This time around, while we are once again heading North West, it is more North than West. I guess this is as good of a time as any to provide a rough idea as to the biggest movers and shakers in the area and the current state of affairs.

First thing first; everything is disputed. Diamond Lake is in charge of Diamond Lake, and Diamond Lake claims that the land 1,000 kilometers in every direction is theirs. In the Break mountain range North and North West of Diamond Lake, you’ll find a dwarven settlement as well as tribes of goblins and orcs and hobgoblins and more that will all claim most of that same land is their own. You’ll even find numerous small human settlements which claim to be independent and have their own leadership structures and tracts of land within the boundaries of Diamond Lakes' claims. So, be aware that what I’m about to tell you is very general, and that details on ownership and borders are particularly subject to change based on who is doing the talking.

If you go east of my home swamp, you’ll eventually run into the ocean. We’re on the eastern edge of this continent. Lizardfolk prefer to avoid living too close to the shores because ships sail along the coast, so mostly the various lizardfolk tribes are located 30 or more kilometers within the boundaries of the great swamp, only sending out expeditions to attack or harass those near their borders. And yes, looking at lizardfolk as a whole, that includes capturing and looting seafaring vessels, though my Stone Tails generally keep their raids inland due to being landlocked by other tribes.

Although my tribe, the Stone Tails, are prominent, we are only one among the 5 biggest Lizardfolk tribes, and there are a little over a dozen smaller Lizardfolk tribes beyond that whom are also living in the swamp. It's a big swamp, and we call it the "Great Swamp" both in my own village and, apparently, in Diamond Lake. The Lizardfolk tribes do occasionally war with each other, but by this point even the most pig headed of Lizardfolk realize that we are running out of territory, so nowadays there is not a great deal of intratribal conflict as we generally try to respect each other's borders and for the most part will raid other races. We don't have the spare manpower (Lizardfolk power? Lizardpower?) requisite to pick fights at every opportunity. At this point we don't even have the Lizardpower required to properly maintain our own borders, much less seek to expand into someone else's. The Stone Tails, for instance, supposedly once lived in the Break mountains. That was long before the time of any of our living tribe members, but according to our oral history, that mountain range is our ancestral home… And some variation of that story, though originating in different places, is true for the other tribes as well. No one wants to live in the swamp. We live there because it is the only place left where we can live at all.

South of the Great swamp there is a stretch of uninhabited plains followed by a large trade city, Riverwind. Riverwind is known for being a hive for smugglers, slavers, and other unsavory sorts, but it is an economic powerhouse, with trading partners far and wide. This is a mostly human city, though anywhere humans dwell you’ll find representatives of the other flavors of metahumanity. Say what you want about humans; and yes there's quite a lot of bad things that can be said about them; among the "goodly" races, they are by far and away the most tolerant of other species.

North of The Great Swamp is The Forest of Death, followed by the Barrier mountains. The Forest of Death is something of a mystery; all the trees in the forest, all vegetation in general really, is petrified, making the forest rather hostile to animal life. There are powerful creatures occasionally roaming about in there, and while the details on those creatures is sparse and unreliable, many of the stories hint at creatures like Gorgons and Cockatrices and similar creatures with particularly nasty abilities. Moving on to the Barrier mountains, it is supposed to be populated by Ogres and Hill Giants and so on, though the reports of what lives in the Barrier mountains are even less reliable than what we hear regarding the Forest of Death.

Though overland travel is very limited, and I don’t have reliable information beyond that point, somewhere far, far north of the Barrier mountains is the seat of power for “The Empire”. The Empire is not the only Empire in this world, but it’s the only empire I know of to get a capital T when referring to The Empire. It is not a single kingdom but is instead a conglomerate of 25 kingdoms of various races and nationalities, all of whom are ruled by a single High King. Each of those nations has their own Monarch or form of Governance, and the High King is selected from the leadership among those 25 kingdoms. They will usually serve for life or retirement, though there has never been an Elvish High King to put the “for life” status to the test, nor is there likely to be an elven high king as relations between The Empire and the Elven Kingdoms are rather poor.

