The Frozen Abyss is mostly uninhabitable.  Too cold to survive for long stretches of time, it will literally freeze people solid in some places.  However, and you’ll see this here in this picture, that’s mostly in the area below the cliffs.  There are great ice shelves that push up over the greater expanse of the continent, and it is said that no one who has descended them has ever seen the light of day again.  That’s primarily because of the overcast that ensures no sunlight ever truly reaches the land below, although there are great monsters and creatures in the world beyond that would be hard to survive as well.  This is the “eastern landing” of The Frozen Abyss, a barely habitable area that only the most maddened adventurers would dare to step foot on.

The western landing, on the other hand, is meant as a punitive sentence.  Even colder than the already harsh east, the worst people in the world are sent here to serve out the rest of their days.  It has been said, however, that magic has pooled in this area, and left the western landing with strange properties, such as odd time dilations, and extended lifespans for those who live here.  In a lot of ways, this looks so surreal, because its difficult to imagine a world in which the sea is stopped and then there are cliffs, and somehow the sea doesn’t pass beyond them.  Again, we have some towering ice shelves here which get so cold, the water can’t pierce through them, and certainly can’t run higher than them.  Even if the shelves somehow shattered, the water would no doubt freeze in place before it could draw too far.

And with that, we’ll take one last look at this part of the world, showing you the great expanse that the Frozen Abyss covers.  It really is astounding how much untamed wilderness is there.  Perhaps one day, someone will learn how to make it work for them.

That is it for our Inkarnate maps for a while, but as I mentioned in our last map post, we will be heading back to the places we’ve been again, to see what new secrets have been revealed, and what might lie beyond in wait.  Thank you so much for spending your time looking at this cartography.  I hope you enjoyed it!

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You’ll see in the map that there are a few places close to Aeratul and Algea that have a bit more of a presence to them.  This shows as hills and cliffs, and while that may seem a little uninhabitable, it’s actually the part of the Frozen Abyss that is most hospitable to the known races.  That’s because beyond these regions, the Frozen Abyss descends hundreds of feet into the bitter cold unknown.  Amidst blustery weather, it’s hard for anyone to see beyond the cliffs, and very few people on record have ever ventured below and returned.

Of course, because the Frozen Abyss is so inhospitable, there’s not a lot of people who are there, and those who are aren’t the most scrupulous people.  South of Aeratul, the area serves as a sanctuary for the exiled—note quite a prison, but certainly no country club either.  It’s the one place where it is considered in poor taste to collect a bounty on someone’s head.  And that’s besides the fact that it is difficult to get there, and filled with all sorts of dangers.

As always, we wrap up with the parchment version of the land.  In this case, the map is spread out fairly wide, because the Frozen Abyss covers so much of the lower part of the planet.  They’re not hurting from global warming on Tellest, so this combination of land and ice is expansive indeed.  This is the penultimate map that we’re showing off, which of course means in just a few short weeks, you’ll see the final map that we commissioned through Kay Fulmer.  That’s not to say we aren’t planning on collaborating with him again, but we’ve got to build up our budget again first.  In any case, we’ve still got lots of other maps to show off over the next few months… They’ll just be in a different style.  See you soon!

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