In a time of darkness, when giant monsters of land and sea roamed the earth, Gumoori saved the world’s first peoples from annihilation. She carved out her skin and bone to form the Godstones. Atop them, giant trees were said to grow, and havens made by their sprawling boughs amidst an otherwise perilous realm.

But this story faded into myth, believed only by the ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ and even there, nearly forgotten. That was until the Boora tribes fled to the great plateau they would name Ehro-Tutook. There, where predators ruled the forests, a woman would lead her people to safety—a giant tree with roots wrapped around a boulder. A place where monsters dare not tread. They proclaimed the boulder a Godstone, the tree a ‘Tua’, Tree of the Godstone, weapon against The Dark.

The Boora pilgrims called this place Tuawara—place of the Tua and water. The first village was Maagi named after the woman that brought them, soon becoming the first of the Boora city-states.

‘Motun’ in the language of their people, means ‘sea of the sky’. It refers to the mighty bay of Motun that spans far beyond the eye’s reach. The bay receives an immeasurable flow from the creases of the Great Mountain Geera Igwe and the thawing north.

The city-state is made up of a collection of inter-connected island and coastal villages, and some more remote river communities.

They are sea and river people, fed literally and spiritually by the waterways. At the eastern reaches of the bay you will find Rooyim lo Wara—the Endless Falls—a drop of a thousand metres into the vast ocean below.

“When one of their people dies, they must take them only as far as full bellies will allow. The warriors will take them as far as they can—a show of respect. The final judgement is not theirs to make. The ancestors decide whether they will make the journey to the true sea.”

“Seven hundred and forty years after Morobé, the first Boora climbed the front range of Hadr Bayadja—white sky—and set eyes on the Marr-Engyadreh Tua-Àmma—a Snow Gum—the Mother Tree of Sval.”

Sval is a borrowed name. The story goes that some long-bodied Dharwar in their balloon ship were blown from the gas fields in the Porth’s northern wards and smashed into Hadr Bayadja with twenty-three men. Thinking they were falling into the open jaws of a behemoth they cried ‘Svaaal!’ meaning jaws. The locals liked the name so much they kept it.

Sval is a vast region, much of which is in perpetual winter of varying severity. The people are known for their architecture and engineering skills.

Aku’s capital is known as a citadel city. They are a hard people, quick to war. The region is situated on the dark side of Geera Igwe.