The Great Basin: A Crossroads Wilderness For Everway & Spears Of The Dawn

The Great Basin and the Northern Lands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Sea

Far to the Northwest of the realm of Emerald Savannah, and just North of the great sun-soaked mountain chain that shelters Three Lands*, are the lands of the Great Basin. The Great Basin's land is fertile, heavily forested, dotted by numerous small freshwater lakes, and crisscrossed by many rivers. In its very center is a Salty Sea. The Great Basin's lands and waters are sparsely populated by different peoples. Its lands are a vast wilderness of danger and mystery.

The Salty Sea at the center of the Great Basin is dotted with numerous islands. Some of these are inhabited by brown-skinned fisherfolk, while others are shunned as Necropolis Islands, littered with the ruins of ancient city states and tombs. These islands were settled by the darker-skinned refugees and colonists from the wicked and now-eternally-lost Sixth Kingdom to the Southeast of the Great Basin.

The forest lands to the north of the Great Basin's Salty Sea are sparsely peopled, and contain a great many wild animals. The people living on the Salty Sea's shoreline look like the island folk. The villagers fish the Salty Sea and carry on a great deal of trade with the island-folk. They live in small coastal towns and villages. The shoreline communities also trade and at times clash with the light-skinned forest folk who have wandered South from the Northlands, and who now roam the North shore in small tribal hunting groups.

The Southern shore of the Salty Sea lacks permanent settlements, although light-skinned tribal groups also hunt game here. Adventurers from the Three Lands have begin to explore the southern rim of the Great Basin and have established Spearpoint, a small town made of house boats and houses on stilts on the Salty Sea's southern shore. From here, expeditions of Spears from the Three Lands go out to the islands, and the shore communities and forest areas of the Great Basin.

Word has begun to filter back to Spearpoint of a powerful, golden-walled city-state to the north of the Salty Sea. Its inhabitants are dark-skinned, and ruled by a Queen whose dress resembles that of the old rulers of the Sixth Kingdom. There are a number of pyramid tombs outside the city. The elders of Spearpoint think the time is right to send Spears north to investigate.


*The Three Lands (which includes the Sixth Kingdom) is the default setting of Kevin Crawford's medieval African pastiche RPG, Spears of the Dawn. This post creates setting content intended for use with both Everway and Spears of the Dawn, and was written to comply with  the non-commercial usage guidelines on the Sine-Nomine blog. The realm of Emerald Savannah was created for use with Everway, and is already included in The Everwayan blog's Creative Commons license.