Where It Started
The Nameless Tundra is the frozen expanse of the old world — a place of endless snow, thin air, and the kind of cold that does not ask permission. The tundra is 1,000 km wide, and the cold of the tundra runs 3 m into the ground, and the ground does not thaw. The snow of the tundra is white where the wind has kept it, and the white breaks where the ice has cut it, and the break is the tundra's only light. The white of the snow is the tundra's only ground, and the ground is where the cold is kept. The air above the tundra is blue where the light leaves it, and the blue is the tundra's way of saying the day is done.
The tundra keeps the ice shelves that run 50 km long, and the shelves are where the cold is kept in the deep. The frozen rivers of the tundra run 20 m deep, and the ice of the rivers is blue where the cold has taken it, and the blue is the tundra's way of keeping the year. The tundra smells of cold grey stone and old snow and the wind that does not stop. The settlements of the tundra are small, and the settlements are where the souls who have decided that cold is a problem they can solve with more cold are kept, and the keeping is the tundra's way of holding the year. This is the place where the world is bigger than the people in it, and the world is the tundra's only word.
It is here that Tigole found the young Uaellaen, alone and alive, in a place where neither should have been. The tundra did not remember him, and the not-remembering is the tundra's mercy.
Overview
- Climate: Perpetual winter. The sun is a rumor. The wind is a fact. The cold runs 3 m into the ground, and the ground does not thaw.
- Landscape: Ice shelves 50 km long, frozen rivers 20 m deep, and the occasional settlement of hardened souls who have decided that cold is a problem they can solve with more cold.
- History: This is where Uaellaen's education began. Tigole taught him in the snow — not in a hall, not in a library, but in the open, where the lessons were as vast as the horizon. The tundra is 1,000 km wide, and the width of the tundra is the tundra's only lesson.
"Tigole taught me in the snow that the universe is bigger than any guild, any god, any war. I thought I understood. I was wrong." — Uaellaen
In the Story
The Nameless Tundra is backstory — a place that exists in memory, in the old world, before the Drop. It is the emotional origin point of the entire story: the place where a boy learned that the world was bigger than the people in it. The tundra is the place the story returns to in memory, and the returning is the tundra's only word.
"The tundra does not remember you. That is its mercy. You remember it. That is your problem." — old tundra proverb