The Map of Adamah

The map of Adamah came before most of the characters. Geography decides who meets whom, who trades with whom, and who has never bothered to learn a neighbor's name. So let me walk the continent.

Start with the water. The River Sentience runs through the center of Adamah, and almost every kingdom touches it somewhere. The Endless Sea surrounds everything, freezing solid in the north and open to pirates in the east. Notice how many nations use water as a wall.

The northeast is Snowfall, a frozen land the old kings said was shaped like a wolf: the Heart at its center, the Howl at its head, the Tail in the southwest, the Front Paws in the southeast where the snow is thinnest. First Snow, a massive mountain, is believed to have taken the first snowfall the kingdom ever saw. Directly south, on the other side of a staircase, is Penumbra. The cave kingdom sits between Snowfall and Ophir and touches the sea on its eastern edge. Its four gates point at its four neighbors.

West of the River Sentience is Socho. The Valley of Elah lies just east of the city, the same valley the bison of Champaign return to every year. Socho's Fortress holds the high ground in the northeast, and God's Fall, the waterfall of the hero's send-off, marks the northwest tip. Beyond the western mountains sits a hidden coastal community called the Golden West. Far to the south, past hills and valleys, the dry city of Quate crumbles on a cold cliff.

Below Socho, along the western coast, stretch the grasslands of Champaign. The Black Hills in the northeast are the sacred home of the Sioux. The Escalante Desert south of them belongs to the Raz. The Brushlands and the Wenatchi River, a distributary of the Sentience, hide the Wenatchi tribe. Nine lakes are scattered across the middle of the country, and a formation called the Flood Stones sits south of the Tevat, suggesting the land was drowned once and might be again.

The southwestern tip of the continent is Morass, a swamp of cypress and tupelo east of the river and bordering Ophir. The Bane River runs east to west through it toward Dead Lake. At the very bottom, a lighthouse village called Ka Lae guides ships around the southern reefs, and the Sea's Solace, a web-like waterway, offers the only safe passage through the swamp for those who know it.

East of the river is Ophir, a hot jungle rich in gold. Its capital rises around Arash Bilqis, the throne raised above the Sentience, and the Golden Road carries its wealth south through the city of Rhian to the port of Padua. Ophir's northern border touches Penumbra, and somewhere along it is a cave that a fourteen-year-old prince believes could unite them.

Then there is Cape Guard, a peninsula on the eastern edge that decided to become an island. Guard's Strait, a man-made channel designed by the king's goldsmith, cuts the peninsula off from Ophir and forces every ship through Cape Guard's ports, Ho Pater chief among them. Mt. Bental, the volcano, gives the kingdom its black ash armor.

South of everything, in the desert, is Betharaba, the House in the Desert. It has no major river. Its people have eleven churches carved underground and a twelfth they have never found. Cape Guard refused to trade with them and the King of Morass came with his fury, and six hundred survivors remain.

And there is one more place, which no map in Adamah marks. Eden is an island at the far reaches of the Endless Sea, and someone is building a fortress there with a room for every nation, arranged in a circle. Inside those walls, at least, the eight kingdoms are already touching.