Arbre

Overview

Arbre is the inhabited world on which avout (cloistered scholars) live within the Mathic World and others live extramuros (outside the cloisters) beyond the walls. The name anchors formal dating in the A.R. era. Accounts describe long-term climatic swings and migrations after the Terrible Events, with communities adapting to arid basins, irrigated valleys, and mountain terraces.

Notable Features

• Sea of Seas: a relatively small but intricate saltwater basin linked to the great oceans by three straits, widely treated as the cradle of classical civilization.
• Continents: traditions differ on counting Arbre’s continents, with some sources using ten historical names and others recognizing seven; the discrepancy traces to ancient naming around the Sea of Seas and to far-northern land that wraps over the pole and connects regions once thought separate.
• Skywatching infrastructure: many maths maintain roofline observatories such as the Starhenge; orreries commonly include a lapis sphere representing Arbre.
• Sæcular networks (civil-world infrastructure): paved highways, freight traffic, and a navigation-satellite system used by cartablas. Reports note that portions of the road network outside major towns can be rough or degraded and that, on a recent morning, devices across a wide region failed to obtain fixes (cause unconfirmed).
• Polar overland route: at extreme northern latitudes, sledge ports dispatch over-ice trains that haul freight (and sometimes vehicles and travelers) between northern lands when markets and conditions permit; caravans of drummons feed these ports from the “deep ruins” country.
• Terrain and land use: lower mountain slopes in some regions support fuel-tree plantations served by dirt logging roads and heavy trucks; higher elevations open into wild country with tarns, old tracks, and disused structures such as abandoned fortresses and cabins. These areas are sparsely settled and used seasonally for hunting and camping.
• Orithena on Ecba: an ancient temple site and dual-walled complex Orithena on the volcanic island of Ecba. A cloistered community there presents outwardly as avout while identifying internally as a Lineage (pre-Cartasian tradition); excavation is organized in cool hours, orchards supply food along the slope, and hot springs feed bath-houses. Breezes off the sea and ash-fused masonry are noted features, and local trees are described as the oldest living on Arbre.

Associations

• Calendrical and institutional: Arbre’s cycles frame observance in the A.R. system and the mathic calendar.
• Cultural landmarks: references to the “Three Inviolates” commonly point to maths at the Concent of Saunt Edhar, Saunt Rambalf’s math, and the Concent of Saunt Tredegarh.

Recent Activity

• Contact at Orithena: witnesses on Ecba describe a parachute-retarded, rocket-braked probe descending over the temple and settling onto the tiled forecourt known as The Decagon. Orithena residents opened a hatch and recovered a humanoid visitor “not from Arbre,” together with a sealed case of labeled blood tubes. Sæcular responders in protective suits arrived, issued tracking collars, and jammed the Reticulum (planetary network). Shortly afterward, observers saw a high-velocity object enter the volcano’s cap above the site, followed by an orange, glowing pyroclastic cloud that overran Orithena; many people were evacuated by aerocraft. Participants attribute the strike to the orbital Geometers and report signs of disagreement among them; others note that formal confirmation is pending.
• Orbital object: ground and instrument observers describe an icosahedral object in Arbre-centered orbit. Features noted include a network of edge members meeting at rounded vertices and, on at least one face, markings laid out as a geometric construction akin to a proof. A separate inscription on a forward strut uses characters resembling, but not identical to, familiar alphabets. Within avout circles, some have begun calling the presumed visitors the “Cousins.”
• Narrow-beam illumination: on at least one night, a red beam from the object illuminated prominent maths; examples shown publicly included Saunt Rambalf’s and Saunt Tredegarh’s. In dialog among travelers, a Thousander reports that long-term waste repositories exist beneath Edhar’s crag, with similar sites at Rambalf and Tredegarh; others treat this as sensitive and not publicly confirmed.
• Systems effects: contemporaneous reports also mentioned a navigation-satellite outage; explanations circulating range from festival interference to deliberate disruption, none verified.
• Planetary sentiment: travelers describe a surge of world-level identification and concern—speaking of feeling like “citizens of the world”—in response to the orbital craft’s appearance; some invoke laments for the Third Sack when imagining worst-case outcomes.

Status/Access

Arbre is active and inhabited across both cloistered concents (walled monastic complexes) and the Sæcular world. Travel conditions vary widely by region and era of maintenance, from well-kept highways to broken “new gravel” stretches in the countryside. Crossing between continent-scale political units under the Sæcular Power typically requires documents, which avout do not generally hold; over-ice sledge routes at high latitude provide one practical path between northern lands without passing through sea or air ports of entry. Observational access to the sky continues through instruments wherever permitted; information about the orbital object is being compiled from both public images and private measurements. In remote highlands, hand devices such as jeejahs may have thin connectivity and navigation tools may struggle to acquire fixes.