Never's Edge

ER, upon his return, regaling his younger siblings with tales from his accidental adventure

...."so tell us, what was the COOLEST place you got to see, huh ER?"
-"No, what was the craziest?!"
-"The scariest!"
-"The..."
-"Alright alright, I get the idea, I get the idea! Calm down you guys, I can only answer one question at a time! And those you just threw at me are some right doozies... all of the places I saw were so different, so unbelievable, its really hard to pick one over the other. How about this? For the next part, instead of just telling you what I saw and did, I'll give you a general overview of the region first? That way, you get a nice idea of the landscape, and all the cool things and people that I met in it? Here, Crinkles can even help, he'll show you the layout. Right Crinkles?"
-"Fine, fine. Luckily for you my memory is not-to-be-pecked. Gather round children, whilst I travel back down memory lane for myself, and bring you across trackless oceans, fetid swamps, soaring mountains..."
-"Oh hush you! We already know you've seen cool stuff! Just show us the map!"
-"Yeah, hush! Besides, ER tells the story better anyway! We wanna listen to him, and just look at you!"
-"Alright guys, leave the poor map alone, and pipe down. Its time to go back to the forest..."

Never's Edge

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This geographical region straddles the border between The Never, a deep and dark Faerie Forest, and the Divershplain Reflection, once a sprawling empire of man that has splintered and dwindled in classic Tolkienian style. This map is still not great. But its getting there.

Geography

Now technically, Never's Edge itself is the name given only to the fringe of "normal" woods that exists, you guessed it, along the eastern edge of the deep, dark, fairy wood which is known simply as The Never. This relatively small region is heavily influenced by its neighboring geographic regions though. In order to truly understand The Edge itself, I think its probably best if I give you a bit of a primer on the entire region which Carter  is showing you now, from the east of The Never itself, up to the Cliff's Edge Mountains in the north, and the northwestern regions of the Divershplain, past the Range of Ryllandaras are all counted. This mainly because this entire cluster of areas are on the fringes, the edges, of where people actually live, and so they all kinda get grouped together on most maps, and by most people.
Now, just what are these names for places that I just threw out at you? Well, we'll get to those next. But first, the Edge proper itself:

Never's Edge

would be classified by most in this world as a legitimate, deep, and fully flourishing forest. It is, in fact, quite similar to the woods around here, at least at first glance. It is full of lush greenery, towering oaks and other green-leafing trees (or whatever they're actually called, you know, not pines) and has a number of small glens and trickling rills. A picturesque place for city dwellers to come look at, and a place that the natives know can be both deadly and full of opportunity. Running north-south through the edge (yup, right there, that green part that is around the real trees, that's it) you can see a road. To the people who live there, it is merely The Road, as it is the lifeblood of the region, and one of the only ways they have to reliably contact civilization. It has other names on big maps found hanging in The Libraries and in the planning rooms of generals, but I never heard it referred to as anything else.

The Divershplain

starts where the mundane trees of the Edge peter out, and stretches out beyond the horizon east and south from there. It has its good, "civilized" parts, full of quaint villages, farming towns surrounded by seas of grain, cities, and even kingdoms and baronies. Those I've already told you about, and for the most part, they exist off this map, either to the northeast on the coast of The South Sea, or far to the south. The part of the plain directly east of the Edge is renowned (and feared) enough that it receives its own name on any map worth its ink:

The Range of Ryllandaras

This region is the wildest part of the entire 'plain, and so of course it buts right up against the Edge. Legend has it that a terrible beast roams in a roughly circular area south of the sea and east of the wood. Nobody is entirely sure of the form it takes; many tales claim it can change shapes at will, appearing as a lion, a jackal, a herd of wildebeest, or even a man. Whatever form he takes, one thing remains the same: it is incredibly territorial, and more than willing to hunt and eat any on its territory that it perceives as a threat to its sovereignty. Entire armies have marched against this area of the plain, that much is known as historical fact. What happens afterwards to those armies, however, that is where the folklore and fear mongering begin. As a result, this portion of the 'plain is supposedly the most wild, and presents the greatest vistas and views. The only people who get to enjoy it however are the various wild tribes, of men and other races, that occupy the land. They live as nomads, and supposedly offer sacrifices to the great beast, some as tribute, and others in genuine worship, it is said. They do not have a great relationship with the cities and baronies which ring their part of the plain to the north, east, and south, and oftentimes only ride in those directions to go on raids when their herds are depleted, or the omens tell them to. To the west lies the forest though, which has always stymied their totem, and only three poor villages, without much in the way of plunder. So it is there, to the Edge, that they come for trade, where The Road comes closest to the part of the 'plain where normal men (such as myself, as I said, this part is all hearsay) dare to tread.

To the north, where The Road finds one of its ends, lie the

Cliff's Edge Mountains.

To the locals, being used to forests and plains, these peaks tower over their world, the only things that can hope to match the majesty and terror of the true depth of The Never. Compared to The Shifting Mountains out the window...they're decent I suppose. I'll give them a 6/10, I suppose. What Crinkles is showing there, at the top, is not quite the entirety of their scope, they do continue a bit further off the map to the east. To be honest though, its just not a huge range. Pretty narrow, with a few high looking peaks, and not especially long as a range either. They are far from tamed, of course, being mountains. Giants and mountain elementals are supposedly seen from time to time, but they don't spit those monstrosities in any significant numbers either. The Road is able to traverse the one set pass, Centerpass, where it ends at the fort which guards the entry into Perland, the most isolated end of this Reflections. Crossing these peaks anywhere but that pass, while doable, is not something anyone would recommend. Myself included. It was pretty terrible. Mountains are still mountains, and they were covered in snow, ice, avalanches, and the various nasty, hungry things that live in them.

