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In the marshlands formed by the summer icemelt, the vegetation would rot and fill the air with its foul stench. However, the southwestern grasslands along the West Galena Mountains were locally known as the "Bleak Steppes" of Haatar-Baen because the soil was tainted and everything that grew in the area was inevitably poisonous. The grassy plain of the Sunderland in the southeast was decently fertile and could support agriculture and ranching, and Vaasan farmers cultivated a type of maize known as moon corn.
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There were no forests, and what few clumps of trees could be found were as often dead as alive.
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Little grew naturally in Vaasa save for the grasses of the southern steppes.
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Between the 14 th and 15 th centuries DR, the Ice Run-labyrinthine ice formations in the Glacier’s edge-had melted away, thus adding the Lugsaas Chain Mountains to the landscape. īecause the Great Glacier kept melting, the northern border of Vaasa kept shifting northward. The one positive benefit of all this melting ice was that Vaasa was one of a relatively few lands with consistent access to pure and safe drinking water. The river bisected the realm, with the arid badlands of the Cinnabar Wastes in the north and the shortgrass steppes of Haatar-Baen and the Sunderland in the south. What icemelt did not seep into the mud found its way into the Beaumaris River, which meandered from the Bogs through the central highlands at the bottom of a great gorge, known as the Clefts of Razack, before arriving in the eastern lowlands and exiting Vaasa through Bloodstone Pass. This morass of muddy swampland was seasonal during the 14 th century DR, but over the decades it became a permanent feature of the landscape. Įvery summer, the Great Glacier continued its retreat, inundating the tundra with icemelt and turning the land into mud-deep enough to reach a horse's stomach and treacherous enough that it could trap and drown unwary travelers -especially in the western moors where the Bottomless Bogs formed. Vaasa was a realm of tundra, taking the form of moorlands in the west, wasteland in the north, and plains in the south. Geographical Features Īn orc navigates the snowy tundra of Vaasa. As of the late 15 th century DR, much of the remainder of the population lived in the city of Palischuk in the Ostraland region to the northeast or in the city of Telos in the central highlands. This region was dominated by the towns of Darmshall and Maur-Eturo. Most folk who settled in Vaasa did so in the Sunderland region in the southeast where they had access to both the gem- and metal-rich Galena Mountains as well as rare workable soil for raising crops and livestock. The West Galenas separated Vaasa from the lands of the Moonsea North to the west and from the Moonsea itself to the south. Bloodstone Pass allowed access through the Galenas to Damara in the east, and these two nations were collectively known as the Bloodstone Lands. It was bordered to the north by the Great Glacier and surrounded to the south by the arc of the Galena and West Galena Mountains. Vaasa was the westernmost realm of the so-called Cold Lands. As a result of the harsh environment, the Vaasan people were known to be a tough and close-knit folk who were unashamed to rely on everything and everyone they could to help them survive. The winters brought deep freezes, and in the summers, fog blanketed the land and frigid waters from melting ice turned much of the tundra into boggy mud that was better traversed with sleds than wagons. It was always cold, with icy and dry winds blowing off the Great Glacier to the north. Vaasa was an empty and inhospitable land of rolling hills, frozen wastes, meager grasslands, and open tundra with sporadic farms and the occasional wandering monster.