Stedding

Stedding are the homelands of the Ogier, and the only places where Ogier can live for long. An Ogier who stays outside one too long sickens with the Longing and dies of it over the course of several years. It was not always so. In the Age of Legends the Ogier had their stedding but were not bound to them; the stedding were lost during the Breaking of the World, a time the Ogier call the Exile, and the Longing has held them since. No one can touch the True Source inside a stedding, which made them a refuge during the Breaking for men who could channel and feared the madness. Some sheltered there for many years, though the need to channel never left them and the isolation from the Source proved more than they could bear.