Rustwater Basin

The Crossroads • Population: ~5,000

Neutral ground where all roads meet. No faction truly controls it, making it last free town—or first to burn. The water runs red with iron, and the town runs on commerce, vice, and violence. If you're headed anywhere on the frontier, you pass through Rustwater. Old Pete's tavern serves as informal information hub.

Kessick

Rail Hub • Population: ~3,000

Major rail junction choked in smoke and sorcery. Time kept by train whistles, not clocks. Consortium and Covenant of Ash both maintain heavy presence. Air quality toxic—everyone coughs. Children born here often show strange marks. But work is plentiful if you don't mind dying young.

Cindralock

Mining Town • Population: ~800

Burned down twice—foundry fire first time, mysterious blaze second. Rebuilt both times because coal deposits too valuable. Folk joke the place is "cindered and locked in ash" but stay for wages. Dangerous work, short lives, but steady pay.

Orvain

Consortium Capital • Population: ~15,000

The closest thing to civilization on the frontier. Glass towers, paved streets, gas lamps, running water. Consortium headquarters. Where decisions are made in boardrooms that result in blood on dirt roads three hundred miles away. Walled, guarded, expensive. Most frontier folk will never afford to enter.

Greystone

Cliff Town • Population: ~600

Built into cliffs on Scorchveil's edge. Named for black-streaked boulder that lightning struck repeatedly. Paranoia thick as dust—everyone carries iron, trusts no one. Supplies come through Brannoch. Serves as last outpost before deep desert.

Durrant

Cattle Country • Population: ~400

Ranching community on grassland corridor before desert. Where Duncan investigated cattle dying and walking. Practical folk, hard workers, suspicious of outsiders. Marcus Kellan's ranch is largest in area. Short rail spur connects to Rustwater.

Brannoch

Trail Outpost • Population: ~200

Little more than saloon with attached buildings. Named for Scottish immigrant whose establishment was only refuge on southern trail. Now serves travelers, traders, and outlaws with equal hospitality (if you can pay). Ask no questions, tell no lies.

Lathrop

Ley-Crossing Town • Population: ~1,200

Reality doesn't work right here. Doors open to wrong rooms. People age differently. Time feels fluid. Ley-line crossing makes the town valuable to Circle of Ash, terrifying to Redeemers. Stroud plans major cleansing. Folk nail symbols to doors to keep from wandering at night. Rails avoid it entirely.

Brimstead

Mining Town • Population: ~2,000

Never sleeps, just twitches and mutters. Miners cough black dust, die young. The Lanterns tavern serves as saloon and courthouse. Dogs bark till throats give out. When law fails, they send for men like Duncan Maddox. Where the story begins.

Palomera

Hollowborn Haven • Population: ~500

Hidden valley settlement cloaked by psionic veils. Refuge for Hollowborn fleeing persecution. Circle of Ash maintains protective rituals. Name from old word for "dovecote" but settlers misused it for canyon where pigeons roosted. Dust Vultures protect it; Redeemers hunt for it.

Holtrass

Forgotten Trail Town • Population: ~300

Name garbled from "Old Trace," vanished trail that once cut through valley. Maps kept wrong spelling. Town survives on stubbornness and isolation. Few visitors, fewer amenities. Folk who want to disappear end up here.

Bellhaven

Pilgrim Waystation • Population: ~700

Chapel bell once guided pilgrims across ford. River flooded, carried founder away, but name softened to Bellhaven. Half-sanctuary, half-trap. Mother Elaine runs waystation offering refuge to travelers. Raiders lurk near holy ground. Always tension between sanctuary and violence.

Mournstead

Plague Town • Population: ~400

Church settlement struck by plague. Cemetery grew larger than town itself. Name became identity. Everyone knows someone buried here. Atmosphere heavy with grief. Some say the dead whisper at night. Most avoid it unless desperate.

Ojo del Diablo

The Devil's Eye

Circular sinkhole lake in the Scorchveil. Water so black it drinks sunlight whole. At night, reflects stars that don't match the sky overhead—different constellations, twisted and mean. Locals throw offerings (coins, knives, teeth, even fingers) hoping the Devil looks away. Bodies found forty miles from the Eye, killed by things that shouldn't exist.

