Carannon
Carannon is the main Malleon possession in the Conflux, a water world much like the Malleon homeworld of Mor. However, where Mor’s waters are placid and pacific, Carannon is beset by the Tempest, a continent-sized superstorm that renders a huge surface area of the planet uninhabitable and wracks the rest with frequent, violent, and unpredictable storms.
From giant pearls to exotic research materials, the marine world of Carannon is rife with the treasures churned to the surface by the great Tempest that roils its waters. The bold and foolhardy alike strive to join the vaunted Stormchasers who brave the storm in search of fortune. And every Malleon pirate and soldier dreams of wielding the prosthetic trick-weapons and folded-steel “katurasu” swords that are forged in the planet’s storied weaponsmithing tradition.
Windlee
The first, largest, and most influential Malleon colony is Windlee, an island continent on the other side of the world from the Tempest’s Eye. It’s home to the least turbulent air and waters on Carannon, but what that means in practice is that Windlee is one of the few places on Carannon with a “dry season,” meaning a season when it doesn’t rain every single day. Windlee’s climate is perfect for growing rice, and most of the established settlements on Windlee are surrounded by miles of terraced rice paddies. During the War, bento boxes from Windlee were a staple in the Malleon Navy.
The capital of the Windlee colony is Windlee City, a settlement at elevation bisected by the Laughing Mountain, which divides the city into an upper city called “Leeward” and a lower city called “Windward.” (The Laughing Mountain is called that because it’s very porous, with many passages between Leeward and Windward. When storms hit and heavy winds pass through, those pores create a Helmholtz resonance that sounds like rumbling laughter.)
Windward, the eastern, lower city, usually has some amount of flooding, from a couple inches to a couple of feet. As a result, Windward buildings are set on stilts, and Windward residents wear tall waterproof boots. When Leeward VIP’s come down to Windward, they use sedan chairs with EMN bubbles to protect their delicate outfits from the elements. Windward is governed from the Tap, a complex leading deep underground built above a cave system to divert the floodwaters. Windwarders resent Leeward, whose citizens demean them as “dampies” and “soggers.”
Leeward, the western, upper city, stays dry, even in the toughest storms, because what rain makes it through the Laughing Mountain ends up in the aquifers that water the upper city. Residents of Leeward prefer to dress in silks and leathers that would be ruined by water, to contrast themselves with the poorer residents of Windward. Leeward is governed from a tower called the Beaker, a huge glass skyscraper interwoven with an aquarium that allows fish to swim all the way from ground level to the penthouse.
Northeast of Windlee City is the mountainous Feron settlement of Hochschloss. During the War, a Feron known as Grasshopper organized a guerilla campaign against Windlee, mostly aimed at destroying assets shipping out from Windward Spaceport. The Malleon attempted several campaigns into Hochschloss, but being poor mountaineers—there aren’t any mountains on the Malleon homeworld of Mor—were unable to take Hochschloss the way they’d captured Fort Shohet.
Sumbala Bay
The Sumbala Bay Colony sits in one of Carannon’s temperate zones, in Monsoon Alley. Sumbala Island is fertile but storm-wracked, but the Bay itself is protected from the worst of it by Pavise Ridge. Sumbala Bay is known for its underwater treasures: It’s home to giant oysters with enchanting pearls unlike anything else in the known worlds, and its underwater caves are full of precious gems of every hue. Divers venture out on rickety boats but wearing the latest in submersible Kallisti power armor.
Sumbala Bay is populated primarily by Malleon from the Rahambey Islands on Mor, a religious people who worship a more ancient version of the Cyfnoi who are half-human and half-animal, known as the Vaala. On each of the eight peaks of Pavise Ridge, they built an enormous statue of each of the Vaala, each from a different colored crystal. Many Rahambey Islanders from Mor practice a religion requiring them to make a pilgrimage to pray at each of the Vaala, and they’re also one of the Conflux’s most popular tourist attractions.
