Hartigan Ridge
1495
Hartigan Ridge is the strip of hills that cuts between the lands of Twotoe Settlement and the untamed wilds of The Conundrum. It is a place of deep, profound magic with strange and befuddling creatures. Up and down The Ridge there resides things that most folk could only hope to dream of—and wherever you walk along its rolling slopes, you’ll almost always see the sovereign peak of Gorham Mountain towering above it all. Perhaps there are great riches to be found deep under its earthen crust, or perhaps it is just a marker signaling the fantasy that lies beyond its snowcap.
Down in Twotoe, the people live peacefully amongst themselves, not caring too much for what happens beyond their verdant pastures. For them, life is as plain and sweet as a pumpkin pie in the Fall and a berry cobbler in the Spring; a warm hearth during the Winter and a cool breeze in the Summer. It was about a century ago that the first settlers travelled from the city-states—just “the states”, they now call it—taking it upon themselves to seek out a humble and beatific life. It’s not often that any new folk arrive to do much besides farming and raising cattle, but every once in a while there comes a stranger or two who are drawn to Twotoe to seek out something more… mystical.
Despite the otherwise simple life that lives in Twotoe, stories of strange beasts and happenings grew as naturally as the Summer grain. Hairy behemoth-men, giants living up behind the hills, strange lights in the fall that seem to move where they so choose, and all manner of odd and unimaginable beast. Of course, travelling to the frontier wouldn’t be such an appealing endeavor if they were the only ones harboring stories of the mystical and mysterious; many other settlements have been raised along Hartigan Ridge, but nearer and safer distances from the states, where the rivers lead to lakes, and the forests to clear meadows. But Twotoe is, despite all scrutiny, truly where the mundane meets the magical. There are beasts and strange men beyond the Ridge, and perhaps some even more spectacular discoveries to be found in the deep caves of Gorham Mountain.
That is why, sometimes, when the air is sweet and the seasons are on the cusp of change, a handful of brave—perhaps foolhardy—souls seek fortune higher than any simple cattle ranch or amber waves of grain. They are searching for treasures beyond imagining, and glories that will be immortal, so long as man may breathe.