Homeland of the Battanian Clans
The Greenwood Expanse stretches across the mist-choked hills and deep forests of north-western Calradia, a land of broken ridgelines, hidden valleys, and narrow passes that frustrate armies and favor those who know the paths between trees. Low clouds cling to the high ground, and fog rolls through the hollows at dawn and dusk, muffling sound and bending distance. The terrain itself resists control. Roads are few, winding around old growth and steep slopes. What stone causeways exist are remnants of imperial efforts to impose order on a landscape that never accepted straight lines.
This is the ancestral land of the Battanian clans, the original inhabitants of much of Calradia before imperial roads and feudal charters divided the hills. Their hilltop fortresses and timber-ringed strongholds crown ridges and caldera rims, positioned to watch valleys where armies must pass. These fortresses have borne witness to centuries of resistance: first against the legions of the old empire, later against the expanding reach of Sturgian warbands and Vlandian march-lords. Every pass has a story of an army that bled for a road and gained little more than graves for the effort.
The Greenwood Expanse is not uniform forest. Open moorland spreads between wooded ridges. Steep ravines hide streams that vanish into caves and reemerge miles away. Volcanic calderas hold cold lakes where mist never fully lifts. The land favors those who move light, know how to vanish into cover, and can live off what the hills provide. Heavy formations struggle here. Horses tire quickly on the slopes. Supply trains are vulnerable to ambush. The Greenwood has shaped Battanian warfare as much as any tradition.
Battanian culture within the Expanse is clan-bound and memory-driven. Lineage is carried in story, not ledger. Land is held by kin groups who remember which ridges shelter in winter and which valleys flood in spring. Hill-forts serve as gathering points in war and ritual centers in peace, where oaths are sworn and disputes settled before elders. Authority flows from reputation and kin obligation rather than chartered title. A leader’s right to command is renewed each season by continued competence, generosity in victory, and survival in defeat.
The Battanians idolize valor, but not the sterile valor of parade grounds. They praise cunning mixed with audacity. The one who steals a rival’s cattle herd through fog without bloodshed is celebrated as much as the champion who breaks an enemy line. Storytellers keep alive tales of warriors who dine with rival clans, trade insults as freely as drink, and leave behind a reminder of their visit carved in memory and bone. These stories are not taught to children as lessons in cruelty, but as reminders that reputation in the Greenwood is earned through daring acts that become legend.
The towns of the Expanse—Car Banseth, Dunglanys, Marunath, Pen Cannoc, and Seonon—stand where trade routes and clan paths intersect. They are meeting points between hillfolk and lowland merchants, places where iron, wool, timber, and game pass into broader Calradia. These towns are fortified, but their walls bend to the land rather than impose rigid order upon it. Markets are crowded and loud. Outsiders are tolerated, watched, and taxed. No town truly commands the surrounding hills without the consent, or at least the acquiescence, of nearby clans.
The castles of Battania—Ab Comer Castle, Aster Castle, Druimmor Castle, Flintolg Castle, Llanoc Hen Castle, Pendraic Castle, Rhemtoil Castle, and Uthelaim Castle—crown ridges and guard passes rather than dominate open plains. Each castle controls movement through a narrow corridor of land, making them strategic choke points in any campaign through the Greenwood Expanse. These fortresses are less about projecting power outward and more about denying passage inward. They serve as refuges during invasion and rallying points when clans gather to strike back into contested lowlands.
Villages in the Expanse cling to valley floors, river bends, and sheltered slopes. Ab Comer, Andurn, Aster, Ath Cafal, Beglomuar, Bog Beth, Bryn Glas, Cantrec, Claig Ban, Dalmengus, Diantogmail, Druimmor, Durn, Ebereth, Fenon Etir, Flintolg, Gainseth, Geunat Nal, Glenlithrig, Glintor, Imlagh, Inveth, Lindorn, Llanoc Hen, Mag Arba, Morihig, Pendraic, Rhemtoil, Seordas, Swenryn, Tor Leiad, Tor Melina, and Uthelaim are not laid out for easy defense by foreign armies. Paths between them twist through cover. Villages often maintain hidden trails known only to local kin, allowing evacuation or reinforcement when invaders march the main roads.
Life in the Greenwood Expanse is harder than in the river valleys of Vlandia or the plains of the heartlands. Soil is thin in many places. Crops grow in terraces carved from slopes. Hunting and herding supplement farming. Winters bite hard in high ground, and fog can hide danger until it is too late. In return, the land offers concealment, refuge, and the kind of defensive depth that no charter can easily conquer.
To outsiders, Battania appears wild, stubborn, and fractious. To those born into the Greenwood Expanse, it is a homeland shaped by memory and resistance. The forests do not belong to the clans. The clans belong to the forests. Banners may come and go, but the hills remember every army that tried to tame them and failed.