The twelve regions

The road through the valley

Starborne's journey runs through twelve regions, from the forest home where the story begins to the city at the heart of the Ministry. Each region is one leg of the road and one beat of the novel's first volume. Each has its own town, its own dungeon and its own Veil Medal, and each medal is what lets you travel on.

The order below is the canon order of the journey. The browser version already has towns by these names on its world map, but the game is in development and the map, the route and even some names may still change. Read this chapter as a gazetteer: what each place is like, and why the story goes there.

At a glance

1. Hearthvale

Home, at the foot of the western mountains. Hearthvale is moody dusk-green, with warm pools of hearth-light against the cold of the trees and a gentle fog. It feels safe, and it feels watched. Gideon's cabin and forge are here, with a well, a fenced farm, and a half-hammered nail in the lintel. This is where the novel's opening tragedy happens and where the first wrongness creeps into the woods.

2. Brakktun

The road east follows the Tooth Road past a landmark called the Tooth. A village west of it has already been taken. Brakktun's meadow is open and amber by day, but doors stand open, fires still burn and nobody speaks. Bell-ropes are bound in salt and hair, chalk squares are drawn on the stones, and abandoned bowls sit counted out in rows. This is where you first see what the Ministry does when it crosses a village like auditors.

3. Harmony

The novel calls it the copper-pipe place. You reach it along the Copperwend, a long boardwalk over black water where the pipes hum. Harmony is teal mist and verdigris, lantern light reflected on still water, the great copper pipe-works and their sluice valves, and the ripple of a mire serpent under the surface. The pipes are not only plumbing: they are how the Ministry moves what it takes.

4. Duskreach

The Long Gloaming is a road in perpetual twilight, with its lanterns spaced too far apart. Duskreach is violet-grey and full of deep shadow, and it is the region where carrying light matters most. Owls roost over snuffed lampposts, and in the square stands a sundial with no sun. The story's theme here is light as exposure: the Ministry's lens, and what it means to be seen and counted.

5. Cinderhold

Through the Ashfall Pass, under falling embers and over black-glass scree. Cinderhold is orange on charcoal, lava channels and the Great Forge, with ash drakes overhead and black-iron nails cooling on the stones. It is the region of Gideon's craft: ritual smithing with nails, ash and heat, and the hammer mantra at the centre of his character.

6. Frostmere

The White Silence is a snowfield where tracks vanish and the wind seems to count. Frostmere is blue-white and near monochrome, broken by one warm lantern, with whiteout fog that rolls in without warning. There is a frozen cistern, an ice-locked shrine, frost lynxes, and a hamlet buried after a taking. Its story is the erased names, and the silence a taking leaves behind.

7. Ravenmoor

The Gallows Mile runs between wind-bent trees and hung lanterns, under watching crows. Ravenmoor is grey-green and lit by lightning, with crow gibbets, false signposts and a noble's rotting manor. Nothing here is quite what it says it is. It is the region of the Ministry's deceptions, and of rivals who keep coming back.

8. Thornwall

The Bramble Throat is a narrowing corridor of thorns that draw blood on contact. Thornwall is rust-red and bruise-purple, with living briar gates, packs of thornhounds and roots fed on blood. The theme is ritual cost: a world that feeds on those willing to pay.

9. Stormhall

The Breaking Shore is rain-lashed cliffs and siege ruins with surf that sounds like drums. Stormhall is steel-blue under hard lightning, with broken siege engines, fortress gates and turrets. Here the Ministry stops looking like clerks and shows itself as an armed force.

10. Sablefen

The Sunkway is black water to the knees, with things glinting under the surface. Sablefen is near-black, lit only by a cold blue glow, and it is the most claustrophobic place on the road. Sunken homes sit in the mire, and somewhere in it lies the black slab veined like a still ocean. It is where the Veil feels closest: thin mouths in the air.

11. Gloamspire

The Pilgrim Stair climbs in switchbacks past prayer-bells, with a choir's hum carried on the wind. Gloamspire is indigo dusk, rivers of candles and a great spire against a bruised sky. It is the region of faith, and of the Ministry's false gospel: order through darkness.

12. Concordia City

The Auditor's Mile is pristine and lifeless. Everything along it has been counted, and nothing is alive. Concordia City is cold white-grey under surgical light, hung with banners of the square-and-line, full of ministry halls and ledger-archives. It is the heart of the auditors, and its gate opens onto the Black Glass Observatory.

Beyond the twelve: the Black Glass Observatory

The Observatory is not a region you travel through. It is the end of the road. Its gate opens only when all twelve Veil Medals have been set into it. Inside is the Tear's blue-black veined glass and controlled darkness, with no safe light anywhere except Lyra's. For what waits there, see The world of Aethel; for who, see Characters.

Reading the regions

• The order tells a story. The road begins at home, then shows you a taking, then moves steadily closer to the Ministry, from rumour to plumbing to lenses to armed enforcers to the city itself.
• Light is the thread. Hearthvale's hearth, Duskreach's spaced lanterns, Frostmere's single warm lamp and the Observatory's lack of any light but Lyra's are the same idea at different strengths.
• Watch for the square-and-line. Wherever the Ministry's mark appears, a taking has happened or is coming.