Year 86
The continent of Yementing is divided into five independent countries and mostly still follows the borders ordained by the saints. A sixth breakout country has formed, however, by dissenters of the faith. Additionally, a large area remains unclaimed as it is deemed too dangerous to enter.
As the land in the middle, Choysten borders almost all the other lands of Yementing. The soil is fertile and the weather is temperate, making it an ideal place for agriculture. Trees have long since reclaimed all ruins from the time before the mystic age, but people have begun carving out large groves where they can live. Settlements are spread and divided with little unity, and the people live on a technological level comparable to pre-medieval European society, from a time where records where few. The inhabitants of this land are fair-skinned and blonde and are aligned with the magic of lightning.
In the year 86, Choysten is a conglomeration of twenty-six distinct, disparate regions. There hasn’t yet been a war between them, but there have been talks of alliances.
Fair Arrows
The northernmost region of Choysten containing one large settlement by the sea to the north, Greysten, and three smaller villages, no more than farms, in the western part of the region. All land between them, as with Choysten generally, is covered by dense trees.
Greysten
This is a sleepy little village in the southwestern end of Choysten, consisting of a few large farmhouses surrounding a natural hill in the middle on which the local longhouse stands and the chieftain lives. It is home to the tribe of the Fair Arrows, who subsist mostly off of husbandry, each house built big enough to house both humans and livestock alike. Their one claim to fame is having a saint, Saint Daniel, buried just outside of town, and they enjoy the holy protection offered by his relic, the bow Nevada that he used in his battle against the demon king.
The Hoard
A larger region than the Fair Arrows, but less populated with one large town and two smaller settlements. The land is characterised even more by its uneven terrain, making settlements difficult.
The Raider’s Man
A very small region in the northeast of Choysten, and locked in between the sea and the two previously mentioned regions with only one settlement nestled inside harsh terrain. Access to and through the region is difficult, and that is just the way the residents like it.
In the southeast corner of Yementing lies mountainous Ublistan. Its people live on the steep cliff sides, on plateaus high above ground and even inside caves, digging tunnels in the search of ore and artefacts from before the mystic age. One should think that nothing could grow or live here, but grass and bushes and even a tree or two stubbornly cling to life and feed animals like sheep. It is said that a gate to another world exists somewhere in Ublistan, and that the people guard it fiercely.
West of Choysten is the desert kingdom of Snoic Stral, where only mountains and cliffs can provide any shelter for the unmerciful sun.
North of Choysten we have Xutrania, a land of scattered islands where people live mainly along the shores and fish in the ocean to live.
Northeast of Choysten is the land of Escye, where bitter cold winds howl uninterrupted along wide swaths of heath as far as the eye can see.
East of Choysten, squeezed in between Escye and Ublistan, we have Swunia, a land filled with lakes and springs and plateaus. The land is divided into several regions, half of them prosperous with glorious architecture, and the other half inhabited by savages.
East of Choysten is a barren, ashen waste surrounding a chain of mountains. A volcanic eruption some eight decades earlier turned the area upside down, and it remains unclaimed by people to this day.