Gharrek

Gharrek stretches beneath an endless sky, a continent of extremes where howling tundra winds give way to scorching scrubland heat, and where the clash between ancient ways and imperial ambition plays out across vast, unforgiving distances. Here, the horizon seems infinite, broken only by weathered stone formations that rise like ancient sentinels from seas of waving grass.

The southern reaches, where the Kingdom of Nar maintains its tenuous hold, center around the fortress-city of Last Stand. Built atop a massive granite mesa, the city earned its name during the War of Three Winters when Nar forces held against overwhelming odds. Today, it serves as both military garrison and trading post, where hardy merchants exchange furs, preserved meats, and rare tundra herbs for grain and manufactured goods from the warmer lands.

North of Nar’s borders, the Illarin Dynasty has imposed its rigid order upon the steppes through a network of garrison towns and patrol roads. The regional capital of Triumph’s Gate showcases Imperial engineering at its most ambitious, a planned city of concentric walls and aqueducts that channel meltwater from distant mountains. Yet for all its grandeur, the city feels like an island of stone in an ocean of grass, forever alien to the land it claims to rule.

The native tribes of Gharrek, collectively known as the Windwalker Clans, have seen their traditional migration routes disrupted by Imperial expansion. Many now cluster in designated settlement zones, their proud horseback culture slowly eroding under policies that favor sedentary agriculture. Others have retreated to the Bleached Wastes in the far north, where even Imperial patrols fear to venture, maintaining their ancestral ways among the wandering herds of woolly rhinoceros and the massive, shaggy aurochs.

The eastern scrublands harbor their own mysteries. Here, the Singing Stones, towering natural monoliths that emit haunting tones when the wind passes through their weathered hollows-mark sacred sites older than memory. Imperial scholars dismiss the local beliefs that these stones mark places where the world grows thin, yet patrol reports consistently note unusual wildlife behavior and unexplained phenomena in their vicinity.

Beneath Gharrek’s sparse soil lies unexpected wealth: veins of a meteoric metal prized for its ability to hold enchantments, and deposits of crystallized mammoth ivory from the great beasts that until recently dominated these plains. Control of these resources drives much of the current tension, as Nar prospectors, Imperial mining consortiums, and displaced tribal groups all stake competing claims.

The fauna of Gharrek has adapted to its harsh extremes. Dire wolves hunt in coordinated packs across the tundra, while the southern scrublands host prides of saber-toothed cats larger than any found elsewhere in the Wilds. Most fearsome of all are the storm bears of the northern reachesmassive ursines whose thick, white fur crackles with static electricity, allowing them to stun prey with a single swipe of their enormous paws.