Ulthar

Ulthar is gentle land, farm from any big cities or other trappings of civilization that distract from living a life of good hard work. It consists of undulating hills dotted with granite boulders and shrubs, with grass that makes good pickings for livestock. The summers are warm and wet and the winters cold and snowy. There's three large areas of forest, where brave hunters sometimes go to get wild meat, or some clever mushroom collector goes to find nutritious food and magical components, but most folk know well enough to stay out. There's small patches of forest dotted throughout the landscape too, much safer and more convenient places to go to collect wood. The sparseness of Ulthar really needs to be emphasized. There's 20,000 people in an area of about 2500 square miles, which means less than 10 people per square mile. Most of them cluster up in little villages so it means you can walk for hours away from one of those villages and easily never see another sentient being, unless you run into a herder. Around the villages people farm as much land as they can manage, no one cares much for ownership, there's plenty of land for everyone. Beyond the villages people take their flocks of sheep and cows out to wherever they can find sufficient grass and water, bringing them in to large barns in the villages through the coldest months of winter, when snow blankets the ground.

Apparently some of the other regions are more densely populated, and the isolation in Ulthar makes it appealing to those who have reasons not to want to be remembered in those other places. Some specific locations in Ulthar:

A - Lake Home

Ulthar's 'capital', if you really want to call it that, and biggest settlement is a town of 2000 people. Merrilyn, the region's Alder lives here, and there's a few trappings of government, like the region's treasury (where the gold is kept that comes in when irregularly collected taxes are called) and a few educated folks who's job is to make sure the region is looked after. But in reality, most functions of society are dealt with on an as-needed basis by each village. Each village usually maintains their own infrastructure, keeps a stash of armaments to fight off monsters and collectively decides on how to deal with those who wrong other villages. The Alder only really gets involved in big things, like coordinating rebuilding when a whole village burns down, or if she is needed to arbitrate on a particularly difficult accusation of a crime. While officially appointed by some far off duke, the Alder's authority ultimately comes from The Soul, so the clergy support her and all take her words as law.

Lake Home is also the site of Ulthar's largest church, staffed by a handful of priests who happily travel throughout the region whenever needed to bring The Soul's blessings to the people, whether these be in the form of healing, prayers to improve the harvest or just sage words.

B - Waterways

Ulthar is blessed with abundant water, with streams, ponds and swamps dotting the landscape. Only two rivers are particular large though, namely the North River and the South River, which join to form Main River and Lake Ulthran before eventually plunging off a spectacular waterfall into one of the Slices. These rivers provide a bounty of fish, though few folk in Ulthar are skilled with boats, leaving the few who do use them to bring in fish hauls of fish from the depths of the lake to receive the admiration of their compatriots.

C - Ellem Woods

A loosely defined area in the west of Ulthar, the Ellem woods is a hilly area, a little more rugged than the rest of Ulthar and a little harder to move through, but still as bountiful as would be expected, with plenty of good pastures and game to be had. There is a village more or less every 5 miles here, most with around 100 people and we'll begin our adventures in one of these villages, named Ret.

The one thing lacking is much surface water, but The Soul provides and every year a representative of the church travels though in spring with a holy relic that brings forth water from springs and wells throughout the following year. This tends to be a time of celebration as the faithful join in the relic's procession from village to village, praying to enhance the power of this magic.