The Taiga
The northern arm, and the busiest: conifers, moss and lichen under heavy snow, with the whole of the Rimeward's manufacture passing through it on the way south. Large game roams the forest, which suits the Shah Hadiz entirely.
The Land
Snow falls heavily and the summers are short and mild. The trees are dark and close-set, the floor is deep moss, and there is more meat walking around the Taiga than in any other stretch of the Hedges.
Because the north road crosses here, the Taiga is also where the ring stops being a border and becomes a market. Mousehold sits astride the crossing: sixty thousand people, the second-largest city in the world, governing nothing whatsoever. Everything simply passes through it, and everything pays a little to do so.
The Shah Hadiz
Proud, formal, and fiercely independent, with striking orange or white fur barred in black. They hunt big game and prefer dangerous prey to easy pickings, with as little weaponry as the animal will permit — a code they hold to sincerely and describe at length.
They are also witheringly rude about their cousins. The Shah Gaz's ambushing is "thuggery"; the Shah Mira's city work does not merit a word. The Shah Hadiz are aware that they are the only tribe who talk this way, and take it as evidence.
Encounters
Roll d100. The busiest crossing in the Kingdom. Half of what you meet is freight, and the other half is following it. CR is scaled to Faerie size — see Challenge by Size.
| d100 | Encounter | CR |
|---|---|---|
| 01–10 | 1 Rimeward freight train, 3d6 strong, paying for escorts at Mousehold rates | — |
| 11–18 | 1d4 Shah Hadiz hunting big game with as little weaponry as the animal permits | 6 |
| 19–25 | 2d6 Mousehold factors, toll-keepers and rumour-brokers, all of whom want something | — |
| 26–32 | heavy snow closes the north road, and 1d6 caravans stack up at a tollhouse | — |
| 33–38 | 2d8 springtails in deep moss, turning needle litter | 0 |
| 39–44 | 1d4 crickets in a cut stump, singing through the cold | ¼ |
| 45–50 | 1d3 jumping spiders on the lichen, angle already taken | 1 |
| 51–56 | 1d4 ground beetles under the moss layer at night | 2 |
| 57–62 | 1d2 paper wasps with a nest above a tollhouse, and a standing complaint | 2 |
| 63–68 | 2d4 wolf spiders in the moss, young on their backs | 3 |
| 69–74 | 1d3 hornets at a spilled sap-barrel on the road | 4 |
| 75–79 | 1d2 mice and voles hauling for the Underbank crews, off shift, uncounted | 6 |
| 80–84 | 1 mantis in the conifer scrub, courteous and unhurried | 8 |
| 85–88 | 1 shrew on the road margin, which has not stopped in its life | 7 |
| 89–91 | 1d2 bats over the crossing at dusk, hunting the courier lane | 10 |
| 92–94 | 1 sparrow in the conifers, and the road has no canopy cover at all | 11 |
| 95–96 | 1 hedgehog at the roadside — its entire diet is people your size | 13 |
| 97 | 1 woodpecker on a trunk above the road, working methodically | 15 |
| 98 | 1 stoat, white, into a tollhouse's understory | 15 |
| 99 | 1 hawk down the road-line at speed | 20 |
| 00 | 1 fox on the north road at dusk, which the Shah Hadiz will not contest | 24 |