‘F’ is for the ‘Frontier.’

‘F’ is for the ‘Frontier.’

The Frontier refers to all lands west of the Uncanny Valleys. Not settled or developed by the humanist Empire of Gold and Jade, it is home to the highest populations of most other intelligent species, including imps, nine-legs, triclopes, dorads and centaurs, as well as most of the largest life forms, including sauropods, gryphons, land-squid, cyclopes and biollants.

Natives.

Most species band together in The Frontier, requiring co-existence for survival in harsh climates. The Frontier experienced most of the damage in the recent Apocalypse of Demons, and is something of wasteland. Most of the existing city-states are built in the remains of ancient sites, such as God’s Lap, built around the last surviving skyscraper from the Gremlin Empire. Clemency is an avidly lawless city-state built in a crater where a great demon once exploded.

Most thriving city-states form The Red Crescent, a crude travel route with open-door policies to the Red Brigade (see ‘R’). The Red Brigade is a militant sect of a disorganized religion the Empire of Gold and Jade pushed out of the east. According to their treaty, the Red Brigade own The Frontier. No one in The Frontier cares. The Empire of Gold and Jade has spent the last forty years reneging on the deal and invading.

The north-east of The Frontier is the ancestral home of triclopes, who hold largely homogenous strongholds and mining colonies there. This includes the northmost reaches of the Uncanny Valley, which are at their most shallow and least populated by giant monsters. The Empire of Gold and Jade makes frequent attempts to cross the Uncanny Valleys here, and is in a perpetual conflict with the triclopes over the region.

The Empire of Gold and Jade may well be coming east for all the tourist attractions. Allegedly it still rains shards of metal in The Sarlund. The Red Brigade patrols The Z (see ‘Z’), the world’s only remaining zombie reservation. Travel far enough west, and rumor has it that there are tears in the fabric of reality. No one has ever come back from the deep west to confirm such rumors.