Thursday Fluff – The Maps of Pannithor (Part One)
3rd Feb 2022
Jonny Mann
Hello and welcome to Thursday Fluff.
This is our new series exploring the lore and background around some of the most interesting aspects of the worlds of Mantic. We’ll be covering all game systems too, so whether it’s the creation of the Enforcers, the splitting of the Fenulian Mirror or the Salamanders and their love of sailing, this is the place to be if you want to find out more.
This week we take a look at some of the incredible cartography that map out the world of Pannithor.
Behind the massive walls of Therennia Adar, is a vast room, lit by glittering mirrors that cunningly re-cast soft light from the heavens far above. Tiered wooden shelves surround the central chamber, heavy with the dusty books and grimoires of the learned elven races. In the middle of the central hall is an immense table made of a single piece of polished hardwood, carved with astonishing skill by the hands of ancient elven artisans. On the table lies a massive animal hide, taken from Y’Roon Thunderfoot, the ancient king of the mammoths. A giant quill, filled with a limitless supply of black ink made from the blood of hydras, scratches its way endlessly over a fantastically detailed map of the entire world. Since time forgotten, the quill has faithfully recorded the ever-changing shape of the world; the rise and fall of empires, the kingdoms and borders that shift and merge and come and go. The fate of entire civilisations and the decisive events and battles that have dominated history have all been steadily and dispassionately recorded by this unerring cartographer.
Pannithor
Historic Northern Pannithor at a time before the Winter’s War and the Great Inundation. Note how many great nations were almost entirely landlocked were it not for a few connecting rivers and tributaries. Primantor and Vantoria were great cities at the heart of Northern Pannithor.
Modern Day Pannithor
Now the great Infant Sea dominates the heart of northern Pannithor and whole areas, such as the Glades of Honeymaze, are confined to the history books. The Northern Sea is now Frozen in both name and nature. Ice has engulfed the entire North, creating arctic wastes and snow-capped peaks. What great nations survived the Winter War find themselves in much more need for a Navy than they once did! Lake Suan is now much larger and known as the Low Sea of Suan.
Elvenholme and the city of Therennia Adar
Therennia Adar was and is one of the most remarkable cities in the world. Once it was merely a spec of civilisation nestled amid the great Groves of Adar. The city had no walls in those times and an elf could make his way directly from the orderly avenues and thoroughfares to the winding paths of the wood without ever being able to pinpoint exactly where one ended and the other began.
The Celestians walked those paths, too, in the days when they were whole. Their otherworldliness did not ward them against the entrancing beauty of the wild ways; the hidden grove, the secret pool. Above it all, the Spire of Ages struck up from the heart of Therennia Adar, an icon of triumph hundreds of feet high. It bathed in the warmth of the sun above and the glow of the vast woodland below. Stories are told of how light, birdsong, and the very wind itself were woven into mighty spells that swirled above the great kingdom and protected it from intrusion and disaster. Those spells are as broken as the age that birthed them.
Therennia Adar now sits hundreds of feet below sea level, yet it did not drown. This is because of the sacrifice made by great Valandor – the warrior-mage whose powers transcended both man and elf. He stood before the onrush of the deadly waters as they hungrily devoured the shining groves. The streets thundered with the flight of forest creatures and the air was thick with the roaring of the waters. Valandor stood fast before them, pitting all his might and will against the devouring tide. Soon the earth shook, and a great rumbling drowned out all sound as Valandor tore a great wall up from the earth; a vast curtain of rock that spared Therennia Adar from the fate shared by so much of Elvenholme . His might spent, Valandor fell from atop the wall to the churning waters below. Today the vast majority of Therennia Adar sits in perpetual gloom, always in the shadow of the greatest wall outside dwarfendom and neither wind nor sun strikes the city streets.
Of the old city, only the very tip of the Spire of Ages peers above the wall. It is here that the battered body of Valandor, recovered from the cruel waters, is held in state where it attracts pilgrims from both land and sea. Despite existing in shadow, Therennia Adar has transcended its fate and so have its people. They have reclaimed their heritage of wind and sun by transitioning from a land-locked spiritual paradise to the great maritime superpower of the world. Atop the mighty barrier wall are great buttressed towers overlooking the elegant, sweeping shipyards that have been erected in the centuries since the fall of Valandor. Some say this is the true heart of the city and its people; bristling with activity, energy, and motion that is to be envied by the inland attitudes of mournful lassitude. It is certainly true that the people of the old Western Kindred have found new life in their bond with the ocean.
