The Frontier
The Frontier (Froeentra) is everything that is not the six cities. It is not a wilderness so much as the remnant of one: there are roads through it, settlements on those roads, and a few thousand people living in what is between them. None of that makes it safe. What is out there is described under Dangerous Fauna and Flora; this page describes what people have managed to put on top of it.
Nothing is farmed beyond a defended perimeter. Anywhere else is too dangerous.
What it is
Three overland roads, four sea lanes, about sixty settlements, a few thousand people who live in places no one else can, and a great deal of dangerous wilderness. Everything else out there is trying to kill you, and most of it was built to.
The pages
- The Roads — the three roads and four lanes, the Roedhavens along them, the Muyra, who owns them, and the exceptions: Clearhold's garrisoned passes and Eldershore's Spynra posts
- Roedskrin — the post network that is how the world knows what the Frontier is doing
- Waendra — those who wander: the people who live between the roads
- Fyndrecht — the finder's right, and what it means to be a Fyndra
- Aesloes — the strangers who arrive from nowhere
The Frontier and the law
The Frontier lies beyond every city's gates, and the Pact of Reason confirms what was always true there: a person found alone in trouble belongs to the finder, and a claiming made there is lawful in every city once the mark is cut. The war that produced the Pact began with a Frontier claiming. What the Pact settled is not whether a person can be taken there but that, once marked, there is no place left where the taken can be free. See Fyndrecht and Slavery.
The Frontier is also where True Mastery's community enforcement fails, which is why it appears in every argument on The Contested Ground.
Who is out there
- The Waendra
- Small groups on a seasonal round, holding an Oathbond like anyone, trading at the Roedhavens and never sleeping inside them.
- The wild people
- Escaped slaves — Frizdoeen, in the cities' word — living in the Frontier bands without an Oathbond though no owner holds them. See Those Without an Oathbond.
- Roedhaven keepers
- Whoever built the walls.
- Garrisons
- Clearhold's soldiers on the Mountain Way, Eldershore's scouts at the Spynra crossings, and the Pass Warden at Ironpass.
- Caravans
- Passing through, and paying for the night they finally sleep.