The Long & Windy Road (Igrainne) 30/7

Report by Springwarden Igrainne Blackriver for the Emerald Enclave

The nation of K’ul Goran, established long before the advent of Faerunian colonisation, is located east of the settlements, across a sea passage where triremes carry fine cheeses and artistic goods to Port Ffirst. It is home to the advanced, metropolitan cities of Cape Za’Suul and Zot Goran and its dominant population is minotaur. Different from the savage monstrosities found in Faerun, the minotaurs of K’ul Goran are of a slimmer build, possess brown fur, horns that curl towards the back of the head, and light plumage on their arms. With their embrace of civilised society and the arts, they are evidently free from the influence of Baphomet, though remnants of their demonic heritage can be observed in the usage of the Abyssal tongue and the labyrinthine layout of Zot Goran. They coexist peacefully with air genasi and aaracokra, the former of which have intermarried with the minotaurs, creating a hybrid species called aerotaurs, who have distinctive pale blue fur. Indeed, the influence of the Elemental Plane of Air can be felt in the strong, buffeting, rogue winds that plague the roads of the country. But even then the K’ul Gorans have found a use for this nuisance, placing metallic hoops akin to tuning forks on their buildings, so that their cities are always humming with musical notes.

The Council of Daring Heights has hired a well-travelled half-elf merchant named Girelle Veluss to open up trade negotiations with Zot Goran, the northern capital of the Minotaur Kingdom, on behalf of the city. The Lenoir family, the de facto rulers of Port Ffirst, recently struck a trade deal with Cape Za'Suul, so it was only reasonable that Daring Heights should follow suit. Mr. Veluss insisted that this “historic” journey be made entirely on foot (i.e. horseback) as per “tradition”, and thus would span a total of 12 to 13 days. Aside from minor trouble with bandits and horse thieves, the journey was largely safe and Mr. Veluss was soundly settled in his new home in Zot Goran.

However, there was one exceptionally strange occurrence on the way to K’ul Goran. After leaving the Angelbark Woods, the party of travellers found themselves outside of Cape Za’Suul, hundreds of miles southeast of where they should have been, according to the maps. Mr. Veluss remarked that he had not expected to encounter Cape Za’Suul but rather some other town on the journey, and the overall travel time was cut down to 10 days. It appeared that there had been an invisible portal, a distortion in space and time that transported the travellers to a different location and disappeared right afterwards.

In the treatise entitled “Kantas – A Study in Impossible Geography”, Professor Gale Earthbane discovered that different maps of Kantas and star charts do not fit together and paint a coherent picture of a land that makes geographical sense. On the local level, Kantas seems like any other place on Toril, but on the larger, regional level, it is something academics have termed “disturbing” and “absolutely bizarre”. This odd phenomenon is likely to be connected to the planar irregularities often found on the continent, that the chaos of the Feywild, the Elemental Planes, and perhaps all the planes of existence in general created these so-called “geographical slips”.

This begs the question, can Kantas ever truly be mapped with reasonable accuracy? Will land travel be rendered moot, as one would never know when a “slip” might occur and send them farther from their destination? Kantas lies on the boundaries dividing the Material Plane from all the rest, and everyone who lives in it is treading on that horizon line.

End of report.

Earthbane, G. (1463). Kantas – A Study in Impossible Geography. K’ul Goran Journal of Geographical Sciences, 210(5), 554-569. doi: 10.1172/kgjgs.1463.08.018