The Vale

The sheltered basin around Vallenfeld and the Eastern Hills, walled by the Vale Rim and pierced by three named passes (the Vellen Gorge, the North Stair, the Ashen Gap) — the world's first zone and its safest surface ground.

Green farmland and wind-scoured ridge inside a near-unbroken mountain rim, held loosely between House Vandahl's silver rights at Vallenfeld and the older claims of the Ashari tribe in the hills. Every road out of the Vale runs through a named pass, and every pass is a promise: the world gets harder past this line.