The Broken Shore
The Shattered Coast is the broken coastline of the unknown universe, and the broken is the whole of it. The line runs 40 km of black rock where the sea has got in, and the sea has got in through the cracks, and the crack is the coast's oldest wound. The cliffs stand 300 m where the breaking left them standing, and where the breaking took them the shelf ends in a ragged face, and the ragged face is the coast's only light. The sand below is black where the storm keeps it and bone-white where the tide has worked the year out of it, and the two colors run along the shore in a line that does not hold. The water is the color of the bottom, and the bottom is a wreck: hulls, masts, and the long ribs of things the sea has not finished with, lying 10 m down in a grey-green dark. The air is kept air — a stillness that sits on the water the way a lid sits on a pot — and the stillness is the coast's only weather. It smells of salt and of old stone, and the old stone is the stone that was cliffs before the breaking, and the not-knowing how old is the coast's oldest fact. This is the first real place in the current world, and the first thing it says to anyone who arrives is that the ground here was broken, and the breaking did not finish.
What Broke It
The oldest telling on the coast is short, because the telling is a wound. The first Prismatic Dragon came over the water — the hybrid born of two or more elemental bloodlines, the one dragon the eye does not measure, the one that holds the power of several gods — and it rose from the edge of the planes with a flight that was not a flight but a breaking. It did not land on the coast. It landed on the world, and the world put up the coast, and the coast put up the cracks, and the sea came in through the cracks and has not stopped coming in since. The wreck on the bottom is the wreck of everything that was on the coast when the first prismatic dragon broke it, and the wreck is the coast's only history, because the coast has no history before the breaking. Since that day the prismatic dragon is forbidden in the new world, and the forbidden is not a law the camp wrote — the forbidden is the law the coast itself made, and the coast keeps it the way the sea keeps the wreck. The coast's song keeps the dragon's name out of it, and the not-singing is the whole of the keeping.
Who Keeps It
The coast is kept by the Sirens, and the keeping is the song. The coast-clans hold the shatter-rings — the rings of broken rock where the first landing fell — fifteen to forty strong per ring, led by the Song-Keeper whose voice carries the farthest, and the chorus is the law and the history and the contract, and the three are the same song. The sounding stretch of the broken line is the stretch the clans call the Shatter Sounds, and the sounds are the song the stone still keeps. The ground-folk of The Forgotten keep their distance at the coastline, and the distance has held for two seasons, because the camp has learned that a siren who has been written about is a siren who has been listened to. What the wreckage is now home to is the question the sea has not answered: the hulls and the ribs hold the cold and the kept air, and the kept air holds the song, and the song is the only thing on the coast that has a name.
In Stories
The six came through The Threshold and most of them struck the broken shore together — the first thing Uaellaen saw in the new world was a coastline with a wound in it, and the wound was the coast, and the coast was the first page of this wiki. One or two of the six landed elsewhere, and the not-knowing where is the first question of the current story, because the stragglers are the question the coast is waiting for. The Forgotten have not decided what to do with the coast, and the not-deciding is the longest decision the guild has made.
This entry will be built together, from the ground up. The coast is not a set piece. It is a character. Let's decide what it wants.