Where the River Went Backwards

The Uphill River

Dried riverbed in the Graven Plain. Most years stays empty. But once every couple decades, water returns—flowing uphill, defying gravity itself. When that happens, drowned folk walk with it. Pale as moonlight, eyes bulging, mouths open but silent. They stagger from the banks seeking something. Whole villages board up doors until water dries. Some drowned find their way inside anyway.

The Place Where Nails Grow

Iron's Harvest

Barren patch in the Ash Belt where iron spikes push out of soil like weeds. Farmers harvest them, get good money. Problem: anything built with these nails ends badly. Barn roofs collapse. Nails twitch in wood like maggots. Blood stains appear. One farmer built barn with harvested iron—roof fell, killed his youngest. He claimed boy "weren't meant to live past thirteen anyhow."

Marrow Downs

The Humming Bones

Hills pale as bones in the Graven Plain. Dig anywhere and you'll find massive skeletal remains—not buffalo, not cattle, bigger. Bones hum at dusk, sound carrying miles. Children roll down the slopes laughing. Sometimes they don't get back up—just lay there, humming with the ground. Parents carry them home stiff as driftwood.

Two-Mouth Spring

The Split Water

Spring in the Fen runs sweet water by day, black bile by night. Town built near it once—every inhabitant gouged their own eyes out by year's end. No one knows why. Spring still runs. Some mad bastards drink from both mouths hoping for visions. Only visions they get are of their own graves.

Thousand-Lantern Fen

The Soul Lights

Swamp in the Fen of the Fallen where floating lights drift—too steady for fireflies, too restless for lanterns. Hunters disappear following them. Each light is supposedly a trapped soul. Catch one in a jar and you own it. One man did, started feeding it scraps. Then opened the jar and poured it into his mouth. Spoke in three voices after— none his own.

Crown of Crows

The Black Crown

Basalt outcropping shaped like broken crown in the Bluffs. Thousands of black birds roost there, darkening the sky. Not normal crows—too many at once, never starving, never dying. If a crow lands on you there, you'll be cold in the ground before year's out. Folk avoid it even during storms. No whiskey's worth that risk.

The Stairs That Sank

Gateway to Nothing

Stone staircase in middle of Scorchveil Desert, leading down into sand. No house, no ruins, just steps. Daytime: harmless stone. Nighttime: they go deeper, like sand parts for them. Folk sleepwalk there. Families wake to find sons, daughters, wives gone. Tracks lead to the stairs, then vanish. Best advice: don't dream near them.

Red Mother's Teeth

The Bleeding Cliffs

Jagged crimson cliffs near Stormrise resembling mouth full of fangs. When lightning strikes, the stone bleeds. Not rain—blood. It pools at bottom, thick and coppery. Cattle won't drink it. Desperate people do. It fills them with rage, makes them tear at their own kin. Whole family lines wiped out that way. But some say it makes a man near unkillable—at least till the rage burns out.

Bell-in-the-Black

The Obsidian Tower

Monolith of black obsidian in the Graven Plain. No entrance, no carvings. Every storm, it tolls like church bell, echo rolling for miles. Sound isn't just heard—it speaks. Not in words you understand, but in words you remember anyway. They lodge in your skull like hooks. Old Pete Carver still wakes sweating, hearing that bell saying his name.

The Silver Line

Primary Rail Route

Main rail artery: Orvain → Kessick → Rustwater Basin → Iron Mesa. Consortium's spine of control. Well-maintained, heavily guarded, regular schedules. Also: expensive, monitored, and you're stuck with whoever else bought tickets. Bandits rarely hit Silver Line trains—Ironbrands response is too brutal.

The Dust Trail

Southern Caravan Route

Main wagon trail: Rustwater Basin → Brannoch → Desert edge settlements. Unpaved, unreliable, prone to raids. Stones piled at intervals mark safe paths. In Scorchveil, storms erase trail overnight. Need local guide or you'll die of thirst three days out.

Current's Bend

River Route

Navigable river running through Rustwater Basin. Flatboats and rafts move goods but risk Stormcallers and Fen-wraiths. Safer than trails in some ways—harder for bandits to ambush water traffic. More dangerous in others—supernatural threats drawn to flowing water.

The Bluff Roads

Mountain Passes

Winding trails through Stormrise Bluffs. Treacherous: steep drops, sudden weather, lightning strikes. But sometimes faster than going around. Local guides essential—they know which passes stay clear, which avalanche, which attract Stormcallers.

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