- Sen The Nine Lands
- Where rivers meet and Sendya, the finest city in the north, is giving way to Shaimin greed. Its Argent Keep holds some of Vadred’s oldest secrets. Sen is also home to the deadly and mysterious Spear.
- Ivern The Nine Lands
- High, cold, and half-wild, walled off by mountains its own people haven’t finished mapping. But Riverport thrives since it welcomed the Shaimin HQ as a hub for lumber, coldspark, and cheap labor.
- Dorz The Nine Lands
- The land of Prophet Ropia. A high desert hiding many secrets. A land of pilgrimage and nomads sitting on a buried sea of fire. It has changed little since the Unmaking, ruled by the same dynasty for a thousand years.
- Kand The Nine Lands
- The highland peaks are overrun with apex predators. The southern swamps a web of seething life and secret societies. So inhospitable you need blind faith just to go there. It keeps to its old secrets and nobody dares or cares to change it.
- Lembex The Nine Lands
- A land of cloud forest and cattle farms bordering the Black Rift. It is a poor land ruled by wealthy families where a person can disappear, on purpose or otherwise. It is where the Unmaking began.
- Bittora The Nine Lands
- Home of the Bit ka, land of goab forest, volcanic peaks and thermal rivers, built on temples and old rites, where the line between devotion and control has never been especially clear.
- Golone The Nine Lands
- Home to the thousand Temples of Arci and the Brothers of Balinar, its shrines worship pain and pleasure and the blessed Dwo, a third sex native to the land. What the priests know and what they choose to share are rarely the same. They are the first allies of the Shaimin.
- Plenara The Nine Lands
- Quiet, wooded, some say the fairest land of all. Home to Renelay Bay and the Mountains of the Wind, it is peaceful and ordered exactly how the people of Plenara have always preferred it.
- Talon The Nine Lands
- The East Land of forest and cliff, known for the Wild Coast and the strange creatures that linger since the Unmaking. It is empty of men save for Talofar, the old capital. No one goes there and no one leaves.
- IseronThe Tenth Land The Nine Lands
- A frozen desert until the Shaimin claimed it as their domain — called itself native, and started rewriting the story of the nine that came before it.
- SendyaThe City of Masks Cities & Strongholds
- The white city on the plain, lit at night by shailight bright enough to defeat the stars. Seat of the Dumin, and Pantan-built long before the people who rule it arrived.
- The Argent Keep Cities & Strongholds
- The Dumin’s palace above Sendya — Goloni murals painted over spirals of grey and ochre its architects have never quite managed to hide.
- New TownBeggar’s Ward Cities & Strongholds
- The sprawl outside Sendya’s walls, hovels of scrap metal and rot-wood running miles deep. No wall keeps anyone in. Gradno calls it progress.
- Ivern HeadquartersThe Shaimin Claw Cities & Strongholds
- Native basalt on the outside, so the people who labour in its shadow believe it belongs to a clan of the frozen north. Past the security membrane it is something else entirely.
- Skorn Cities & Strongholds
- A city in a volcanic basin ringed by seven lakes — four cold, three hot — where the ground itself is warm and the seasons run backward.
- Teska Hall Cities & Strongholds
- A long low hall of black wood on the hill above Skorn, under a shield of three moons over a crossed spear and sword.
- Tradesh Cities & Strongholds
- A holy city on the island of Molor, where two rival faiths keep their shrines on the slopes of a mountain that will not stop groaning.
- Betta Cities & Strongholds
- A northern port on Navyr Bay. Not so much a city as a digestive system: the tide brings the filth of the Northlands to its docks and the transmute mist finishes the job.
- Azur Cities & Strongholds
- The desert capital of Dorz, white stone and wavering air, where the dowager’s word still carries further than the queen’s.
- Belop Town Cities & Strongholds
- Shipyard country in the south, where goab hulls are built by the only crews in the world who know how.
- Watan Cities & Strongholds
- An island in the Middle Sea. The Doni fled there, and their vaults still hold the books they took.
- Lankor Wa Cities & Strongholds
- A Goloni city whose principal export is other people’s children. Spoken of politely as a place of pleasure.
- Moc The Mocs
- Primi prison, heritage site, or a tomb. Depends who you ask. The calcified remains of the Casters’ sky-structures — now sealed settlements where the Pantan are kept.
- Mydya Moc The Mocs
- The moc on the Rim, built into amethyst cliffs above the Violet Sea. A great sky-structure that fell eons ago and was slowly absorbed into the rock. Once a Pantan fortress; now their prison, and the last place in the Nine Lands where Readers are still born.
- Dromense Moc The Mocs
- The moc at Ivern. A ruin and a looted tomb — no Readers left in it, only fortune-tellers and the sick.
- Daelor The Mocs
- A moc deep in the southern wood, reachable only by a river nobody sane travels.
- Nuzedi The Mocs
- The Pantan moc that once stood where Tradesh stands now. Two centuries on, only a trace of it survives in the masonry.
- The Violet Sea Waters & Wilds
- The ocean off the Rim, glowing at its edge, light rising from the deep like a rumour of something sacred.
- The Zo Waters & Wilds
- The great river road south, carrying everything that moves between the northern cities and the Middle Sea.
- The Seren Waters & Wilds
- Deep indigo water east of Sendya, its far bank three days out and lost to haze.
- The Urnis Waters & Wilds
- The river that floods each year and lays down the black silt feeding half of Dorz. The most fertile land in the Nine Lands sits on its banks.
- The Belop Waters & Wilds
- A river road through the goab forest where the sun has not touched the water in a thousand years. One boat in ten that enters this stretch does not come out.
- The Black Rift Waters & Wilds
- The tectonic scar left by the Spear’s impact, running from Sendya all the way into Kand. So deep that nothing thrown into it is ever found.
- The Barricades Waters & Wilds
- The mountain wall between Mydya and the inland world — three brutal days of switchbacks, and the only road out.
- The Sak Desert Waters & Wilds
- Yellow dust and heat-shimmer, crossed by the Agak Road and by nobody who has a choice.
- Lake Monasca Waters & Wilds
- A holy lake in the foothills of Dorz, teeming with life and guarded for generations.
- The Spear Ruins & Sacred Places
- The ship that carried the Casters into exile and struck this world hard enough to nearly break it. It still stands, still pulses, and still bleeds amber vapour into the sky. The men who go in to mine what it bleeds do not live long.
- Anranam Ruins & Sacred Places
- The old city and Anra’s shrine above Sendya — one of the few Caster temples to survive the Unmaking, and lately gifted to the Shaimin for its materials.
- Mol Din Ruins & Sacred Places
- Not a fire-peak but a honeycomb of glass-walled passages and vaults. Nothing grows on its slopes. The Mountain of a Thousand Fates.
- Ropia’s Walk Ruins & Sacred Places
- The pilgrim stair carved into Mol Din, climbed each year to the shrine where the prophet received her vision and was later burned for it.
- Barabon’s Dome Ruins & Sacred Places
- The great hall of Sendya, named for a man who did not build it. Caster-made, and standing eight centuries before the Sendyans claimed it.
- The Water Wall Ruins & Sacred Places
- Deep beneath the Argent Keep, a condensation-slicked surface holding back the Sen River — the only wall down there free of Pantan carvings.
- The Closed Doni Temple Ruins & Sacred Places
- Ten levels high on Nubal Square, no windows, one door sealed with silver bars. Shut for years, and unlawful even to discuss.
- Caster’s Spear Gorge Ruins & Sacred Places
- The gorge at Azil Ka, where the radore comes out of the ground and desperate men sell it in shadow markets.
Nothing by that name. Try another word.