Beastlands

Littfeld
Roll with the Punches

Allemance


The caravan has rolled through pleasant weather for days. Judging by the blue sky and the soft breeze rolling across the hills ahead? Today will be just the same. You can hear distant laughter shouted by a gaggle of wolf pups playing in the field. The noonday sun warms your face, and the smell of pine and clean soil fills your nostrils. Welcome to Allemance.

The Lupine Kingdom of Allemance (ALLaymahnse or ALLehmanse) is the Beastlands’s green heart. Its plains are framed by mountains: the northern Mantle and the southern Bêtemère. These peaks have blessed the homeland with verdant pastures in a wide river basin. In the northeast, birches and elms cast gentle shade on the region of Glasrún for hundreds of miles.

Beasts know Allemance for its open vastness. Its domain covers a third of the Beastlands, around 360,000 square miles. Arneria’s Beylik and Bat’yan rival it in size, but the reason for the kingdom’s reputation is obvious when one stands at the Louvain Peninsula’s edge and takes in the pastoral expanse of farmland on the horizon.

The Allemagnian (or “Alley”) north has mild summers and long autumns, while the wineries in the south enjoy warm days well into October. Most towns see snow at least once a season, and occasional squalls drop on Alley northerners.

Almost 7 and a quarter million people reside in Allemance. Equines favor its open space and find peaceful work on angus farmlands. Bovine farmers live on fields and ranches passed down through countless generations. Canines, and principally wolves, are Allemance’s most common species. A wolf queen sits on its throne in the capital city of Louvain and they also make up most of its nobility.

Louvain
The road to Louvain climbs the stark cliff of a peninsula overlooking Allemance. The city stands at the cliff’s edge, and at the world’s center. People of every species live and work on its crowded streets, plying their craft in stylish boutiques and open-air bazaars. At the precipice, Louvain Palace is a towering symbol of the monarchy’s enduring legacy.

Patrie
Neat rows of terrace coffee farms surround the road into the valley. The stones in the road are new, especially compared to the well-loved trade routes they branch from. The city ahead is like a great wheel, with each of its spokes leading to the heart of the teeming urban center. A divine blueprint transformed this Broken World ruin into a home for the brethren.

Oria
The icy wind bites at you through four layers of wool. An expanse of gray mountains and white snow frame the aurora’s colorful ripples in the night sky. The lodge house ahead offers the promise of comfort and good company, safe from the mournful wind’s howling. Welcome to Oria. The Mantle’s frigid peaks stretch across the northern horizon of Allemance, a natural border spanning hundreds of miles. The houses of the alpine Beast World lie beyond these imposing cliffs. Harsh winters make for a hard life in the homeland of elk and bears. Comfort requires ingenuity and cooperation, but delvers who brave the snow will see a batko’s silhouette inviting them into the lodge.

Three and a half million beasts and brethren call themselves Orians. It’s a tough place with tougher inhabitants. 240,000 square miles lie north of the Mantle, but much of the terrain is impassable mountains. Only the Oric people have conquered these peaks, even digging a sixty-mile tunnel through the central Grensa mountains.

Vinyot
"A drum roll of fat raindrops patters against the roof ofthe wagon. The wheels jerk to a halt. You’ve arrived. You open the door to take a deep breath of salty air. Trade ships line the harbor on the horizon, with the glittering sea beyond. A dense mass of old stone buildings surrounds the dock, with a bethel’s spire pointing skyward in the west. The booming port city awaits, filled with busy foxes who talk fast and move faster. After all, there’s so much to do. Welcome to Vinyot."

The homeland of Vinyot sails fleets of trade ships to bring modern life and foreign goods throughout the world. It runs along the western and southern edges of the Beast World’s mainland, with cities at its river estuaries. Its eastern border follows the Allemagnian Bêtemère Mountains, with hilly and difficult terrain in its inland regions. Vinyot is smaller than Allemance, but its 8,000 miles of coastline has blessed it with a flourishing economy and unique identity. The climate is balmy most of the year. Sea winds carry humid weather and frequent summer rains.

