The Outer Wilds
Beyond the Kingdom's marches, the land does not organize itself into homelands. The Outer Wilds are a patchwork of true wilderness and reclaimed ruin, and the ruins are the disturbing part: they are Faerie work, older than the Kingdom's official history, in styles no court scholar can place.
The standard explanation is that the wilds were once civilized and fell into savagery. The obvious alternative — that the Kingdom is smaller than it used to be, and shrinking — is not discussed.
There is no capital out here. There is the Great Hunt: the Goblin King's court, mounted and perpetually moving, which arrives, holds assizes, settles disputes, collects what it needs, and is gone before any army could be brought to bear on it. Being on the Hunt's route is the closest thing the Wilds have to citizenship.
| Region | Area | Population | Dominant Race | Capital | Ruler |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Bloodmoors | 70 km² | 120,000 | Redcap | the Iron Barrow (9,000) | Iron Jarl Gorrach |
| The Rustlands | 40 km² | 80,000 | Gremlin | the Sump (~6,000) | Nix of the Sump |
| The Nightwood | 90 km² | 60,000 | Bugbear | none | Ursk |
| The Briar Barrens | 55 km² | 90,000 | Pukwudgie | the Quill (5,000) | Thornmother Pesk |
| The Black Meres | 120 km² | 200,000 | Grindyloc | none | Vahl the Weedking |
| The Corpselight Fens | 65 km² | 70,000 | Jack-o-Lantern | none | Jack Nine-Wicks |
| The Hollow Marches | 100 km² | 15,000 | Boggart | none | The Steward of the Nameless Hall |
| The Waking World | n/a | ~30,000 in service | Hobgoblin | none | Old Mother Ash |
| The Great Hunt | mobile | ~4,000 in court | mixed | none, by design | The Goblin King |
Reading the Numbers
The Outer Wilds are more than twice the Kingdom's area and hold about a tenth of its population, which the Eternal City reads as proof that goblins cannot build a civilization. The Wilds read it as proof that they were never given a Heartland. Both are looking at the same figures.
Two entries are worth flagging. The Black Meres are the largest single territory in the world and the least visible, since almost all of it is underwater and a good deal of it lies beneath the Kingdom's own border. And the Hollow Marches' 15,000 is a count of boggarts, which is to say a count of ruins large enough to be worth haunting — fifteen thousand halls, holdings, and towers that the Kingdom's official history says were never built.