#akoum

“Jagged mountain peaks rise high into the air, topped by gravity-defying arches and spires. Titanic structures of crystalline rock formations, abyssal crevasses where magma bubbles and flows, desolate badlands of eroded volcanic rock, geysers of sulfurous water and vents of toxic gases — all these features define the harsh landscape of Akoum. Floating mountains, unmoored from the earth, hover in defiance of gravity, extending the uneven landscape upward as far as the eye can see. From the jagged obsidian cliffs at the coast to the soaring mountains called the Teeth of Akoum in the north, the region is bristling with angular spikes as if the land itself is trying to ward off any encroachment.

Life in Akoum is harsh, perhaps more so than anywhere else on tumultuous Zendikar. Its largest settlement, Affa, was a tiny cluster of stone and brick buildings nestled in what pass for foothills at the base of the Teeth of Akoum — before disaster drove its scant population underground. Akoum’s greatest concentration of people is not a settlement at all but the giant caravan of Goma Fada.

Most of the land is cracked and dry, but hardy plants and animals find a way to thrive in unlikely places. Trees and shrubs cluster around volcanic gas vents, defining environments unlike anything else on Zendikar. Aggressive silver and blue grasses take root in volcanic stone and spread rapidly, providing meager fare for the larger fauna of the region. From time to time a volcanic burst brings fertile earth to the surface, and Akoum springs into beautiful flora in an event the elves call a ‘life bloom.’

Creatures that can survive this rugged land are as tough and dangerous as their environment. Even the mammals have some form of hard carapace or shell, and many forms of insect life, from tiny beetles to enormous burrowing geopedes, thrive in the ground. Various kinds of elementals — living embodiments of earth, fire, and magma — are the most common predators.”

“Anowon is the scion of a powerful vampire family in Malakir and an expert on ruins, runes, and ancient languages. In his relentless search for answers, he has left a trail of corpses from Tazeem to Akoum. Clever and callous, Anowon is a threat that requires serious attention.

In settlements around Zendikar, Anowon is considered a renowned mage and benevolent scholar who leads expeditions from his base camp in the mountains of Akoum. With the help of his followers, he’s cultivated an image of himself as a knowledgeable scholar — the man to go to with strange relics and hard questions.

But there are others who speak of Anowon’s treachery. Many call him a thief and murderer. His fellow vampires believe that Anowon is a ruthless power seeker, yet they view him with grudging respect. The dark mysteries of his past paint a picture of him as a sinister figure who is anything but an innocuous scholar.

A Murderous Mercenary

During his early years, Anowon was ‘first son’ of the House Ghet, under the tutelage of bloodchief Tenihas. The exact method of his ‘birth’ is not recorded, but Anowon viewed Tenihas as a father figure, and the bloodchief seemed to hold his young heir in high regard.

By all accounts, Anowon was fascinated with Tenihas’s extensive library, particularly ancient texts that alluded to the enslavement of vampires by ‘famished gods.’ Before the rise of the Eldrazi and the subsequent Culling, this ancient servitude was merely a vaguely remembered but poorly understood aspect of the vampires’ history. According to witnesses, it was this mystery that created animosity between Anowon and Tenihas, who didn’t want his young protégé to unearth things better left buried in the past.

One night, Tenihas was brutally murdered in his own bedroom, his retinue slaughtered and his treasure stores plundered. The only surviving witness swore that Anowon had killed his bloodchief in a fit of rage and then vanished. Anowon didn’t return to his homeland for many decades, and in the intervening years, the legend of the killing of Tenihas grew to almost mythic proportions.

Anowon spent the next decades as a sell-sword, honing his skills as a mage and warrior during dangerous expeditions. The most reliable information from this period comes from the Bala Ged Expeditionary House, where Anowon pledged his loyalty for a brief period. While hiring himself out to expeditions, he deciphered archaic dialects, inked hundreds of rune-scrolls, and amassed a great collection of relics. Although the circumstances are lost to memory, it was during one of these expeditions that Anowon acquired a powerful scroll now known as the Dragon’s Fire. Almost immediately afterward, Anowon renounced his loyalty to the expeditionary house and disappeared from Bala Ged, launching a quest to find the legendary Eye of Ugin

The League of Anowon

Anowon eventually established a base camp in Akoum, gathering a group of ragtag explorers, adventurers, and mages to help his search. His widespread reputation as a ruin sage proved especially useful, drawing adventurers to seek him out for aid and information. He used their relics and knowledge to further his quest for the Eye of Ugin.

Anowon’s students learned techniques for navigating hazardous ruins, retrieving ancient artifacts, and protecting themselves from the many dangers that lurk in such places. Those who left his tutelage could readily find work with other expeditions across Zendikar. When an injury, such as a lost limb or eye or a crippling curse, brought an end to an explorer’s career in the field, that person usually remained as a tutor in the league’s camp.

Reaching the base camp was no small task, usually involving taking a griffin from the town of Affa below. Prominent explorers often came to the camp looking for student volunteers to help on their next mission. It is believed that Anowon strongly encouraged students he considered expendable to volunteer for such efforts.

