The Vale Rim

The near-unbroken wall of steep wooded ridge that encloses the Vale of Vallen, pierced by only three known ways.

The basin of Valenfeld did not stay sheltered by luck. A wall of ridge and crag rings the Vale — too steep to climb, too long to flank — so the green country inside reads as a held place while the wilds press at its edge. Three ways pierce it, and folk who keep to the Vale keep to them: the Vellen Gorge in the south-west, where the river cuts its own door down to the lower country; the North Stair, the cold notch the road climbs toward the Reach and the far Rampart; and the Ashen Gap in the east, the dry saddle that lets out toward the wastes and the barrow road. Past any of them the land turns quickly hungry. House Vandahl never had to wall the Vale — the Vale was walled before them.