The Isthmus FortificationsThe Isthmus Fortifications are system of coastal fortresses and defenseworks built by the Imperial House of Starcrest in ages past, which crowd the Great Isthmus, the narrow landbridge which connects the vast Alamastran Empire with the hostile kingdom of Balray. The defenses are now largely neglected by official imperial attention, as the Imperial Legions and Auxilliaries are largely occupied in struggles along the Eastern and Southern frontiers of the Empire. Instead these fortification are garrisoned and maintained by a vast conscript army of judicially exiled convicts from across the vast empire. Upon discharge from their indentured soldiery in the Border Guard, many are still barred from returning to their homelands and therefore stay on within the vicinities of the great Isthmus fortresses. This has lead the growth of large and rowdy populations which have sprung up in make shift favellas sprinkled between the garrisons and between the walls, bulwarks and fortifications. These impoverished, but culturally thriving communities have given birth to a uniquely diverse and cosmopolitan culture of trouping arts, musicians, poets, and performers which regulary tour the courts, fairs, and festivals on the Empire, being especially popular in the Heartland Crowns. The Isthmus has become especially renowned for it culture of Troubadors, which are perported to have their own lore and magic akin to the Bards of the Bardic Academy in Crown Vinton. Most of these communities are within the domains of the Border Guard fortresses, and therefore are technically under the martial law of the Empire. The Border Guard does not have its own officer core, but instead possesses commanders from the Imperial Legions, most seeking to garner enough attention to return to the front. Therefore, these communities have a reputation for good governance, despite their unruliness. The restlessness of the populace is largely quelled by a share of the grain shipments provided from Sandriff for the Border Guard and through the continual employment of festivals, spectables, and frivalities by the military governors of this Crown. The Magnacy of the Crown is traditionally whoever the High King is currently grooming to govern the capital city of Eishen. Therefore, Magnate of the Great Isthmus is one of the most prestigious and influential peerages of the realm traditionally open to civil servants of ability. Tradition dictates that no scion of the royal house may occupy this peerage, thereby keeping it energetic and able.
The Border Guard itself has a notorious reputation for unreliability in combat. It is for this reason that these indentured soldiers are placed on garrison duty on the fringe of the Empire, where their presence operates as a deterent to incursions by the hostile Balraens, but also does not oftern require their active deployment. The two greatest landward fortifications garrisoned by the Border Guard are the Twin Pinnacles and the Rainbow Canyon Citadel. These two strong fortifications protect the approach into the Heartland of the Empire from the Isthmus itself.
The Twin Pinnacles consists of two ancient rock chimneys which flank the entrance to a natural canyon which cleaves through the coastal cliffs into the continental interior. These fortifcations have been carved into two mighty watch towers guarding this approach. The also double as light houses, with a fiery beacon mounted as the top of each--the northerward one warning mariners on the storm-tossed Jadess Sea of their approach to the Great Ithsmus, and the one on the south doing these same for mariners in the turbulent Yamari Ocean. These beacons are maginfied by crystaline amplification and can be seen for miles out to see, even on a stormtossed night.
A torrential, rapid-tossed river known as the Rainbow Current for the beatiful rainbows which illuminate its rapids and cataracts, flows through this canyon and rages into the Yamari plummeting from the might coastal cliffs in a breath taking waterall a mile south of the Twin Pinnacle. At one point in the canyon between the Pinnacles was the mouth of the Rainbow Current, but many aons past a natural cataclysm changed its course. The Pinnacle Canyon eventual rejoines the Rainbow Canyon in a pricipitous footpath decending further down away from the bluffs of the Ithsmus to the coastal cliffs of the Yamari Coast north of Sandriff. The Rainbow Current flows from toward the sea through this sloping, broad canyon, known as the Rainbow Canyon. It is a fertile canyon with flood plain that widens as it approaches the cliffs of the Yamari Coast. At the head of the canyon where the Rainbow Current decends violently in a series of massive cataracts known as the Rainbow Cascade, there is a mighty octagonal citadel, known as the Rainbow Citadel, of ancient design which protects the decent from the Pinnacle Canyon into the Rainbow Canyon below, and at the same time bars access to the interior Hearland by way of Ghaltri, the mountainous land of the Dwarves, from which the Rainbow Current has its glacial origin.
The Twin Pinnacles and the Rainbow Citadel are garrisoned by the Border Guard as well, but each as its own Castellan. These three function as the vassals-in-chief of the Magnate-General of the Great Isthmus.
There are some small river communities which live within the Rainbow Canyon, for it is a large and abundant tract of land. However, these communities tend to be comprise of independantly minded migrant sheperding peoples which simply use these communities as winter grazing lands for their flocks. They pay a grazing tax to the Magnate-General and are generally left in peace and isolation.
The Rainbow Canyon ci