The Badlands

This is the rugged interior of Iocanthos, bounded to the south by dense forests and the sea, and to the north by the jagged flint mountains. The Badlands are an endless sweep of plains, scrub and steppe where most of the Ghostfire crops can be found and where the warlords clash. It is dotted with battlefields, some of them no more than a tangle of recently slain bodies and others titanic fields of bones and burned-out wrecks. A fortunate and hardy individual can make a good living scavenging these battlefields to find valuables and weapons to sell. Iocanthos’s folklore is full of the tales of the sticky ends experienced by such scavengers, from dread curses to old-fashioned walking dead, and most normal folk stay away from these battlefields.
==Sights and Sounds of the Badlands==
The badlands live
up to their name;
the landscape is a
desolate plain of
dun-colored stone,
loose, thin soil
and thorny weeds.
Stretches are pitted
with old blast craters
and marred by spills
of blackened earth,
so arid it seems that
nothing will ever live
there again. Every
few kilometres the
remains of a ruined
settlement or clan
camp lies empty
and abandoned;
some are old, while
others seem newly
destroyed and are
still splashed with
rust-coloured dried
blood. Here and
there skeletons lie
where they fell, and
eerily, the Ghostfire
flowers seem to take
root wherever the
dead rest, wrapping
their roots around
the shattered bones
and opening their
multi-hued iridescent
blooms. Then there’s
the wind. When it
blows, it seems to
squall from different
directions, kicking
up eddies and swirls
of choking dust, and
it always seems to
carry the stench of
the charnel house,
filling the nostrils
with the appalling
stench of blood and
iron, always iron.