Ghyll:Ungerry-Tubers

dibs --Nikos of Ant 17:28, 8 October 2005 (EDT)

You will find no advertisements for it in Folktown. It is not the ultimate challenge to any mountaineers. No Wakanpantricist guards have ever been stationed there. It is not well-known nor is it often sidestepped in conversation because of its eerieness. No disappearances have occurred there, alleged or otherwise. And it isn't where they, them, those, or that! comes from. It is simply a spot, geologic, and isolated - very isolated. It is Ungerry-Tubers.

It is so isolated that only a smidgen of the scholarmatic pool have even looked into it. Those interested in biotoxicology or in taxidermatology seem to find enough work in their own backyards, the geomantics who should take interest are too busy... elsewhere. But those few who have taken on the long trek, the hefty hike, the incongruous terrain, and the hot-cold showers that fall without warning, have found a realm of wyrd effects.

One such effect of the wyrd is the commonalty of howzingery which elsewhere occurs quite rarely. For most, howzingery is equated with Hat, Old Hat, Prollztqx - the names of the small town where it most closely occurs. The region is named Aran'lzt by the folks in Prollztqx, Huzza by the mapmakers in Iganefta, and Rv'rded by goodness-knows-who as written on an ancient map which my aids had found while doing research.

Located within the vastness of the Sarfelogian Mountains the Ungerry-Tubers is quite easily misplaced. The whole undulating scape of rocky slopes, stoney valleys, and windy rivers is filled with unvisited and unfriendly locales. It is necessary to get a guide in some parts of the journey, odd guides from within the odder townships that one finds in those parts of the mountains. To speak of the Ungerry-Tubers is to speak nonsense to these people, rather they speak of the High Smellie and the Obbnoxious Foots, others give the name Mztlplik or Zingry Karzt. There is an unspoken defference to the Ungerry, or to something therein, by the folk who live close enough to it; whether they see it as being magicked, hexed, or pyxied is hard to tell. Once in Prollztqx it is quite easy to feel the formation of the Tubers. You see, the attitude changes.

"The Ungerry ist one o the lytl-troddn places of ooure world; I find that my senses are enhanced, perhaps, or ist this my owne imaginings?" --Ser Daffid Lud

...The only other thing worth mentioning is that the inhabitants of those vague, isolated spots where Howzingery is common often mention that there is some connection between it and the heh-blammo balance. If there is any truth behind this statement, it has yet to be revealed."

The Elminster Mire is a "frowned upon" focal point for interlopers, busybodies, blackmailers, and gossipers. Located east of the Evesque Valley and northwest of the Andelphracian River Valley, the Mire didn't always have such a disreputable position: back in the days of Quezlar 6, it was a veritable and dangeous force to be reckoned with (making his subsequent crossing all that more remarkable).

For all practical purposes, the northern edge of the world is the Jorvyll Mountains. The Arandellion Moors do lie beyond, to the north, but their worth is clearly quite limited, and many cartographers do not even include the Moors on their maps. Others argue that the Moors are really just plateaus within the Jorvyll Range, and that the Worldwall is actually a part of it too. (Whether or not the Worldwall is an orthogonality boundary is a question for the geomancers that I won't venture to touch with an eighteen-and-an-eighth-nanit-stick.)

The Jorvyll Mountains are differentiated from the Sarfelogian Mountains primarily by their attitude (yes attitude, not altitude). The Sarfelogians are a much calmer, more peaceful and helpful range of mountains, while the Jorvyll are rough, nasty and brutish. Yesticale worms, wormwood, fefferberries are all products of the Jorvyll, while Pziqq trees and mountain meadows are found in the Sarfelogians. The Jorvyll region is also blamed for the dance craze of the Zot.

The Shrigure Gradient marks the boundary between the Sarfelogians and Jorvyll, although there is presently no known method for locating this boundary. One is hiking though a pleasant mountain meadow in the Sarfelogians, and suddenly the whole environment changes and the surroundings are noticably ominous and hostile. It may be possible that the boundary could be identified with the judicious use of a supranatural luminescence meter. However, at present, this remains a theoretical concept, and hikers traveling close to the border are cautioned to be careful in their travels.