And now, we come to centerpiece of the entire region. The thing everyone, from the uneducated carter making a supply run to ,the strange and mighty Ryllandaras himself, is secretly worried about.

The Never.

I did not do more than skirt by the very edges of this ancient wood, and even that was a far more harrowing experience than my weeks lost in the mountains surrounded by blizzard, yeti, and troll. It was also, however, far more beautiful than the greatest mountain view or nighttime glacier walk I could ever hope to see, on any mountain. And there, I believe, lay the true peril. As a result, I can't tell you anything about it from direct, personal experience. Instead, much like for the Range, I'll have to make do with hearsay, rumor, and legend. There are things I do know for sure though, and can without a doubt confirm. The Never is a Faerie wood. It is deep. It is dark. It is strange. And mortals do not belong. Some legends claim that it is but a portion of The Eternal Wood, which stretches the world round, and is the source of every strange Fey being you might hear of in any story. Others say that its depths are so strange and alien that reaching them would transport one to other realms or realities, with no chance of returning home. I cannot confirm the truth of those particular stories. But I would not be so quick to deny them either. When I was passing through, The Never had been fairly quiet for a long while. Its borders had not grown recently, and a minimum of talking goats, giant spiders, and disappearing cows with multiple heads had been seen in the past months had been seen. To the younger folk I met, this was of course a grand thing. Things were normal (on that front at least). The problems of man were enough to deal with without worrying about the problems that they Fey might bring. The older generations outwardly agreed with this optimistic outlook. They did not brag about this good fortune however. They seemed rather quiet, and concerned, as if what they were experiencing was but the calm before the storm. I cannot say which opinion held true over the long term, thankfully, as I was able to vacate the region before the storm that is the Fey ever broke, or did not. Thankfully.

Fauna & Flora

The Edge's position along the border between reflections makes it a chaotic place, like home, with lots of things, people, and creatures flowing in and out of it. The woods themselves tend to be inhabited more by denizens of The Never itself than from the plains or mountains which border it on the other sides. At least, that was my experience with the place. This may be due to simple questions of suitability, since as you can imagine, something used to living in a magic fairy-wood is probably going to adjust better to living surrounded by non-magical trees than will something which is designed for life on the rolling plain. This doesn't mean that only fairies, selkies, and dryads are to be found though. Sometimes, especially in the northern section of the wood, smaller giants, weak earth elementals, and flying denizens of the peaks might venture down in search of a meal or three, or in order to escape a more dangerous foe. And supposedly the grazing creatures of the plain, such as bison and species of deer might stray beneath the boughs of the Edge as well. If a traveler is extremely unlucky, he or she might even run into a creature stranger than these, translated to the locale by the excess of planar energy which can be found in the wood, although like at home, most of these creatures do not last long before either the drastic change in scenery does them in or they are whisked away yet again to some other far-off place.
Nobody I talked to was able to give me a very exhaustive list of the sorts of creatures I could expect to run into outside of those "normally" found in mundane woodlands the world over. Apparently the creatures which tend to escape The Never itself for extended periods of time can be wildly varied and strange, and unfortunately nearly all possess some sort of illusion or shape-shifting magic, as the fey do. Those which make a habit of switching up their habitat have learned that attempting to blend in to the birds, bugs, and beasts which might normally be found there to be useful, so it is hard to know exactly what you are dealing with at any given time. What looks like a dragonfly buzzing around your head could turn out to actually be a curious pixie, or the deer being chased by a hunting party could get bored with its game and reveal its true nature of horn and bone before turning on them and eating them all.

Natural Resources

The Edge is not a heavily utilized region. While there is plenty of timber for logging, land to be cleared and farmed, and even exotic herbs and other plants, the local population is not huge. In addition, due to the fact that it can be very hard to tell just who or what might be attached to a given tree or spring or hill (for reasons mentioned above), the locals who work out in the woods tend to be extremely careful about what, and how much, they harvest. The ones who live long lives do at least. Because of all of this, the entire region is technically a motherload of untapped resources, but in practical terms, probably can't support much higher levels of production than it already is, unless someone is willing to go to war over it. Which I think people have in the past, to be honest. As near as I can tell, those people built the abandoned keeps scattered through the woods. Don't think things turned out very well for them.

Politics

Alright now, bear with me guys, because I know you're all about to say: "but you said nobody lived there!" or perhaps "why would we need to know about pseudo-local geopolitics in order to know about a small stretch of woods that isn't good to live in and is surrounded by equally inhospitable regions?" or something else derogatory. I swear, its relevant, and I'll keep it short so we can go back to talking about the place itself, like you guys asked.
As I'm sure none of you know, the larger Reflection that the Edge is a part of has recently gone through a huge power shakeup. And when I say recently, I mean within like five years or so. Less than a decade, for sure. It's all really complicated, and I know none of you are as interested in such events as I am, so I'll give you guys the quick and dirty and tell you why it matters here. Supposedly a few years ago this region was blessed (or afflicted, depending on whom you ask) with the emergence of a new god whose followers have a decidedly militaristic bent. In just a few short years an empire calling itself "The Land of the Blinding Sun" led by his followers has managed to conquer the vast majority of the reflection, sweeping through the Edge about half a year ago or so, on its way to conquer the last hold-outs to the north of the Cliff's Edge Mountains. After passing through and subjugating the locals without much of a fuss, the generals of this glorious force decided to station a police force of sorts in the woods along the road in the Edge, to make sure that their supply lines were able to stay open, and they could finish up their conquest. This camp, and its miniature army, is set up right between the three villages of the region, and has, from what I could tell, had a large impact on the surrounding area in the few months before I arrived.

Undead Tower of Learning