The Barrens
A spoiler-free guide to Fourth Wing, Iron Flame & Onyx Storm (The Empyrean).
Only showing what’s been revealed up to your current progress. Future events, identities, and relationships are hidden.
Overview
The Barrens are a distant desert beyond Krovla and beyond Navarre’s enemy.
The region is a dry, desert-covered southeastern peninsula, ruined during the Great War and abandoned by dragonkind.
Important Events
The Barrens were abandoned after the Great War, along with the memory of General Daramor and his near-destruction of the Continent.
An ancient Barrens army was annihilated by dragons and gryphons working together, placing the region within continental military history rather than only legend.
Xaden says venin drained all the magic out of the Barrens and then spread like an infestation. Violet recognizes the explanation as matching the folklore she knows.
The last known shadow-and-lightning pair drove venin back into the Barrens for a few hundred years, tying the place to the Great War precedent for resisting them.
Location and Access
Navarrian geographic recitation places the Barrens past Krovla and beyond the enemy territory known to Violet.
A military wall map places the barriers of the Barrens among the ruined deserted lands at the southern tip of the Continent.
The Aretian map identifies the Barrens as the southeastern peninsula and shows the crimson stain extending out of it into Braevick over the Dunness River.
Battle Brief mapping shows red spreading from the Barrens up the Stonewater River toward Samara, keeping the region at the deep end of the visible venin advance.
Layout and Features
The Barrens include barriers and ruined deserted lands, enough of a defined region to appear on Navarre’s strategic wall map.
On the Aretian map, the Barrens are painted completely crimson, with the stain stretching out of the peninsula into Braevick over the Dunness River.
Stone from land bordering the Barrens can be so drained of magic that it limits further draining through it. In Tecarus's arena, imported Braevick stone keeps a venin's draining attack confined to the field instead of spreading through the structure.
At Cordyn, the fighting pit's arena surface is recognized as drained stone imported from land bordering the Barrens, and Xaden immediately notices the material.
Residents and Affiliations
Family stories can use the Barrens as the place where venin wait to come for Navarre, preserving the region as a source of fable-like fear.
Venin were once understood as coming solely from the Barrens. That older understanding no longer covers the whole threat, because they have taken recruits elsewhere within the last fifty years.