Where the @The Southern Crags descend into lowland, the earth breaks and drowns. This is the @Mirebelt —a vast expanse of swamp, sludge, and shattered forest stretching for miles around the base of Ironspine. Once a thriving woodland, it was stripped bare over centuries through clear-cutting, flooding, and industrial runoff.
Now the Mirebelt stands as a rotting monument to progress, where industry’s remains sink into black mud and nature retaliates with tooth and venom. Low-hanging fog blankets the swamp, pierced only by the lights of passing trains and the faint glow of Sunstone beacons along the rails.
No citizen of the empire willingly enters the Mirebelt on foot. The swamp has developed its own order—feral, predatory, and shaped by isolation and corruption.
The Mirebelt is a hostile ecosystem of stagnant water, collapsed machinery, drowned tree stumps, and unstable ground. Pollution has warped both flora and fauna, producing aggressive predators and territorial monstrosities.
Visibility is poor, footing is unreliable, and sound carries strangely through the fog. Survival favors ambush hunters, not travelers.
To cross the Mirebelt, the orcs constructed an extensive network of elevated rail lines—towering structures of riveted iron and reinforced pylons that stride across the swamp like skeletal limbs. These rails serve as the empire’s vital arteries, linking Ironspine to distant cities, villages, and frontier outposts.
Each train is a steam-powered, armored locomotive designed to transport both troops and cargo. Rail convoys are often reinforced with turret cars and plated exteriors.
Travel is efficient—but never safe. It is common for trains to return bearing claw marks, dents, and blood-slicked armor from encounters below.
Resupply stations are positioned at regular intervals along the rail network. Each is garrisoned by armed crews tasked with maintenance, refueling, and monitoring swamp activity. These stations are often the last safe haven before the rails vanish back into fog.
Beneath the tracks, unseen in the mud and mist, predators wait.