Dead End Rockies
The Dead End Rockies earned their name from the majority of travelers who enter them. Seekers, explorers, and wanderers arrive hoping to blaze new trails through the barely charted wilderness of Lorado, and most of them die in the attempt. Their deaths mark the path for those who come after, and slowly, one corpse at a time, the Dead Ends become marginally less lethal.
The territory is vast and split between extremes. Half the landscape is ice-desert, half is thick jungle spreading from the Eastern Plains. Miles of barely charted trails wind through both, too treacherous for caravans or iron horses. No reliable maps exist. A person can live and die in the Dead Ends without ever seeing another soul, and many have done exactly that.
For Rovers, this is the ultimate destination. Living within the Dead End Rockies is beyond sacrifice; it means allowing space for progress and discovery while knowing the likelihood of leaving is nearly zero. They come seeking the unknown, the untouched, the stories that no one else has lived to tell. A small sect of the Tribes of Seasons operates within the region, collecting lost travelers and guiding them back to civilization. They are considered the saviors of the Dead Ends, pulling unwitting explorers from the edge of a quiet death in the ice or the jungle. Without them, the body count would be considerably higher than it already is.
The territory is vast and split between extremes. Half the landscape is ice-desert, half is thick jungle spreading from the Eastern Plains. Miles of barely charted trails wind through both, too treacherous for caravans or iron horses. No reliable maps exist. A person can live and die in the Dead Ends without ever seeing another soul, and many have done exactly that.
For Rovers, this is the ultimate destination. Living within the Dead End Rockies is beyond sacrifice; it means allowing space for progress and discovery while knowing the likelihood of leaving is nearly zero. They come seeking the unknown, the untouched, the stories that no one else has lived to tell. A small sect of the Tribes of Seasons operates within the region, collecting lost travelers and guiding them back to civilization. They are considered the saviors of the Dead Ends, pulling unwitting explorers from the edge of a quiet death in the ice or the jungle. Without them, the body count would be considerably higher than it already is.
Geography
Miles and miles of barely charted trails span the Dead End Rockies, crossing ice-deserts and thick jungle in roughly equal measure. The terrain is too treacherous for caravans or iron horses. Explorers still attempt to record and map the trails, but the landscape resists documentation; complete isolation is the norm, and a traveler can live and die without encountering another soul. The eastern half is thick jungle spreading from the Eastern Plains, while the western reaches are frozen desert. No reliable navigation exists beyond the trails marked by those who died walking them.
