Eastern Badlands

• Location: East of the Heartlands and the Abyss of Khora, west of the Eastern Kingdoms, north of the Hyatic Mountains

• Environment: Rocky canyons and rivers, semi-arid but with significant amounts of flora along bodies of water.

Geography

The eastern badlands are a scarcely populated semi-arid region of red rock mesas, mountains, rocky badlands, grassy lowlands, plentiful canyons, and wind-carved rock formations. While hardly a verdant forest, these lands conceal a great deal of life. The mountains are frequently covered in scraggly brush and trees, where rain falls at higher elevations, while beds of life form around the many rivers and lakes in the region. The region is also volcanically active, a fact that lead to it becoming a home to many Draconid species which thrived in the environment.

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The most important landmark in the eastern badlands is Mount Sathyras, the ancient lair of the dragon-emperor Khora, and now the capital of the Kingdom of Sathyras. Mount Sathyras lies to the west of the River Zka, and Mount Czali lies north of there. Some lakes dot the region in valleys between the frequent mountains and hills. To the west and east the land flattens substantially, so the eastern badlands are a fairly narrow area- to the west, it gives way to the fertile but tainted hinterlands, and to the east it gives way to the grasslands that form the western section of hte eastern kingdoms.

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Beneath these badlands lies one of the largest cave networks in the known world, second only to the Dwarrow underground, and these caves thrive with many exotic and mystical creatures, which seem to migrate out from the heartlands periodically. The caverns do not seem to be connected to the Abyss, as it is exceedingly rare to find corrupted monsters in those subterannean lands beneath Sathyras.

To the south of the Badlands it shares a border with the Hyatic Mountains, as well as the Abyssal Sea. Many of the smaller rivers in the area are polluted by passing through the Abyss, but fortunately the river Zka, the main source of fresh water for the area, is untainted.

 

Civilization

The main inhabitants of the eastern badlands are the Dragari, who are centered upon Mount Sathyras. The Dragari civilization spans the River Zka, which stretches southwards from the Adryssian empire in the north. Practically all other civilization has been wiped out from the region, though migratory tribes sometimes venture into the southern regions from the Hyatic Mountains, before usually heading east or southeast to greener pastures in the eastern kingdoms and auroran penninsula.