Yabanocak
A human refugee city unseen on maps. Its houses can be dismantled, its streets change with the seasons, its smoke is vented through mushroom tunnels; it grew large enough to become the capital, but it did not dare to become visible.
City ID
Function: refugee center, dynastic meeting, and illicit trade node. Population: 410,000–620,000 in the central hearth; 2.1–3.4 million with the dispersed refuge and tunnel network. Peoples: humans in the majority; Gnome, Svirfneblin, Drow and Tiefling fugitives in the minority. Faith: The Last Hearth.
Buildings and neighborhoods
The Scattered Edge are mock camps and hunting lodges; The Hearth Ring houses the main population, while the Root Sanctuary houses the grain stores, hospitals, and escape tunnels. The Stag Courts, Towershadow, White Grove, Reed Paths, Fifth Ash, and the Lost Children are separate foci of dynasty, smuggling, and new human identity.
Administration and daily life
Hearth Assemblies govern neighbourhoods, the Council of Five Kors governs dynastic crises, and the Guardians of the Road govern security and evacuation. The ember of the common hearth has not been extinguished since the Night of the Five Embers. The city depends on Son Tarla for grain, Salkımkent for trade, Hal-Sur for salt, and Kar-Dur for iron.
Current crisis
Population exceeds the storable limit. If the Last Field does not grow, famine will begin; Red Stag demands open capital, White Hearth demands citizenship of Crown of Thorns. A common dream of the children of the Nameless Dynasty revives the fear of Stagnation.
“Yabanocak has no walls. If an enemy knows where the city begins, the wall has already been crossed.”
Location in Avarra
| Field | Record |
|---|---|
| Continent | Nareth |
| Regional threshold | Dense western groves of the Thorn Meridian and abandoned woodcutters’ roads |
| Physical site | A shallow valley concealed by mist bowls, fungus tunnels, and dismantlable walkways |
| Main approaches | Unmarked grove paths; the safe route changes each season |
| Nearby ties | Elyrakroot, Staggate, and Nareth’s unregistered border villages |
Yabanocak is not a fixed point but a settlement network that moves within one valley. Its market sits in a dry streambed in summer and around the fungus vents in winter; an outsider may find the city on a map yet fail to find the same gate a month later. That mobility protects it, while making wells, care for the ill, and grain storage persistently fragile.
| Record | Detail |
|---|---|
| Status | Human settlement not formally recognised by the Crown of Thorns |
| Population | 410,000–620,000 in the central hearth; 2.1–3.4 million with the dispersed refuge and tunnel network |
| Dependent settlements | About 14 permanent villages and more than 30 seasonal camps |
| Peoples | Humans; gnome, svirfneblin, tiefling, drow, and changeling minorities |
| Government | Hearth Assemblies, Council of Five Embers, and Road Wardens |
| Faith | The Last Hearth tradition |
| Central problem | The population has outgrown what can be hidden and fed |
The Last Hearth
The Last Hearth is not an independent fourth faith. It is a local sect of the Threshold and Ancestors tradition, developed among human refugees, and a civic rite as much as a religion. During the fall of the human kingdoms, embers said to have come from five different lands were joined in Yabanocak’s common fire. That fire represents the continuation of lost kingdoms, the memory of the dead, the hope of living openly again, and the belief that humans were one people before they were dynasties.
Every household lights its own hearth from the common fire. When someone is exiled, the fire in their home is not extinguished: an ember is placed in a small clay vessel and carried with them. To put out a hearth is to remove a person from the living and the ancestors.
The city’s real shape
Yabanocak is made of four rings. They are not fixed places on a map, but arrangements that conceal one another and can move when necessary.
Scattered Edge
The visible outer layer consists of false settlements: hunters’ huts, charcoal camps, abandoned mills, and small animal pens. Its inhabitants hide city life by misleading strangers, changing real paths at night, and sometimes burning a whole hut before abandoning it.
Hearth Ring
This is the densest part of the city. Houses occupy small clearings, hidden by branches and cloth, and are made to be dismantled quickly. It holds neighbourhood hearths, markets, craft yards, small shrines, dynastic houses, and children’s collectives. Streets have no fixed names; directions use living signs, such as “the third hearth behind the mossy stone after the second forked oak,” so route knowledge cannot easily be put on a map.
