The Steppes were once a region of arable and pastoral farming, which fed the population of Orondor and also left surplus for storage and trade.
Since the corruption of Orondor in 622, sixty years ago, the lands have slowly changed. Wells and rivers have dried up, and soils which were once fertile and rich are now dust and dry. Very little grows here, and the rustic villages that dot the land now lay abandoned and in ruins.
Yet the area still proves a valuable traiding route, and compared to the craggy roads of The Scar, The Steppes offer a longer, but relatively safer passage between Oun and Rune.
Author's Note
This page is currently quite bare bones. It'll be one that I hope to return to to flesh out soon (July 22).
Very few of the civilised races – humans, dwarves and the like – live here anymore. Those that do are hardy folk, often ancestors of the farmers that made their homes here and refused to leave their homesteads once the crops started to die.
The lands are host to wandering undead, or Restless, who wander the barren fields and hills in small groups. They are little threat to prepared caravans which can hire guards to fend them off, but for lone travellers and those caught unprepared they provide a constant threat.
Fang is the largest settlement in The Steppes. On the northern border of The Scar, Fang is a towering inactive volcano; its peak shattered by a powerful eruption many centuries ago. Fang is home to the Ferian, or at least where most of their kind dwell.
The Steppes are a large area of gentle rolling hills, which in better times provided picturesque views interspersed with streams, quaint villages and tall windmills. Now, their soils are grey and lifeless, and the wind whips up the sandy fragments of the fields to create dust storms that leave in their wake dim, hazy days as the particles fill the air.
Fang is the largest and highly populated settlement within The Steppes. It lies within a large, dormant volcano, which is riddled with caverns and passageways carved eons ago through the flows of lava and volcanic activity which rang through the peak. Now, the ferian use these structures as the basis of their main settlement. Life within the mountain is sub-divided into sections, with the higher ranking, Overling ferian living higher up, in the more ventilated, spacious caves and the lower, more mutated individuals living below in the festering caverns of the Underlings.
Hendakk is a sprawling, unclean and largely poor place. Few have any reason to go there, although it does hold attraction for some. Undead monsters and other freaks are captured from the wilds and brought into the fighting pits of Hendakk’s underbelly, pitted against each other or against gladiators who have ended up there via their own will or not. It is also a refuge for criminals and other scoundrels on the run from Rune’s authorities, as few in authority in Rune would wish to pursue anyone there. A lawless place, and forever under threat and attack by the undead that roam around, the city employs a “survival of the fittest” mentality. Many in Rune feel that it is only a matter of time before the place is destroyed by the undead or consumes itself in its own wickedness.
Author's Note
Easter Egg Time! Hendak is the name of a gladiatorial slave in the game Baldur's Gate 2. Hendakk is a gladiatorial city based around that very thing.
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