Altitude 0
The Surface is the living world above ground, where every traveller begins. It is the one region no single people rules: the Aelfar keep to its deep forests, the Hammerborn to its cold high country, and the Mallardine raise their citadels wherever the surface still keeps order, while wild and herded animals range across the rest. From the Surface, portals open down and up to the world’s hidden regions — the underground Sanctums and orbital Skyhold of the Architects, the undead Caverns, the impossible Backrooms, and the Infernus below.
The Surface is not one landscape but many. Heat and cold, wet and dry, mountain and flat shift from place to place, dividing the world above into distinct biomes, each with its own ground, weather, growth, and dangers. The sections below describe the biomes a traveller is most likely to cross.
Wide, arid expanses of sand and bare stone under a punishing sun. Water and shade are scarce, the days hot and the nights cold, and what little lives here has learned to go without. Now and then a stray Sonari is spotted out in the open waste, wandering far from any Sanctum.
Deep woodland of old trees, dappled light, and tangled undergrowth — shadowed, close, and easy to lose your way in. These forests are the hidden home of the Aelfar, who keep to their depths and rarely let a stranger find the path.
Hot, wet, and overgrown — dense green tangle, and in its low ground the standing water of swamp and marsh. The reeds and mud hide the Miremoth, the marsh’s patient ambush predator, so keep moving and stay well clear of the deep reeds.
Banded badlands of red rock and clay, dry and broken into bluffs, flat-topped mesas, and steep ravines. Striking to look upon and hard to cross, with little water and treacherous footing. Here too a stray Sonari is occasionally seen, picking its way across the rock far from any Sanctum.
Wide, open grassland — gentle, level, and the mildest of the surface lands, the likeliest place to find your feet. Where the plains run down to rivers, lakes, and the sea, the Mallardine raise their citadels, for they are as at home in the water as on the land.
The cold, high country — frozen flats and rugged, snow-capped mountains where the air thins and the snow never melts. This is the home ground of the Hammerborn, who thrive in cold and at altitudes that fell anyone else.