The TwinGate area has seen some radical changes in the past two hundred years. Two hundred years ago, the area north of TwinGate was thought to be relatively tame. It was thought that the best way to keep track of the savage humanoids was to reinforce the north with small keeps and forts. They dotted the landscape from the Char to the EldrissSwamp, and ranged in size from small outposts to large fortresses the size of a village. As the outposts became more stable and accepted, small towns and villages began to coalesce around them. What started out as a ramshackle collection of armorers, merchants, chaplains and harlots living near each keep became more than just a support network for the outposts. The savage wilderness was evaporating.
Unfortunately, the savage humanoids had other plans. While they rarely attacked the towns directly, they gathered their forces, waited for the guards to get fat and lazy, and after several decades -- 150 years ago, approximately -- the savage humanoids struck with a well-organized series of raids that cut off supply lines from TwinGate.
The next several years were a period of chaos in the area. Some keeps were mostly self-sufficient, and fought to re-establish communication with the south, bringing the villagers inside their walls for safety. Other keeps, bereft of supplies and unable to forage in the wilderness, ran out of food, water, and supplies, and were destroyed by the savages once sufficiently weakened. In the most disastrous situations, panicked guards abandoned their keeps as rumors of the savage hordes spread, and the nonhumans inherited large, easily-fortified bases of operations.
Eventually, TwinGate recalled the guards and ordered the keeps destroyed whenever possible. The ruins dot the landscape, charred heaps of stone, sometimes with buildings still intact. The surviving keeps have fallen into disrepair and ruin, home to one band of brigands or monsters after another. As for the no-longer protected villages, most retreated back to the south with the guards. Some, stubbornly refusing to leave their homes, stayed behind, and while a few of those have survived, most have been destroyed -- or worse. Most of the humans left to the north of TwinGate are either brigands, hardbitten mercenaries, wanderers cast out from the nomadic Riders, or druids making their quiet way through the forests and swamps.
It should be noted that all these events happened over several years, and that at any given time, some guardsmen were standing strong and confident in their ability to defend the south against the savages while others were gibbering in terror and running back to TwinGate, leaving a town of defenseless villagers behind them. After winning back the area, the savage humanoids grew emboldened and struck further south in a series of punishing raids on TwinGate and the DemonWood and GoldenWood towns. It has only been in the last fifteen years or so that the attacks have lessened -- so anyone close to 20 years old will have memories of raids, although there are rarely raids on any of the large towns today. The Scouts are heralded as the saviors of TwinGate, for the most part. The idea of keeping the goblins in check with stealthy reconaissance by rangers and rogues rather than large forts has apparently been a surprising success, and it is popularly thought that the Scouts can usually give TwinGate enough warning about movements by the savage humanoids to prevent attacks before they happen.
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