A frontier of black pine, aurora-lit steppe and buried roads where orc nations, prospectors and old stone guardians contest the north.
Overview
North of the Crownspines the land opens into immense cold distances. Pine belts cluster around geothermal valleys, while the high steppe is bare except for blue grass, standing stones and the tracks of seasonal migrations.
The Reaches are often described by southern chroniclers as empty. They are not. Orc nations maintain ancestral routes older than Elaris, Harthane halls hold the mountain edge and isolated enclaves trade metalwork, horses and preserved aurora glass.
History
The First Orc Incursion began when several northern peoples crossed south together, fleeing a pressure that the surviving accounts call only the White Hunger. Later Elarian histories converted this movement into a simple invasion and omitted the treaties that resettled whole clans.
The Great Northern Rush brought surveyors, private armies and company towns. Their arrival created fortunes and border wars in equal measure. Several boom settlements disappeared during the Silence, leaving warm lamps and no bodies.
The present record
The modern Reaches are divided by overlapping maps. Seven Ports companies claim concessions, orc councils claim river basins and the Harthane recognise only boundaries that can be seen from a named summit.
Farther north, a line of stone towers advances south by roughly one mile each winter. No expedition has seen one move.
Notes and record
This article combines campaign record, spoken lore and the mythic account preserved in the Earin archive.