The Isle of the Sun

Our gazetteer of the world(s) of The Saga of the Ortegids is pretty much complete. Over the last few months, I've summarized every major region in the first three Dragon Quest games and explored their potential for TRPG scenarios. However, just today I started thinking about one small area I didn't pay any heed to before, but one that just might be more interesting than I thought.

In Dragon Quest III, upon crossing through the Pit of Giaga, you come out on a small island in the western gulf of Alefgard, directly across from Tantegel. This is the only location in this part of the game that has no counterpart in Dragon Quest I, likely because there's no sea travel in that game. On it is a small, unnamed port - there are no shops or inns here, so it's likely a small fishing village rather than a regional trade center. It's really just there to give you access to a ship while in Torland, and for this reason I overlooked it in my discussion of Alefgard.

However, one of the NPCs there asks the party if they've come from "the upper world," which indicates that the people of Torland are familiar with the existence of Erdland. To recap the cosmology I'm using for The Saga of the Ortegids, I have chosen - in part because it provides for more interesting gaming opportunities - to interpret Torland as literally being inside of a hollow Erdland, with the Pit of Giaga being an actual, physical pit connecting the two surfaces. Interestingly, the Western fandom tends to interpret the Pit of Giaga as being a portal and the worlds as separate universes, but the Japanese fandom is more equivocal about it. In any case, for Saga, it's a physical pit - which ties into my next point.

Torland (unlike Erdland) has no consistent day-night cycle and is shown to be in a state of constant night before the Sphere of Light is used for the first time in DQ3. Furthermore, the Dragonlord stealing the Sphere in DQ1 is sometimes said to cause an unending night, depending on what source you're reading (this could be metaphorical, but for me it's not). Under my interpretation, this implies that Torland had no natural light source until the Sphere of Light created one, being the inside of a hollow planet and all. So far, everything is interally consistent.

But then I realized that if the Pit of Giaga physically separates Erdland from Torland, if there's a big hole in the ground in Erdland, there must conversely be a big hole in the sky in Torland. And we do know that Erdland has a sun. Before the Sphere of Light was used, this island below the Pit of Giaga must have been the only place in Torland to receive natural light - that is, what was able to stream through the Pit when the sun was overhead.

Art by Vsevlod Ivanov
(Seriously, check his stuff out)

This likely wouldn't be enough light to illuminate all of Torland on a regular basis, but it would mean that this one island would receive direct sunlight for part of the day. In an otherwise lightless world, this would no doubt have a significant effect on the local culture. Perhaps the locals of this island, even if they know of the existence of an upper world, don't realize how a natural sun really works, and view this light as a divine phenomenon. This would transform the Isle of the Sun, as I've called it, into a natural choice for a holy site, with cults springing up around the light and adherents making pilgrimages to witness it.

With this in mind, perhaps the port we see in DQ3 isn't the only settlement on the island - perhaps there is another city that serves as the center of this sun cult, and we just don't see it in-game because there was nothing useful for gameplay or narrative purposes there. Given the Norse vibes of Torland in general and Alefgard in particular, let's call this city Sollenborg. While ostensibly a subject of the Alefgardic crown, it would be an autonomous power headed by a cult worshiping the sun, with the priesthood holding local positions of authority.

Art by Noah Bradley

In a campaign set in Torland before the events of DQ3, this city could be a curiosity for the party to investigate, or a regional power given its apparent blessed nature. It would also offer another religion to add to the worldbuilding of the setting. Also, one of the easiest ways to kill vampires in a pre-sun Torland. I also find it interesting to think about how even in a magical fantasy world, there would still be perfectly natural phenomena that are misinterpreted as miracles.

I also think it's interesting to consider what might happen to Sollenborg after the events of DQ3. Surely the sun cult would lose quite a bit of its authority with the Sphere of Light providing constant sunlight. This could lead to a crisis of faith for its adherents - and perhaps the more worldly of the cult's authorities, fearful of losing power, might be jealous of what the Sphere provides and covet it for themselves. You could also probably tell an interesting side-story about how the sun cult would handle the Dragonlord's theft of the Sphere. If Alefgard was suddenly deprived of its sunlight, the cult would have something unique to offer the people, who would surely grow desperate in such a time.

Charlock

In Dragon Quest I, the castle of Charlock is the final dungeon in the game, and the site of the final battle with the Dragonlord. It reprises this role in Dragon Quest III, with Zoma filling in for the role of final boss. It plays a different role in Dragon Quest II, but we'll get to that later.

Charlock Castle is on a small island at the very center of Alefgard, occupying the continent's central bay. Notably, it's directly across from Tantegel - you can see it on the map as soon as you leave the starting location, but it's inaccessible until much later, and much of the first game revolves around creating a passage to the island.

