Beastlands

Civilization does not equal safety. Far from it, the wilderness ever encroaches with ever-increasing viciousness as population rises. The night is dark and full of monsters, the winds bring ill omens, and survival is no simple task. Slowly the Beastlands grow, no one has been to the heart of it in living memory and towns once distant from it's borders have long since been swallowed up, their people lost to the wilds.   There is no safety behind walls or underground, where nature cannot venture it corrupts from within. Therianthropy is rampant, any large population center is afflicted and though some may retain their minds many do not. Often there seems to be a malicious intelligence about it, many people erupting at once and giving no hope of containing the infection before it can spread.   There are rumors of those who live in peace with the wilds, however, those who are mad or magic enough to abandon humanity. Some call them druids, others shamans, but it is agreed that these people have given themselves to the wilds and been accepted in turn. Though there never seems to be more than a handful at a time every community wishes to have some kind of contact with one, if only to keep the peace with their own crops.