Geography…

Cartography courtesy Bo Press Studio

Geography:

1.     Trevallyn: (setting of The Stumpwork Robe, The Last Stitch and A Thousand Glass Flowers) is a province essentially like parts of our own global north: parts of the Celtic world. Green and filled with forests of gloriously deciduous trees, it is mostly a temperate climate. It is the largest province of Eirie, ranging from the southern coasts which are bleak and exposed, to the middle vales which are richly agricultural and have small market towns or villages.

There is only one truly large town, a place high in the Goti Range called Star. It is a trading town and has a hugely mixed ethnic component owing to the traders from all the provinces of Eirie who negotiate the great road over the Goti Range called the Celestine Stairway.

They meet in a jaw-dropping marketplace – a grand indoor hall made entirely of wood with clerestory windows. The market is held indoors because of the vagaries of the mountain weather and ensures a booming economy.

The traders have many different types of beasts of burden – camels, pachyderms, alpacas, donkeys, horses and oxen –  which require suitable stabling and thus Star’s forefathers had the foresight to build a massive mews at the foot of the Celestine Stair. It is a massive four winged building built in similar fashion to the market-place.

Because the town of Star hangs precariously off the mountainside, its narrow walkways are fit only for mortal (and immortal) feet. Thus the Celestine Stair passes alongside the town’s outer walls, the retaining wall itself made of huge blocks of mountain stone and which inadvertently create Star’s protective palisade.

The Goti Range is inhospitable; an alpine environment subject to howling gales and ice showers, avalanches and blizzards. It’s the perfect hunting ground for the many and varied spirits of the Other world that is the mirror image of Eirie.

Close by the Goti is a series of lakes, the Great Lakes, which are one of the most dangerous places in Trevallyn because of the preponderance of malignant water-wights. Surrounding the lakes and tarns are the Barrow Hills and where the Ymp Tree Orchard can be found.

Entrance to the Other world can be made in judicious ways and the Ymp Tree Orchard is one of the most fascinating. One of the four Gates to Færan, it is a massive orchard of pleached apricot and peach trees that stretch for an unlimited distance. Of course that distance is only defined by the reader’s or observer’s imagination. It may be that the distance is manufactured by Others to confound mortals. Who knows? At any rate, the entrance may be found by the simple expedient of locating the third row from the bottom. But that begs the question that in an orchard where the size cannot be easily defined by the mortal eye, where is that third row?

Again courtesy Bo Press.

 2.  Pymm Archipelago: is a series of many islands (see map) of which the largest is Maria Island. Pymm is the next largest and Bressay is its bustling seaport. If you can imagine Sluys or Veere in the sixteenth century then that is Bressay.

Maria Island is a strange place with a lumpy backbone of escarpments. On the leeward side they drop and then roll into valuable agricultural land. But on the seaward side, they crash vertically into a dark-as-night sea where more of the pernicious sea-wights live… and wait.

The island has estates run by squires who own their land but defer to the Barony of Pymm  and the economy of the islands is largely sea-oriented. Those stretches of Maria Island that are agricultural grow valuable wool and crops of barley, wheat and oats.

Each of the lesser islands are somewhat bleak like parts of the Faroes or Shetlands in our own world, but each has there own myth that hovers about like an enigmatic mist.

3. The Raj: (setting for A Thousand Glass Flowers) Perhaps the most challenging and fascinating of the provinces because it is so exotic. It is a blend of Morocco, Turkey, and the Indian subcontinent from our own world. Ahmadabad, the major city, is like the Alhambra, Jaipur and the Topkapi all rolled into one.

Ahmadabad is the Sultan’s city, the palace city, the City of a Thousand Bright Lights or a Thousand Magnificences. The buildings are elegantly designed and built  from white marble or pink stucco that is reflected in the city’s many fountains and rills. The city straddles the river Ahmad which is like the Ganges, flowing widely and often fiercely through ravines to a muddy delta at the far east coast close by a place called Castello.

Castello is a place to beware of. Built by the immortal Other, Isolde, it is a grey-as-grief walled bastion where the worst of Eirie gather. ‘Fallen angels’ they are called but are the most malign from the mortal and immortal world.

Fahsi is the trading city - a place of artisans, souks and bazaars that are filled with amazing trade and eccentric people.  Sadly a thriving drug culture exists, supplied from opium poppies grown in the secret valleys of the province.

4.  Veniche:  (setting for The Last Stitch and A Thousand Glass Flowers) is the jewel in the Eirie crown –  a centre of excellence, exactly like the real Serenissima of our own world. The writer has portrayed Veniche as a mirror image of Venice during the Renaissance. It is filled with art, sculpture, the most glorious architecture and hidden alleys and wights who will kill or be kind.

The Museo is the most culturally important building in Veniche as it houses an exceptional collection of Other ephemera, something Others find disrespectful and disconcerting. One of the most astonishing pieces within the Museo is the stumpwork robe, a garment of legend and life.

5.   The Han: (setting for The Shifu Cloth) is a secretive and a hidden province that no one in Eirie has yet discovered. It will be revealed to readers for the first time in the novel The Shifu Cloth. Much of its identity compares to the Far East, China and Japan and it is situated far to the northwest of Veniche in the Goti Range.

 The province itself is surrounded by two walls –  the Great Wall on the outer and the Palisade on the inner. In between are acres of forest and chasms and fast running rivers enabling further seclusion.

The Han has an army of merchantmen who were kidnapped as children from the Raj. It is felt that by looking like Rajis and speaking the Raji language, they could trade for the Han without drawing attention to the secret province. These traders however were brought up in the Han way.

There is only one city – the Forbiddden City.  Life around it is run by five Houses in each of the branches of the Han’s economy. Thus there exists five merchant houses, five trades houses, five bureaucratic houses and so on. The other fields are medicine, fine arts and farming.

Within the Han there is also a Slave Trader whose responsibility it is to keep the province supplied with nubile, skilled females from ‘outside’ who have the classic Han appearance of black hair, and dark  eyes. These women are the foundation stones of the continued population of the Han until if and ever the curse is broken. Until The Shifu Cloth is released, the curse must remain secret.

Of course there is also a celestial world filled with glittering swathes of stars and folds of milky galaxies.  Where else would all celestial spirits live after all? It may be that one day, a clever cartographer will design a map to depict the Heavens above.

And this from Bo Press Studios as well