I don't think Charlock is actually a part of Alefgard, so much as it's located in the immediate vicinity of it. At least, for The Saga of the Ortegids, I would portray it as an independent kingdom in Torland. Although the Dragonlord is the final boss and central antagonist of I, his grandson appears in II, still apparently in charge of Charlock, and this time as an ally. His role is small, all things considered - he really just gives you information needed to complete a late-game quest - but he even declares the party to be friends if visited after defeating Malroth. And the fact that he's there at all is, in my opinion, a clue toward Charlock's true nature.

You would think that, if the Dragonlord was some rogue entity acting within Alefgardic jurisdiction, his descendants would not be allowed to operate the same position so openly, and not with the kingdom turning a blind eye to it. This only makes sense if we assume that Charlock is a sovereign state, and the Dragonlords are its rulers. They had opposed Alefgard at one point in time, but later forged an alliance with them and/or the three Ortegid kingdoms, perhaps out of necessity with the Children of Hargon proving to be a bigger threat.

Art by JamesRPGArt

This interpretation is actually pretty internally consistent with what we see in the games. Neither character is given a name beyond "Dragonlord," which is likely the title of the ruler of Charlock. They use the same sprites, would could be a sign that they use the same royal regalia for their position. Furthermore, the first Dragonlord is implied to be the son of the Queen of Dragons from III, which positions him as being part of a draconic royal bloodline. As I stated before, that also explains his motivation for stealing the Sphere of Light from Tantegel, because that item was originally owned by his mother, and is likely a sacred treasure of the draconic royal house. If we further pull at the strings of the Dragon Queen claiming to be a "messenger of the gods" who lives close to the heavens, the Dragonlord may well be a direct descendant of Gaius, the god of dragonkind, and would have reason to covet the Sphere if it was forged by Gaius himself. If he was born in Erdland, him retrieving the Sphere may also be a way to legitimize his rule to the dragons of Torland.

I would go as far as to say that Charlock was probably run by a different lineage of dragons at the time of DQ3. I don't think Zoma would've always been there, at least not going based on the logic I've already created for this setting. In my opinion, the power and authority Zoma displays in being able to overthrow a goddess makes the most sense if he is himself a god, and the Erdrick Trilogy shows that gods can be summoned to the mortal realm. Perhaps Zoma is in Charlock because he was summoned by the reigning Dragonlord at the time, who may have been a worshiper of his cult.

In fact, one of the bosses fought directly before Zoma is the "King Hydra." There's no real sense of significance alloted to this creature besides the name, but consider that that name combines a reptilian monster and a noble title. Where have we seen that before? I'm almost certainly overthinking this, but it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Art by Gustavo Cabral

Anyway, on to the gameable stuff. Befitting its status as the final location of the original game, Charlock's terrain is quite foreboding, consisting mainly of mountains. Uniquely, the castle itself is placed atop a series of tall cliffs, which use unique graphical assets not seen elsewhere on the map - I'd posit that it's built on the tallest mountain in the Alefgard area, if not all of Torland, which draws further parallels to the Kingdom of Dragons. Unlike the Kingdom of Dragons, though, I don't see such an inhospitable land sustaining a large population of humanoids. The bulk of Charlock's population is likely made up of dragons and their kin, like Dragovians.

It could be a place to go to battle monsters, but we also see that the draconic rulers are capable of diplomacy and maintaining friendly relations with outsiders. Negotiating an alliance with the dragons could provide a valuable asset. Further, the fact that the ruling dynasty is a foreign one could well breed tensions with native-born dragon houses. And who knows if they would approve of the ruler's decision to ally with humans...

Alefgard

The Kingdom of Alefgard is the only location to make an appearance in all three games of the original Dragon Quest trilogy. Thus, it's a natural place to begin our exploration of Torland for The Saga of the Ortegids. The entirety of Dragon Quest I and the latter third of Dragon Quest III take place within its borders - using the same map, in fact. This was apparently a big reveal when the games first came out, one that was completely lost on me because I played III first as a kid. Furthermore, while Dragon Quest II's map covers the whole of Torland, Alefgard is present on it, and several of the locations from the first game can be visited.

In the second game, the map of Alefgard is shrunken and many locations have been dropped in order to make it fit into the larger map of Torland. I feel like there is no greater proof than this that the maps we see in the games are simplified representations of the actual in-universe land masses. If the worlds were real, there would surely be many more towns, dungeons, and points of interest than we can visit in the games; we're just seeing a zoomed-out version of the map that only has the highlights included. The Alefgard we see in DQ2, then, is merely a further zoomed-out version of the Alefgard of 1 and 3. However, because two of the three entries in the trilogy limited their scope to Alefgard, our gazetteer of it can afford to be more detailed and granular than that of any other region, and it has the most discrete locations of all of them - though we should remember that this too is a simplification.

