Middias atop Merucca. (Patreon)

I revisited my old drawing of Upergora, the homeland of the Alves on Concavia. I’ve added travellers wayfaring below it, swans flying, ships in the distance and put down a lot more pencil gradients on the page to add depth. The city of Middias now looks unmistakably divine as it shines down on the surrounding Upergorean landscape.

I’ve also added a proper border frame to the piece, something I will do for most Concavia pieces. It shows the five cities of Upergora around the frame with their names written in Alvish script. Each of the cities is divided by a wavy line, symbolising the four waterways that lead in and out of Upergora. Middias at the top also has the wavy lines, but that is because it lies on a central island. That bar is terminated by two hourglasses, this is because the inverted mountain of Merucca and its base resemble an hourglass, but it’s also because Merucca blocks the upper mouth of the inverted stairwell, which is shaped like an hourglass, hence the double hourglass motif.

If you’d like to know more about that, here is the Lore written in the prosaic style of Concavia:

“Beyond the north wind lies the fair haven of Upergora. At the heart of this blessed shire, however, lies a fell and grim lair, the Hourglass Stairwell. This Stairwell was delved into the earth by Dhegoma, Swoma, and their children, the Dwalves, seeking to bridge the inner world of Concavia to the emptiness without, where the dark lord Tàmhas was cast at the end of the Days of Gold.

Long ago, in the Days of Silver, the Warding Mark was cast on the nether mouth of the Stairwell by the Gyden Mehter to shut out her children, Swoma and Dhegoma, who had forsook her, outside the world to be with their dark lord, Tàmhas. Mehter then bade her throng of Albes to shut the upper mouth of the Hourglass Stairwell. The Albes hefted the great peak of Merucca from its roots and shut the Stairwell by standing the berg on its head, wedging it in the opening. Mehter then bade her other children’s children, the Alves, to stand watch over the Stairwell and to see to it that the Warding Mark never become unbound. With her spellcraft, Mehter made what had been a frozen land into a blissful stead.

Upergora was shielded from the north wind on all sides by nine rings of frost-clad peaks that no man might go over. There were carved four inlets, and beside these watery gates were builded the four great towns: Falias on the waterway Daityu, Gorias on the waterway Bhadru, Murias on the waterway Danwu, and Findias on the waterway Eridanu. But the mightiest of all of them was Middias, raised atop the skyward roots of Merucca, with its thirty-three ever-watchful high-halls.

The Talanos of Talanā fought with the Alves of Upergora at the end of the Days of Tin and brought on the Great Flood. Now, in the Days of Iron, Upergora is threatened once again…”