Rimewater Vale

Rimewater Vale is the northernmost province of the Lundenian Confederation, as well as the northernmost stretch of land attached to the mainland of the continent of Esparc. Much of the Vale is cold and wet, dominated by forests, swamps, and bogs. Most of the Vale has a relatively low population compared to the rest of Esparc, with the exception of the major cities of Kirkwall and Yorving, the former of which is the city with the second-highest population in the whole of the confederation, after the capital, Lundenia.

The Vale has a reputation for danger, and is portrayed in the songs and novels of the rest of the confederation as a savage frontier, sparsely settled and constantly at risk of being wiped out by bitter winters, raids from Kreathar to the north, and throngs of hostile monsters. While the tales are often exaggerated, the Vale is truly dangerous, with wide swaths of land left to monsters and a serious problem with brigandry and raids, both from humans and dragons.

Still, the province has the allure of wealth. Immense trade flows through its great cities, its hills are rich with valuable minerals, and the cool summers and snowy winters are the preferred climate of a range of fruits, especially numerous breeds of "snow" grapes used in the Vale's famous wines. It is rich with history, too, with a network of underground ruins calling for treasure hunters and occult scholars alike to explore the depths of a lost civilisation in search of fortune.

The Fountainhead Mountains

The Fountainhead Mountains rise like a great curtain around the borders of Rimewater Vale. The mountains stand, on average, about twelve thousand feet high, with many of the peaks shrouded in snow all year long, and even the lower slopes often have heavy snows in winter. The mountain folk of the Fountainheads, like most Valish folk, are very insular, with a great number of them living in isolated homesteads and herding sheep or goats. Vandermaine is the only major settlement in the mountains, having grown out of a moot point for local herders and into a mining settlement extracting the lead and coal from the surrounding hills.

Snowback Ridge is a somewhat isolated plateau in the eastern Fountainheads, and is inhabited almost solely by miners and smelters. The peaks here are especially rich with the metal silver, considered holy to the Luminary Church and useful for arcanists, as well as being the metal used to mint most coins in the Vale. The ridge is shared between the Vale and the nearby country of Delen, a former imperial province that refused to join the confederation, and which has become a hotbed for new imperialists, who wish to see the old empire restored. The border is tense on both sides with regular conflict over mining rights.

The Lake Lands

As the name implies, the Lake Lands are a wide expanse of extremely wet land, with much of the water settled into no less than fifty lakes of varying sizes. The Lake Lands are mostly marshes and bogs, with small forests coating dry patches in the northern stretches like a quilt. Population here is sparse, and Lake-Landers are often viewed by the rest of the Vale as especially "provincial", with rumours of inbreeding and unorthodox religious practises tarnishing the reputation of anyone who hails from there. The draw to these lands is largely the fish and the peat, which, while not especially extravagant, are commodities that are able to keep the hamlets of the Lake Lands on their feet.

The Wildmoor

The Wildmoor is really a collection of several moors that sit between the Lake Lands and the Juniper Hills. The Wildmoor is known for its weather, which can be very extreme, with isolated but very powerful thunderstorms and windstorms lashing the land throughout summer and early autumn and spring. It has a large population of monsters, including several herbivores that are herded alongside cattle and sheep by the folk who live on the moor.

The Kilnwood, a large forest bordering the west side of Lake Amarclere, is geographically considered in the same region as the Wildmoor. The Kilnwood, so named for the fires that burn through patches of the forest with regularity, was once the home of several prestigious orders under the Lord Protector of Kirkwall. These days, though, it is the solely the home of the outcasts, hermits, and criminals who can stand the threat of fire spirits that call the wood home.

The Juniper Hills

Known for its rolling, golden hills that are said to sparkle under the sunlight, the Juniper Hills are by far the most populous region of the Vale. The Juniper Hills are the home of the city of Yorving, as well as the heart of the Vale's wine production. Estates and farms line the hills, growing grapes, juniper, a wide assortment of grains, and apples. In the summer, the hills are warm and picturesque enough for them to be the summer home and vacation spot for a number of aristocrats from Kirkwall and the rest of the confederation, to the point that florid romantic poems praising the shape of a hillside are something of a local joke among the middle and lower classes. Apart from their agricultural bounty, the southern reaches of the hills have several large deposits of fine potter's clay, enabling Yorvingshire to have a thriving stoneware trade.

The hills are surrounded by hinterlands, which are used as a prime source of fine lumber, and the Witchweald, a forest that certainly is not used for lumber. The Witchweald has a reputation for magic, with rumours saying the woods are home to everything from actual witches, to cultists, to spirit armies, to malevolent monsters, and more. While these rumours are an exaggeration, the weald is the epicenter for the strange ruins that can be found beneath the Vale, and have called many scholars here to study them.

The Giants' Walking Path

This peninsula is formed of a sharp line of geometric ridges that rise abruptly from the ground, cloaked in evergreen forests. As the name implies, the Giants' Walking Path was once home to a number of giants, who were mostly pushed out of the Vale over two hundred years ago, with many fleeing to the Kreathar islands. The peninsula here is not fertile in any sense of the word, and most of those who live here do so to quarry stone. Almost by chance, the path is home to the Caspian Flight Academy, the second regional base of the Dragoon Corps, after their headquarters in Kirkwall. The sparsely-populated, harsh landscape is perfect for the knights' training regimens.

Archwood Forest

The Archwood Forest is a vast evergreen forest that covers steep hills and low cliffs near the coast. The forest is named for the archwood trees, titanic evergreens that can stand as tall as three hundred feet. These archwoods were once highly valued for the novelty of their timber, but the trees have recently been designated as "provincial treasures" by the Lord-Protector of Kirkwall, a legal state that imposes a maximum number of trees that can be felled a year. With the profits dried up, all the lumber camps and settlements, save for some off-the-books company endeavours, evaporated, leaving only husks of small hamlets in their wake. Today, the forest is the domain of a mix of Kreathar and Valish hinterland folk, who largely exist outside the legal bounds of the province.

The Crownbreaker Sea

The Crownbreaker Sea hems in the Vale to the north. The sea is cold but not especially violent, and it can be traversed in all seasons by those with experience. In the winters, small icebergs sprout from the sea, with the occasional larger berg floating south to be harvested for the novelty of its ice by inhabitants of the port town of Wrightsmouth. The Kreathar islands sit to the west of the sea, just far enough north that some villages' docks are locked in ice during the winter. The inhabitants of these islands have a fractious relationship with the Valish people, with some clans making the Vale a frequent target for raids and others engaging in infrequent trade. Most Valish people don't entirely understand that the Kreathar are only loosely a state, with many clans engaging in trade and war, amongst themselves or with outsiders, independently. Kreathar in the Vale are often distrusted for this reason.