Setting
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w_qYXQ ... r&index=20
The Scavenger Lands are the nations and city-states clustered around or near the Inland Sea, whereas the East proper includes those nations further from the Blessed Isle. The major areas of the Scavenger Lands include Nexus, Lookshy, Great Forks, Thorns, and Greyfalls.
Nexus is the heart and soul of the Scavenger Lands, a city-state all to itself that shows allegiance to no one and nothing but the mysterious Emissary and the Council of Entities that rule there. It is a nearly lawless place, where laws are passed and repealed so often that civil structure of any kind is enforced only sporadically. It is a place of great opportunity, especially for the emerging Anathema, for anything can be purchased in Nexus β adventure, romance, slaves, artifacts, maps to ancient cities, and more β for the right price, of course.
Lookshy is similarly an independent city-state. However, where Nexus is a lawless den of rogues and scoundrels, Lookshy is the last bastion of the Seventh Legion, the final remnant of the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate. The Seventh Legion refused to bow before the Scarlet Empress, and they have shown that they possess the military might and savvy to remain free of the Realm. They are the alternate Dragon-Blooded power in Creation, and while they are not friendly to Anathema, neither are they a civilization based around finding and murdering them.
Great Forks is the City of Temples, a place where gods, elementals, and god-blooded rub shoulders with Fair Folk, Exalted, and stranger things. Run by a trio of gods, Great Forks was once a refugee settlement founded after the Great Contagion. Since then, its rulers have made a thriving city that can boast of having routed a Deathlord⦠a feat which no other living being can claim to date. It is still a refugee haven, a place of unbridled worship and hedonism, where the affluent can forget the cares of the Time of Tumult for a while. Of course, the less affluent still have to struggle to survive amidst the strange company their city keeps.
Thorns was once a tributary of the Realm, strong and proud, but everything changed a few years before the start of the default setting. A Deathlord calling himself the Mask of Winters led an army of the dead out of the Underworld and, with the help of the reanimated remains of a First Age Behemoth, laid waste to the city and turned it into a shadowland. Now, the living are slaves to the dead, and while the Mask of Winters pretends to send representatives to other nations and claims to simply be an equitable leader of a viable nation, his eye turns to the other nations of the Scavenger Lands, seeking the next jewel to add to his soulsteel crown.
Finally, Greyfalls is a tiny tributary of the Realm, one of the last in the Scavenger Lands. They are in dire need of aid, beset as they are by beastmen, Wyld mutants, Anathema, and worse. However, the rumblings of civil war on the Blessed Isle have forced the Realm to withdraw much of its support from such a distant tributary. The satrap has to decide best how to protect his people in the Time of Tumult, and with Realm aid so far away, the choice seems more and more likely to come down to either the traditions and mores of the Scarlet Empire or the shelter of the first port in this metaphorical storm.