Thoren

By Don Harward

Thoren is a continent-sized land that existed in a time other than our own. It is a mountainous land where Three great cities each have people very different from the others. Thoren, the largest city, is in the far east near the great chasm that divides the land from the distant lands on the other side. T

• Language: English
• Publisher: Don Harward Books
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9781088066928

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Thoren

A Novel by

Don Harward

Copyright @ 2021 by

Author Don Harward with Illustrations by Andrea Becker

With assistance of Chris, Anne, Paul and Team Bookmarketeers.com

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-0880-6698-0

Printed in the United States of America

Published by: Bookmarketeers.com

For Nathan.

My son, who had the courage to go and chase his dream…

And

For the Warriors out there, who give selflessly, and often for people who care not of their sacrifices.

Preface

Now, you may be wondering what would have prompted me to write this book. Why did I choose this Genre, and then place it in time where I chose to do so? Why did I choose these characters and then represent them this way or that? Simply, I did all of this for my son.

You see, my middle son, Nathan, had finally come to the point in his life when he was leaving home to begin his own great adventure. He has long wanted to be a soldier. Since he was a boy, he dreamt of becoming a warrior. He set all that in motion one day when he raised his right hand, then boarded that van that landed him in the US Army Infantry School at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

He has always wanted to be a soldier, but he may have been born eleven centuries too late. If he could have chosen a time other than this one, he would no doubt have chosen the days when the Norsemen of Denmark and Norway fought their campaigns across northern Europe. His interest in those people, and that time, is, indeed, profound. He even taught himself how to speak their ancient language! He can speak like a Viking the same as you and I converse in our native tongue. He can write some things in Rune, their lost language. Against my wishes, he wears a tattoo of the Rune word for Fenrir, an ancient wolf who was truly one bad fellow. Raised as a Christian, I have some issues with all that, but it is his choosing, not mine.

During my childhood I was an avid reader. I read all J.R.R. Tolkien’s books by the time I was ten. Associated with that Trilogy is a popular myth that Mr. Tolkien wrote the story in pieces. It goes on to say he sent them to his son, an Infantryman serving in the British Army in North Africa during World War Two. The myth goes on to tell how the British soldiers, seeing only battle every day, were comforted by the reading of this fantastic story of middle earth as it arrived letter by letter.

I loved that myth so much that shortly before Nate departed, I decided to write him a book just like Mr. Tolkien had done according to the myth. I would write it chapter by chapter and mail it to him. You see while studying the warcraft of the modern infantryman, one is not allowed to read anything except for letters from home and the Infantry manual published by the US Army. I would be a real sneaky guy here!

I’d write this story, bit by bit and Nate could read it little by little while on guard duty or during some rare free time. Well, that’s exactly what happened, for the most part. I wrote, then sometimes shoved thirty pages into a huge manila envelope and mailed it away. He told me one time the Drill sergeants ordered him to open it in front of them because they suspected him of receiving something illegal such as candy or some other heinous item. He even shared those letters with some of his friends there. I am told that they, too, enjoyed the stolen moments of fantasy. Sergeants: I’m grinning ear to ear!

You see, when I began this thing, I could not have envisioned just how the story would have developed. I confess, I borrowed from the most popular book of all time in some ways, and in doing so, the writing took on a life of its own. I started to see another purpose in the writing. I began to want to connect it in some way to that much grander book.

Writing it became part of my daily routine. there were days when I saw the sun rising and then later set all while still writing. The words just poured out, faster than I could type. It was as if some creative dam had burst, and I was trying to save as much of the story as I could before it washed forever away. So, before I knew it, there it was. Nate graduated from the Infantry school, and I placed the blue chord of an Infantryman on his shoulder. I now had an actual warrior son and a finished book. The whole process took six months and hundreds of hours.

I guess I am simply a dad who promised to do something for his son and did it. I think it was a good experience for the both of us and he will have this work and the memories for all his life. It is my gift to him. I need not sell a single copy; I only want to hand one finished copy to him. The writing of Thoren has encouraged many others who became involved along the way. I felt the book was born from the notion of doing something positive for someone, but during the process, many others have also been blessed. One person, a young lady, Andrea, came from seemingly nowhere to offer her services to illustrate the book. It is her sketches that you see within these pages. The scenes she sketched were born from the impression she had after reading a piece. Some were suggestions by me, but most, perhaps all, are a direct reflection about how she saw the scene I attempted to paint with my words.

