The Peoples of the Flanaess
(as told by sages, loremasters, and old wives alike)
Ask any educated soul in the Flanaess about "the folk of the land," and they'll tell you humanity here is no single people, but four bloodlines woven together — sometimes cleanly, sometimes not — into the nations you find today.
The old blood. The first people, some say, to walk these lands when the forests were younger and the borders unnamed. The Flan never built empires the way others did — they lived with the land rather than carving kingdoms from it, and that spirit lingers in their descendants still: trackers, druids, hunters, and folk who look at a "civilized" road and see just another path through someone else's wilderness. Dark of hair and eye, weathered, unhurried. You'll find purer Flan stock among the tribes of the Barrens, the highland clans, and scattered rural folk who never much cared who claimed to rule them this century.
The builders. Generations ago, the Oeridian tribes came out of the east in a slow flood of wagons and spears, and where they settled, they stayed — raising keeps, drawing borders, writing laws. Look at Furyondy, Nyrond, the sprawling wreck of old Aerdy, and you're looking at Oeridian civilization at its most ambitious (and its most quarrelsome). Brown-haired, sun-browned, of middling height and stubborn temperament — they are, more than any other folk, the backbone of "civilized" society in the Flanaess, for better or worse.
The fallen. Once, the Suel Imperium reached further and dug deeper into forbidden magic than any realm before or since — until it ended itself in a single terrible day of colorless fire that scarred half a continent. Their descendants carry that inheritance uneasily: pale of skin, hair like white gold or ash, sharp-featured, and often gifted — or cursed — with an old and hungry aptitude for the arcane. You'll find them ruling in cold pride among the Snow and Ice Barbarians of the north, or scheming in the shadow of the Scarlet Brotherhood, whose purity cults have never forgiven the world for what was lost.
The far horizon. West of the Yatils and the Barrier Peaks lies a whole world the eastern Flanaess only half-understands: sun-browned, dark-eyed peoples of Ket, Tusmit, Zeif, and the Paynim reaches, heirs to their own empires, their own prophets, and their own long, bitter war-history with the Suel that shaped both peoples forever. Horse-lords, holy warriors, merchant-princes — the Baklunish built glittering cities while Oeridian tribes were still wandering.
The Wilderness — The untamed borderland between "civilization" and the monster-infested frontier. Sparse, dangerous, and full of small encounters and points of interest.
The Keep — A fortified frontier outpost, not a city. Think small garrison-town: a castellan (the local lord/commander), a handful of merchants, a temple, a tavern, and soldiers holding the line against the wilds. It's your home base, supply point, and rumor mill between expeditions.
The Caves of Chaos — A ravine honeycombed with caves, each inhabited by a different faction of monstrous humanoids (kobolds, orcs, goblins, etc.) who normally squabble among themselves.
In 1979, the original 'The Keep on the Borderlands' module was included in the first "starter set" bundle for D&D. Millions of players began their D&D journey at the gates of the Keep.
In 2018, publisher Goodman Games began a series of 'Original Adventures Reincarnated' with The Keep on the Borderlands, publishing the original alongside a modern 5E D&D version.
In 2025, D&D 5.5E returns to Greyhawk with a reimagined adventure - Heroes of the Borderlands!
The Keep on the Borderlands has no definitive location. It can be located anywhere in Oerth - the world of Greyhawk.
For our adventure, it is located at the western fringes of the Yeomanry.
A land of free warrior-farmers, mostly of mixed Suel-Flan descent, who threw off Keolandish rule generations ago and now govern themselves through elected spokesmen. It's tucked into a valley between the Jotens (mountains) to the north and the Tors (flat-topped hill country) to the south. Its people are proud, self-reliant, and used to fending for themselves. The Keep on the Borderlands is located at the westernmost point at the foot of the Jotens.
The Tors — hilly borderland at the Yeomanry's southern edge, notorious for goblins and bandits raiding down from the high ground, plus livestock-stealing monsters.
The Hool Marshes — a massive, disease-ridden swamp separating Keoland/the Yeomanry from the Hold of the Sea Princes to the south. Lizardfolk, hidden yuan-ti cults, and desperate outlaws hide in its bottomless mires. Not a place to wander into casually.
A pirate-controlled coastal realm, historically dominated by the Scarlet Brotherhood (a secretive, ethno-nationalist cult). Smuggling and piracy bleed up through the Hool Marshes and Dreadwood into "civilized" lands.
Keoland — the large, older kingdom the Yeomanry once broke away from. Politically it's currently stable but full of noble house intrigue simmering underneath.
The Dreadwood — a big forest along Keoland's southern border, separating the kingdom from the Hool Marshes. It's a highway for raiders (humanoids, renegades, and forces out of the Sea Princes' territory) moving north.
Gran March — a martial, knight-heavy state built around a militant warrior philosophy. Think heavily armored cavalry and strict codes of honor — a useful "law and order" neighbor if the Keep ever needs reinforcements or a rival authority shows up.
Bissel — a frontier state that serves as a buffer protecting Furyondy and Keoland from incursions out of the west (it was invaded by the nation of Ket but held on). It relies heavily on "border companies" — mercenary and adventurer bands defending the frontier.
A vast, old-growth woodland where the canopy grows so thick overhead that daylight barely reaches the ground — locals say you can lose track of morning from evening once you're a few miles in. Wood elves keep to its deeper reaches, and the eastern edges have seen soldiers trying to cut a road through, with little luck — something about the forest, or what lives in it, keeps pushing back.
A gentler, greener wood than its shadowy neighbor the Dim Forest — sunlight actually reaches the forest floor here, and travelers often describe an almost dreamlike quality to the place, like the borders between "here" and somewhere stranger run a little thin. It was fought over in recent memory, and while the elves who call it home won back their ground, some say a few things that came in with the fighting never quite left.
A wild stretch of forest with a reputation. Woodsmen and hunters use its outer paths freely enough, but go on to say raiders and worse things use the same trails from hidden camps deeper in. It has the feel of a forest that's only half-tamed — safe enough near the roads, genuinely dangerous once you leave them.
The Crystalmist Mountains — the towering range that walls off the whole western edge of the Sheldomar Valley (the wider region Yeomanry sits in). This is giant country: hill giants, stone giants, and worse raid down out of these peaks regularly. Also home to orcs and other humanoid tribes.
Geoff — an isolated, fog-shrouded realm of herders, farmers, and miners (with a strong dwarf/gnome/elf presence) tucked against the mountains and the Rushmoors. Historically peaceful but constantly raided by giants coming out of the Crystalmists.
Sterich — a mineral-rich earldom next to the Jotens and Crystalmists, worked by dwarf and gnome clans. Like Geoff, it's a frontline against giant incursions — in fact, Sterich was actually overrun by giant and humanoid armies in the mid-580s CY and had to be reconquered with help from Keoland, Gran March, and the Ulek states.
The Valley of the Mage — a strange, isolated pocket deep in the Crystalmists/Barrier Peaks, ruled by a secretive, paranoid archmage and defended by gnomes and unusually tall elves.
A hard, distant mountain range on the horizon to the north, its snow-capped ridgelines rarely crossed by ordinary travelers. Locals speak of it in a mix of awe and unease — giants are said to roam the high passes, and old rumors persist of strange lights and stranger sounds echoing from somewhere deep in the crags, unlike anything a mountain should make. Few who go looking for the source ever come back with a straight story.
