The valleys of the Châzkem Mountains house many individual and small groups of dwellings. The people who live there are linguistically diverse, but culturally unified on the basis of their religious practices and their architectural style, which are closely linked. All structures within the valleys are built to have a single door, which uses post and lintel construction. One symbol apiece is carved into the stones, for a total of three symbols per building. These symbols are derived from a shared syllabic writing system, which records an unknown language (see the work by Asydis and Mesym for the first full scholarly treatment of the phenomenon). Depending on the combination of symbols used, the valley’s residents can make structures into cold storage spaces, heated buildings, or resistant to earthquakes – among many observed potential effects. As of this writing, many years of scholarly investigation have been expended trying to decipher what spirit(s), god(s), demon(s), angel(s), or other entities are propitiated, with very little to show for it. One stubborn minority continues to insist that individual spirits are instantiated by each construction, but this is plainly preposterous.