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Discussion Is this western edge of Lustria tainted somehow?

Discussion in 'Fluff and Stories' started by Scalenex, Dec 7, 2022.

  1. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    So I've been going over the map of Lustria with a fine toothed comb lately and I was writing a sort of rant to put in a note and my brilliant but crazy brain went on a brilliant tangent.

    Then Scalenex stopped writing because he had a brainwave.

    1) The Spine of Sotek mountains were created by the Slann at the direction of the Old Ones before the Great Cataclysm.

    2) Most of the place names on the western side of Lustria have scary foreboding names but you never really hear about Skaven or Chaos or any of the traditional baddies doing bad stuff here.

    My conclusion is that the Spine of Sotek mountains were created as a proverbial wall to keep out the Bad Stuff. Ancient bad stuff.

    The fact that no Chaos Daemon or Skaven lord tried to start anything here could either because

    1) The Mysterious Ancient Evil here is so strong that even evil creatures fear it.

    2) the ancient Slann and Old Ones technically won against the ancient Mysterious Ancient Evil, but the land west of the mountain was made into a proverbial grave yard. Yeah, you might some trees little animals but the vibrancy of Lustria's life force doesn't shine here. Thus there is not much for the Lizardmen to do here and there isn't much for Chaos and Skaven to play with.

    3) Maybe the Mysterious Ancient Evil was not really that bad. Maybe it was just understood. The Old Ones and the Slann branded the creatures/force/or whatever here to be a corrupting influence, but in reality it's badness doesn't hold a candle to the powers of Chaos.

    4) something else.

    And if there was something there, the question everyone is asking is "Is the Thing sleeping or dead?"



    My Head Canon is such that before these were the "Spine of Sotek Mountains" these were called the "Barrier Mountains" or something similar. Overtime, the Lizardmen mostly largely forgot what the mountains were a barrier against, so they stopped being afraid of the western side of the mountain and one of them new fangled Sotek cultists got name chief Lustrian cartographer so the mountains were rechristened in Sotek's honor.


    The Lustrian Map has some unexplained landmarks with catchy name. Not all of them need be connected to the Mysterious Ancient Evil.

    The "Blood Hall" is listed on an empty island off of Lustria's west coast. It's one of the few landmarks with out a Lustrian map symbol connected so it probably not related to the Lizardmen. Maybe the islands fit my general theory, maybe they don't. The named islands north to south is "The Island of the Crimson Skull", "the Dragon Islands", the Turtle Isles, and the Forgotten Isles. A lot of islands don't have any name. The Turtle Isles are the only ones that don't really sound bad to a Lizardmen's ear (I'm not sure if they like dragons or not). The Turtle Isles also have a Lizardmen monument, "The Golden Ziggurat" and an attached "Isle of the Beast". I bet the Lizardmen kind of sort like the Turtle Isles.

    It just so happens that most of the Lizardmen monuments west of the Spine of Sotek mountains are in the Turtle Isles or directly adjacent to it. Besides the "Golden Ziggurat" we have "The Wellspring of Eternity" which is arguably separate from the Spine of Sotek Mountains, but it's also in the Reeking Mire. Fun. To not contradict my own fluff, the Wellspring of Eternity is either something orcs cannot wreck (or perhaps even find) or someone already wrecked it long before the orcs moved into the Reeking Mire.

    Catty corner from the "Wellspring of Eternity" is the Pillar of Unseen Constellations. Then you move south and you are go where the map names get extra cursed sounding. The "Ruined Temple of Chinnubul" is in the Spine of Sotek mountains. Chinnubul is a silly name for a lost Old One but maybe Chinnubul was a dead Slann of great import like Izzatal.

    The "Chamber of Visions" is in the Forbidden Jungle adjacent to the Golden Ziggurat, not sure what to do with that one.

    The "Sentinels of Xeti" are catty corner from the Chamber of Visions and are just off the coast from the Turtle Isles. Xeti could be another important Slann and perhaps the sentinels are statues with some kind of warding effect. The "Halls of the Holy" is in the Spine of Sotek and form a nice ley line triangle with the Chamber of Visions and Temple of Chinnubul. Perhaps the Halls of the Holy is anchoring what ever barrier effect the mountains were originally created for.



    Where the Forbidden Jungle meets the Copper Desert lies "The Golden Collossus" way south of that where the Copper Desert almost meets the Night Forest is the "Dust Gate".



    Or perhaps, the Games Workshop writers and illustrators simply disliked the nation of Chile.


    The Mal'iente Swamp is in the only major gap in the southern portion of the Spine of Sotek mountains. Mal is Latin for "bad" and gets used in a lot of fantasy fiction, both good and bad. The swamp is probably either bad because of the Mysterious Ancient Evil or it's bad because it's really hard to traverse going into the barrier motif.

    The Cavern of the Great Bats is nestled where the Forbidden jungle meats the Spine of Sotek Mountains. The Mine of the Bearded Skull is in the Spine of Sotek mountains. Neither of these places do not have any ley line intersections or Old Ones symbol. They were probably created by another faction apart from the First. I mentioned before on another thread maybe doing something inspired on the Mayan death god Camazotz (who is a bat), maybe not.

    Note the "Southern Sentinels" are not marked by one landmark icon, but by four and they seem to form the barrier between the southern tip of the Spine of Sotek Mountains and the Culchan Plains. If the Spine of Sotek Mountains were created as a barrier against some ancient evil, the Southern Sentinels are probably the proverbial padlock or zipper sealing things.
     

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