Rustlands

Rustlands is one of eight regional territories of the Realm of Talevir. The territory is administered out of Norsails, at the tip of a long hilly cape off the northern coast.
The territory lays claim to and controls the northeast of Talevir, from the coast of the Rounder's Sea in the north 240 miles south to the mountains of the Shorn Cliffs and Prospect Spires, and from the eastern coast at the northern border of Ranger's Reach at Ranger's Faltering 450 miles west to the border of Nor'rend at Frithe March.

Geography

To say the Rustlands are difficult to traverse is an understatement for even the most experienced of rangers.

The territory is dominated by a broad, 200 mile-wide basin of meandering waterways and moorlands draining from the Shorn Cliffs and Prospect Spires, divided by a southwest-to-northeast stretch of hilly upland pine forest known as the Nor'Rounder Barrens. The wet meadows and peat bogs of the western stretch are comparatively easy to manage and can even be used as rangeland for sheep, but travel north or south of the barrens is treacherous and disorienting at best.

The southeastern edge of Rustlands is marked by where the grasslands at the north of Ranger's Reach descend into the basin in undulating moorland with thickets of heather and sedges hiding unpredictable pockets of loose soil and waterlogged moss before reaching an ever-changing, unmappable inland lagoon with ephemeral watercourses and hidden tendrils of deep mud and quicksand. Ranger's Faltering and the Shifting Slog is a daunting introduction to overland travelers entering Rustlands from the south, but is not nearly the hardest area to navigate. Once within the basin proper, the landscape seems to stretch endlessly in all directions without landmarks and sheets of clouds frequently obscuring the sun and horizon. More perceptive rangers, sailors, and druids may make some sense of coastal or montane proximity by how fresh, peaty, or brackish the water tastes and smells, giving hint to whether a waterway is closer in flow to mountain source or tidal influence from the coasts, but their twisting nature can hide true distance and direction from even these skilled outlanders. The closer to the center of the basin, the more difficult it becomes to tell one way from another, and waterways may appear and disappear into the marsh grasses without any clear headwaters or outflow. Various monstrous creatures and aberrations may lie in wait, obscured within these pools of water, waiting for unwary travelers to step too close or for a pack mule loaded too heavily for the waterlogged soils to accommodate. Venturing away from the few established roads in the basin, one is more likely to encounter hags or a shambling mound than one of the hermits that live on floating grass mats in the wetlands.

The center of the great basin holds one reliable body of water, surrounded on either side by vast mazes of tidal estuaries and sloughs: Rustloch is a roughly 25 mile-long freshwater lake tinted red-brown by the peat bogs that filter into it. Until the 800's PS, this lake and its main tributary were the one reliable source of drinkable water in the lowlands that didn't carry serious risk of poison or disease. Unfortunately, its reliable location and position downstream from the mines of Iron Haul have polluted its waters to match the drinking risk of the surrounding areas.

Sandy hills rise in the north, where pine forests take over from the marshlands. The canopy appears a flat, featureless expanse of trees with no indication of the terrain underneath when viewed from above due to poor, shallow soils near the hill crests causing dwarfism in trees growing near the top, so aerial reconnaissance is as fruitless as mapping on foot. The Nor'Rounder Barrens carry their own risks, as anyone might imagine of a dark, sprawling forest, but it is far easier and safer than the wetlands on either side. The Deadmere to the south is the site of many waves of historic battles, leaving the bogs filled with what qualifies as grave water and a host waiting to be risen by any enterprising necromancers. The Hool Marshes to the north are less a shifting maze than the wetlands of the southern basin, but are home to larger, organized groups of monstrous races like lizardfolk and sahuagin. Shadow crossings hide in these dreary marshlands, creating yet another hazard for those foolish enough to attempt an unaided crossing.

Climate

Storms blown south across the Rounder's and Crosswind Seas deposit a fair amount of rain upon the hills of Norsails Cape and the Nor'Rounder Barrens, but aside from these hilly areas, clouds progress unimpeded until pooling at the Shorn Cliffs. This leads to a weather cycle affecting the whole northeast of year-round rain or sheets of clouds, with the lowest precipitation through late winter and spring and greatest amount of sun before midsummer heading into the month of Amberstil as rainfall increases and meltwater further inundates the region. Overall, one quarter of every month is comprised of rainy or drizzly days and very little sun from late summer through to late winter. The hills of Norsails Cape and the coastal portions of the Nor'Rounder Barrens can be extremely windy, especially in late summer when the first large storms of the year come blowing in. This leads to the seasonal spread of lightning-sparked wildfires that regularly burn through the hills and the twiggy underbrush of the barrens before reducing to low burns in the grassy parts of the bogs and moorlands.

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Settlements

The largest inland settlement lies on the shore of a large freshwater lake tinted brown from water seepage through peat moss. Rustloch was once the source of water used in making whiskey, but its waters have become shunned by the 900's PS, as the lake has largely become a harbor of last mooring for shallow-draft sailing vessels that dump ballast to take on ore and much of the water running in from upstream has become contaminated by mine tailings. The colloquial name has shifted to calling the harbor town Spoils Lake and the main tributary to the lake has gone from Clearwater Run to Clearwater's Ruin. "Spoils Barges" are towed upriver by pack mules via an established plankway west to the largely Dwarven settlement of Orehunt cut into the base of Iron Haul Mountain and floated back down to Spoils Lake, carrying excavated rock and mine waste with ore traces that are too low yield to merit expending effort on. Much of this waste is dumped along the edges of Rustloch and used to shore up levees, with usable gravel being carted to reinforce the Marsh Road and the excess used as fill at the river mouth on the edge of Prospector's Bay.

