The Steplands

Outsiders see wilderness; The Hillfolk know it as home. The Steplands are rugged hill-country south of the Flats — a karst plateau of limestone, quartzite, and granite carved by runoff and groundwater into hills, valleys, cliffs, caves, sinkholes, and streams.

The land is thin-soiled, erosion-prone, and full of old barrows, Stone Lord remains, sacred places, and grazing routes. The Hillfolk's bands move through it with knowledge that settled travelers lack.

Use the Steplands for Hillfolk politics, taboos, caves, barrows, rockslides, blood debts, sacred sites, and the tension between outsider maps and a nomadic people's lived geography.

• Home to dozens of small nomadic bands, the Hillfolk
• Karst terrain: limestone and quartzite and granite with caves, sinkholes, and streams
• Rocky, almost barren in places — soil thin and prone to erosion and mudslides
• To the north, touches Ferrier's Fen and the Great Wood; to the west, climbs to the Huffel Peaks