Balkan Wildlands

**After you walk into a village and you see 50 children, all sitting neatly in a row against a church wall, each with their throats cut and their hands chopped off, you realize that the creature that could do this doesn't have a soul..."**

**-- excerpt from a mercenary's diary**

The Balkan Wildlands are a massive swathe of land occupying the territories of ex-Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, parts of Greece, Hungary and Romania. Its name derives from the lack of any central government structures present in its borders, instead the many souls of the Balkans rallying under varying military-political groups, fiefdoms, duchies, small kingdoms or otherwise surviving in loose anarchist societies.

## Overview

Life in the Balkans is extraordinarily perilous and arduous, the common man often toiling away his entire life just in order to survive. Conflict is very common in these lands and thus, it is no surprise that the Balkan Wildlands are host to numerous mercenary groups, looters, bandits or slaver warbands all seeking to grasp this opportunity in order to accomplish their own goals, often succumbing to vile and base greed. Seeing as the Balkans are an ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse land, it is not uncommon for violent clashes to occur stemming from these subjects, in the worst cases ending with bloody pogroms and genocides.

To be born and raised in the Balkan Wildlands is to endure the epitome of human suffering. Poverty, hunger, endless war, uncertainty - they are the reality of these lands. To survive here is a feat in and of itself and as such, Balkaners are some of the most rough people in the world, their mercenaries taken in high regard by all in the European continent for their adaptability and rather grim outlook on life.

## The Night is Dark and full of Terrors

**"Requesting air support at 34TEQ98! We need immediate assist-..." The radio abruptly cuts out, before a new voice speaks out. "Granit-05, this is Spartan-02, rendezvous at the designated Bravo point, two kilometers east of AZ." The radio cuts once again, before a new, third voice, interrupts the silence. "We're fucked! We're all doomed! I'm seeing three suns over the horizon..." The radio then cuts out once again to pure static...**

**--Ghost radio transmissions**

The wildlands are known to be host to a vast variety of paranormal activity, reflecting the emotions and past of the land's inhabitants in twisted and profane ways. The instability of these lands are thought to be the source of the paranormal, though this instability is only further exacerbated by these threats from Beyond, thus creating a downward spiral into madness and total destruction.

It is not uncommon to be met with intense paranormal activity especially during the night, thus most of the residents of the Balkans tend to bunker down in the evening, boarding up the windows and doors of their homes, barricading their streets or standing guard at nighttime. Some of the 'more common' activities usually include visions of so-called 'shadow people', distant moving shapes, ghostly apparitions such as long-dead individuals seemingly coming back to life as a husk of their former selves to haunt the living or roaming undead. While these situations may very well be dangerous and quickly turn deadly, they still pale in comparison to some of the other, rarer paranormal activities, some thought to be so dangerous that people tend to intentionally wipe any records of their existence as to not spread their influence to others, those such cases often called 'informational hazards'.

It is also not uncommon for the lands cursed with such influence from Beyond to be incredibly unstable climatically, with thick mists enveloping the landscape, thick, stormy clouds rolling over the dark skies or continuous downpour. The paranormal is intensely feared in the wildlands and beyond, though the locals of the Balkans grew to adopt certain old superstitions in supposedly combating the supernatural, such as hanging garlic by their doorways, spreading lines of salt around their homesteads or routinely blessing their homes with holy water - though whether or not these methods actually achieve anything other than the temporary mental relief of the inhabitants is to be debated.

Seeing as the nature of man is most corruptible, the presence of occult worship is high in the Balkan Wildlands, entire churches dedicated to beasts from Beyond gather in the dead of night, spouting out in incomprehensible tongues, engaging in deranged rituals, human sacrifices and debauchery, all to please the appetite of ever-thirsting monstrosities. These cults most often retreat themselves to the dark and dreadful woods of the Wildlands, though occasionally it is known that certain rural towns may in time turn to the worship of the occult in their entirety, keeping their dark devotion a secret from the prying eyes of Christian paladins and the Black Legion ( ⁠black-legion ).

## Religion and Beliefs

The main Abrahamic religion practiced in the Balkan Wildlands is Orthodox Christianity ( ⁠orthodox-brotherhood ), followed behind by the Islamic Faith. Though the two religious groups are often caught in violent altercations with each other, certain consensus exists between these opposing sides: most members of the two religions detest the worship of false idols, of pagan gods or occult practices.

Paganism is likewise spread throughout the Wildlands, though identifying one particular dominating pagan belief is a fool's errand, as they differ vastly from village to village. Some worship abstract beings or places (like ⁠Hyperborea ), while others worship natural phenomena - and others 'return to their roots', as is the case of a fraction of the Greeks believing in the Gods of Olympus.

Other Balkaners stray even further, delving deep into the dark nature of the Rift ( ⁠the-rift ), studying it, harnessing its powers and worshipping it fervently. Some align themselves with beings from Beyond, worshipping the very ground they walk upon, while others choose to instead study the unknown independently, often falling into deep madness due to their inability to comprehend the Rift itself.

## The Promise of Adventure

**"If there is one thing that humanity has always idiotically pursued, then that is adversity. Mankind strives for challenge in a foolish game of proving the Universe that whatever it can muster, the spirit of man will prevail."**

**-- Unknown Writer**

The Balkan Wildlands are a known 'tourist' destination for the likes of mercenaries, daredevils, researchers and occultists, all visiting these perilous lands in order to fulfill their own agendas. The wildlands are as perilous as they are rewarding to the opportunist soul: smugglers, arms merchants or contrabandists building vast fortunes off the suffering of the locals representing an all too common sight in the wildlands. The Wildlands are known for holding precious relics of the past in the form of abandoned American army stashes, stocked up secret bunkers hiding experimental technology and top secret documents all waiting for someone to stumble upon them. Some occultists believe that the Wildlands may hold cursed artifacts from Beyond, items of immense power capable of altering real-space at the whim of their user, while others believe that the wildlands hold secret gates leading to other dimensions, the Rift itself, or mythical landscapes ( see ⁠hyperborea ).