The Valley of the Tempest, also the Seat of the Storms or Antaño (“Yesteryear”), is a high-walled marsh valley in Vala, a day from Nesut Biti, with ruins from near the founding of Uruk and the fallen statue of the storm god Adab.
| Type | Place (valley) |
| Spanish entry | Valle de la Tempestad |
Access
It lies 50–60 km away over hard hills. The only entrance is a narrow rock-cut pass beside precipices, lined with skeletons. Celestial guardians charge passage: «Se paga en oro o en un ojo. Y el ojo ni siquiera hace falta que sea de tu cara» (“You pay in gold or in an eye. And the eye need not be from your face”). The place is desecrated; only the god who cursed it claims it.
Description
Open to the sky but somber under high walls. Where the sea once covered the gulf, fresh springs now mix with salt marsh, producing hot springs, mists that cut sight to twenty feet, stilt-rooted trees and nasty insects. A forest “opens when she passes and closes afterwards”. There are edible mushrooms and talk of “a world of mirrors”. The lineage of Talia Cristalia is linked to the valley’s antiquity. It is distinct from Valle Blanca and Valle Roja, further south.
Ruins
Only the edge of the old bridge survives, beside the fallen statue of Adab, god of the tempest (“Talos, Gilgamesh, whatever they call him”), who curses the place. Underground are traps, a hidden door and a half-flooded chamber with electric glows. A crypt holds the body of a man named Mario Navarro.
The statue’s cellars held artifacts “that you would now call technological”, linked to entities that may have made them. Foreign colleges buy them. The ruins are “clearly earlier than the fall of the Star Tower”.
Inhabitants
A dragon sleeps beneath the ruins, like the other sleeping dragons of Vala. Its greatest creature is plant-like and strikes “with an octopus tentacle”. Masked people with night rites live or lived there; bandits hide in it. The valley retains souls; a defeated company swore: “we will go to the Valley of the Tempest to recover the souls of our companions”.
Conflicting accounts
- Some itineraries place it west of Nesut Biti; others in the southern mountains toward Tres Arroyos.
Open questions
- Who “she” is, and why Mario Navarro lies in the crypt, are unexplained.
- Whether the Crystal Valley, said to be a dimension of Lucifer, is this place, a layer of it, or only shares the word is not established.