The Glass Range
Type: Mountain Chain
Location: Northern Canava, planet Aescharion
Notable Settlements: Ironbraid Hold (Shardsworn stronghold)
Primary Exports: Mirrorstone, silver, quartz, reflective crystal
Associated Factions: The Shardsworn, The Lantern Priests, The Veinless Rebels
Overview
The Glass Range is a jagged belt of snow-capped peaks, quartz cliffs, and light-catching caverns stretching across Canava’s northern edge. It forms both a physical and spiritual boundary between the inhabited lands of Canava and the frozen reaches beyond. Sunlight refracts through the crystalline strata, creating kaleidoscopic auroras visible even in daylight — phenomena locals call the Shardsong Glow.
While breathtakingly beautiful, the Range is haunted by its history. Beneath its glittering slopes lie the veins of mirrorstone, the continent’s most valuable mineral — and its most cursed. Modern dwarves of Ironbraid Hold mine these veins tirelessly, though their work has revealed a terrible truth: the mirrorstone encases the fragmented souls of their ancestors.
Geography
Heartspine Peak: The tallest summit, believed to contain the original “First Forge” where ancient dwarves bound their souls to stone. The peak emits faint, rhythmic pulses of light at midnight.
The Luminous Veins: Networks of glowing mirrorstone that snake through the mountains, visible through thin snow or when cracked open. The veins hum when storms gather overhead.
The Vein’s Mouth: A colossal mining shaft descending deep into the Range, surrounded by Ironbraid’s fortresses. It serves as both a trade depot and a shrine to ancestral spirits.
The Crystalfall Glacier: A creeping sheet of ice that fractures and exposes new crystal deposits each year. Many miners have vanished within its mirrored tunnels.
The Silent Vales: Valleys where sound is strangely muted, as if absorbed by the reflective rock walls. Lantern Priests claim this is where the mountain “listens.”
Cultural Significance
For the dwarves, the Glass Range is both holy ground and industrial prison. Every pickaxe strike is a prayer or a sin.
The Shardsworn: View mining as a sacred act of liberation — each freed crystal releases an ancestor’s soul.
The Lantern Priests: Maintain that the mirrorstone must be “burned” to release divine light, justifying its industrial use.
The Veinless Rebels: Argue that mining merely shatters and silences their kin. They smuggle mirrorstone back into the mountains to perform forbidden rites of rejoining.
Because of its mirrorstone trade, the Range powers Canava’s entire economy — from Harlequin Vale’s cannon forges to Port Chimera’s soul-glass trinkets — yet every shipment deepens the dwarves’ spiritual despair.
Myths & Legends
The First Forge: Said to lie sealed under Heartspine Peak. Some believe reopening it could reunite all fragmented souls — or unleash a blinding cataclysm of light.
The Shardsong: An ethereal melody occasionally heard in the caverns; it is said to be the collective voices of trapped spirits resonating through crystal veins.
The Stone Saints: Ghostly figures glimpsed within mirrorstone walls. Miners claim these apparitions guide or curse them depending on intent.
The Drowned Vein: A mythic underwater extension of the Range continuing beneath the Chimera Sea, forming the Glass Trough. It is rumored to contain the souls of those lost to the Maw.
Economy & Politics
Mirrorstone from the Glass Range is essential to Canava’s power structure:
Harlequin Vale purchases refined shards to craft cannon lenses and pyrotechnic devices.
Embervault engineers use powdered crystal as heat-resistant enchantment cores.
Port Chimera traffics mirrorstone relics to collectors and smugglers across Aescharion.
Control of the mining routes has sparked multiple “Vein Wars” — underground conflicts fought not for land, but for the right to interpret the souls’ fate.
Environmental Effects
Continuous mining has destabilized the Range’s natural balance. Earthquakes, mirrored blizzards, and light storms known as “Glassquakes” now ripple through the region. When these occur, the mountain faces seem to weep molten light — a phenomenon miners dread as the Mountain Bleeding.
Current Status
Ironbraid Hold remains operational but increasingly divided between its factions. The Lantern Priests’ cathedrals shine brighter each year, burning more souls for fuel, while the Veinless grow bold, spreading messages of liberation across the caverns.
Rumors persist of an upcoming rebellion — a plan to collapse the main vein and let the ancestors finally rest.