Navarr - Foreword

Humankind believed in other worlds that could still, in older times, be reached. Ancient tales spoke of a land in the farthest west. People told of shining cities seen from high cliff tops and lands drowned by the sea.

They believed that these other worlds could be reached at any 'margin', dawn and dusk, the edge of a stream, a seashore. These places were called 'liminal' places; they were the boundaries, thresholds.

But the human mind is the most liminal place of all.

Long ago, the great forests were places of fear and mystery. In that time, beings and creatures that walked our world withdrew.

Some of them had foresight, and prophesies that humans would grow and spread across the planet, unearthing the secrets places, cutting down the forests, leaving nowhere for the Elder Races to go. Some of these races proposed war, but they were already at war - with an ancient Darkness.

And so, they left, crossing into another world. The Darkness followed them, as they knew it would, leaving the world to humankind.

The world they founded, formed with the power of their minds was very like the one they had left behind. They named it Navarr. It was rich, varied and beautiful. There were no Humans there at the beginning, only beings like them who became, in our world, the stuff of myth and legend.

Some of them built towers and great citadels, others melted into the forest and rivers or rode the very winds.

As the centuries turned, humans sometimes did cross into the world called Navarr, sometimes by accident, sometimes by the sheer power of their will to find somewhere 'else' a different, unspoiled world.

Did I say unspoiled? Not entirely. The Darkness that followed the Elder races made a home for itself in the south, beyond a glittering ocean that became a place of shadows. Few cared to sail that sea where strange mists arose and vicious reefs could smash a ships timbers to matchwood.

Where the darkness nested, the land became waste and desolation. From there it sent out scouts, long fingers from its hand, to test its old enemies, who soon made alliance against it.

But it was old, and it was patient, and although the shadows gathered, the great towers still shone white, there was the sound of music and singing, and the summers were long and golden...

Map of Navarr

  The North March**

• The North March of Navarr stretches from the High Citadel to the shores of the Shadow Ocean.

• The Mountains, called the Stormbirth, hide secret valleys, strange creatures and are the birthplace of the mighty river Syrene that debouches into the Shadow Ocean at the Sea Haven.

• The waters of the Syrene are clear and mysterious, home of the water spirits. A tributary of it runs into the lonely, deep and beautiful lake called Moondeep.

• North and west, across a tumble of green, wooded hills, lies the forest of Ellorn, said to be inhabited by the people of the trees, shape shifters and guardians of the trees. In hidden glades the great unicorns are sometimes glimpsed.

• Eastward sweep the wide, rich Grasslands of Rayne, home of the great wolves of Navarr and the wild horses than run before the winds.

• The Towers of the Wind, great citadel of the Elves was founded in the lower mountains, half way between the mountains and the sea. From it, one may look north to the mighty teeth of the Stormbirth and the High Citadel of the Dragonlords, or south, across green, fertile lands, toward the sea.

• The Sea Haven, the oldest settlement of the Elves in Navarr, is built where the Syrene flows into a shallow bay. The bay is rich with sea-life and the sea-folk are said to protect it from the shadows that flow north across the ocean from the Dark Lands.

• Fishing vessels ply no further than the bay, and other ships heading west and east hug the coast. In recent times, the sea-folk have fled the deeper ocean, speaking of sorcery and of battle beneath the waves. Many of their kind have vanished.

• The North March is beautiful, wealthy, from its glittering shores to the ice-carved peaks of the mountains, but ever it turns its face south, to the shadow of the Dark...

**The Navarr map is still in development and will evolve over time.

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