Unapproachable East.pdf - The Forgotten Realms

Situated on a long peninsula that stabs like a knife
into the heart of the Sea of Fallen Stars, Aglarond
is a land of open water and deep woods. Here
humans and elves have intermingled for centuries, and nowhere
else in Faerûn is there a greater concentration of halfelves.
The land has long stood as a bulwark holding back the
Red Wizards of Thay from the western lands. This is a thankless
task, but the people of Aglarond take it up not for the
survival of other countries, but their own.
Geographic
Overview
The Aglarondan peninsula is roughly 540 miles long from the
westernmost islands off the peninsula’s tip to the eastern edge
of the Umber Marshes. At its widest point, it’s around 180
miles across, but this narrows to practically nothing at its
western tip. The vast portion of this length of land is roughly
150 miles across from north to south.
Much of the Dragonjaw Mountains are also part of Aglarond,
although the northwestern range is generally considered
part of Thesk. However, the lands beyond the fortress
at Emmech are past the direct protection of the armies of
Aglarond and are thinly populated for this reason among
others. This is an unforgiving part of the country, beset not
only by monsters but by the ever-encroaching forces of
Thay. Today, the minions of the Red Wizards are more rare,
but the area’s monsters still pose a grave threat to homesteaders
and travelers alike.
Although Aglarond is at roughly the same latitude as
Cormyr, its weather is much more moderate. No place in
the country—even the heart of the Yuirwood—is farther
95
than ninety miles from the sea, and most of its cities are
actually on the peninsula’s rocky coast. The waters moderate
the weather, so the seasons are rarely as harsh as they
are elsewhere.
Aglarond is isolated from the rest of Faerûn by the
plateau of Thay to the east and the Sea of Fallen Stars on
three other sides. Thus it separates the Easting Reach of the
north from the Wizards’ Reach and the Alamber Sea of the
south. The Pirate Isles lie only a hundred miles or so off
Aglarond’s own western islands, but since piracy is punishable
by immediate execution in Aglarond, most buccaneers
give the land a wide berth. The length of water that separates
Aglarond from Thesk is known as the Sea of Dlurg.
This is more of a bay than a proper sea: At its narrowest
point, about midway down its length, only fifteen miles separate
the city of Furthinghome from the Theskian shore.
While the Yuirwood covers much of Aglarond, the land between
the trees and the shore consists of fertile, rolling hills
that make excellent farmland. Farms are rarely more than
ten miles from the shore. The half-elves who make their
home under the Yuirwood’s leafy canopy discourage largescale
settlement of the forest with a mixture of compromise,
diplomacy, and the occasional veiled threat. Despite such efforts,
though, the woods continue to recede every year.
Grasses, shrubs, and vines quickly reclaim abandoned farmsteads,
but trees are slow to return to territory stripped from
the Yuirwood long ago.