The Redstone Expanse
Flame-Touched Frontier of the Concordat
To the east of the Daggercrag Mountains, where the jagged cliffs give way to burning winds and a sea of red dust, lies the Redstone Expanse—a sweeping, sun-scorched plateau that forms the fiery heartland of the Taurian Concordat. Harsh, vast, and beautiful in its desolation, the Expanse is as much a crucible of character as it is a region—a place that tempers those who dwell within it into steel-hardened survivors and unyielding patriots.
The name Redstone comes from the ochre-colored bedrock that dominates the terrain—iron-rich stone that glows deep crimson beneath the relentless sun, and shimmers with magical heat long after nightfall. Dust storms sweep the flats with howling fury, carving stone into strange, wind-sculpted towers known as the Horns of the Expanse. The ground is dry and cracked, but far from barren. Beneath its surface lie deep veins of copper, salt, and rare fossils that fuel much of the Concordat’s industry.
At the Expanse’s heart sits Samantha’s Hold, the capital of the Concordat and the seat of House Calderon. Built into the high bluffs overlooking the scorched plain, the city commands both a strategic view and symbolic dominance—a fortress of order rising from chaos, the very image of Taurian willpower in stone. Around it, smaller mining towns, trade outposts, and nomadic ranching communities dot the land, connected by a network of carefully warded caravan trails and subterranean waystations known as sunvaults.
Life in the Redstone Expanse is grueling, but deeply proud. The people here—miners, warriors, and ranchers alike—embrace a culture of endurance, duty, and fierce independence. It is said that no Concordat citizen is truly considered an adult until they’ve weathered a full storm season in the Expanse’s open plains. Most families boast at least one member in the Ironhorn Guard, and tales of lone caravans fighting off bandit warbeasts or surviving arcane sandwhirls are passed down like holy scripture.
Mystics from the Concordat’s state-sanctioned arcane academies occasionally venture into the deeper reaches of the Expanse to study the leyline anomalies and unstable magical echoes that flicker in the rocks—remnants, some say, of the League of Stars’ last experiments in planar binding. These sites are dangerous, often warded by residual energy or haunted by creatures born of fractured reality, and are officially off-limits… though many ambitious scavengers ignore the warnings.
The Redstone Expanse has become more than just a homeland—it is a staging ground, a proving field, and a symbol. For as the Protector himself once said, “Only from the furnace can something unbreakable be made.” The Redstone Expanse is not just where the Concordat was born.
It is where its heart still beats—loud, defiant, and burning with purpose.
“You don’t tame the Expanse. You earn its silence. And if you’re lucky, its respect.” — Captain Selene Bragar, Ironhorn Guard Veteran
