West Marches Campaign

Region: The Verge

The Verge is a sizable sub-region of the Blossoming Wastes, a small and vaguely familiar buffer between the true vastness of the Marches and the lights of civilization. At its greatest limits some thirty by sixty miles, the Verge is a rough and tumble attempt at enforcing some semblance of society upon the Wastes. Clannish villages of grim isolationists and rugged opportunists dot the landscape, their inhabitants burning bramble patches and felling mutated trees to make room for their stubborn farms and ranches.

Settlements in the Verge are racially diverse, with human, half-orc, and dwarf being most common, but many uncommon races are represented; however, most of these townships are composed of only one of these races at a time. For the most part, they survive on basic subsistence crops and livestock, but their proximity to the Blossoming Wastes have created unique opportunities. Verge settlers cultivate and forage for unusual herbs and fungi, and have even been able to rear certain rare and valuable animals and insects.

These townships and farmsteads face constant threats from all variety of monsters, outlaws, and freak weather, but most of them do not acknowledge any sort of authority from the east. They bring their harvest to Thorngate's marketplace, but instead rely on their own guts or hired mercenaries to deal with most threats. This independence has a price, of course. Many of these bold settlers are able to harass their neighbors unchecked, and some are little better than robber barons in their own right. For every steading that has thrived in the Verge, just as many have vanished without a trace back in to the Wastes.