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The Sea of Silt and the Rim Wall

The giant gray backdrop to every view on Aerun.

No signal. The Aura network stops at the Rim Wall, and there are no relays out on the silt, so this chapter will never download. Here's what you can see and learn from the coast.

The Sea of Silt

The gray country fills the whole middle of Aerun, sitting on top of the highland like water on a table. It isn't sand. It's dust finer than flour, hundreds of miles of it, pale as ash and perfectly flat. Nobody owns it.

• Where: above you. The interior is higher than the coast: the silt's surface sits well over a thousand feet above the sea, held up by the Rim Wall, so from the lowlands you look up at it.
• What it does: it flows like water, and you sink in it like water. People and animals both. There's no swimming in it.
• Getting across: three ways. The Guild's marked lane, the Long Reach, aboard a silt skimmer; the shoals, ridges of firmer ground that shift with the seasons and that the desert tribes know; or not at all.
• Weather: silt-storms, big dust storms that bury landmarks, rearrange the shoals, and can strip the paint off a hull. There's a season for them, and it's on the long side.

The Rim Wall

The ring of cliffs that holds the interior up: one continuous wall of ochre rock between the green coast and the gray country above. From anywhere on the Ring Road, it's your horizon.

• The climb: around two thousand feet from the lowlands to the top in most places, sheer near the top over long fans of scree. On the inside, the silt comes almost right up to the edge.
• It varies. It's highest and steepest in the north and west, where the Ringing Mountains join it. Along the east it steps down in benches and ramps. And at the Balic Saddle it drops to a few hundred feet: the one place a road can cross.
• Silt-falls: where the rim dips, dust pours over the edge in slow, endless cascades, like gray waterfalls. You can see them for miles, they're gorgeous, and they're also a sign the wind is picking up.

Good to know

• There's wildlife. Something big lives under the deep silt, and skimmer crews watch for its wake the way sailors watch for reefs.
• Nothing goes northwest. The northwestern reach has no lane, no markers, and no charts. Pilots call it the blank, and the Guild's rule is simple: nobody goes there.
• Bring a good veil. Breathing the dust for days is rough on the lungs. Buy a proper veil; the cheap ones are souvenirs.
• Pick your campsite. Don't camp under a silt-fall or a scree fan. Things fall off the wall.
• Only two crossings matter for trade: Balic's saddle in the south and Raam's shelf in the northeast. Everywhere else is a climb, and climbers don't bring cargo.