05 Everwyld

Geography and Circumstance:

Everwyld occupies the northern side of the bight which forms the majority of the western side of the continent, sitting between Ghostwind to the north-and-northwest, Shadowgave to the south, and Feywood to the east. The Great Escarpment makes up its north-and-northeastern borders. Whilst, from a distance, Everwyld might superficially resemble the Feywood, the difference between the lands becomes blatantly obvious once one gets close enough to realise that nearly the entire region is comprised of hills and valleys, running the length from the Great Escarpment nearly all the way to the oceans. The rivers and streams cross and split throughout the region, turning it into a veritable maze of waterways and hills.   Travelling to and from the coast from the mountains is theoretically easy enough - follow the waterways downstream, finding river fords or building bridges as you find the cross-streams. Travelling northwest/southeast, however, is a much more difficult proposition, forcing travellers to either travel up-or-downstream until finding cross-streams to follow, or otherwise having to scale the seemingly-endless series of hills.   The wildlife of Everwyld is diverse, but tends to the varieties found in temperate and alpine regions - bears, wolves, elk, moose, deer and the like are all common. Occasional drake and wyvern sightings have been made, as well as hydra nests in the southeastern reaches of the region.  

Races of Everwyld:

Everwyld’s hilly forests have been conducive to the survival of the more agile of species, and those more well-adapted to forest living, particularly since the Planestorms in the region promote rampant vegetation growth.

• Catfolk
• Elves
• Ghoran*
• Gnomes
• Halfling
• Humans
• Kitsune
• Strix
• Tengu
• Vanara
• Ysoki

*Ghoran can occasionally spontaneously come into existence during the Everwyld Planestorms - whether the essence of their souls springs forth from its planar connection and inhabits existing plantlife also mutated by the planar energies, or some other cause of this phenomenon causes their creation has yet to be discovered.  

Everwyld Society:

Since the cessation of the Calamity over a hundred years ago, the population of Everwyld has split into multiple smaller valley towns and villages, each normally comprised of two to three resident species. The capital, Eaglehall, still remains the largest and most diverse population centre in the region with a largely egalitarian approach to living, though individuals from the outlying settlements have begun being treated as more “rural” members of the community.   River trade is, understandably, the backbone of inter-settlement trade within Everwyld, both because of the difficulty in traversing the densely-vegetated hills of the region and because of how extensive the waterways are. As a side-effect of this, coastal trade is also the primary method of moving peoples and products to neighbouring regions - river traders bring cargo to the ocean, then coastal vessels move it onward.   The nature of the Everwyld Planestorms and their effect on vegetation does make surface mining and quarrying difficult, at best. As such, the region is perpetually suffering a shortage of good, ready metal and stone sources, which must either be laboriously deep-mined (with special attention paid to keep Planestorm-touched waters from leaking into the mines) or traded with the neighbouring regions. Lumber and plant products, on the other hand, are in plentiful supply, and many rare forms of flora are abundant within the borders of Everwyld.  

Stronghold: