The Freehold

The Freehold is a vast wilderness, beginning, informally, with the Knees and the forest surrounding Stonewash, encompassing everything to the "tail" of the coast, including the Hearthwood Isles. Though not formally recognized as a territory, the Freehold is home to an independent, mixed population estimated to number at least 150,000, including the known population of the Or Kai.

Geography
The Freehold is composed of five wildly different environments, each with their own booming ecology, beauty, and perils. Though the Freehold receives more preciptation than most of the coast, much of it remains dry throughout the year, weathering torrential rainfall and storms for a relatively brief wet season followed by a long dry period, during which much of the forest loses its leaves. Notoriously hazardous to the unwary wanderer, the Freehold appears "layered" the further south one travels with deep pits and winding cave and tunnel systems that support an ecology of their own.

The Knees
An extention of Mother Lake, the Knees is a rather large and treacherous stretch of bog with an incredibly resilient population of Singers, six-limbed amphibians known best for their capacity to immitate the most beautiful of voices or the most dreadful of screams, a skill they use to feed their voracious appetites and seemingly limitless capacity for growth. Littered with garbage and waste water from the city itself, the Knees surprisingly support a very small community situated largely on the steep cliffs to the west.

Torn-Foot Shelves
Here the rock of the mountains has been eroded into a system of cliffs leading down to a meandering river that periodically floods throughout the year, the walls dotted with a multitude of caves and tunnels that lead to places unknown. Although beautiful, with the erosion showing multi-colored layers in the rock, the shelves are littered with sharp gravel and tenacious brambles that grow in this rather inhospitable environment. Said to be haunted, the Shelves are largely avoided with stories of pale ghosts that hunt and eat men like wolves living in the caverns themselves.

Rising from the shelves are two tall, spindly spires of stone known as the Spurs. Those that live in the Freehold may visit the Spurs, leaving gifts and offerings in exchange for the "pale ghosts" to stay in their dismal territory and leave their property and communities unmolested.

Hollow Tail
A narrow strip of land that spends a portion of each day partially submerged, Hollow Tail dips into the tropical region, experiencing light to moderate rainfall throughout the day. The Gem of the Tail is a deep blue pit situated in the Spade, sheltering strange new life found no where else in the known world.

The Hearthwood Isles
A collection of nine tropical islands that surround the Spade, the Hearthwoods are home not only to the ever iconic Hearthwood trees, but the remaining population of Or Kai, as well. Though relatively small, very little of the Isles has been explored and is largely considered dangerous territory.

Culture
Though lacking a properly recognized population, the Freehold is known for a unique, patriarchal society comprised mostly of the Elgfreyn's failed attempts at creating a slave race. Creatively named the Sons and Daughters of Freehold, as the first of their kind carved their very living from the forest shortly after fleeing the Dawnspire during and shortly after the building process, the Sons and Daughters are the first known doresh-human hybrids to settle the Coast. Physically, they may have pale to olive skin with the faintest point left to their ears and slightly more prominent canine teeth with dark hair and eyes being typical. Though it is nowhere near as strong as that of the doresh, the Sons and Daughters of Freehold have a level of iskra resistance above that of the average human.

A strongly patriarchal society, Daughters of Freehold are raised to be wifes and house keepers, having limited knowledge of hunting, fighting, and general survivalism though typically lacking the motivation and mental strength to renegade against their fate by the time they reach adulthood thanks to social conditioning. Additionally, though slavery is rare on the Coast and largely resented by the population, the Freehold is best known for their willingly selling their extra daughters for favor, protection or coin when it suits.