Root Refuge
Natural caves expanded by svirfneblin and gnome masters contain grain stores, hospitals, weapon rooms, meeting halls, and emergency evacuation tunnels. The whole population cannot fit here. The refuge exists so Yabanocak’s institutions and children can survive if the city is destroyed.
Walking Neighbourhoods
These communities have no permanent site. They move camps with the seasons and work in hunting, communication, and smuggling. They are not included in official counts, so the city’s true population is unknown. Some accept the authority of the Hearth Assemblies only during winter.
Daily life in Yabanocak
Morning and homes
The day does not begin with open flame. To keep smoke out of the sky, food is prepared in closed earth hearths, underground chimneys, or with heat-storing stones. Morning is marked by three light knocks on tree trunks: the first means the roads are safe, the second that markets may open, and the third that children may go outside. A changed rhythm means danger.
Houses are designed not to look permanent: their foundations are shallow, walls use wood frames, felt, and woven branches, and roofs are covered in living moss and leaves. Every household keeps a list of belongings that can be dismantled. A family unable to take down its house in two hours is considered rich or careless. Root Refuge dwellings are safer but dark and crowded; children who live underground too long can develop a fear of the sky.
Food, water, children, and night
The city cannot feed itself entirely. Its ordinary table depends on mushroom flour, barley and rye, root vegetables, dried apples, deer and rabbit, river fish, chestnuts, honey, smuggled salt, and dark soups made from forest herbs. White flour, sugar, and sea salt are status goods. In famine years bark is ground into flour; “the year we ate bark bread” is how many disasters are dated.
No stream is used constantly because a water source can reveal population. Villages follow a rotating water calendar and use dew-catching cloths, sealed wells, and rain cisterns. Revealing a water source to a stranger without Road Warden approval is forbidden.
Children learn to forget roads before they learn to read: how to spot a tail, spoil their tracks, answer questions about the city, follow an adult during evacuation, and conceal a true family name. Many orphans grow up in shared houses called the Lost Children—an honouring name for the children of lost kingdoms.
There is no single large market; small markets move across the week to avoid making a permanent commercial trace. Money is used, but neighbourhood tokens and work shares matter more in shortages. Hearth Assemblies try to set grain prices, though Underbranch smugglers often set the real price. At night, subterranean fires and cloth-shielded mushroom lamps give light. Loud singing is forbidden, but laments sung downward in the Root Refuge are allowed through purpose-built echo chambers.
Social orders and government
Old Crowned families claim descent from fallen human dynasties and influence the Council of Five Embers. Some want to restore a human kingdom; others fear dynastic claims will divide humans again. Road Families know secret routes, forest passages, and foreign trade. They pass maps through songs, knots, scars, and family stories instead of paper.
Hearthfolk—artisans, farmers, healers, and labourers—form the majority and the base of neighbourhood assemblies. Rootfolk are gnomes, svirfneblin, drow, and humans who live in the Root Refuge; despite physically sustaining the city, they lack sufficient council representation. The Nameless refuse to declare their identity, dynasty, or old kingdom. After seven years of service to the common hearth, they may become full citizens without revealing their past.
Every neighbourhood elects a Hearth Assembly to manage food, housing, water, marriage records, and local crime. If a home has a burning hearth, its adults have a voice in the assembly; being a hearth-holder is therefore citizenship. The Council of Five Embers rules on the affairs, inheritance claims, and shared history of the old five human kingdoms. Officially symbolic, it has real influence over wealthy families, guards, and foreign contacts. Its most dangerous question is whether Yabanocak is a temporary refuge or the first capital of a new human state.
Road Wardens are soldiers, scouts, spies, and evacuation officers. Because there is no city gate, they embody the border: they alter real routes, watch strangers, build false camps, evacuate neighbourhoods, and gather intelligence on the Red Hunt and Crown of Thorns patrols. Their growing powers, claimed as a security need, cause unrest.
Law, marriage, and names
The gravest crimes are revealing true routes or granary sites, defiling or trying to extinguish the common hearth, surrendering a refugee to the Crown of Thorns, abusing an evacuation signal, and concealing a sign of Stagnation. Death is rare. The harsh usual punishment is to be made roadless: the offender receives food and a few possessions, every route they knew is changed, and they are expelled with no return.
Marriage between people of different old kingdoms can be political. While old dynasties maintain genealogies, common families have developed combined names. Children are usually identified by the hearth-neighbourhood where they grew up—such as Fifth Ash, Reedborn, Towershadow, or White Grove—rather than by either parent’s former kingdom. A new human identity is forming.
