Borderlands

The Borderlands frame the northern edge of the world. The name covers the nations that stand between the Westlands and the Great Blight: Saldaea, Kandor, Arafel, and Shienar, and once Malkier, the northernmost, swallowed by the Blight a generation earlier. All four were carved from Artur Hawkwing's northern provinces during the War of the Hundred Years, when their governors allied rather than fight one another while Shadowspawn pressed the frontier, and that alliance has never lapsed. Life there is a standing watch. Raids out of the Blight come as regularly as seasons, every town is fortified, and children grow up drilled for war. The Borderlands hold the most martial cultures in the Westlands, and their soldiers are respected everywhere; the south sleeps soundly because the north does not.