The Great North - Colour Art

Some little visual treats from Tom Killian's work on The Great North, with extracts of accompanying text, forthcoming via Kickstarter later this year:

North of the Red River the land empties itself. The Road runs lonely up the coast, under cold, sun-faded and windswept skies. Standing tall over the wilderness as they have since the days of the Emperor are two great castles, Dolorous Garde and the Place of the Keepers - though nowadays these fortresses do not so much protect the land as turn their backs on all that would disturb their quietude. There is little that would threaten to do so in the thin forests and grey seas around them. But the names of these places are spoken of in hushed rumours which bring travellers from distant places all the same. For once they were the heart of Imperial rule in the north, and this is still remembered. 

The burgh still harbours a war fleet, nominally owned by the Emperor and awaiting the return of imperial rule. These old ships - sleek, oared things built for ramming - are meticulously repaired and maintained, though of course over time they have grown fewer, and the ones that remain inevitably show their great age in the vast encrustations of barnacles on their hulls and in their constantly expanding patchworks of repairs. Each ship by convention is given only a number and not a name, but they are treated as demigods or saints by the inhabitants of the burgh, who recite tales and legends (whether fanciful or true, none can say) about them from their many centuries of service, and insist that their captains and crews know them to be sentient - capable of communicating strange needs and desires through the dreams of those on board, and able at times to control the winds so as to avoid danger or change course to some unknown place. Each ship has its cult, whose members offer it prayer and sacrifice, and ask it to intercede on their behalf with the forgotten imperial gods - or even the soul of the Emperor Himself - whenever they are anxious, joyous, or otherwise in need of blessings. Whenever a ship of the fleet leaves the harbour, the words goes out (‘The IVth is on its way’; ‘Is that the XIXth? The repairs must have been finished’) and the members of that particular cult flock to the quayside to throw flowers, shower it with ale, or dive into the water to swim alongside it. In those moments of passion and excitement in the morning sun, it is easy for the participants to forget that the fleet has had no apparent purpose for many generations, and the voyages of its ships are as lacking in wider meaning as the blowing of the wind or the falling of the rain.

If one were to go West from Killers’ Way and the narrow band of civility which runs up and down that stretch of the Great North Road, one would find the land rapidly becoming empty and wild: an unconquered swathe of dense woods, low resentful hills, and lakes and bogs of brown peaty water. A great Broceliande - indeed, the Great Broceliande - which has never tolerated settlement and will not yet. 
 
Beyond it, and the Teaming River which runs quick and frigid from distant mountains, lies the forest of the Hardwater, growing thick and green. It is ancient, as ancient as the hills of the Great North, but it is also young; it pulsates with life. Time there means nothing. A mere cycle of death, rebirth, and growth - always growth. 
 
The trees there are mighty. Most were already old when the Empire came, though its power never touched them. But a tree does not age like a man, becoming withered and bent and weak; it gets only stronger. The trees of the Hardwater tower over the things below, and spread their branches so high and wide that their canopy extends above the forest floor unbroken like a sky of green. 
 
Beneath this sky, animal life throngs. And so do nature’s spirits. Fauns, capering in forest glades. Ettercaps, patient and quiet in nests of silk. Dryads, the wives of the trees. Woodwoses, forest slavers and erstwhile rulers who would make all their chattels if they could. Green men, dreaming of the passing seasons in hidden lairs. 
 
And elves, the Hardwater’s rulers. Distant, cold, magnificent and murderous; kings, hunters, architects and artists. The Hardwater and everything in it is theirs, and they carry its power beyond their borders  wherever and whenever it suits them.
 
At the heart of the forest lies the Hardwater itself. A great deep lake resting flat like a mirror, reflecting a sky that is not green but the purest blue. Few humans have seen it, and fewer still have lived to tell the tale. It is said that its waters give everlasting life - but that once a person drinks from it, one can never tolerate any other substance passing one’s lips again.

As one moves inland from the coast through thick woodland one suddenly finds the ground rising up into a shelf of crumpled hills, where the trees give way to heather and thick grass and the merciless wind. This land of low peaks, open moors and deep narrow gorges is known as the Hill of Wolves, which is the name of its highest peak - although here ‘wolves’ refers as much to intelligent inhabitants as it does to canine animals. The entire region is infamous for its centaur reivers - clans of thieves, kidnappers and cattle-rustlers, who lair in thick-walled bastle-houses with their own beasts and descend upon more settled lands throughout the year for pillage and sport. Imperial rule never bore heavily on them, though the remnants of the attempts are scattered around the hills - the broken ruins of small forts which failed to suppress them, and temples which failed to find converts. The reivers were both too proud and too bloodthirsty for the Emperor’s civilisation. 
 
Alongside the reivers there lurk other wild and malevolent beings: ettins dwelling in dark caves, redcaps scheming from stone towers, and other things more powerful yet, luxuriating in the isolation of the hills. But it is also rumoured that, somewhere deep within the heart of this bleak wilderness, there lies a verdant valley of thick forest thronged with game, kept by the elves of the Hardwater for hunting, which no human eye is permitted to see and return to let the mouth speak of. 
 
A narrow trail, the Sixthstreet, timidly skirts this wilderness, heading north-by-north-west from the Great North Road. On it lie human settlements which have managed to achieve a modus vivendi, through force or cunning, with the dangers which overlook them from the hills to their west. The former of these approaches is embodied in Drummond’s Quarter, the fourth-of-a-town,  whose people are enslaved by the warrior castes who rule and defend them. The latter is embodied by Hrotha’s Town, built from the stuff of illusion and hidden from view of all potential enemies by the great wizard Hrotha himself. The people of the smaller villages around them flock to these burghs when danger threatens - or mirror their tactics in miniature.