We humans, hope to leave something meaningful in our wake, and maybe in some small way, this book might do that. Perhaps it will bring a moment of happiness to someone or transport some reader far away to an imaginary place called Thoren. But, buried in these pages is a bigger message and a greater spirit. I suppose, my hope would be that those who read this would sense him and perhaps come to know him personally, as I do.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 A Very Strange Land

Chapter 2 Something of the people of Thoren City

Chapter 3 Guildsmen

Chapter 4 Norse

Chapter 5 Meetings

Chapter 6 King Abermath

Chapter 7 Helen

Chapter 8 Plans

Chapter 9 Betrayals

Chapter 10 War comes knocking at the door

Chapter 11 Throne

Chapter 12 Battles

Chapter 13 The Buildup for A Good Fight

Chapter 14 A Kingdom is Restored

Chapter 15 It Ends

Thoren Glossary of names, terms, and things

Introduction

The earth is much older than you would think. Old enough for many great civilizations to have come and gone. Many ages have come to pass, and I suppose many more will as time marches on to some distant point in the future. It is said that time forms a loop, circling in its final moment back to touch its very beginning once again. In this way, all things are connected. The earth is a wholesome mother to mankind and to other kinds as well. After civilizations have made their mark on the land, the earth oftentimes erases everything those people ever built. This ebb and flow sets the stage anew once again for the rise of other people to grow and find their destiny.

Some of the civilizations who have passed into the night are all but forgotten, leaving only a hint that they ever were anything at all. Sometimes however, they leave tantalizing little clues scattered about so that perhaps someone down the line might find them and try to put the puzzle together. Thoren is or was one of those places. A great civilization that grew from humble beginnings to become a thing of greatness, but it too has an end. I should not tell too much of what happened to those people in the end just yet. Suffice it for me to say that they thrived, and oh how they lived! This is the story of those people.

I am old, oh so very old. It is a curse sometimes but also a great delight to see and experience the works of the great master. He created me, and indeed everything else that is or has ever been. I suppose he allowed me to come along for such a time to experience all that came to pass in this world of Thoren so that its story should not be forgotten. So, the task has fallen to me to talk of this as if I was there because I actually was. I will do my utmost best to tell the story in as great a detail as my mind allow, and hope that someone, someday, somewhere, will come to appreciate all that has come and gone.

Thoren was a great land of antiquity where mankind and its animal friends lived in fantastic ways that are, for the most part, lost from the history of those who came afterward. It is a great island, a continent perhaps, that rose majestically from the sea on all sides except in a couple of areas where the coastal flatlands gently gave way to the sea. Formed in the shape of some giant tear, the thinnest part separated it from the other lands by the great chasm. It was deep and so utterly unworldly that it was nothing less than a total barrier from everything else in the world. Its very presence keeps the rest of the world out of reach from the people of Thoren. Its effect was absolute. The land mass of Thoren stopped at the edge of it, and beyond that point, there was, effectively, nothing else.

Thoren was probably big enough to be properly called a continent, but to the people living there, it was the only world they knew. Stretching nearly three hundred leagues from the chasm to the farthest reaches to the west at its widest point, it spanned almost half that distance. As one traveled west from the chasm, it grew steadily wider until approximately two-thirds of the distance to the west. There laid the great center lake, an inland sea that made the entire land of Thoren work for the people who lived there. Because of the great center lake, many rivers flowing into it and out from it connected the low lands to other habitable places. A nexus of transportation grew out of it that permitted its people to move from one end to the other with relative ease. Attributed to this mobility of its people, most of the inhabitants of Thoren shared a common language, Lore.

As the tear drew steadily narrower traveling westward, the elevation decreased some from the central mountain highlands surrounding the great center lake and became heavily, very heavily forested. To the west, the trees grew truly gigantic, reaching toward the heavens with roots anchored deep in the strong rock of Westwald. Well, at least the people of the west hung on to the old name for that forest as Westwald, but history would record that the peoples of Thoren generally referred to all forests of the entire continent as ThorenWald. Thinkers of the time would more accurately and scientifically divide the land into seven distinctive forest lands along with a few desolate regions. But as common folk goes, they tend to distill everything down to its most simplistic terms and names, Thoren and ThorenWald.