The difficult terrain of the Smrecklit Range of the Jorvyll was an ideal location for Agarttha to be founded, as it kept the Blasphemers who founded it well out of everyone else's way, and the inhospitable character of the region also served to keep their numbers down. How they managed to smelt enough bronze to build their towers is anyone's guess.

Keglacians once settled the edges of the Jorvyll, but in the past century, this entire culture has migrated southward. Due to this, they are not considered proper candidates for discussion in the topic.

[edit]Geological facts Mount Yurch is thought to have grown up rather rapidly, over the period of perhaps as little as 2000 years, during the time of the Avazian civilization. This is largely conjecture, but is based at least somewhat on fossil evidence and myths of a cataclysmic earthquake vaguely set in that period. What is more certain is that the mountain is the result of a fearsome tectonic event, as the sheer eastern face of the mountain appears to have once been a horizontal rock layer.

Located in the northern region of known Ghyll, the Sarfelogian Mountains are the oldest mountains on our world. Green and ancient, they stand like a stony crown on the maps of Ghyll. From the foothills of the Evesque Valley north to Jorvyll, this range is the much-eroded remains of a great mass formed by folding. Consisting of primarily sedimentary rocks with folded bands of light-and dark-colored minerals, they have been compared to the folds and swirls in a marble cake.

Its highest peak is Kluvat Peak (70.7 lunanits) located at the south-western edge of Jorvyll. The mountains are rich with Pziqq trees which generally mark the sites of rich mineral deposits. There is an ongoing debate about the ecological decline of the famed "mountain meadows" as a result of the mining and counter-mining of these (mostly) worthless materials in the Endlessly Rising Staircase Movement.

The term Sarfelogia is a name that applies to parts of the region that have long been characterized by marginal economy, isolation of its people from the Ghyll mainstream, and distinctive folkways. The Sarfelogian repeating musket is a distinctive and highly accurate weapon in the hands of a practiced marksman. To date, there have only been three individuals positively identified as Sarfelogians and they were the target of much ridicule and scorn (which may explain why it has been so difficult to identify more of them).

The scenic ranges also abound in trails, paths, passes and crude roads built by the Keglacians over the centuries. Many of these routes feature breathtaking vistas and are popular spots for camping and recreational travel. Roads leading to Nesting caves are constantly well-maintained and were it not for the relative safety of travel on the well-constructed highways, the practice of "Natural Nesting" might well have gone the way of autocannibalism as a viable practice.

The Moor is famous not only for its proximity to the dangerous Wentzel Fen, but also for being the first of its kind to be studied by Phylostarus in his great Stone of Wisdom survey, where he found that over two thirds of moors have such a stone. Umbo Moor is a very popular spot with the Pinky Gazers, though, oddly enough, not with any of the Perky Gazers. The Moor is an area of outstanding natural beauty that enhances the wonder of any mooning.

Umbo Moor is most famous, however, as the place of a Battle from Tarkherk Corps history: the Battle of Umbo Moor. On the 2nd of Gomin -58 EC, Mox Elder, the Mildly Impressive Commandant of the troops stationed there encountered his famous "beautiful" White Lady. It was this incident that led to his court-martial in -56 EC, where Commandant Elder claimed that the Lady saved him and "reinvigorated his belief in the sanctity of life." Suffice it to say, no woman was ever found that matched his description. It is a popular belief that this "vision" was, in fact, a hallucination brought on by the early experiments with Ball Lightning Liqueur which, in part, earned the Corps their reputation. Indeed, many a young Tarkherk has gone off to Umbo Moor in search of their own visions induced by that most famous of explosive beverages only to wind up cold, wet and alone.

The Arandellion Moors are a series of High Lands to the north of the Jorvyll. They seem to be fairly useless, and despite their large size, only a few groups of hardy Ghyllians seem to live among them. This might be due to the fact that the land, for the most part, smells of rotting fefferberries.

The most common plant in the Moors is the widespread fefferberry. Unfortunately for the inhabitants, the most common species is also one of the least economically viable. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the area have taken to brewing an alcoholic beverage out of them, useful only because it blots out the smell of the rot. The inhabitants consider going blind an excellent trade for getting rid of the awful stench, and almost never go outside their homes without taking a good stiff drink of the brew.