Darklight Valley, home to the Darklight Stables of HARPG :iconHARPG:

See a larger uncoloured version with the names visible here: [link]

This original of this is safely tucked away at the Main buildings of the Stables - a reclaimed ancient ruin. That had been sketched after a large drawing discovered on a then still standing wall elsewhere in the valley, a map with no names. As you can see, even this copy has seen a bit of roughness in its life.

Now, Darklight Valley is absolutely riddled with ancient ruins, far too many to plot on a map. Most of these are little more than heaps, the occasional tumbled wall or weathered steps carved into the mountainside. Judging from their state, it's likely that there was once close ties to other races, even associations with long gone empires.

The valley is nestled in among a clutch of mountains of varying sizes. The entire section of land tilts, just the tiniest bit - but enough for all the water dissappearing into the underground streams to be channeled down to the southwest edge. Here you find a very long, very shallow lake, from which flows a waterfall so high that you can't even see the ground below and where the air is a constant haze.
In fact, millions of years ago, a tectonic shift pushed up this slice of land miles above the surrounding country, creating a completely isolated environment.
Well...not completley isolated. There are occasional strays arriving...
Strays? You ask. How can there be strays arriving at a place like this?
Well... That's where Darklight Valley reveals one of its major secrets....

So, you want to visit the valley, maybe bring a horse for breeding or taking part in a competition... Ok, so far so good. But the place you want to go is essentially an isolated mesa. Actually, if you knew it, that is the least of your problems - and perhaps mutter a bit about the stable owner being very adamant about you not charting a helicopter to solve the problems. Of course, you'd do that anyway - but you can't find the valley on any of the maps you've consulted. So what do you do?

You follow the instructions...take a little traveled path into the mountains...leave your trailer and head off on a trail so seldom used that it's little but a couple of lines on your map. Along the way the trail takes you through a natural rockformation taking the shape of a big connected arc. You ride right on through. It's beautiful...but at the time you notice nothing special about it. The landscape is the same...mountains and...what you gues...more mountains. Perhaps you look up into the sky and notice the shape of an unfamilar bird in the sky....

...except that's no bird.
In fact...what you just rode through so casually was a portal, a portal between worlds. The Gate of Heaven

Welcome...to Darklight Valley!

Stable journal: [link]

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Brushes used:



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