ThorenWald was easily the greatest forest of the known world. It supplied for the needs of all the inhabitants of the land and could have likely provided for the needs of the entire known world (Had anything been known of it!) But there were no means of international trade or export, so the forest provided its wealth to the people in abundance. Despite their constant felling of trees and such, the lands scarcely showed anything of the effects that mankind had upon it.

Five great cities grew and thrived on the land. Three on the habitable flatlands along the coast, and another near the mouth of the Blue River on the great center lake. A final larger city was located in the uplands three hard days ride from the great center lake.

The greatest of all cities in Thoren was likewise named Thoren, located on the southern coast in warmer waters along the rolling hills about fifty leagues from the Chasm. It was gigantic by the standards of the time, easily twice the size of the next larger city. A man of good health could barely cross from the east to the west of the city in a three-day walk. Perhaps not so much from the sheer distance but due to the difficulty of navigating. The city was not laid out well at all. The complex intermingling of small and large roads, alleys, waterways, along with bustling markets and homes by the thousands made quick transit all but impossible.

Having grown steadily from the earliest recordings, it suffered from never having had any central plan nor influence of any governing body strong enough to affect its growth. No, it just added on this and that as people felt the need, and actually grew to be quite charming and interesting. It seemed one could turn the corner to discover a whole new world that differed from the one behind. The city did have one beautifully perched collection of marble and stone buildings where the kingship resided along with centers of thinking and medicine and science and money.

Moving westward to the far west of Thoren, the city of Bern occupied the west flatlands where the mountains finally broke against the ever-crashing waves of a relentless sea. I suppose those seas did that long enough to finally break down that giant of a mountain range and made a place suitable for the early farmers to gain purchase. With fields to cultivate and gentle hills to pasture, his animals, life, human life gained a foothold and, throughout time, constantly grew larger and more successful. The land was mostly inhabited by farm folk, but some thinkers built the Bern University, where all the arts and science of the time were available for study. Ironworkers and other trades made their craft in Bern, especially in building the fast ships, a long narrow hulled craft well suited to take advantage of the strong winds flowing out of the west. These fast ships could reach Thoren in less than a week during the fair months if sailing the southern seas.

The Guild also maintained a strong presence in Bern, as it did throughout Thoren. Guildsmen serving there felt much freer to express their opinions than in any other place except for their home, the city of Ginder. Judging from the coastal cities of Thoren and Bern, which allowed men to settle in protected places where food was abundant, the forest also landed its helping hand with an abundance of materials such as the much sought after Krispen pine, freshwater, and wild animals. Ginder stood in stark contrast to all of that. Found in a place in the central uplands, all of it was built in the clouds where the pines were sparse if they could be found at all. The people there were thought to be from a faraway land they called Timmen, which lay east of the Great Ocean or so common folklore said. Much of their history remains a shrouded mystery, but it is said that one time, long ago, the chasm was spanned by a land bridge of sorts that fell into the depths during the great shaking. The loss of that bridge apparently also turned the sub-continent of Thoren into an unassailable island.

These people from Ginder, who many called the long swords because of the narrow, long blade they carried on their side, kept to a tight regiment of living that governed all facets of their lives. They were known to be fierce warriors if called to be and were in the best physical condition of any humans living. They spoke both lore and their own language that was, if anything, extremely difficult to learn. Therefore, they preferred to represent themselves in person wherever they had business. It seemed as though they were interested in assimilating into the other cities and many towns of the land, but there was always something about them, something religious in nature that seemed to govern their lives. They were true to their belief to the core of their souls. Because of that, they were often sought for advice and counsel by leaders of the land. They were teachers and maintained the single most difficult fighting school in all the lands.

