Five Sacred Scars of Arkanthys

The Sacred Scars of Arkanthys are the locations where the influence of the Creators remains embedded within the world. They are not temples, ruins, or monuments left behind by ancient hands. They are the residual intersections where the primordial principles that shaped the world once imposed themselves most strongly upon reality.

When the Creators drifted away from Arkanthys, most traces of their presence faded as the world stabilized around the natural laws their convergence had imposed. In a handful of places, however, fragments of those principles remained concentrated. These locations became anomalies within the world itself, places where the forces that once shaped Arkanthys still linger in faint but persistent forms.

These sites are known as the Sacred Scars of Arkanthys. The term reflects their origin rather than reverence. They are scars left behind by the cosmic convergence that formed the world.

The inhabitants of Arkanthys do not recognize these places for what they truly are. To most people they are simply mountains, seas, celestial bodies, or unexplained phenomena. Their deeper origin remains unknown.

Five such scars exist. Each corresponds to one of the Creators whose principles intersected most strongly with the forming world. Vaaldros, the Principle of Entropy, left no singular scar. His influence does not settle into one place. It spreads wherever decay, collapse, and destabilization appear.

The Scar of Khoran — Elderspine

Elderspine is a vast mountain range stretching from the far north toward the eastern reaches of the continent, forming the stony backbone of the region known as Khazural. Beneath its immense peaks lie the Deeproots, subterranean structures older than any known civilization.

Among the Ungi dwarves of Khazural, Elderspine holds immense cultural and spiritual significance. Their priesthood, known as the Stonebound, maintain the deepest traditions tied to the mountain and guard the Hammer Verses within its depths.

The mountain itself contains countless geological anomalies. Caverns form in patterns that appear almost deliberate, metal veins emerge where natural processes should not place them, and the Deeproots descend further into the earth than any expedition has fully mapped. These formations are believed to be remnants of Khoran’s original imposition of structure upon the chaotic Roil that existed before the world. Elderspine remains the deepest structural imprint left by the Principle of Form.

The Scar of Selira — The Vizir Strait

The Vizir Strait separates the western continent from the eastern lands where Targon and Whiterun stand. Its waters shift between extreme depth and sudden shallows, forming powerful currents and unusual tidal movements that have remained strangely consistent for centuries. Despite its unpredictable nature, the strait has become the most important maritime trade route in the known world. Nearly all sea trade between the Empire and the western kingdoms passes through its waters.

Sailors who travel the Vizir Strait for long voyages report strange experiences. Songs carried across the water without visible source. Shapes moving beneath the waves that vanish when approached. Unfamiliar scents drifting across the sea. Some claim to glimpse figures reflected within the water itself. Whether these accounts are superstition or something deeper remains uncertain. Scholars who study rare arcane phenomena suspect that the strait may retain faint remnants of Selira’s principle of flow, where water first gained its ability to carry resonance, echo, and memory.

The Scar of Pyrrhex — Stygia

Stygia was once a vast volcanic archipelago in the southern seas of Arkanthys. Islands rose constantly from beneath the ocean as eruptions forced molten rock toward the surface, while older landmasses collapsed and vanished beneath the waves. The region never reached geological stability, its landscape reshaped continuously by fire and upheaval. This instability was the lingering imprint of Pyrrhex, the Principle of Transformation, embedded deep within the world’s crust.

Long after the First Age, during the Godwar, the region surrounding Stygia was violently reshaped. The death of Kassira and the catastrophic rise of Syrandora shattered the Cadrian Vale and triggered a massive tidal upheaval across the surrounding seas. The resulting wave swallowed the volcanic archipelago entirely.

Today Stygia exists only as a lost scar beneath the ocean. The seabed in the region remains volcanically unstable, and the waters above it are considered dangerous and unpredictable. Though the islands vanished, the scar itself remains.

The Scar of Aeltheon — The Vault of Time and Thought

Unlike the other scars, the Vault of Time and Thought is not a place within the physical world. The Vault exists beyond the boundaries of Arkanthys itself, drifting across the flow of time. It cannot be reached, visited, or located through any known method. It has no fixed position and no stable entrance. The Vault is believed to contain the memory of the world itself. Every moment that has occurred upon Arkanthys and every thought that has passed through its living beings is said to echo within it.

Because the Vault both contains time and moves through it, it exists simultaneously as an entrance and an exit, a beginning and an ending. It is sometimes described in philosophical texts as the mind of the world. Among the few scholars who speculate about the earliest age of existence, the Vault of Time and Thought is often called the brain of Arkanthys.

The Scar of Nyvara — Lumea and Elunara

The twin moons of Arkanthys, Lumea and Elunara, orbit the world in perfect celestial balance. Lumea shines with pale white light, while Elunara glows with a faint violet halo visible across the night sky. Their synchronized movement forms one of the most stable astronomical cycles known to the world. When the two moons align, their meeting marks the end of the year. Across Arkanthys, cultures celebrate this moment with festivals that welcome the beginning of a new cycle.

Though many traditions attribute divine meaning to the moons, their true origin may lie far deeper within the earliest shaping of the world. Some believe that Lumea and Elunara represent Nyvara’s greatest remaining imprint upon the world, celestial anchors that preserve the balance between presence and absence surrounding Arkanthys.

Vaaldros — The Living Scar

Vaaldros left no singular scar. Unlike the other Creators, whose influence settled into specific locations within the forming world, the Principle of Entropy does not concentrate into one place. It spreads. Where structures collapse, where magic destabilizes, where void pockets appear beneath the earth, traces of Vaaldros may be present. These manifestations are not permanent landmarks but ongoing processes of erosion within reality itself.

In this sense, Vaaldros did not leave a scar upon Arkanthys. He became the scar that continues to move through it.