Three Crossings

"If the Gods are omnipotent, or nearly, it stands to reason they are permitted to make mistakes."

- Proverb attributable to Camus Inakas

This article is the target of major revisions.

Three Crossings, is a large seasonally-populated city located on a rocky promontory of in the central Lordless Lands, in the territory disputed between Bastonia and the Mighty Northern Horde. The city is traditionally considered part of the territory of the Confederacy of Sages, held in common with their cousins in the Orcish Nation. Because the city was traditionally only heavily populated during the times of harvest for trade, beyond a small core of permanent residents, its population is highly variable. With the expansion of the Frontier Counties, it is lately flooded with refugees of the Mighty Northern Horde from nearby orcish settlements like Green Knoll, and the governance of the town has changed hands from the Confederacy of Sages to the Mighty Northern Horde directly.

Geography

The city is on a low flat near a lake known simply as Duck Lake due to the prevalence of ducks in that area in their proper season. This position makes itself a nexus on many of the traditional migration routes among both the Orcish Nation and the tribes of Centaur who are the most common members of the Confederacy of Sages in the region.

Traditionally, the city spent most of its time as a small town populated by fishermen and duck farmers, swelling several times a year to the size of a small city when the nomadic tribes in the area came together for grand harvest markets. As a result the city had a remarkably empty and impermanent feel. Since the seizure of the Frontier Counties and the Green Knoll Purge, however, the desperate remnant of the Mighty Northern Horde has banded together and fortified the city, placing it under Orcish rule.

The name Three Crossings refers to three specific mergers that happen in or near the city:

• The town has been a meeting site where the migration of the Centaur pass the migration of the Ashwalker Tribe every autumn.
• Duck Lake itself is fed by a minor waterway, the Eastbrook, which flows into the lake from its northwest corner.
• Every spring, the city is a hub for no fewer than fourteen orc tribes which all participate in the Wolfpack Moon Festival, a major dog trading and breeding event.

Economy

Traditionally, Crossroads boasted of a very rich economy by the standards of the Lordless Lands, where most trade is conducted in bartering and merchantilism is not a widely adopted method of economic prowess. This economy has only flagged with the hostility of Bastonia. Crossroads is no longer central to the movements of any tribes of either Sage or Orc, and instead serves only as a last holdout for a people heavily displaced from their traditional homeland.

The city was particularly known for a local breed of dog known as the Moonhair, whose fur is used in like fashion to wool to produce precious and religiously-significant cloth by the orcs. It was also an important producer of Orcish Bog Oil, an important seasoning. These two goods made up their primary exports in the late fall and winter, when the village was controlled by the orcs.

Orcs living in the town year round participated in a minting program that used copper coins in lieu of direct bartering. The price of the Three Cross Penny was pegged to a hand-breadth of a ream of Moonhair cloth or one half bladder of Bog Oil.

Politics

The retreat of the Mighty Northern Horde, which effectively colonized the city, has soured the relationship between the Orcish Nation as a whole and the Confederacy of Sages, who feel that the orcs' increasing isolationism and hostility will only be used against both nations by Bastonia, both as excuse for future wars and by allowing them to be driven apart.

The town itself has a split government. The Horde government remains in control of the defense of the city and makes grand and sweeping use of the city's resources to rearm and resupply itself while it musters for a fresh counter-offensive, but does not directly govern the Centaur when their herds are present in the city.