Anowon and the Eldrazi

Anowon’s many expeditions had a hidden purpose. The Dragon’s Fire scroll he acquired during his years as a sell-sword led him to devote many years to searching for the Eye of Ugin, though he had little understanding of its true nature. He ended up playing a small and unwilling role in the release of the Eldrazi when he followed Chandra Nalaar to the Eye of Ugin and then led Jace Beleren there. When the Eldrazi titans awoke and emerged, Anowon was initially drawn to Bala Ged by Ulamog’s monstrous call, but he managed to remain free of the Eldrazi’s enslavement and has returned to Akoum to rebuild his scattered league.”

“Civilization clings tenaciously to the crags and slopes of Akoum, as much as the ground shakes and despite the rampaging of the Eldrazi. All the races of Zendikar are represented here, though humans and goblins predominate.

Affa

Before the rise of the Eldrazi, Affa was a little clump of buildings at the base of the Teeth of Akoum. A river flowing down from the Teeth provided the town with one of the few safe, reliable sources of water in all of Akoum. Its population was mostly human, though elves, kor, and even the occasional vampire would call it home for a time. It was the major trading hub in the region, with goblins bringing minerals and other materials to the bazaar for trade, and it served as a launching point for expeditions searching for ruins in the mountains. The Akoum Expeditionary House, based in Sea Gate, maintained a hostel in Affa run by a cheerful, heavily scarred human named Sachir.

With the coming of the Eldrazi, Affa has managed to survive only by moving its entire population into a cavernous underground ruin. Lining the cavern walls, ancient hedrons stand sentinel against the Eldrazi broods that threaten the survivors. The hedrons provide a false sense of security, though, for they protect only two sides of the cavern. If a horde were to come from the wrong direction, the hedrons would do little to hold them back, and the people of Affa are unprepared for such a catastrophe.

Goma Fada, the City that Walks

Perhaps the strangest population center in all of Zendikar is not technically a settlement at all. Goma Fada, literally ‘The City that Walks,’ is an enormous caravan constantly on the move across Akoum. It consists of several thousand people — mostly human and kor, with a few elves and merfolk — along with hundreds of huge, sturdy carts pulled by horses, oxen, and the strange, giantlike beasts called hurdas. The carts comprise homes, shops, eateries, and even farms of sorts — fig trees and similar hardy plants are grown in the dirt-filled backs of wagons. Cisterns full of water and granaries laden with food are drawn along by the enormous beasts of burden.

Goma Fada faces all the challenges of life on Akoum by never sitting still for long. Since resources can appear and disappear at a moment’s notice, the caravan hauls supplies of food and drink to last for months and sends roving waterscouts — part explorer and part engineer — to find ephemeral streams that appear after rainfall and channel the flow into the caravan’s cisterns. Of course, the dangers of Akoum often move faster than the caravan, but the tenacious folk of Goma Fada have survived so far, even enduring the coming of the Eldrazi.

Because of the destruction wrought by Ulamog and his brood, the ground is not always strong enough to support the massive carts and wagons of the caravan. Light outriders now travel before the main body of the caravan, testing the ground before the great wagons arrive. The rolling city avoids most of the crystalline Spike Fields because of this weakening, though it sometimes sends smaller wagon trains across the fields to trade with the goblin warren called the Slab.

The Kargan Lands

The fierce, nomadic humans of the Kargan tribes live high in the Teeth of Akoum and compete for territory with the dragons that hunt in the mountains. The tribes can hold their own in this competition only by stealing dragon eggs or capturing their whelps and raising the creatures themselves. When they are grown, these dragons serve as mounts and companions for the tribes’ leaders so that other dragons view the tribal lands as dragon territory.”

Stone Havens

“The passage of the Eldrazi, while devastating to the land, sometimes leads to important revelations. Layers of volcanic rock crumble away at the Eldrazi’s touch, occasionally revealing ancient ruins long buried underneath. In the midst of the Spike Fields, a string of ruined fortresses have been unearthed in what is now a chasm stretching for miles across the desicated land. Word of these ruins has drawn many kor to Akoum, including a group of stoneforge mystics — heirs of Nahiri’s lithonantic tradition — who are turning these ruins into shelters for people fleeing the swarms of Eldrazi broods. The stoneforge mystics bind the walls of the ruined fortresses to hedrons, marshaling the hedrons’ protective powers to ward the havens. More humans live in these Stone Havens than kor, since most kor continue on their pilgrimage routes, but all the races of Zendikar are represented in these refuges.

A remnant of Mul Daya elves have come to reside in one of the havens, where they are working with kor clerics to add another layer of protection to the refuge. Together, they have invoked kor revenants and elf ghosts to bolster the haven’s defenses. The residents now call their home Ghostwatch and respect the shamans and clerics to the point of reverence.

