Nightscar Crags

Nightscar Crags

Nightscar Crags rise in the southwest of Oblivion Vale, on the high edge of the Western March. The range is jagged stone and broken ridges. The passes are tight. The ground shifts after storms. Old disaster scars cut through the slopes where roads and camps were buried. The Crags are known for sealed ruins set into cliff faces, barred by stone plugs, iron plates, and oath marks.

Land, routes, and collapse

The rock is mostly black and grey, stacked in hard angles. Pale scar bands show where stone was stripped bare by older slides. Ravines drop into shadow and collect shattered timbers, broken stair runs, and crushed bridge spans. Scree fields move underfoot. A safe path can fail in a single night of wind and rain.

Travel is not guided by rivers. Rivers and lakes are gone across the Vale, and the Crags show this loss in the worst way. Old road lines still exist, but many end at collapsed cuts or dry channels that offer no water and no shelter. Modern routes depend on rope lines, cairn marks, and watch posts near the lower passes. Above the patrol line, routes are informal and change often. Rescue is rare because reaching a fallen person can cost more water than a crew can spare.

Water reality and ration control

Snow and seep water vanish fast in Nightscar. Any open melt is absorbed by fissures or taken by the first hands that find it. Survival depends on guarded wells, hidden cisterns, and strict ration practice. Water here is not a personal matter. It is state power and criminal currency at the same time.

The Western March registers wells in fort ledgers and treats access as a controlled right. Many well mouths have lock plates, keyed covers, and guard rosters. During hard seasons, fort captains close passes, seize measures, and force travelers into ration yards. People who argue are treated as threats to the whole route, not as petty thieves.

Sealed ruins and oath marks

Nightscar holds more sealed doors than most mountain belts because it sits on older war ground. Some seals were placed before the Drying, when armies still marched along river-fed roads. Later seals were placed to contain plague signs, buried weapons, and infernal rites that courts could not admit in public.

Most seals share a common build. A corridor ends in a stone plug. Iron plates pin the plug into the surrounding rock. Oath marks are cut into plate and stone, often copied from Fate practice. These marks are used like evidence. They declare who sealed the site, who witnessed it, and what punishment follows a breach. Patrol captains keep rubbings in fort archives so later officers can prove that a door was broken by force, not by accident.

Some sealed valleys also have secondary barriers. They use fallen stone, bricked vents, and trapped stair mouths. This creates “quiet basins” where wind behaves oddly and sound carries far. People report dull knocks, grinding, and drafts that feel like breath from behind stone. Fort doctrine does not chase these sounds. It increases watch on nearby wells and keeps civilians away.

People in the Crags

The Crags do not support real towns. They support pass forts, ration yards, short work camps, and hidden dens. The lower cuts are watched by patrols and quarantine escorts. The high ridges stay wild because holding them would bleed the March dry.

Bandits and deserters use caves as safe dens. They kill for water more than coin. Many gangs began as escort troops or levy workers who learned patrol patterns and ration math. The Black Cask networks also use the Crags as transfer ground. Caves hold caches of stolen seals, forged permits, and ration notes. They move water in casks and skins, and they move proof of ownership as much as the water itself. Violence is constant because a witness can lead a patrol to a cistern.

Monsters and why they appear here

Nightscar’s threats fit three causes: high wind corridors, many sealed spaces, and constant human crime around water. The following creatures are recorded as recurring in Nightscar, and their presence fits local conditions.

Air Elementals
Air elementals form as dry-wind predators in plague-wind seasons and long storms. The Crags funnel wind through ravines and cracks, which helps them stabilize. They slip through shutters, lift grit into lungs, and tear tents and water skins. They are feared by convoys because one event can destroy a crew’s water without a blade.

Cloud Giants
Cloud giants hold the high ridges above patrol reach. They hoard rain catchers, fog nets, and sky cisterns built from wrecked towers and salvaged beams. They tax travel by demanding water first, then tools, then hostages when they doubt payment. Some fort captains pretend the giants are only a rumor because public admission would cause panic and desertion. Guides plan routes to avoid ridges where fog nets hang.

Hoardwyrms
Hoardwyrms nest where burned quarries and slag hills provide metal scraps and heat-soaked stone. Nightscar’s old scar cuts and buried road works create these nests. Hoardwyrms raid caravans for seals, stamped bars, and iron fittings. Their smoke breath kills torchlight and stains lungs, making pursuit fail in narrow passes. Their raids shift traffic patterns because a single blocked route can starve a fort yard.

Greedscales
Greedscales hunt stored goods and locked yards. Nightscar gives them targets at pass forts and at smugglers’ cask caves. They melt wax seals and weaken locks until doors fail under pressure. They take casks fast and leave before militia gathers. Their presence increases corruption, because rivals try to steer a greedscale toward an enemy depot with tribute and false scent trails.

Erinyes
Erinyes appear when infernal contracts move from paper into enforcement. Nightscar supports this because it has hidden rite rooms, sealed war vaults, and steady work for smugglers who forge ledgers. Erinyes hunt oath-breakers, burn false records, and seize heirs for payment. They can pass as disciplined soldiers long enough to enter a fort. This forces patrols to rely on seal codes, witness marks, and strict identity checks.

Balors
Balors are recorded only during major seal failures. When one appears, the March treats it as a disaster, not a hunt. A balor burns storehouses, cracks gates, and forces districts and yards to be sealed or abandoned. After a balor event, law hardens. Curfews tighten. Water audits expand. Executions rise for anyone blamed for the breach. In Nightscar, fear of a balor is one reason old doors stay plugged even when salvage inside could feed a town.

Night lights and answering stone

At night, dull lights show in cracks and high fissures. Some come from smugglers using shielded lanterns. Some come from mineral glow in certain scar bands. The most feared lights are those near sealed archways marked with chipped iron sigils. People claim these lights appear with faint sound from behind the plugs. Whether true or not, the effect is real. Crews travel by day, camp away from seal faces, and keep lamps low so wind predators and winged enforcers do not track them.

Role in the Western March

Nightscar Crags function as a shield and a drain. The lower passes protect the March interior from raids, but maintaining them costs people, metal, and water. The state holds what it can through patrol doctrine, ration law, and document control. Above that line, the Crags belong to whoever can move quiet, carry measures, and keep a secret cistern. This is why Nightscar remains a place of sealed history, hidden crime, and rare monsters that the rest of the Vale only hears about after someone fails to return.

Named scars and common seals

Locals name the biggest slide cuts because names help people remember where death is likely. “Whiteband Drop” is a pale scar slope that sheds stone after every storm. “Cinder Mouth” is a soot-stained arch where salvage crews vanished, then an iron plate was bolted over the entry. “Oathgutter” is a long ravine lined with old witness cuts, where sound carries and lantern light draws attacks.

Many seals in Nightscar carry layered marks from different eras. A single plate may show a king’s stamp, then later March tally cuts, then newer quarantine marks. This mix tells a clear story. The Crags have been used, lost, sealed, and reused many times.

What outsiders misunderstand

Outsiders treat Nightscar as a simple bandit problem. March reports treat it as a route security problem. Both views miss the core issue. The Crags are a network of water points fenced by stone and patrol law. Whoever controls wells, cisterns, and seal keys controls movement. Every conflict here is a conflict over measures, access, and who is allowed to live through a pass.