The Wildlands
The Wildlands begin where the Empire's roads end, at the frayed hem of civilization where the desert bleeds into jagged canyons and ruin-choked valleys. No one draws true borders out here. The land shifts too often, like a wounded animal rolling in its sleep. What was once a village can become a sinkhole overnight, swallowed by the arcane rot that seeps through the cracked ley lines beneath the surface. Spellstorms rise without warning, twisting the wind into shrieking cyclones and casting silhouettes across the dunes that seem to move against the light. The many tribes of the Empires rebellion, now fractured, fight for control over this forsaken no man's land.
But people live here, somehow. Not citizens, not colonists — survivors. Freed indents form shattered communes out of old mining frames and broken spelljammer hulls, building lives from scrap and memory. Rogue Warforged, cast out by the Empire or escaped from the Foundries, wander in squads or follow the elusive Mechanist, seeking purpose in the wreckage. Others serve stranger powers: spirit-walkers who dance with the dead, shamans who’ve learned to drink leyline energy like water, and wildfolk who answer only to the fey queen Laurel, whose lilac-scented storms herald her passage across this lawless frontier. The Eternal Empire pretends the Wildlands don’t matter. Their maps label it as “unclaimed territory,” a bureaucratic fiction wrapped around a land too dangerous to colonize. But their patrols know the truth — those who march past the border often don’t come back. And those who do return aren’t always quite themselves. Everything in the Wildlands is broken — the laws of nature, the memories of time, the bones of old machines. But beneath the ruin lies power, and power always draws the desperate. Some come looking for freedom, some for ancient secrets, some to vanish entirely. The Wildlands don’t care why you came. It only cares how long you’ll last.