Ginder did not lie along any waterway. It was not constructed on a flat place, but seemed to be hewn right out of the stone mountains. Its existence encapsulated the lifestyle and culture of the long swords or guildsmen, as others called them in certain places. There was but one road leading down to north river from Ginder, and the entire city was built above a height of two thousand stands! (A stand being about five feet in length, the average height of an older woman in Thoren) The air there was thin, the water mostly frozen, the wind whipped about fiercely at times, and farming was difficult. Wherever one had to go in the guild was either up there, or down there! Because of that, the guildsmen of the city developed large lungs and strong hearts. Many a story recorded long swords running for an entire day and night in the lowlands with no rest. Another interesting fact about these people was that they all seemed tethered to that place in the clouds. For they would only stay in other cities, towns, and villages for a certain amount of time, then they would leave to journey back to Ginder, almost as if they needed to restore their energy and rejuvenate. It was odd indeed.

It is of particular interest to note that Ginder was closer to two other cities, actually forming a powerful triad of Thoren culture, which made for the greatest concentration of peoples in all the land. Those cities were Ozman on great center lake and the mouth of Blue River and Norse on the northern coast.

Ozman should have been one of the largest cities on the continent, but it has suffered over the years from many wars. It needed to trade for food and commodities from the other cities and villages that it sometimes found itself at odds with over the years. Those little squabbles, of course, caused Ozman to go without things it desperately needed on many occasions. Something changed with all that years past when a prominent warlord, Ozman, after winning a decisive battle with a lesser village, decided to make peace with his neighbors. He invited representatives of all those communities to join in a league of sorts where their problems were properly aired in a court overseen by surviving members of the Ozmand’s and an equal number of Guildsmen.

It is odd to note that guildsmen, although being the fiercest warriors in the land, and being close enough nearby to have easily simply conquered the stumbling town of Ozmand sought peace above all else. They spoke about onus, their God who spoke to them, and all of them worshipped him throughout their lives. They would speak of Onus but often used his other name, and of his love for men. He wished all would come to his table, and that he was disappointed in man’s behavior. He only permitted the guildsmen to help and guide these troubled people of Ozman and never to rule over them.

Ozmand grew and thrived and became a great inland shipping port where trades exchanged and flowed out to ports throughout the land. Ozman was indeed a key city and was very much under the watchful eye of the Kingship of Thoren.

Norse, the last of the great cities located where the Blue River emptied into the North Sea, was the same in size as Ozman. It differed from all the other cities in Thoren in that it clung to its ancient religion and roots. Its culture was one forged from a people who had to survive a difficult life. The ground was good but not as good as that found in other places. The banks of the Blue River, where they could be found, provided the most fertile grounds where corn and wheat, and potatoes and other vegetables were grown.

In the hills surrounding Norse, sheep grazed, and in the small farms, some actually raised pigs. Fishing vessels were a bit squatter and more of a working nature than the fast boats of Bern provided much of the people’s food. During the cold months, ice floats would sometimes clog the fishing grounds, preventing fishing for a couple of months. A few times in the past, the ice flows came following a cold summer when crop yields were not as plentiful, and starvation ensued. The poorly nourished Norse people then suffered a few recorded bouts of disease, particularly something they called the Benz. Apparently, something had so sickened the bowels as to cause its victims to twist and bend in an attempt to alleviate the pain that some who recovered retained a horrible twisted and bent stature. Those people were generally thought to be disease carriers and put to death by having their living bodies thrown into burning pits of black oil. Their screams from the horrific pain can sometimes be heard in the wind as it tumbles through the ramparts of nearby, towering stark mountains.

Norse is a place not generally visited, nor traded with, although they seem to have an abundance of the black oils which are finding more and more uses in other more industrialized places. The Thoren kingship visits there with some frequency, and serves as another connection with the outside world. Whereas most of the rest of Thoren seems to be expanding and trading with nearby peoples, the Norse, cling to their ancient religion where a harsh god called Got reigns over his earthly domain and demands total loyalty and obedience. This loyalty is enforced by a system of priests and spies who all report to the seated ruler called the Valtine. He or she, as has been the case a time or two, is the absolute ruler and authority who can settle any dispute or public or private matter.

He, who currently sits on the golden and silver inlaid wooden throne, would have nothing to do with the southern kingdoms if it were up to the priests. Still, Valtine Alfarr never the less entertains a small representation of guildsmen and of course, diplomats from the kingship of the southern city when they visit. While Thoren seeks someday, somehow, to unite all the peoples, the guildsmen hope that the process is a peaceful transition.

