Scarcity defines the Broken Lands. The terrain is mostly nonarable, the cities small and scattered, the people hard and fiercely self-sufficient. Survival is a constant battle that leaves little time for less pressing concerns. Countries in this region lack the prestigious artistic, academic, and cultural institutions that the empires to the south enjoy, but they also lack the extreme inequality and social rigidity that can hobble advancement in those lands. Here, a person’s fate is in their own hands, and destiny is for the bold to forge. Both natural climate and historical disasters have shaped these nations. The rocky, wind-scoured hills of northern Brevoy and the mosquito-infested swamps of the River Kingdoms are impossible to cultivate, while the irradiated wastelands of Numeria and the demon-haunted Sarkoris Scar are even less hospitable. Arable farmland in the region is limited to southern Brevoy, parts of the Sellen River basin scattered across Razmiran and the River Kingdoms, and tiny pockets in Mendev and Numeria. As a realm’s stability depends on keeping its people fed, the breadbaskets of Rostland take on outsize importance in Brevoy, and Razmiran’s fertile farmland is a major reason its masked god’s rule goes unchallenged. The region’s history has unfurled against, and continues to be guided by, this backdrop of scarcity. Centuries ago, an immense starship fell from the night sky and shattered across Numeria in the Rain of Stars, seeding its land with untold wonders and dangers. In a more developed realm, those mysteries might have been dissected and cataloged long ago, but because Numeria was and is a sparsely populated land of superstitious folk, those star-fallen relics have remained largely unexplored to this day. When the Worldwound erupted in the north and spewed demons onto Golarion, the Abyssal armies scythed through thinly settled Sarkoris without meaningful resistance. Fiends consumed that entire realm before the crusaders of neighboring Mendev, aided by soldiers from across the Inner Sea, were able to stem the tide. For decades, southern nations sent soldiers and supplies northward to bolster the crusade’s defenses, but when the Worldwound closed and new threats arose closer to home, those nations pulled their support away. Now, though the gravest danger has been sealed off, countless demons and their corruptions remain scattered across the Sarkoris Scar and the battlegrounds of Mendev, and few stand ready to face them. Wild, perilous, and largely uncharted, the Broken Lands are filled with dangers and mysteries both ancient and modern. Civilization is a fragile thing here, and in the vastness of the woods and lakes and windswept tundra, spirits and stranger things rule.