Rustlands was a source of iron and fuel long before the establishment of Talevir, with processed bog iron and peat being shipped down to Cooperage and across the Crosswind Sea hundreds of years before the Sundering. However, with Talevir's expansion east and north came more enterprising prospectors and more focused mining operations. Breakthrough to the surface of underground mining of ores from Iron Haul has fundamentally changed the outlook of the whole territory from a backwater with limited usefulness from its shores to a vital resource for all components needed for making steel coming from the northeastern edge of the Prospect Spires. Iron Haul has become the most singularly exploited mountain on the entire landmass, with the Dwarves underground claiming to have been tapping its roots for centuries as a source of ore before emerging at the surface at what became Orehunt. The settlement became a boon as a source for water from Clearloch being good for power, drinking, trade with surface dwellers, and a much easier waste disposal avenue for tailings than needing to dig for dumping into the Underdark. By the 800s PS, prospectors from Talevir and from around the Crosswind Sea have come to work the mines of Iron Haul and to seek rarer metals and gems in the Prospect Spires between Iron Haul and Delver's Gambit to the west.

Rounder's Rest

While Spoils Lake and Orehunt have been able to grow into sizable towns due to reliable navigation over water and the needs for steel, very few settlements can grow to the size of towns in the interior of Rustlands. The coast, however, has two ports that have grown tremendously. Rounder's Rest in G'elter Cove is a port of shelter from storms as well as a way point to rest and take on water and food for Rounders as they make the voyage from Timber Bay to Sureharbor. As the only reliable on-shore source of fresh drinking water and poor-but-arable land for some light farming on the edge of the Nor'Rounder Barrens, Rounder's Rest is the main port for travelers heading into or out of the territory and is the most stable community for those living in Rustlands. As a hub on the periphery and point of inroads travel and equipage for prospectors, though, this port of respite is the one place in the territory that dissent can foster. Outlanders, unaffiliated rangers, and emissaries of druid circles may appear in Rounder's Rest to voice their anger over the exploitation and defiling of resources, where wilder areas inland would simply see disappearances of villagers, travelers, and agents.

Norsails

The largest settlement in the whole of the northern territories, Norsails is the administrative capital of Rustlands, though it is at the end of a long, hilly cape that separates it from the body of the territory 20 miles over water and over 50 miles over land. Established as a fishing town and hub for timber and peat barges to lade onto deep water cargo ships, Norsails is built out from the sandy hills with fill of the bones of abandoned and broken ships. For centuries, this most-important northern harbor has sent fleets of fishing vessels around the Rounder's Sea and acted as trading hub for the north out to the Crosswind Sea. "Rounders" were first established in the maritime community as a natural outgrowth of a culture of sailors and central trading hub for the north originally focused on moving goods east and south around the Crosswind Sea, but later shipping the long way round to Sureharbor both as a point of best use of currents and maximizing trading ports of call, but also to avoid the issues of dangerous sailing conditions and potential for piracy presented in traveling around the Ragged Coast and northern Fog Bound Sea. As Talevir made its expansion east, it quickly became apparent that securing Norsails would allow the realm to effectively control the entire northern coast. Even before expanding east in 720 PS, Talevir worked to establish consolidated banking and trading houses in Norsails and invested in the Rounders that were shipping lumber to the major ports of the realm, ensuring that the lifeline of the north had a favorable view and vested interest in supporting the realm long before it came under rule. Through the 800's PS, expeditions from Rangefort to Norsails established a more secure, permanent version of the Marsh Road to protect the resource interests of the realm. Also around this time, a sizable Dwarven community in the heart of the city dug out a long railcart tunnel that facilitates unimpeded movement of material under the cape while producing more fill material to expand the spread of the city. Upon annexation of Rustlands and Nor'Rend in 896 PS, Norsails became the regional capitol for Rustlands, with representation at Stagshead officially being filtered through Rangefort. By 920 PS, Rustlands and Nor'rend have come under the consolidated control of Lord Charles Tallyrand, High Lord of the Northern Territories, operating out of Norsails as the de facto seat of power for the region. As an officially governed, sizable city far from the mainland, the culture of Norsails is quite different from the inland of the north and there is essentially no voice for the folk who dwell in the larger territory.

Type

Territory

by Thomas Smith

Large settlements include:

• Norsails (Regional Capital)
• Rounder's Rest
• Spoils Lake
• Orehunt

Major Landmarks include:

• Iron Haul (Mountain)
• Prospect Spires (Mountain Range)
• Shorn Cliffs (Massif Edge)
• Galewind Peak (Mountain)
• Nor'rounder Barrens (Forest)
• Rustloch (Lake)
• Rounder's Sea
• Prospector's Bay
• G'elter Cove
• Peatlands Bay
• Norsails Bay
• Bog Harbor (Bay Inlet)
• Norsails Cape
• Frithe March (Bog)
• Hool Marshes
• Deadmere
• The Shifting Slog
• Ranger's Faltering (Heathland)