[ Planes of Cordance > Pangaea > Vaalbara ]
Vaalbara
The most ancient part of the Planelette of Pangaea
HEARSAY: Every demiplane, even every plane, starts from a seed. Just ask the Yggdrani. From that seed a new planelette can grow, and maybe with the right care and attention it will blossom into a plane. Most of the time, the location of the seed is lost to time, or at least covered up by the Powers That Be. Not so in Pangaea. Vaalbara is said to be the most ancient part of Pangaea, a remnant of a seed that spawned the planelette. According to that barmy medusa Magnum Opus, divination magic suggests it was first planted when the Inner and Outer Planes were separated. The barrier between Pangaea and the Elemental Plane of Wood is thin enough in Vaalbara that a berk can travel between the two planes without even noticing. They say the treants are the only ones who can tell the differences between the two planes at this point, and those bloods (or should that be saps?) are even older than Moss-Among-His-Roots, Wind-In-His-Leaves. Vaalbara is the place where the Animal Lords come to rest when their time has truly ended.
DESCRIPTION: The oldest region of Pangaea, Vaalbara is where the dying come to rest for whatever time they have left. Many animal lords have been recorded as coming here to shuffle off the mortal coil: the Opabinia Lord, the original Shark Lord, hundreds of different Fish Lords, the last of the individual Dinosaur Lords—Apatosaurus, Triseratops, Stegosaurus just to name a few— hundreds of different Bird Lords
The forests of Vaalbara are ancient, and the trees here cannot be found elsewhere in the cosmos. The the waters have no modern fish that planewalkers would recognise, only the strange creatures of the ancient oceans. Finding a creature here means a body has probably found the last of its kind—many are eternally wandering for a mate, vanishingly unlikely to find one. All of the survival instinct of creatures here is survive, they’re far more likely to flee than attack a body—even the most bloodthirsty of them—unless they’re attacked first.
The Dustmen, the Signers, and the Sinkers have all set up kip in Vaalbara for different reasons—more on that here. The Dustmen and Sinkers have set up a stronghold they call the Last Stretch—reminiscent of a dug-out mound with an interior like you might expect a primitive clan of halflings to come up with.
SPECIAL FEATURES: The feeling of impending extinction is so powerful in Vaalbara that it amplifies Pangaea’s usual hindrance of Necromantic magic. Chant goes that not even the greatest powers of Death or Undeath can revive a berk that gets put into the dead-book here. Even if the body or skeleton is moved away from Vaalbara, it cannot be revived. On the plus side, you’ll not be harassed by undead here either, they are physically repelled from setting foot in the region, and summoning undead is said to conjure only piles of ash.
Source: SGreen, Jon Winter-Holt and Margarita, based on an idea by Greg Jensen. Geologywatch: Everything here is homebrew. Pannotia (600 million years ago) was the supercontinent before Pangaea (which existed a mere 300 million years ago). It was located around the South Pole. Going back way further, some 3 billion years, one of the very first hypothetical supercontinents has been named Vaalbara—the graybeards have reconstructed it as part of South Africa joined to part of East Australia, long before Madagascar was an island (or a movie). Incidentally, the next supercontinent is due in about 250 million years, and has already been named Pangaea Proxima. The Americas will once again be joined to Europe and Africa, which will make commuting easier, but will probably also lead to a mass extinction as most of the interior will become a blisteringly hot desert.
