Shadow Marches

When most people think of the Shadow Marches, they imagine a fetid backwater where illiterate humans mingle with orcs and other foul creatures, practicing strange rites by the light of the moons. While flawed, this vision isn't entirely inaccurate. The Shadow Marches are a desolate land of swamps and moors. The homeland of the orcs, the Marches were scarred in the ancient conflict with the daelkyr. The fiends left twisted creatures and aberrations in the swamps, and sowed seeds of madness that linger to this day. There are indeed moonlit rituals in the Marches: some to honor the daelkyr, others to maintain the wards that keep them trapped in Khyber.   Humans came to the Marches long ago, refugees fleeing a war in the distant land of Sarlona. Over time the two cultures merged, forming the Marches as they exist today.   The Marches had little contact with the Kingdom of Galifar or the east until a few hundred years ago, when a House Sivis expedition made two discoveries: the region contained valuable dragonshards, and a number of clans had manifested the Dragonmark of Finding. This led to the foundation of House Tharashk, as these clans joined together to master the economic potential of their mark and leverage their mineral wealth.