In addition to the treasures from Sumbala Bay itself, Sumbala Island is known for many exotic spices that evolved in Sumbala’s erratic weather. These spices are difficult to harvest not only because of the weather patterns but also because Sumbala has an enormous cave full of wolfbats: Wandering into the Sumbalan Heights without a dog to hear the wolfbats’ noiseless howls is suicide, each pack capable of stripping a human body clean to the bone in under a minute.
Shiverport
Far to the north, and permanently beset by storms, is Shiverport, the colony on the edge of the Tempest. Shiverport is habitable only through the operation of the Salamander Engine, made to harness a huge Curiosity believed to have been formed millions of years ago in the Tempest before drifting outward. The Salamander Engine keeps the city core warm and radiates enough heat outward to keep the parts of Shiverport exposed to the elements relatively habitable. The Salamander Engine also deflects heavy winds, as well as scattering hailstorms and horizontal rain into harmless snow and drizzle.
Shiverport is home to the Carannon School of Mines, a school originally devoted to the economics and engineering of mines, but which now also teaches science and engineering courses relevant to the Stormchasers, who have their headquarters in Shiverport. CSM is known for producing the best structural engineers, as well as the best shipwrights specializing in craft designed to operate planetside in adverse conditions.
The Stormchasers, an organization of adventurers who brave the Tempest, maintain their headquarters in a lighthouse called the Candle, a huge, hollow, white stone monolith topped by a Curiosity-fueled bonfire that stays alight even in the harshest storms. The strange energy of the Tempest transforms things caught within the storm: Bodies of sailors tossed overboard in the roiling storm are sometimes found days later, their eyes turned to pearls and their bones to gold. Though founded by Malleon sailors, the Stormchasers are open to any who would risk life and limb to harvest the Tempest’s deadly alchemy, and as a result, Shiverport’s small population is the terrestrial settlement with the most even balance of Malleon, Isan, and Feron.
The Shiverport economy is built around “rigs,” offshore staging platforms for the Stormchasers. Rigs have movable legs, but they’re very slow, capable of no more than 5 knots. Stormchaser companies take their rigs as close to the Tempest as they dare, then fly into the Tempest in formations escorting “Bumblebees,” ungainly spherical ships that can only fly using specially engineering sublight Nephelium drives, but with a magnetic and gravitational silhouette perfect for efficiently harvesting the precious materials the Tempest churns up.
Pontifex Bay
Pontifex Bay is the site of the first Catallax campuses outside Arlayas, a joint project of the Elihu, Braunstein, and Ezreal Colleges. It was overseen by and named for Pontifex Solomon Kohelet, the first Isan leader of the Catallax, who believed that only through cross-pollination across campuses throughout the Conflux could the Catallax truly unlock the next stage of evolution. It’s built above a huge semi-aquatic, symbiotic plant called the Zukud, whose roots and branches run everywhere through Provost’s Bay, above and below the waterline. The western and eastern wings of the bay are connected by a huge gold-and-silver bridge to honor that symbol of the pontifical office.
While Pontifex Bay has yet to contribute to anything so grandiose as a paradigm shift in human evolution, it’s the site of a huge harbor and drydock to service the many “mobile quads”—submarine-based labs where the Catallax venture into Carannon’s depths for research and study. These labs study the dynamics of organisms in the depths, specifically how they use Nephelium adaptations to protect themselves against the cold and the pressure.
From these initial discoveries, Pontifex Bay upgraded its drydock with advanced fabrication technology to refit the mobile quads with new adaptations as they’re discovered. This process is assisted by the Zukud, which reaches out into the bay with hydroponic roots. These roots stick to ships, but apply a Nephelium-infused oil that insulates them and deflects light- and sound-based detection, releasing after the oil finishes applying. The Catallax control access to the Zukud root system, only allowing outsiders access to this ship treatment for a substantial donation to the endowment.
