Regions of the Hill Country

I've tossed around several labels for some time for regions of the Hill Country, but I don't think that I've always been super consistent with my usage of them. I thought it would be good to document what I think that "latest" is. Originally, the Hill Country was just a region in itself, but of course, it's big enough to have more than one region; at least as large as a Western European country of the past, like France or Old Germany or the Austrian Empire, etc. or as big as one of the big western states of the US like Wyoming or Montana. 

This isn't meant to be a list of details of the map, but rather of higher level "regions" within the Hill Country, most of which I've already developed many smaller details already.

The "core" of the Hill Country is the two regions Northumbria and Southumbria, both so named because of their relation to the Umber River, which runs through the southern part of the Goldenwold. Northumbria is driven, in large part, by the major urban settlement Garenport, which is the most important city in the region, and a real city and a powerhouse financially, militarily and in every other sense. 

Southumbria, on the other hand, has Barrowmere in somewhat the same situation; by far the most important urban center; really the only truly urban center. Barrowmere and Garenport are rivals, both commercially and politically—and even philosophically, as the self-styled Grand Duke of Garenport wants to unite the two regions more intimately and set himself up as the king of the newly christened Hill Kingdom instead of Hill Country. Luckily for the other regions, he's got lots of problems at home that are distracting him from pursuing that agenda too hard.

Both regions have subregions. Northumbria's Garenkarst Peninsula is east of the Waychester Bay and therefore unrelated to the Umber River, and the Northwoodshire region is between the Umber River and the large forests to the south. Technically it belongs to Southumbria, and it looks to Barrowmere for leadership, but only a little; the region is really kind of autonomous and independent in many ways.

There are two more recent expansion regions, where settlement from Hillmen is relatively new, and has opened up new frontiers for the Hill Country. The so-called East Marches are really more to the north even of Northumbria, and stretch from the territory of Cayminster (which is definitely in the Northumbrian orbit) across the northeastern edge of the Darkling Sea, and have now started to spread southwards across the eastern edge of the sea a bit in the form of Woodrow's Hamlets, a small subregion that's considered part of the Marches. Burlharrow is the largest urban (using the term somewhat loosely) area here, and they have both some commercial dependency still on Garenport, but also a great deal of resentment about it, and it is largely made up of common folk who urge for breaking with Garenport more explicitly, at least politically. Regardless of its politics, it's far enough away from the remainder of the regular Hill Country to be an afterthought in many ways to them, but as more and more settlement is moving into this area, that will probably not be true forever.

The West Marches on the other hand are truly separated from the rest of the Hill Country, and far enough away from it to be independent. Settlement of Hillmen in the region also is shared with some few peoples who were already in the area, although much of the West Marches is ranchland or other depopulated wilderness. Bucknerfeld is the largest city in the area, and it thrives on trade across the Great Northern Road with distant destinations in Lower Kurushat, Baal Hamazi and places like Simashki. But Hillmen have also spread recently down into the so-called Cactus Balds, and homesteads, ranches and more are now common in these relatively dry hills—in spite of their names, they're not necessarily completely bald nor covered with tons of cactus, although to the Hillmen, the prickly pear and other cactuses were a unique element that caught their attention. Mostly they are lightly covered in pinyon-juniper savanna, gray oak and even mesquite, interspersed with lots of tough grasses and the iconic cactuses which so caught the imagination of the Hillmen who otherwise weren't familiar with them. If you want a real world analog, go check out the Davis Mountains in western Texas—but then moderate the climate a bit. The summers aren't so miserably hot.

I'll probably draw up a quick map that's specifically focused on labeling these regions, and otherwise sparse on more detailed labels, and post it when I get a chance.