5.5 million people live in Vinyot. The tradewind vulpine and human species make up most of its population. The majority of otter and ferret laetines, as well as the raccoon and possum tenebrines also call Vinyot their homeland.

Al'ar
"It’s another hot day under the sun, with nothing to dobut listen to sea birds chatter and waves clap against the ship. At long last, a mountaintop pokes up from beyond the glassy horizon you’ve been watching for weeks. The ship makes its way through a loose gathering of fishing boats with their captains sprawled out on the deck. The blazing colors of dock town banners are just beyond. Welcome to Al’ar." The Feline Isles of Al’ar are a remote archipelago of over three hundred volcanic islands. Al’ari are predominantly feline—most are cats, and the non-cats pick up some of their traits while living there. Deep green jungles and the dark blue sea give the homeland a natural beauty that is the envy of all the Beast World.

Untouched beaches and lively dock towns come to mind when the average person hears this homeland’s name. The temperature is warm year-round; the seasons are a cycle of dry sun and harsh storms. Hurricanes pass through the southern half of the archipelago in the wet season, high winds scattering the seeds of Al’ar’s fruit trees. They scatter any unprepared cats, too.

Al’ar is about 25,000 square miles in total land area (counting islands with at least one dock town). Just over one million people call themselves Al’ari, and they live along 2,600 miles of surrounding coastline. Species other than felines and humans are a tiny minority.

Arneria
A humid rainforest a thousand miles wide covers the west, teeming with life found nowhere else. In the east, burning sands are crowned by glittering mountains. The Attamek river bisects the continent, flowing out of the Bey’s Head mountains in the north, all the way to the southern Matansil Sea.

The Bat’yan and the Beylik of Arneria is one homeland with two identities. Its people are split by the geography and climate on either side of the river, but Arneria’s unity is a friendship that has stood for over a thousand years. The Bat’yan’s barangays and the bey’s subjects vowed never to take up arms again after two centuries of bloody war at the dawn of the Beast World.

A diverse blend of six million Arnerians live in the Bat’yan and Beylik. Murine mice are its emblematic species, the most common beast in both halves of Arneria. Ligonine sloths favor the Bat’yan, where they hang from dense foliage on hooked claws. Bison and desert vulpines dwell in the Beylik, where their species have lived and worked to form the caravanserai powering an economy of gem trade. Armadillos and donkeys roam the thousand-mile elevated Causeway that runs between the two sides.

Storied Histories League
You see it as soon as you pass the gates into Far’soro. Every business has banners in the window or above their stand, each with the name of some stranger. Maybe this is how Far’soro gangs mark their turf? Down the main road, people suddenly explode in cheers. They’re crowding around a bison who’s dressed in chain mail and a tunic so pink, it’s hard to look directly at him.

The stranger is screaming in someone’s face. It’s a shorter man, a smirking rat who’s… dressed like a colorful garbage-picker. As you edge around the still-growing crowd, you see the knife behind the rat’s back. Right in front of your eyes, the argument breaks down, and the senseless tragedy of urban gang violence plays out before your eyes. The two beat each other senseless, each one trading blows that send the other reeling. The bison roars in agony. It escalates. Knives flash. Spells ignite in the square. This is a duel to the death.

The crowd backs up to make room for the flamboyant criminals to kill each other, and you see their faces. This carnage delights the crowd; they are enraptured. After flaunting with a gesture emulated by at least fifty beasts in the crowd, the bison casts a spell that completely engulfs the rat in flames. When the victim collapses, the flames go out. He’s somehow unburned. The poor soul must have succumbed to smoke inhalation instead…The crowd bursts into another pop of cheering! A third stranger raises the murderer’s right arm. The crowd chants.

“SHL! SHL! SHL!”