Cannibal Plains

The land stretches wide and broken, a sweep of yellowed grass and scarred stone where the wind howls like a starving beast. No walls mark its borders, but every step feels like trespass. Bones litter the ground, not clean, not buried, but gnawed and left to bleach beneath the sun. Smoke sometimes rises on the horizon, thin gray fingers beckoning the unwary toward firepits and feasts not meant for strangers. The people here are not farmers, not traders, not wanderers. They are the Painted Tribes, a people who cover their bodies with white ash and red gore, who wear the masks of beasts and gods. Their songs drift on the wind at dusk, shrill and broken, carrying laughter that never sounds human. No law has reached this far north since the days of Cat-Lon. Travelers whisper that the Plains themselves hunger, that the Painted Tribe are only its teeth.