If I may point out, the seated Valtine can scarcely understand why the kingdom of Thoren hundreds of leagues who is somewhat united with these odd guildsmen would care at all about Norse in a land so vast. These Guildsmen, these strange people who are the greatest warriors of the land, want peace! It just makes no sense, and Valtine Alfarr has no real interest beyond his defendable borders. Outside the kingdom of Norse, people mostly think that the Valtine does not believe these longswords have any long-term interest in peace. Therefore, he keeps them at a distance as best he can, fearing he may someday have to draw a sword against them.

Most of the people of Thoren live in these five cities, but many small towns and villages dot the landscape. Some share the beliefs of the nearby or closest city, but some have become quite independent. This is very true of all the lands of the southern coastal swamp lands. A place to be avoided by adventurer and trader alike is a place of stinking backed-up waters filled with rotting trees and a hundred different dangerous creatures that will eat a man if given half the chance. The people living in these hundreds of thousands of hectares also keep to themselves and are said to be outwardly unwelcoming but treat each other as family. They share only a few common names, suggesting very little marrying outside of their own tribes. These people, the Muse speak their own language and look at life much differently than most people. For example, they do not have any known name for the lands they inhabit and simply call the place Swamp lands. Some Swamp Landers living closest to the wandering river have picked up and spoken Lore as well. Border people as their kin call them, have been inter-marrying with other coastal people and folks from the far west, even from Bern. Because of these connections, more and more is coming to be known of the Muse although it would seem that contact with those from the inner-lands is not likely because of the sheer difficulty with traveling anywhere in swampland.

It has been rumored that a region of bubbling and flowing pure water lies in the heart of swamplands. No one knows where it comes from, but the swamp landers who speak lore talk of it as though it is a patch of heaven on earth. Some of the springs issuing forth from the depths are rumored to have life-extending and healing properties, although none of that has been seen by other peoples of the southern lands. The truth about the place is quite different, but we will get to that later on.

Most people of Thoren travel by boat either from the coastal cities on the ocean or inland up one of the many rivers. The great central lake, which is probably more like an inland sea, is a common intersecting point for many of the land’s rivers. Flowing south from the lake toward Thoren is the east bends, a slow, meandering river of considerable depth. Although it gets a bit angry during rainy times, most of the time one can travel its length in comfort and safety.

Moving westward, the Wandering River starts off as a fast-moving river near the great center lake but widens and settles into a wide lazy expanse as it empties into the eastern end of the southern swamplands. It is not as useful for trade as east bends and therefore is far less traveled.

Dumping into the center of the swamplands is a pike waterway. Also, a slow meandering affair is about the only way for one to enter into the heart of the great southern swamp. Fortune hunters for eons have ventured from the lake into the pike, most of whom never to return. Those who do talk of the sudden boils that happen here and there that closely resemble the folding seas which encircle all of ThorenWald a hundred leagues from shore in any direction.

The black sails can be found all over the Great Center Lake; however, they seem to be found in special abundance around the mouth of the Pike River. Travel in those parts is never safe, nor is travel on any waterway when talk of the black sails is about.

The western end of the great center lake narrows to yet another river, the West Bends. So named because of its similarity with the east bends, it has been the main conduit of travel from Thoren all the way to Bern since travel existed at all. Far from being a straight line, the river meanders aimlessly for what seems to be forever, and along its banks can be found so many of the west’s towns and ports.

To the north two more rivers empty into the cold northern sea, one to the west, the Bear Claw, and a short one snaking through deep valleys of the cathedral mountains northward to Norse called Blue River. It is said to be as deep as the ocean itself and is just as blue. The land on either side of the river rises to dizzying heights, and for most of its length, no shoreline of any sort exists. Should one fall out of the boat at the mouth of the river, they would have little hope at all of rescue from anyone other than another boat. The steepness of the cliffs on either side has contributed to the isolation that Norse enjoys and has made it somewhat difficult for the guild to reach them. Although the city of Ginder lies only fifty leagues to the southwest, it is a trip of nearly three times that distance to wind through the mountain valleys until reaching the great center lake, then to take a boat for another almost one hundred leagues across the lake and into the Blue River.