Goblin Havens

The goblins of the Tuktuk tribe have struggled to survive in a world being rapidly consumed by the Eldrazi. Possessing neither great strength nor magical power, they have little to rely on but their occasionally inspired imaginations. Their leader, Zada, reasoned that the lands already drained of their power by the Eldrazi would be the safest places to live, just as a predator is unlikely to return to a carcass already stripped of flesh. So she led her tribe into the calcified areas left in Ulamog’s wake and challenged the goblins to find a way to make the devastation habitable.

The goblins initially found that the brittle, powdery rock was too weak to support dwellings. They tried scraping away the crumbling deposits to reach more solid ground beneath, but the Eldrazi had drained away so much mana that the underlying stone was weakened as well. Then a clever goblin called Lako the Builder invented a method of constructing spherical or dome-shaped dwellings from the silk of enormous spiders called ventcrawlers. Two goblin settlements reflect two different implementations of his ideas.

The rest of the tribe moves around in the higher Teeth to stay out of the way of the Eldrazi, but all too often they fall prey to dragons or Kargan ambushes instead, making Zada eager to get more settlements constructed as quickly as possible.

Grip Haven. The buildings of Grip Haven resemble drops of dew clinging to a handful of solid rock spires that jut up from the surrounding white devastation. The droplets are formed from ventcrawler silk that gives them a frothy appearance from outside, and the interior divisions are formed from rocks mortared together with the same substance. Flaps of hide or the thick carapaces of scute bugs cover small openings on the tops or sides. The spaces between the domes are spanned by simple rope bridges consisting of two ropes strung a few feet apart, one for feet and one for hands. Members of races taller than goblins have trouble using these bridges, which the goblins consider an advantage.

Slab Haven. The other Tuktuk settlement is built on a large stone slab, about five feet thick, which is anchored to standing stones that jut above the chalky waste. Dome huts made of ventcrawler silk, resembling pustules on the dusty surface, are spread across the slab. The slab took some time to settle to a stable point in the desiccated ground, but it seems to have found a steady position, and now goblins can walk across the slab in relative safety. However, the community is very exposed to attack, whether at ground level or from above. The goblins are building a concrete wall around the edge of the slab, and each hut has a sort of defensive station on top, accessed by way of a hatch from below, where spear-carrying goblins can attempt to drive away dragons and giant birds of prey that come to harass the settlement.”

The Coastal Cliffs

“The coasts of Akoum are a deathtrap to travelers. Spires of volcanic glass jut from the sea, lava flows cascade from the cliffs, and seaquakes send high tidal waves crashing in, so few harbors allow ships access to the shore. After braving a journey filled with krakens and storms, it is not uncommon for a ship to meet its end within sight of the Akoum shores, the hull torn apart on jagged underwater rocks essentially invisible to a lookout’s eye.

Akoum has no permanent ports. The coastline changes significantly every year because of volcanic eruptions, above and below the water, and seismic activity that sends coastal shelves into the ocean depths. Still, upon sighting a ship, any people sheltering on the coast make every effort to help bring it in, since a ship might carry valuable supplies that simply can’t be found elsewhere on Akoum.

The Spike Fields

Akoum’s crystalline fields shimmer in a rainbow of colors beneath the harsh sun. This awe-inspiring beauty hides a deadly reality. The smallest stone carries sharp edges that can slice through leather and flesh when an unwary traveler slips and falls. What’s more, the surface can reach extremes of temperature — during the day, the sun’s glare on the gleaming crystals creates blistering heat, but the stone cools quickly, and the cloudless sky can make for bitterly cold nights.

The Teeth of Akoum

Much of Akoum is covered with jagged mountains. The so-called Teeth of Akoum are a series of broken mountain ranges that are extremely difficult to navigate. Riding griffins carry travelers from Affa to the handful of camps nestled among the peaks, but only a very clever explorer can forge a path through the gullies and gorges to find an uncharted ruin or a hidden mine.

The land itself is dangerous enough, but the mountains are also home to fierce dragons and the savage human barbarians who revere them, the Kargan tribes. Hellions — enormous wurm-like creatures that swim through lava — occasionally burst to the surface here as well, devouring anything that moves.

The Roil on Akoum

Akoum is essentially one enormous volcano, though it is not prone to major eruptions. Instead, because of the Roil, the whole region is constantly shaken by more minor activity. The Roil’s activity is primarily felt from below — not in air or water, but in the earth and the fiery magma that is never too far from the surface. Lava flows alternately flood and clear tunnels, sometimes causing gases from deep within the earth to vent explosively to the surface, and the shuddering earth can bring down a rain of crystalline shards as deadly as a volley of arrows.

The Glasspool

Rainfall comes to Akoum in violent torrents during the winter, and the surface undergoes a brief but glorious transformation in spring. Lakes form overnight in the crystal fields, and water cascades across the rock spires. This beauty is as fleeting as anything else on Akoum — after days or weeks, another tremor drains the water away beneath the surface.

The one fixed body of water of any notable size in the region is the Glasspool, a huge lake with cool, clean water. Its name comes from the complete stillness of its surface at nearly all times. Tremors and eruptions somehow leave the water unmoved.”