The Mouth of Bones

        To the northwest of the glittering Tamaran cities lies a great rift in the earth, a canyon four hundred miles long and nearly a mile in depth at its most significant elevation. The entire region is covered in earthone escarpments and flat, open brushland - good habitat for small herbivores and scavengers, but otherwise rather barren. The canyon is named for the fearsome fossilized skeletons into its walls - beings from the Age of Tranquility. Most of these appear to be mythical reptillian beasts such as dragons and hydras, though there are also beds of spiralled shellfish and even plants scattered across the canyon floor. The Mouth of Bones is actually a split-open fault line, one of the last significant signs of tectonic activity on the planet. Even at its narrow points, the canyon is hundreds of feet wide, and no bridges exist to this date, largely restricting land access to the northwestern portion of the main island.

        The canyon's only perpetual visitors are the hoomiku from the Hexat colony. They come to study and excavate at night, taking samples and studying the island's exposed geological layers. Come the morning, there is rarely any trace of their tinkerings. Other visitors include the occasional Arcanar field trip, or wealthy tour group from the cities to the east. While popular in weapon handles and some jewelery, the fossils here are of relatively little interest to the common citizen, when so many other delights await back in the lap of civilization. A powerful river carves its way through the bottom of the gorge, originating in the low mountains that hug the northern coast of the island, and flowing south until it finally vanishes underground. Two magnificent waterfalls can be found along its path, crashing down the fossil cliffs from the tributaries high above, and making the rapids all the more dangerous to those below.

The Fossil Cliffs

        Thousands of petrified skeletons can be found throughout the sheer canyons, most of them quite huge in size. They have been fused into the rock over untold eons, transforming into dark, brittle stone that juts from the cliff face in many places. Leering reptillian skulls full of sword-sized teeth, vertibrae hundreds of feet long, , and beasts with more than one head are but a few of the wonders to be seen frozen in time within the fabric of the cliffs. Others, more mundane, are far more common but just as alien in appearance - the remains of a time that long predates modern and even ancient history. The remains of petrified proto-palms, giant ferns, and other plants can be found in the lower layers, towards the bottom of the gorge where the fossils are even older. Most appear to be shadows on the canyon walls.

        Dozens of explanations have been offered up by sages, scholars, wizards, and even common folklore. Some believe the fossils to be the remains of the divine armies that fought against the gods during the Twilight War. Others claim that they are creatures from a time when Rym was young, still covered in tropical forests and misty marshlands, and yet others believe them to be the first failed experiments of the gods in shaping life to populate their young world. Whatever the case may be, the Mouth of Bones presents a mystery that only seems to appeal to the hoomiku - the rest of the Tamaran population isn't especially interested, though many will still come to see what is undoubtably the largest network of canyons on all of Rym.

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