Chapter 1

A Very Strange Land

Very different from much of the known world (that isn’t really all that well known at all), one could write about its mountains and cities and waters for a lifetime and not tell the whole story. Thoren or, I suppose, I’ll allow ThorenWald as some still prefer to call the land, is a place of fierce giant mountains, boiling seas, a never-ending forest, valleys, spires, clouds, and eternal fires. It has stinking swamps and also crisp mountain air where great birds are perched, surveying the landscape below. Many would argue about what exactly is Thoren’s most notable feature. Some would say this particular mountain or that mighty river, and others may shout about the endless sky as the most striking feature of the ThorenWald. But for the people living in Thoren, most would probably agree that the Chasm is the greatest of all things to be seen anywhere.

Stretching from north to south, it is an uncrossable deep gash in the world that the Norse say their god created with a mighty strike of his axe. They say he cut off the land from the rest of the world so he could claim it for himself alone. Old folk tales aside, its creation is well documented in the scrolls of old and taught in the universities. Where once Thoren Wald was but an extension of the lands that now lie beyond to the east, the great shaking that went on over half a lifetime of the north woods people. (Those people live quite long, mind you), and for all those years of the shaking ThorenWald was forever separated from eastern lands.

Historians will also note that it happened not long after the Long Swords showed up in numbers migrating from the Far East. Did they have anything to do with the creation of the Chasm? Well, that’s anybody’s guess.

Whatever land that once connected the two worlds was consumed in the fires that rained down red glowing rock for a very long time. That burned rock fell about such that no one could approach from any direction. Even the wingward people of myth and campfire stories who had experimented with flying for so long that it is said that some actually did! Not even they could approach the land of hellish fire that blackened the sky and shook the earth and at times rained down stones the size of a house!

The land had either fallen into the bottomless abyss or had been exploded outward to cover other parts of the earth. The depths are unmeasurable, although many have attempted to do so and while using some unorthodox methods. One curious bunch once came up with the idea of measuring how far they could still hear the shouts of people with high and low pitched voices. The poor unknowing screamers would stand on a ridge or across a field and sing and shout, while others would march away until they could hear no more, noting the distance. On the faithful day, those hapless participants were tossed over the edge and observed to fall freely ever downward. The amount of time was noted when their screams were no longer heard. But distances seemed to vary greatly, and no accurate measurement was taken even though many folks made the long journey downward.

Argument has ensued about how loud one would actually scream under such a condition versus when they were happily yelling across some grassy field. Most scholars and laymen alike agree that anyone falling will scream much louder than he or she would under normal circumstances. So, with all the debate, it was simply said that the chasm was much deeper than previously thought. The first experiments eventually led to a temporary suspension of the voice screaming faller method because so many people were being lost, but nothing was being learned of the Chasm other than it was a very deep and very scary place. Even when King Elford of the eastern realm decided to toss in prisoners for a time, results were not consistent enough to make any accurate determination. Eventually, people stopped tossing other people into the Chasm.

Various other ideas were proposed at the great counsel in Thoren, including throwing in tar balls set ablaze just before rolling them off the ledge. It was thought that light at night could be seen for a very long distance, so perhaps more could be learned of the Chasm’s actual depth. But some theologians suggested that should a burning fireball fall it could awaken or enrage a sleeping dragon. Then the people of the world might have a greater problem than just trying to figure out how deep that hole was! In the end, efforts were suspended since no matter what the actual depth was found to be, nothing that man knew or possessed would ever allow a single person to cross that bottomless expanse.

Around that time, an expedition was sent into the northern wilderness to try to find the Wingward people. Should they be found, and they could indeed fly, then perhaps they could be talked into flying over the Chasm or down into its endless depths to learn more. Despite some considerable effort, no trace of them was ever discovered. The effort ended like all the others to learn more of that great deep and burnt place.

Although the rock face was recently torn out of the earth on the Thoren side, it should have looked new. What could be seen of the other side with the long-eye-pipes showed it to have a tortured look about it. Scarred and burned and even melted it appeared to have solidified once again into strange rocky dripping shapes. The dripping rocks and the icicle rocks were oddities dotting the landscape near and around the rim of the chasm.

