Highways beaten across the world by centaur hooves, built to outlast a thousand years — and in places they simply vanish.
Made: c. year 200 (Second Age), by Astralis, through the Centaurs
Story
Astralis had the centaurs beat roads across the world, marking their progress with waystations — highways that will outlast a thousand years, with bridges where rivers were hard to cross. The roads pull them toward particular places: one called Starlight [?], one the swamp country where they found an ink for longer-lasting maps, one far away from which no one has yet returned. In places the road simply stops and vanishes.
In the same years, the Skybreak closed the sky. By around year 500, late in the Second Age, Atlas saw the roads crowded and filled the gap with the Halflings, small nomad traders of the roads. In those same years the Stone Talus founded the Bazaar where the roads cross the river.
Now
Wonders of the world, with waystations and bridges. The halflings trade along them, and caravans leave the Bazaar in every direction.
Connections
- Centaurs — built them
- Halflings — the nomad traders who live on them
- Bazaar — where the roads cross the river
- Skybreak — the sky closed, the roads crowded
- Time Keepers — the centaurs’ map-making star-watchers
Open: Starlight [?]; where the road that no one returns from leads [?]; why the roads vanish [?].