The Pontifex Bay project culminated in the secret Quitstaff Laboratory, a huge complex built deep on the ocean floor to study the Tempest from a safe distance, protected from the crushing pressure by a Nephelium reactor and kept strictly need-to-know. Quitstaff has access to exotic matter beyond that of even the most intrepid Stormchasers, using drones to capture heavier compounds as they sink beneath the waves, trapping them in stasis fields to prolong their half-lives as they’re brought back for study. While the Raff Center on Ranweth discovers more new materials in total, Quitstaff has found more materials with unique and seemingly physics-defying properties.
Fort Shohet
Fort Shohet was once the Feron colony of Tchernyshchy, a large hilly island of Feron ranchers who raised livestock on the plants that grew in the island’s rich, black soil. Tchernyshchy was sparsely populated, with a moderately sized town springing up at the foothills of the Antlered Mountain, a lone peak a pair of antler-like stone projections. These Feron were peaceful, and, aside from restricting them from heading off-world, the Malleon authorities largely left them along for most of the War. However, following Admiral Nazzaretes’s bombing of Karsa and destruction of the Gate, an Isan radical named Yomru Shohet organized a militia that launched increasingly deadly raids on Feron ranchers, including killing women and children, until the Feron organized their own force and killed Shohet’s forces to a man.
This was roughly the low point of the War from the Malleon side, and Command decided to make an example. The island was renamed Fort Shohet and turned into an open-air prison, the Malleon military police commandeering the entire town at the Antlered Mountain’s base for administration. From then on, the Malleon used Fort Shohet as a dumping ground for enemy combatants, agitators, and anyone else Command wanted to disappear.
Though activists have demanded an accounting of what happened at Fort Shohet during the later years of the War, Malleon Command still keeps virtually all the files classified, and what’s released has been redacted into incoherence. Some journalists suspect a serious war crime was covered up there, but so far no one has uncovered more than innuendo.
Minatsu
Minatsu is an archipelago of volcanic islands, stretching for 1,000 miles of islands within the best fisheries in the Conflux. Its capital, Nozawa, is built on the slopes of a huge volcano (called Mt. Nozawa) that shields the nearby bay from the Tempest. Atop Mt. Nozawa is a huge caldera lake, Kumomizumi, large and deep enough to fit many large waterships. The Nozawa Elevator, a massive vertical conveyor that can lift even aircraft carriers miles up from the bay to Kumomizumi, to refit them at the wet- and drydocks there, as well as protect them from the Tempest and enemy vessels. The lake is heated geothermally, and the Nozawa Power Company has an underwater power plant that already powers most of the city and is drilling from the facility even deeper into Mt. Nozawa to tap into the heat more directly.
Nozawa is also famous for its two rival schools of weaponsmiths, both considered the finest in the Conflux. The first school, Haganekiku, was founded centuries ago by a Malleon-Feron swordsmith named Ivan Morita, who was trained in traditional Malleon bladecraft by masters in the Mourning Isles on Mor, but invented a new style to stake out a middle ground between the finesse of Malleon blades and the weight and power of Feron weapons. Morita personally crafted the first katurasu, a cross between a katana and a cutlass treasured by any Malleon naval officers fortunate enough to own one. Haganekiku is also famous for its location, Serpent Island, in the Kumomizumi. It’s called that because there’s a huge sea serpent sculpture coiled nearly all the way around the island, with glittering scales of many different metals and alloys, forged with the same folded-metal process that they use for their blades.
The second school, Rokiodo, was founded by Morita’s half-Isan great-grandson, Qasim Morita, whose Isan mother was a famous Anastasi craftsman in her own right, specializing in totevetti (the ritual prosthetics that Anastasi Isan spend their lives tinkering and upgrading) that hid trick weapons. Rokiodo, then, is a school known for taking Haganekiku’s already-controversial approach of hybridizing Malleon and Feron bladesmithing, and adding a further layer of Isan ingenuity. Rokiodo is known for producing complex and elaborate but also somehow elegant trick weapons, both standalone and built into both totevetti and secular prosthetics.
