Together they form a ragged perimeter around the known kingdom; whether that perimeter confines Maluna or protects it remains a matter upon which no responsible scholar should pretend certainty.
The most intimate of these boundaries lies within Badarr itself; Ebbsfloe was once a proud district of blue-timbered buildings, canals and stone bridges which is now enclosed behind high walls because of the Gloom. The affliction began as a soul-devouring plague raised by cultists whose patron survives only in damaged invocations. The Order of Symphora destroyed the ritual chamber and its occupants, yet the Gloom had already entered the soil, masonry and recollection of the place. Undead walk its streets, corpse-flowers open in alleys and hallucinations invite the unwary towards whatever end they most fear or most desire. Paladins maintain the walls and conduct their cleansings from the Grand Symphoran Cathedral. Mercenaries, cult remnants and those survivors who have ceased to regard either group as unusual continue to live within. The Order admits that the Gloom cannot be cured by its present methods.. it therefore calls containment a victory, as such institutions often must.
Beyond the Farsi Peaks, the Edgelands arrive less decisively. A silver-grey mist waits among the trees and advances most readily when attention has turned elsewhere. Within it are memory-leeches, sound-echoes and pulses of strange luminance which have been compared to a heartbeat. Prolonged exposure does not always kill. It may instead remove names, loosen memories and return a traveller who answers correctly while remaining wrong in some less negotiable respect. Edgebeasts, mistwalkers, rootkein and the thing called the Howling inhabit the region. No expedition has mapped its centre because routes alter, distances fluctuate and maps themselves do not remain dependable. Thaumaturges have compared the mist to Soul-warped Glamour that learns the intruder through breath and remembrance. This theory remains speculative, which has not prevented several colleges from arguing over priority.
The Fog of War which covers the Endless Battlefield is often compared to the Edgelands' mist, though the resemblance is chiefly visual. The Edgelands diminish the self through forgetting and the Fog replaces it. Those who enter may experience dread, battle-frenzy and memories belonging to soldiers dead for generations. Spectral companies charge, retreat and die in cycles which neither victory nor exhaustion interrupts. Survivors have grieved for comrades they never met and confessed to crimes committed before their birth. The land remembers violence with sufficient force to distribute it among strangers. Its source is said to be the Assault Palace, a moving siege fortress that ruined Galiria and now proceeds with patient hostility towards Badarr. The Fog follows it like weather following a mountain, though mountains in general give us the courtesy to remain where placed.
Beneath the kingdom lies a second boundary, if the word beneath retains its usu
al meaning there. The Moonfault Depths were enlarged through centuries of mining, particularly for daltium. Daltium extraction opened routes to mutation, corruption and Rancour. The Shroud permits workings impossible elsewhere, including certain restorations of the dead, but it also presses upon mind and Soul with the weight of an old grievance. Those who claim to know what waits at the lowest reaches have not produced evidence that survives scrutiny or, in several cases, daylight.
Beyond the Darman Range stretch the Truska Wastes, also called the Scablands. Their Haze is dry and sharp, distance alters within it. Mirages persist after the heat changes and sometimes display an interest in the observer. Travellers report oases that grant visions, offer choices or vanish once an answer is given. There are accounts of a city made from sand and mirrors, though no two returnees agree upon it. Some do not return with the same face. Crown agencies are rumoured to monitor the region. Despite the Haze, settlements endure beyond the mountains. People trade, raise families, cultivate wells and conduct ordinary disputes beneath a sun that may not always be singular.
The surrounding seas provide the final visible boundary. Coastal waters are dangerous in familiar ways while the stormbelt begins roughly fifty miles from shore and proceeds into difficulties for which sailors have fewer useful names. Winds and tides behave with apparent intention, ships vanish or return altered and most charts become unreliable in the extreme. Some theologians describe the ocean as a single ancient intelligence, others maintain that the stormbelt contains something worse.
These borders differ in substance but not in conduct. The Gloom feeds upon sorrow, the Edgelands loosen identity, the Fog of War imposes violence, the Depths punish intrusion, the Haze distorts possibility and the Brine is a ceaseless appetite. Maluna therefore persists within a ring of conditions that cannot be conquered and can rarely be understood.
