GAZETTEER · THE ASHEN WASTES
The First Sleeper
The skeleton of a colossus half-sunk in the high-desert pan east of the Vale — a man stands no taller than its pinkie finger; you can walk into the cup of its skull. The Korl name it their first ancestor.
It lies on its back in the open sage steppe, face to the sky, so vast that the ribs arc up like the rafters of a roofless hall and a band of riders can shelter in the hollow of its skull. The wind has stripped the sand off the upper bone and packed it round the lower, so the giant seems forever in the act of rising and never quite doing it. The Korl, the big folk of the high passes, say it is the First of them — the one who lay down when the world was young and let the desert keep him. The Ashwalkers give it a wider berth than the heat alone would explain, and leave a finger-bone of their own dead among its phalanges when they pass, so the Sleeper will not mistake them for prey when it finally sits up.
KIND
landmark
CLIMATE
open, sun-baked, wind-scoured high-desert pan
DANGER TIER
Tier II
MAP X
650
Connected
Type Fields
All Relationships (4)
descendant_of
- ←The Korl — The Korl name the colossus at the First Sleeper their first ancestor — the one of the big folk who lay down when the world was young and let the high desert keep him. Their height and frost-skin, they say, are his inheritance.
- ←Hall Giant-Reckoner — The Reckoner claims the First Sleeper for a grandsire and goes to the bones to measure himself against the pinkie — a hall-giant beside a finger — and comes back smaller and surer of his line.
references
- ←The Ashwalkers — The Ashwalkers give the Sleeper a wider berth than the heat alone explains, and leave a finger-bone of their own dead among its phalanges when they pass, so it will not take them for prey when it finally sits up.
expressed_through
- ←The Korl Ancestor-Keeping — The Korl name the half-sunk colossus their first ancestor — the largest single object of the ancestor-keeping.
This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →