5.II

On the far west and southern lands at the edges of the empire you can find a wide canyon that allows passage through from the great sea’s lands and its blessed sky vault into the hostile wastes beyond.

On return one can take the seaway which flows rough in a torrential speed but still evenly enough for small craft and canny ship masters and drains from the dread sea which fills the northern half of these realms and by it reach the great sea of the sun realms of cantor.

The whole of these distant lands is so named for its place between what once were two rivers, in antiquity before their flows were bent into one another at the fall of the Heaven’s Gate.

The Vault of the Twin Rivers.

They are named The Great River and the Fast River. Even though the lesser of the two is since lost.

These lands formerly belonged to the old and gone Assyrian Lords, and are now covered with nothing but villages besides the teeming and sole city from which the Heaven’s Gate fell that still bears its name.

Upon your first arrival into these lands the broken spire of the Gate is the most distinct feature for the eye. It can be clearly seen even at the furthest edges of the vault, although its base is nearly as distant from the viewer as all the sun lands of cantor at their furthest extent. Despite this distance the eyes do not need to be keen to spot the broken and jagged edifice which yet stands tall despite its crumpled and ruined state.

In the approach along the greater of the rivers one will find the scar of the gate’s toppling coming into view. Scattered all across in its wreckage, in such number and scale is this toppled work of man that they appear as foothills and mountains themselves notable from acts of nature or divine only in their exacting line.

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The local tales tell that this great felling was four thousand years past and occurred across this venerable realm to the very foothills of its mountains and even further to have left scars where the peak of the tower smote the southeastern firmament of the sky vault.

Among these remains of lost greatness dwell the people of the twin rivers.

Third most populous are the Assyrians, who once ruled all the realm and are so named for their god, Ashur. This divine has ever been guiding and intent upon those who dwell here. Although the Assyrians once ruled all the lands between the rivers they are now mostly found within the foundations of the broken Heaven’s Gate.

Their tales claim to be the descendants of the gate builders but so too do all the people of the two rivers claim this as well and the gods are silent on which is right.

The Orei are by far the second most populous people of the land of two rivers, whose ways are among nearly all the scattered villages. Their farms bring bounties in dates, lettuce, lentil, onion, barley and beans but are otherwise humble folk with little offered for trade.

And most numerous of all are the dogmen who are so known as the Gutti, having settled along the shores of the great lake which now pools against the ruins of the fall hills as well as tending herds and livestock in the mountains at the edge of this accursed realm’s sky vault.

Those that farm are as the Orei in their trade and often live amongst them and will claim them as their kin and people.

Their mountain dwelling brothers are the ones who claim all dogmen as Gutti (even those disgraced to work and till land among the Orei), and will mostly sell leather, strange fermented milk liquor, cheese and slaves.

- Excerpt from Orion’s Historica naturalis Cantora