Thac

Thac is the large isle west of the mainland of Arinthar where Ruins on Stone Hill takes place. Book 1 does not tour the whole island. It stays in one working corner of eastern Thac: the small seaport of Ravenford, the roads and woods around it, and the older, stranger places within a few days' travel that keep pulling a fishing town into danger. That narrow focus is deliberate here. This page introduces Thac as a Book 1 reader meets it, not as a gazetteer of everywhere the archive names.

Ravenford is the anchor. It is described in Book 1 as the only seaport between Dunwynn and Penwick, set where the Raven River meets Merchant Bay, with its keep, temple hill, inn, docks, and bridges. From Ravenford the companions' world widens in rings: Stone Hill and the Dead Forest to the south-west, the Bendenwoods and the hills called the Vogels where orc bandits lair in caves, Bardon's Gap where a hill giant raids farmsteads, and the lusher Dwimmer Forest and Kelvan Hills on the western road. Dunwynn's duchy and Penwick's fleets press on Ravenford politically even when they stay off the page, and Andrella's place in Dunwynn's succession is part of Ravenford's local weather.

Beyond that corner, Book 1 gives a reader bearings rather than a survey. Elladan comes from Kai-Arborus, the elven tree city in the great forest Ruanaiaith, and was travelling toward Lukescros and its fair when orcs destroyed his caravan. Glolindir's hidden home, Cairthrellon, lies in the same great-forest world to the west in story terms. Names such as Lukescros therefore arrive the way travellers would hear them: as destinations, homes, and reputations attached to people, before they are places on a public map. No settled island-wide scale is stated in Book 1, and none is stated here.

Thac's past is present mainly as pressure. Ruins older than their occupiers, golem work linked in the companions' minds to Larketh and the Thrall Wars, and temples and wizards who still shape daily life tell a new reader that eastern Thac is lived-in and layered, not empty adventure ground. Start with Ravenford for the town itself, Stone Hill for the ruin that gives Book 1 its title, and the companion pages for the people who make this corner of Thac home.