The Western Plains

There are two meanings to the term ‘‘western plains”: the fringes of the Gnarley Forest on the west bank of the Selintan, and the lands around the northern fringes of the Gnarley, which stretch west to those lands administered by Dyvers.

The lands on the west bank of the river shade into the old Wild Coast lands, and the farmers who eke out a living here tend to be poorer than most, suspicious, and hard folk. They have always had to face the threat of creatures marauding from the Gnarley Forest, as well as bandits from the Wild Coast lands.

Approximately half the land in this area is hardly farmed at all, merely occasionally grazed by sheep.

All the farms here have shuttered windows and strong doors. Most have palisade walls and a system of water-filled ditches for defense. Most of the farms are family farms, with the menfolk 75% likely to be 1st-level fighters rather than Normal Men. Fierce dogs are kept as guards (treat as war dogs). Farmfolk trust few apart from their own immediate neighbors and do not travel far from home; consequently, they regard such places as the Free City to be very far-off (and usually as holes of depravity and dens of thieves to boot).

Anyone looking to these communities for generosity or accommodation will be disappointed. The locals will as likely throw eggs at a foreigner as sell them to him.

North of the Gnarley, matters are complex in the post-war picture. The borderline shown on the campaign map is fixed by convention rather than a formal treaty with Dyvers. East of this line, tenant farmers are rented their lands by the Free City, and to the west of it, the lands belong to Dyvers, effectively by consent of the powerful minor nobles who own the lands. However, groups of tenant and tied farmers have begun to press their lords to switch allegiance to the Free City and, should they choose to do so, there is little Dyvers can do about it.

The farmers, and some nobles, seek allegiance with Greyhawk simply because it is more powerful than Dyvers, and these folk feel it offers them better protection. This is extremely important, because they are, after all, just across the water from Furyondy. Some of them have seen for themselves what happened to that country during the wars.

Reciprocally, Greyhawk covets these lands because they are more fertile than most of the Plain of Greyhawk, and the farms offer resources of men while the nobles offer extra taxation revenue. The rulers of Greyhawk have not made an active pitch for new recruits, but rulers of lands just west of the border undoubtedly find themselves well-received by the Free City authorities. This has led to growing friction between Dyvers and Greyhawk, and both sides are known to seed rumors about the other among the border communities. Rumors about Dyvers usually reflect themes of weakness and vacillation among rulers there, while those about Greyhawk refer to the corruption of rulers and the new terrors of the criminal code (“they say they hang a man there for stealing a loaf of bread. Unless ’e’s a member of their damned Guild of Thieves that rules the place, of course”).

Lastly, it is also the case that Dyvers sees the improvements to the old road to Greyhawk, from the Greyhawk end, as a clear sign that Greyhawk is pressing westward with thoughts of dominion and eventually annexing Dyvers itself, just as it annexed Hardby. Dyvers has refused to upgrade the road from its own end, leaving Greyhawk to meet the costs of this. Naturally enough, farmers see this as a sign of the greater wealth (and thus power) of Greyhawk, and it also makes it easier for them to dispatch their produce east rather than west.

The village of Maraven lies right on the DyverslGreyhawk divide, currently paying tribute to Dyvers. The town’s merchant rulers exploit their position to the full, entertaining Greyhawk visitors so as to arouse the anxiety of Dyvers (which, as a consequence, keeps taxes in Maraven low). Since Maraven is semiautonomous, it has attracted riff-raff from the Wild Coast and even the Bandit Kingdoms who are happy to hide out in an increasingly lawless outpost. Unscrupulous mercenaries and freebooters are plentiful here, and evilly-inclined employers know where to find them.