This is a region which has for millennia lain as a buffer between the ancient imperial heartlands of LeBano, Eisen, and Gossary. In all that time, it has never been completely conqueror or tamed. While, technically part of the Crown of LeBano under the current imperial order, the tamer parts have largely passed into the personal patrimony of the High King, especially among the larger villages on the shores of the Five Fingers. The late Starcrest Dynasty was particularly active in this repossession as it struggled to finance its wars against the upstart kingdom of Balray and reward its loyal nobles as the dynasty was losing its hegemony over the surrounding Crowns. House Starcrest dispatched imperial officers into this region to establish order and bring these frontier communities into the imperial economy. This was popularly received within the fishing and trading communities of the Five Fingers, but was fiercely resisted by the Pidjins of the Fenlands. The micro-chiefdoms of the Fenlands to this day still remain largely independent. Oddly, man pleasure properties of the High Throne are based at the edge of the Fenlands, including an Imperial Forest, a hunting retreat and a summer palace complex and artesian baths built by the Starcrest to escape the poxy, summer heat of Eishen, the City of Pearl.
To the southwest of the Imperial Capital are hundreds of square leagues of low-lying, festering glades and mandrake groves known as the Fenlands. These lands are impenetrable by Alamastran society and have become the haunt of outlaws, brigands, cutthroats, and fugitives. Many of these have formed their own bands and continue to prey on communities of the Fingers, or travelers passing through the Forest of the Darkhart. Some have even organized themselves into micro-chiefdoms, developing an insular culture all their own with its own distinct pidgin language. Many Pidjins live and die from generation to generation within these micro-societies never traveling into the wider world beyond the Fenlands. The Fingers are a series of five, long, narrow fresh water lakes that form the source of a major tributary that flows through the Forest of the Darkhart, across the eastern hinterland and joins the Tzaltzan at LeBano's southern border with Crown Gossary. The Fingers look like the fingers of a grasping hand reaching out from the Forest of the Darkhart when studied on a map of Alamastra--Hence their name. The Fingers possess a vibrant fishing culture, which practices aggressive aquaculture and wet-rice farming along the shores of the Fingers. This fishing culture is centered around small fishing villages built on the shores of the Fingers. However, they often possess a Crannog mounted on stilts at some distance from the shore as a holdfast against bandit raids. Some of the stronger communities have even constructed stone holdfasts on islands not far distant from their lakeside villages.