Settlements tied to Yabanocak
Last Field
Direct farming settlement · 4,500–6,500 people · Grain, legumes, and seed. Hundreds of small plots divided by tree rows lie across the thinning southern forest. They look like natural clearings from afar and change shape every year. Yabanocak cannot sustain its population without expanding Last Field, but expansion makes discovery by the Crown of Thorns nearly inevitable.
Smoke Throat
Direct craft village · 1,600–2,200 people · Smoke concealment, pottery, charcoal, and metalwork. Its furnace smoke passes through fungal filters and long natural tunnels before surfacing as thin mist kilometres away. Gnome and svirfneblin engineers are powerful here. Without Smoke Throat, Yabanocak cannot heat itself in winter or repair iron tools.
Dewwell
Water and healing village · 800–1,200 people · Clean water, healing, and birthing house. Built above an underground water pocket, it receives the gravely ill and those about to give birth. It is neutral ground: dynastic and neighbourhood feuds may not be brought here. Thin white rings have recently appeared on its well surface despite no frost.
Silent Thresh
Hidden granary settlement · 500–750 people · Grain storage and distribution. Most homes are decoys; the real settlement is underground. Grain is held in pits insulated by clay and ash, and no granaries open at the same time. Its stewards are accused of using fear of famine to shape politics.
Ashbridge
Road Warden crossing · 900–1,400 people · River passage and illicit trade. No permanent bridge spans the river. Wooden crossings go up at night and are dismantled before dawn. Much of Kar-Dur iron and Hal-Sur salt passes here; only Road Wardens and selected traders know which night a bridge will stand.
Black Hedge
Military watch village · 1,200–1,800 people · Northern defence and false border. Ringed with thorn walls and fortified to be mistaken for the real city, it lies on the most obvious road to Yabanocak. Its task in an attack is not victory but holding an enemy in the wrong place. Its people increasingly believe they are considered expendable.
Emberbelow
Emergency refuge · 300 normally, up to 5,000 in crisis · Children, archives, and the common embers. This former underground structure will receive the pieces of the Five Embers if Yabanocak evacuates. Its exact site is known to three Road Wardens, two Threshold priests, and one chosen councillor; none knows the full route alone.
Lost Encampments
Seasonal mobile settlements · 2,000–4,000 people total · Hunting, scouting, messages, and refugee intake. This is the collective name for small human groups moving through the forest, not one village. New refugees live here for months before reaching Yabanocak, where they are questioned and watched for illness or pursuit. Some camps have not returned to the centre for years, raising rumours of an independent human society.
Vital, independent partners
Salkımkent is a semi-legal trade town, not a dependency; it re-stamps Yabanocak goods as though they came from elsewhere. Its merchants profit from the secret, making them mutually dependent rather than reliable allies. Hal-Sur supplies salt for regular payment, without concern for refugees. Kar-Dur provides iron, tools, and limited weapons; some dwarf hearths call it aid, others an investment against the Crown of Thorns.
| Settlement | Resource for the city | Political tendency |
|---|---|---|
| Last Field | Grain and seed | Open-growth supporters |
| Smoke Throat | Heat, tools, engineering | Rootfolk |
| Dewwell | Water and healing | Neutral |
| Silent Thresh | Food reserve | White Hearth |
| Ashbridge | External trade | Road Wardens |
| Black Hedge | Defence and misdirection | Red Stag |
| Emberbelow | Evacuation and continuity | Council of Five Embers |
| Lost Encampments | Scouting and refugee intake | Independentists |
| Salkımkent | Laundering goods | Profit-driven external partner |
Current political movements
Red Stag
Red Stag believes Yabanocak can no longer remain hidden. It demands an open human state, a defined border, and war with the Crown of Thorns if necessary. Black Hedge soldiers, younger Road Wardens, and old warrior families form its strongest base.
White Hearth
White Hearth argues that humans are lawful citizens of the forest where they live. It seeks representation within the Crown of Thorns, land-use rights, and protection from the Red Hunt. Merchants, healers, and mixed families support it strongly.
Five-Ember Loyalists and the Nameless Movement
Five-Ember Loyalists want the old human kingdoms restored but are divided over which dynasty should lead. The Nameless Movement rejects the identities of old kingdoms, dynasties, and defeat, arguing that Yabanocak is a new human society. Its slogan is: “We were saved not by the crowns we lost, but by the fire we did not extinguish.”