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"Hopskotch could see all of Broken Meadow, south to the unbending channel of the Cutting and beyond to the forgotten hills of Dewcress Shire. To his right, the Shallowfrond sparkled a twisting silver path through the valley north to Whiskey’s Waddle. The heavily forested east bank was highlighted in deep green, a glorious contrast to the patchwork limes and golds of the meadowlands’ tilled fields."

Book I, Chapter 32 – Rescue by Girl

Settlement

The lands of Broken Meadow were resettled when refugees from the Scouring began filtering down from their mountain keeps to work the land beyond Lake Whispermere. A fear that the Blighted might return persisted among the descendants of the Syltian tribes, but the need to secure fertile farmland soon overrode their inherent caution. The calendar was reset to Year of Foundation: 0, and the first few decades gave cause for optimism. It was not to last.

The fog barrier

Moving in the shadows of civilised society, a secretive cabal known as Ravenstrykke manipulated the settlers – the descendants of Tarador who founded Witherness, and those who crossed the lake to settle the meadowlands – into using the surviving shards of the legendary geolyte crystal known as the Sword of Sanctuary to conjure a fog barrier to protect the lower Fellensian Valley. The Quorum of Elders agreed to it, upon the understanding that it would be a temporary measure to shield their settlements from surviving Blighted, who were said to haunt the crags of the Calverslope Ridge. How wrong they were. In the span of little more than a century, the border fog had expanded to Peatsleak Plateau in the north, east down the Fellriven Valley into Dewcress Shire, and west to the marsh-ridden shores of Lake Whispermere.

The Adensian split

Only the Corsairs voted against the fog barrier, and for good reason.

Their elders knew something of Whisper magic, and feared that absent a Sol mage, its inherent instability could become an even greater threat than a Blighted attack on the borders. As the original custodians of the Sword of Sanctuary shards, the debate about handing them over had raged for many months, and came close to ending in bloodshed. Eventually, a faction of allied Corsair clans surrendered the geolyte to Witherness, forever fracturing the unity of the highland tribes.

Despite their reluctant cooperation, all Corsairs of Adenskeep were cast as outlaws by the meadowland majority, a status embraced by many of the clans, who were only too happy to seal their folk off from the lowlanders.