The Raising of the Five Forts

At the far eastern edge of the Golden Empire of Yi Ti, where the Bleeding Sea and the Grey Waste begin, stand the Five Forts, the mightiest fortresses in all the known world. Each is large enough to house ten thousand men, and their seamless walls of fused black stone rise a hundred feet, raised by no craft the men of today possess. The YiTish claim the Pearl Emperor of the Great Empire of the Dawn built them in the morning of the world, to guard against the Lion of Night and the demons of the Waste; sober men note only that they are old beyond reckoning, older perhaps than Yi Ti itself. What they were built to keep out, no book records, but the legions of the Golden Empire garrison them still, and travellers from the west mark how like their black stone is to that of Asshai, and wonder.