors reached the island, and the original builders remain unknown. The leading theories; pre-Flood construction by a lost civilization, natural crystal formations shaped by unknown forces, the discarded creative projects of bored gods; have been debated for centuries without resolution. Mount Vethar’s last major eruption is estimated at well over a thousand years ago; the coastal settlements were already in place by then, and their oral traditions remember the ashfall and the fire, and an odd sense of calm. The Empire formally incorporated Koranthia by the Treaty of Twilight (412 CR), on terms granting the island significant autonomy in exchange for not doing anything “excessively alarming” with the dead. For most of the centuries that followed, the arrangement consisted largely of everyone leaving Koranth alone. The coastal towns went on fishing. Industrial production of arcane orbs began at the Vethar Works roughly a hundred and fifty years ago, coincident with the early years of the Industrial Revolution, under House Neuros’s direct administration. With the Works came a unilateral expansion of Imperial control that the Treaty of Twilight never contemplated: the standing garrison, the closed interior, the escorted orb road to Emberhaven. The fishing communities of the coast weighed their options and decided it was simplest to go along with the Emprix, so long as the arrangement did not interfere overmuch with their day-to-day. So far, it has not. Scholars have long noted that the underlying method of manufacture predates the House’s involvement; the attribution in the public record is thin, and not everyone who reads that record comes away satisfied that the Empire invented what the Empire now owns. The House does not dwell on the point, and strongly encourages others not to dwell on it either. The Works has operated continuously since its founding, the Empire’s sole known source for the orbs that power its airships, its rail engines, and its Steamlings. Shipments leave the island through Emberhaven. The arrangement is the Empire’s, and the Empire does not invite questions about it. :::