Wilderness of Taroc

The Wilderness of Taroc: maybe it's over the mountains, maybe it's behind the hedgerow. Maybe you reach it on the wings of dragons, maybe you simply step through a door. However you get to it, the wilderness is divided into four parts.

The Forest of Swords

Acre upon acre of sabres, falchions, rapiers and gladii. Each taller than a man, and at least as broad. They stand point-down in the earth. Each sits at a slightly different angle. Material blown on the wind drifts into them: it might stick to the flat of the blade, or snag on the hilt, or get sliced by the sharp edge. Moss and lichen cover some surfaces, and vines link the hilts, covering the ornaments. Some say that the hilts become brighter and more decorative in Spring and Summer. Others say that the summer light merely shows the hilts off to better advantage.

The Swords do not need oiling or sharpening. They only appear to start rusting after they have been up- rooted. 

Do not travel the Forest after heavy rains. Soil erosion means that the top-heavy swords can fall unpredictably. It would be like walking through a thousand hair-trigger guillotines. Do not travel the Forest during a Thunderstorm. 

The Chalice Mountains

At a sufficiently large and well-resourced party, coupe glasses may be stacked in a pyramid and sparkling wine poured to fill and overflow the bowl of each glass, filling each with some of the bubbling wine. 

Whatever made these mountains was clearly a very large and very well-supplied party. Deep goblets stack one on another until they reach higher than the trees, higher than Church spires, higher than the flight of small birds. Thicker-stemmed than the glasses above and made of darker materials, no light penetrates the piles of cups. 

Not every cup is set neatly upright, but enough remain set so that the bowl of the cup catches material - rainwater, snow, seeds, guano. Birds may nest in them. Plant life has developed, drooping great beards of lichen from cliff edges. Accordingly, those climbing these mountains are recommended to wear waterproof boots and heavy waterproof gloves - thrusting your hand into cold puddles over and over gets rather wearing after a while.

Most cups, if extracted from the mountainside, are no larger than most ornamental vessel you may might encounter. However, there are rumours of vast, lake-sized cups set high in the mountains like gilt tarns. 

The Desert of Coins

There's gold in them there hills. And nothing else. Piled in glittering dunes are a myriad myriad coins - of a variety of different sizes, but all seemingly the product of the same mint, with similar eroded features - which don't quite correspond to the legal tender of any state you ever recall having heard of. 

There is no shelter unless you can melt or stick coins together. There is nothing to eat. Sometimes at dawn and dusk you can find water condensing on the heads or tails of coins. At noon everything stinks of hot metal.

Also, the sun in the Desert of Coins looks like one of these smug bastards.

If you want to travel the Desert of Coins, bring sun goggles. Watch your footing - coin-dunes can shift unpredictably. Even a flat surface can be treacherously smooth. You'll need a big baggage train. You can see where others have been, where the piles of dried dung provide some of the few places where little plants grow (it is considered good form to create a midden and perhaps one day encourage vegetation). 

It is possible that first-timers (when they are finally deep enough into the Desert to lose sight of the border) will suffer the Ecstasy of Gold. 

The Plain of Clubs

There is nothing between you and the horizon. There is the wind and the sun and the open sky. Perhaps you hear the cry of a hawk. But look down: high as your knee, for miles in each direction are row upon row of knobbly wooden clubs. If you push one, they are as light as a blade of grass, but if one hits you, it will at least bruise. As you watch, they sway in the wind. There is a dull knocking as they strike one another.

Travellers on the Plain of Clubs must use robust stilts, or wear heavy leg armour. Taking a horse or a draught animal into the plain is considered either cruel or very desperate. Some have designed transports with a heavy roller in front, pushed by patient oxen, but this is a slow means of passage for the wagons behind. Still, you won't go short of firewood.

***

Made with reference to these two recent posts over on False Machine. And bearing in mind that musing about the practicalities of turning the world to one substance is scarcely new.

If all the world were Paper,

And all the Sea were Inke;

If all the Trees were bread and cheese,

How should we do for drinke ?

If all the World were sand'o,

Oh then what should we lack'o;

If as they say there were no clay,

How should we take Tobacco ?

If all our vessels ran'a,

If none but had a crack'a;

If Spanish Apes eat all the Grapes,

How should we do for Sack'a ?

If Fryers had no bald pates,

Nor Nuns had no dark Cloysters,

If all the Seas were Beans and Pease,

How should we do for Oysters ?

If there had been no projects,

Nor none that did great wrongs;

If Fidlers shall turne players all,

How should we do for songs ?

If all things were eternall,

And nothing their end bringing;

If this should be, then how should we,

Here make an end of singing ?