Alefgard is a small continent located in northwestern Torland, in between its two main continents. Conveniently, the world map in 2 is the exact same size as the Erdland map in 3, which makes sense if we interpret these maps as representing both sides of a hollow planet. Thus, we can assume the Alefgard in DQ2 is in scale to the map of Erdland, while the version in 1 and 3 is comparatively zoomed in. If that's the case, then Alefgard is roughly the same size as the Worldforest. If you wanted to compare the map of Erdland to Earth, we could hypothesize that Alefgard is about the size of Krasnoyarsk Krai, but we have no reason to believe that Erdland is as big as Earth, and I think the degree of interconnection we see there would support a smaller planet.

Culturally, there seems to be a vaguely Norse theme to Alefgard, and to Torland as a whole. The name recalls Norse realms like Midgard and Asgard, and characters from there often have Scandinavian names like Lars. Visually, Alefgard, like most places in the Erdrick Trilogy regardless of geographical inspiration, has usually been depicted as generically medieval European - sometimes you'll see a horned helmet, but then, those were everywhere in 80s fantasy art. I feel like a tabletop take on the kingdom could draw more from Nordic sources, but I'd probably lean toward the post-Viking era, as there doesn't seem to be a strong raiding or seafaring culture in Alefgard.

Alefgard's greatest treasure is the Sphere of Light, given to Erdrick by the Queen of Dragons, and then passed on to the royal family, where it has been guarded for generations. The Sphere seems to have a non-specifically beneficial effect on the kingdom, blessing it with fertile harvests and protecting its people from monsters. DQ3 reveals that Torland is located on the inside of a hollow world, and for most of that game Alefgard is shrouded in darkness until the Sphere is used against Zoma. It's possible, then, that the role of the Sphere of Light is to somehow control the Inner Sun. There's still vegetation in Alefgard in DQ3, so clearly sunlight isn't needed to grow crops in Torland (maybe it runs on Mythic Underworld logic), but it's possible the Inner Sun is centered directly above Alefgard, and it may provide more direct effects on its land. While most of Torland is in a state of perpetual twilight, never getting dark enough to restrict vision, Alefgard in particular might be constantly at midday. Funnily enough, like Scandinavia in the summer.

Towns in Alefgard include:

• Tantegel: The capital. Site of the royal palace.
• Brecconary: A mercantile center located just east of Tantegel. This town only exists in the NES release of DQ1, in which Tantegel consists entirely of the palace; in subsequent releases, the two are combined into a single location. Still, it gives us another location to work with - and there is plenty of historical precedent for a state having separate administrative and financial capitals. They may even be separate but contiguous settlements - compare Westminster versus the City of London.
• Galenholm: A port town located in the northwest corner of Alefgard. It was founded by a bard named Galen, who owned a magic silver harp, the music of which draws creatures closer. He is buried with the harp in a crypt under the town. Given its position on the coast, close to Lianport and Samartoria, Galenholm is likely an important trade center for Alefgard.
• Kol: A rustic woodland village in the northeast of Alefgard. It holds a natural spring, and at the time of DQ3 the town blacksmith was an emigrant from Zipangu who fled after his wife was set to be sacrificed to the Orochi. He knows the secret to working orichalum.
• Rimuldar: A city located on an island in the southeast of Alefgard, known for its locksmiths. It's separated from the mainland by a tunnel under the sea, which by the time of DQ1 has become the lair of a dragon. Given the city's apparent size and wealth, it's likely that most commerce with the mainland is performed by sea, and the tunnel was likely an aborted project that fell into disrepair. Though we don't see other settlements there, the island is large enough that it could easily support several, so it's probably self-sufficient.
• 
  Hauksness: A trade center in the Domdora Desert, located in the southwest of Alefgard. Originally built around an oasis, but this has dried up by the time of DQ1 and the town is abandoned, save for a single knight guarding a magical suit of armor that once belonged to Erdrick. I like to interpret this as him being part of a lineage of knights tasked with such a job, and even though everyone else has fled the town, he stays, refusing to let the armor fall into the wrong hands. A vein of orichalum is also located nearby.
• Cantlin: A heavily fortified city in the south of Alefgard. In addition to its walls, it's located in a defensible chokepoint surrounded by mountains and swamps, and has a golem that guards the entrance. Likely it is an important redoubt that may have developed from a citadel. Also has an arena.

Dungeons in Alefgard are mostly unremarkable caves, but there are a few sites of interest:

• The Tower of Rubiss: A tower in the northeast of Alefgard where Rubiss, goddess of creation, was imprisoned after being overthrown by Zoma in the God-War, until being freed by Erdrick. Later became home to a hermit in the posession of a staff that could conjure rain.
• The Nailmark: A cave in the north of Alefgard where Zoma was said to have clawed his way into reality, either during the God-War or from being summoned. I just had to talk about that, because the thought that an entire dungeon, with all its traps, denizens, and dangers, is merely the mark a god made on reality with his fingernail is very evocative in a Lovecraftian sense.