Footing there was very unsure due to all the rubble that was strewn and tossed all over. It might have become a place of worship for some, but there was little to no shelter to speak of. There were likewise no roads, and the water there was foul with the smell of sulfur. Trees had still not taken purchase, although an age had come and gone since the shaking. There was simply nothing inviting nor welcoming about the place, and those who ventured there did so at their own peril.

The chasm could not even be approached by the sea, as for many miles from the blackness the seas seethed and boiled in a constant angry state. That’s where people first encountered the boils. A very strange state, indeed, a sailor on seemingly calm seas would suddenly find himself in a field of bubbles. As the bubbling continued, one’s boat would sit lower and lower into the water until it was finally swallowed into the depths. It is not known how this can happen, only that it does, and in more places than just in the vicinity of the chasm. Boiling has happened along the southern reaches of Great Center Lake and was even reported to have happened a time or two on East River in the area of the great bend.

That portion of East Bend River was still tidal, subject to the rise and fall of the coastal sea. It is wide and lazy and a real bonus to the tall mast sailing ships used on the sea routes to Bern and the rich fishing grounds north. Because of the makeup of the river at that place and the proximity to Rusty Mountain, Iron works could be found nearby. With good mooring for the ships, it is a place of growing trade. And but a couple of days travel up the East Bends river from Thoren City.

Although The Chasm is an unwelcoming place for most, one group finds it unavoidably attractive. For amongst its boiling pools of strange colored acrid waters and piles of rock blown outward from the inner places of the earth a treasure trove lies in the open, everywhere for the trained eye. Rare minerals and metals can be found there. Potent liquids are also found. Some of those liquids can eat through a leather water bag in minutes and have to be carried in heavy glass bottles. Gold and diamonds and other precious gems can be found there as well. The trick is, of course, to survive long enough to carry the bounty out of the dangerous areas.

Alchemists hunt there endlessly for exotic compounds. Powders and potions used in medicine and science have also found their way into the markets of Thoren and to the Iron forges on the great bend. One rare, shiny metal that is illusive but can be collected with some quantity is said to combine with iron to create an unbreakable sword. It can be heated and folded many times to create a stronger and stronger blade and is highly favored by longsword craftsmen. People call the metal Quiver. Due entirely to the particular interest in this metal, a trade route of sorts, has opened. It extends from the ports near Thoren up the East Bend River. Continuing it passes through great center lake, up past Ozman. Finally, the trade route moves along on wagon over an inland road to the foothills near Ginder. Although Easterners have their own forging processes, the master craftsmen and iron workers of Ginder have their own secretive processes shared with none.

The chasm may indeed be responsible for some of the strange goings-on of the land, most notably, the boils, but it is also isolating the whole of the land from the outside world. As if to say that by its creation, some ancient god decided to steal away and thus keep hidden the jewel of Thoren; the seas themselves serve as a barrier against outward contact. Like a world within a world, Thoren is effectively cut off from the rest of earth.

The folding seas can be seen from some distance and is an immediate signal for all to steer well clear. Found to be completely encircling Thoren and lying fifty to one hundred leagues off any shore, the seas act in a very unusual manner. Waves form, and instead of crashing onto the water around them, they spill into the back of the preceding wave turning the seas into a roiling mass of turbulence, whirlpools, and unsteady currents. Normally a captain will turn his ship into an approaching wave to keep from capsizing. However, where folding seas come up, the ensuing wave will simply push the stricken ship beneath its headwaters. The sea appears to simply fold itself over the previous layer pushing that old water and whatever is floating on it to some unknown place well down in the depths of the ocean.

More prevalent in the winter months than the warmer seasons, the folding seas have come about during every season and every year since they swallowed up their first wayfaring sailor long ago. Many mapmakers simply draw up the outline of the Isle of Thoren, leaving out the East lands or any other lands that are said to be. Since there is no possibility of crossing the seas too far out of sight of land, they don’t bother drawing anything but the landmass of Thoren. Doing so would only serve to tantalize and perhaps lure the foolish venturer to a certain watery grave.

Philosophers have long thought that some unexplainable ocean current issues forth from the deep places