For all its legendary weaponsmithing culture, Minatsu’s main contribution to the Conflux’s economy is through its fishing industry. Minatsu is the best place in the Conflux to find quality seafood, both ready-to-eat and to supply mess aquariums for ships on longer voyages. Minatsu is also famous for having the best sushi chefs in the Conflux, although most Isan and Feron consider sushi disgusting.
Kestrem
Kestrem is the main Isan colony on Carannon, built into a huge ridge of sea-mountains jutting out from the deep sea. It’s only accessible to aircraft, through a skyport near the peak of Mount Arvinai, the tallest mountain in Kestrem Ridge. On the way into Kestrem Skyport is Crowsnest Town, a lashed-together floating village of blimps and other aircraft modeled on the nomadic flotillas of Karsa, Isan’s homeworld. The ships of Crowsnest Town are high enough up to be unaffected by the Tempest for most of the year, but during the stormiest seasons, or in case of freak storms, Crowsnest Town can disassemble to take shelter in the hollows between the mountains of the ridge or within Kestrem itself, which can raise a watertight seal between the skyport and the interior.
Over the centuries, the Isan have hollowed out Mt. Arvinai, digging deep below sea level. Kestrem had already grown very rich from these excavations: “Kestrem stone,” marbled with veins of Nephelium, is the most expensive luxury building material in the Conflux. But Kestrem’s most lucrative export is candied Nephelium, made from the sap of Afaina, a plant that draws it up from depths of Carannon that even the most adventurous Isan spelunkers have not yet explored. The rare, purest expressions of Afaina sap, known as “ritual grade,” go to the various Isan schools, where it’s the main ingredient in the candies Isan consume as part of Transubstantiation rituals. Most of the rest sells to Malleon pharmaceutical companies.
Kestrem is widely considered an impregnable fortress because its primary food sources, mushrooms and root vegetables that grow deep underground, would allow it to outlast any siege. This food supply is managed by a company called Radish Prince, named after an imp from Isan legend who could plant seeds in anything, even rock or metal, and have them grow. The president of Radish Prince has a permanent seat on Kestrem’s council, and often is elected to serve as colonial governor.
The governor and council rule Kestrem from a complex at the deepest part of Kestrem’s excavations called Niffelet. Niffelet houses a top-secret naval base with a hidden deep-sea waterlock that allows submarines and submersible spacecraft to come and go undetected. The “Flying Fish” submarines built at Niffelet—so called because these submarines can breach the water, launch air-to-air or air-to-surface munitions, then dive back to evade counterattacks—are a state secret kept even from Malleon allies. The theory is that in the event of a Malleon betrayal, Kestrem could outlast a siege while the Flying Fish would wage guerilla war against soft Malleon naval targets to force them to negotiate for peace.
The Three Moons
Carannon has three moons: Ostheno, Meduz, and Rialei. Ostheno is the most important of the moons because it’s rich in key metals and minerals for shipbuilding. Nelson Shipyards, by far the largest Malleon shipbuilder, has its main facility in the Conflux in orbit above Ostheno City, connected to the moon by a space elevator. Ostheno also has several secondary drydocks in orbit, built during the War to take the pressure off the main Nelson facility.
Meduz is known as Carannon’s Tidal Moon, because it’s the one with the strongest effects on Carannon’s oceans and the Tempest. There’s not much built on Meduz: It’s mainly known as the home of the Royal Conflux Oceanographic Institute, which tracks Carannon’s weather patterns and models the movement of the Tempest.
Rialei is both toxic and valuable: It’s full of Nephelium-infused uranium and is the only significant source of the isotope in the Conflux. The radiation is so intense that miners can’t even venture onto the surface. Instead, they use huge mining mechs controlled by mind-machine interfaces. Air crews link a mech’s interface port by attaching interface cables to a laser-guided delivery system capable of hitting an eight-foot target from six miles up. It’s thought that the Tempest is caused by some kind of interaction between Meduz’s gravity and Rialei’s combination of Nephelium and ordinary radioactivity, but scientists have not yet devised instruments fine enough to measure Rialei’s energy but sturdy enough to endure that energy.
