The Shrouded Vale (warning long post)

[Daedin]

You’ve been walking through the forest for many hours now. The tall trees sway gently with the wind and a perpetual rain of leafs turns the floor into a soft sea of reds and golds.
The howls of wolves instill some urgency into your step, yet it feels like you’ve not made any progress at all. North becomes South in the blink of an eye, East and West seem to merge and become one single direction, dictated by the whispers in the canopy.
Night falls, and still you wander. Suddenly, you cross a line of trees, and find that you’ve come to the edge of a cliff. Before you, and stretching on below, is a wide, deep valley. Wisps of fog and mist dance and curl among pine trees, and through these you glimpse white marble and carved stone. Distant singing fills the night and, in the heart of the vale, you can only barely make out the silhouette of a tower.


For the first time in several years, I visited Myon again the other day. And though it was great to revisit so many memories and familiar places..it was also somewhat odd. I’m very biased and protective towards Myon, and still it struck me just how little it has changed over the course of ten years. I’d say 99% of it is just as it was when I first entered it.

Now, on the one hand, this does make sense. It is an elven city after all, where near-immortal beings dwell, changing ever so slowly, and at different pace than the outside world. Myon is a very,very good representation of what an elven culture would be. And, contrary to popular opinions, I very much so like the Mythal, even if I understand the arguments against it.

On the other hand, I am not sure that no change at all after a real life decade is a good thing. And thus my suggestion. I shall list, next, the changes I think would be beneficial to all, but to Myon elves the most. Even if they’ll want to throw me off a window after they read it.

-Myon is no longer a floating city. In fact, it would rest in a hidden, secluded, hard to reach valley. Think Tolkien’s Rivendell.

-So hidden,in fact, that some areas of the forest would work like the ones in Sybayad and the Abyss, with a version of the Forest of Despair’s mechanics. Imagine: randomized transitions. Random vegetation blocking the path. Random bursts of elven magic teleporting people elsewhere.

-Being an elf (any alignment), ranger or druid would alleviate or neutralize a lot of these things.

-The city proper would still follow a square distribution of districts, but all far more open and accessible , so long as you found the way there. Houses built into the mountain side, bridges across streams, gardens and what not.

-The tower would stand at the heart of the city and it would be the only place still affected by the Mythal’s magic, effectively having a magical barrier around it. Think Doriath, also from Tolkien.

-I would also make the Tower a guild house within the settlement, giving its owner the ability to give keys, or elf-friend tokens, to whoever he so desired.

I have another idea for the Grove that will tie in with this one, but I’ll make a separate suggestion for it.