The Riven Edge

Tellus | The Riven Edge

The Riven Edge

"A continent-sized scar, the upturned blade of a shattered world."

Overview

The Riven Edge is not a traditional landmass, but a monumental geological phenomenon, a colossal, crescent-shaped wall of land rising sharply from the southeastern quadrant of Tellus. It marks the place where a massive segment of the disc's original plate sheared away during the cataclysm known as The Breaking. The remaining slab was thrust skyward, its torn edge jagged and exposed, forming an arcing escarpment nearly 3,000 miles long and over 200 miles wide at its thickest point.

Its spine reaches unimaginable heights, some peaks rise over 100 miles into the sky, making it easily the tallest known landform on Tellus. From the sea below, its uppermost cliffs are visible from over 800 miles away on a clear day. This is not a place of nations or settlements; it is a raw wound in the world, a land of shadows, winds, and titanic stone.

Geography and Terrain

• The Riven Edge is a rising arc, curving up and outward from the disc's surface like a planetary fault exposed to the sky.
• It begins at sea level, but quickly escalates in a violent slope, with exposed strata, tilted sediment, and massive fissures.
• The face is jagged and broken, with hanging valleys, vertical canyons, and cavern systems hundreds of miles deep.
• The lower reaches are permanently shadowed due to the extreme angle of the shelf and the orbit of the sun, Cyrus.
• The upper reaches, constantly exposed to the high aetherial winds, are scoured by magical pressure and bathed in thin atmosphere.
• Gravity behaves strangely at the highest altitudes, storms curve sideways, and some fragments hover in suspension.
• Occasional plateaus form pocket ecosystems, cut off entirely from the sea or sun for much of the year.

Climate and Atmosphere

• The lower edge lies in the tropical band but is dominated by wind tunnels, sea spray, and a shadowed biome of fungus, glowing lichens, and heat-trapped thermal pockets.
• The upper edge pierces into the boundary layer of Tellus’s aether dome, here the air thins dramatically, and strange particles shimmer in constant auroras.
• Rain does not fall uniformly. Some regions have permanent mists or are buffeted by storms that cannot escape the land’s sloped gravity.
• At the very top, a rare aether-gas leak creates floating clouds of magical lift-gas, often mistaken for sky-serpents or wraiths.

Origins and Theories

• Geologists believe The Riven Edge formed when one of the plate fragments failed to separate fully during The Breaking and instead tore away and folded upward under tremendous pressure.
• Some scholars say this is the closest one can get to the "spine" of the disc, the hardened framework of Tellus's original shape.
• Others insist the inner curve hides a buried god, caught in the act of rising and frozen in stone.
• The cliffs pulse faintly during celestial alignments, enough to draw pilgrims, madmen, and sky cults.

Inhabitants and Hazards

• Few creatures live here, though some isolated species exist in thermal rift valleys and on hidden mesas.
• Migratory sky-beasts have been spotted gliding along the updrafts, including vast draconic shapes or living zeppelids.
• Wind elementals, cloudborn spirits, and ancient constructs left from the Age of the Urlosh are rumored to haunt the spires.
• No permanent civilizations exist here, but some cults and expeditionary teams have attempted to scale the face.
• The Riven Edge is considered impassable by traditional means, most maps list it only as "Here Be Stone."

Special Notes

• The inner wall, shadowed and humid, is known as the Umbrashade, a place of eternal twilight.
• The peak of the highest reach, nicknamed "Heaven’s Talon," has never been reached by mortals.
• Some fragments of ancient pre-Breaking cities are visible at extreme heights, embedded in impossible angles, suggesting they were carried upward during the fracture.