Torova Temylatin

[Haeda]

Has anyone done any work on this island? Seems a shame to leave it undefined. I'm interested in doing some work on it, but I am just getting back into this setting after an 11 year absence. Any advice, or merely a point in the right direction would be fantastic.

[Rey]

Do you have any ideas? It's far north and really not inhabitable, except if you're trying to send adventurers/settlers to freeze to death.
To use it, there has to be something very extraordinary. The least of the problems is to hack it up into provinces, but from what I've read, for now there are only monsters there and the center of the island is practically unreachable.

[Gheal]

IIRC this island has hidden monastery, where descendants of Basaia still keep their sielsheigh - biggest in the world. I don't recall, was this Cities of the Sun, Book of Priestcraft or some other source. TotHW said nothing about this - only mentions of unusually warm climate and utter lack of population.
I can also expect non-standard warding or two, thrown over this island to divert interest of awnies and other undesirables elsewhere.

[Rey]

Unusually warm climate?
I must have misread something...
Anyway, hardly anyone journeys there primarily because of Leviathan and frozen sea.

[Rey]

Tribes of the Heartless Wastes, page 32 of Player's Primer: Most maps of northern Cerilia include the island of Torova Temylatin, but few go into any detail. Sea captains put in there for fresh water and supplies or sail around the northern harbors to avoid the treacherous Leviathan's Reach in winter, but none ever stay there. Its eastern and western tips seem to be covered with ice during the entire year, but a large forest and high mountains can be seen along the interior. A few particularly adventurous explorers have sailed up the central river of the island, but none have penetrated inland to explore the island itself. If any inhabitants live on the island, they have not been seen or reported.

[Rey]

The Book Of Magecraft, page 80: Within one of the highest mountain ranges of northern Torova Temylatin, Aram and his followers built Basaia's seat, an impregnable monastery carved out of mountain peak. Its central chamber holds the Sielehr. Basaia's seat it reachable only by a single pass that remains snowbound and impassable for all but two weeks out of every year. The bitter, powerful winds surrounding the peak make it too treacherous to approach by any flying creatures less hardy than dragons. Fortunately for those who guard the Sielehr, the artifact itself helps keep the monastery warm.

At its most populated, the monastery held 78 people. It now holds only four scions: Aram ibn Malik, Fatima bin Aram (Aram's eldest daughter), Tuarim ibn Aram (Fatima's fourth son), and Alvaro el-Surak (the last of the Holy Thirty). All of these scions have the long life blood ability at great power, Aram and Alvaro both appear to be men in their forties, while Fatima and Tuarim seem to be in their late and early twenties. The youngest of the four guardians is nearly 1500 years old.

---

Now, this must be one of those lovely believable fairy tales from Cerilian history. These are even cheesier than the Gorgon itself. He at least gets to go out on a strawl and has something to eat. These would have died of boredom alone a couple of dozen times by now.
Hope the Sielehr has some cooking skills.

[AndrewTall]

I think at some point I had some vague thoughts of a traditional elven and goblin land for the Island, a place untouched by humanity where the wild folk lived - and that was the way they liked it.

Any habitable land is likely to have some human population, the cold is a big problem, and I doubt you can grow much, but certainly nomadic types and fisherfolk should be possible to allow low level provinces. Of course settling (leading nona vos to a new safe land?) wouldn't be easy.

The Sielehr myth always struck me as funny, why hide away in the first place? Travel to Ariya and take a place of pride and power where Avani's faithful can bask in her predecessor's glory (and you don't need to worry about dying of boredom or inbreeding). Of course the inhabitants of Djapar might make some claim on the stone even if they refused to accept its true nature, while the temples would obviously also make a claim so keeping the stone would be tough if you didn't want to give it to the crown/temple to win favour.

[Rey]

Guess there was a lot of prying hands on that one when they desperately took it so far away. Really should have been some smaller chunk. And the guy actually found it in a desert. From Deismaar!

I like the idea of a lone elven realm. Doesn't the magic of elvish realms protect the land from the elements?

[Sorontar]

To me this sounds very like the Indiana Jones approach to the Holy Grail. You know, major religious artifact hidden in the depths of an now unused temple, guarded by a very small group of people who seem to have lived for ever.

The BR wiki has an entry of the Sielehr (http://www.birthright.net/brwiki/ind...hr#The_Sielehr).

[Gheal]

Unusually warm climate?
I must have misread something...

My fault. I mean unusually warm climate for such latitude. Only tips of the island covered by ice for entire year, not forest and mountains. And conifer forest can provide you with food if you have relatively small population to feed. Many russian peasants in 15-16 c. run from their feudal masters to the north (to the coast of White Sea) and even develop there sound agriculture.
I wonder why many others refugees do not settle on this island. But with some magic at work all things are possible.

And on the tale of the Sielehr. Any really good paladin must cry seeing how faithful of one god split their faith in several churches, one competing with the others. All kinds of cheats, lies and outright thievery stems from this in post-Deismaar time. I can understand this situation with Haelyn - he's god of conquerors and feudal lords, conquest and divine (haelynian, ofc ) right to rule are part of his dogma. But Avani is Lady of reason, not grab! And presence of an artifact of such power can only intensify these struggles. So idea of hiding this stone sounds pretty reasonable for me.