The Weird Wastes
The coastal stretch between Aysea and May Cape carries a name that understates what travelers find there. The Weird Wastes encompass a strip of Atlantic shoreline marked by sand dunes that have swallowed entire vacation communities, decrepit pre-fall pleasure facilities crumbling into the surf, and phenomena that defy the pragmatic explanations the wasteland prefers. Neither Aysea to the north nor May Cape to the south has particularly friendly relations with the area, but neither has the power to cause serious trouble. The Weird Wastes exist in the gap between two settlements that would rather not think about what happens along the coast between them.
Wild Wood Heights, despite its name, contains no actual woods. It is a stretch of engulfed houses and abandoned entertainment venues where the sand has buried everything up to the rooflines. The Board of Aysea has begun privately referring to the entire area as "the situation," a label that covers the pirate activity of the Close Enough gang, the suspected Final Knights nightfire rituals visible to passing ships, and the general sense that the coastal strip is becoming a staging ground for forces hostile to Aysea's interests. Shambletown, the undead-infested ghost town on a dead-end road off the Pale Horse Pike, rounds out the region's reputation as a place where things go wrong in ways that resist explanation. Sailors report massive nightfires and profane rites visible from their decks. Scavengers enter the abandoned communities and do not return. The Weird Wastes are not a destination. They are what happens when no one is watching.
Wild Wood Heights, despite its name, contains no actual woods. It is a stretch of engulfed houses and abandoned entertainment venues where the sand has buried everything up to the rooflines. The Board of Aysea has begun privately referring to the entire area as "the situation," a label that covers the pirate activity of the Close Enough gang, the suspected Final Knights nightfire rituals visible to passing ships, and the general sense that the coastal strip is becoming a staging ground for forces hostile to Aysea's interests. Shambletown, the undead-infested ghost town on a dead-end road off the Pale Horse Pike, rounds out the region's reputation as a place where things go wrong in ways that resist explanation. Sailors report massive nightfires and profane rites visible from their decks. Scavengers enter the abandoned communities and do not return. The Weird Wastes are not a destination. They are what happens when no one is watching.
Geography
The Weird Wastes occupy the Atlantic coastline between Aysea and May Cape, a stretch of dune-covered terrain dotted with the remnants of pre-fall pleasure communities. Sand has engulfed houses up to their rooflines and buried boardwalks beneath shifting drifts. Scattered coastal vegetation clings to the dunes, but the landscape is predominantly sand, salt, and ruin. The Pale Horse Pike runs inland roughly twenty miles from the coast, with dead-end roads branching off toward locations like Shambletown. The coastal waters are navigable but poorly charted, offering harbors that pirates and smugglers find more useful than legitimate traders. There are no woods at Wild Wood Heights, no heights worth the name, and no explanation for half the things that happen along this strip of shore.