According to Jim the capital of the Empire, Avinal is a vibrant city and a bountiful area, but since I’m on the topic I will make note that, when talking about his homeland, he would make frequent mention of “The Hex States”, which are mostly forested areas that humans took from the elves centuries ago. The elves, in retaliation for having lost the land and at some form of great cost, laid down a series of great curses effecting each of the hex states in different ways. Jim never specified exactly how those curses manifested or what price the elves paid to inflict those curses; but the northern and western borders of the hex states are the southern borders of the nations of the Elves, and I have no idea what lay north beyond the Elves.

Looking west of the great swamp, we have Diamond Lake; which has a reputation for being rugged and unrefined, but which has a decent reputation on most fronts overall. Northwest of Diamond lake we have the Break mountain range, which leads into the dwarven kingdoms though I am uncertain of what those kingdoms entail or what lay beyond them. You'd think that there might be reliable information since I've been in Diamond Lake for a bit, but even among merchants who trade with the Dwarves, there seems to be little communication with the actual dwarves. Southwest of Diamond Lake you will find Goblinoid Kingdoms followed eventually by the Desert of the Lost, a large desert most famous for the combination of talking rocks and illusions, and eventually extensive grasslands that are primarily populated by halfmen tribes. I’m uncertain what lies beyond the halfmen grasslands, or even what the name of those grasslands are.

There you have it, the general movers and shakers of the area, and where to find them. “But Elliot” you may say, “Why do you blame the humans for the plight of the lizardfolk when it doesn’t sound like there are any human kingdoms remotely close to you?” Well, I don't really blame them per se, but if blame is to be distributed there's no doubt the majority of the blame would fall on the humans. You are correct in pointing out that the closest noteworthy human kingdom is The Empire: And that it is far enough away I genuinely don’t even know the distance. 1,000 kilometers north? 2,000? 1 million? I don't know. But you must understand something about humans: They are cockroaches armed with pistols.

When a handful of humans settled in Diamond Lake centuries ago and they were not wiped out, this became a Southern foothold for humanity. When they settled in Riverwatch over a century ago? That became another Southern foothold for humanity. It’s not like those are the only human settlements, those are just the settlements that are powerful enough even considering attacking them would be suicidal even for tens of thousands of Lizardfolk. But once humans have a foothold in place, they don’t stop coming. They fly in, they teleport in, they take ships in, and most importantly of all, they just. Keep. Coming. More and more of them, year after year.

I recall once having seen a historical documentary, wherein a historian was being interviewed, and he made comment about how a particular area was taken over. The interviewer was shocked and appalled by the historians comments, because the "takeover" that he referenced was not something the interviewer considered to be a takeover at all. There was no war, no great battles or slaughter. Certainly there would have been small scale incidents, that happens every time different cultures meet, but nothing significant on a macro scale. All that happened was that over the course of a couple centuries, a large number of people migrated into the area.

According to the interviewer, that isn't a takeover at all. The historians response was that immigration is an extension of warfare; and that the net result was the genocide and obliteration of the indigenous people. The historian recognized that the methods used were not inherently violent, but did not believe it to be important because the natives were obliterated nonetheless, their culture lost, and their historical relevancy completely subsumed by their conquerors. That viewpoint was a bit bizarre, but I cannot say that he was entirely wrong, I merely question the initial claim that immigration is an extension of warfare. Should it really count as a genocide if they were willing participants in the annihilation of their own culture? In my opinion that's not really a genocide, it's just evidence that the culture had lost its will to survive.

Regardless of the validity of those claims from the standpoint of human to human interactions, from the perspective of a monstrous species, the claim that human immigration is an extension of warfare IS an accurate statement. They come, they do not respect your borders, and even if their initial approach is peaceful, it is only a matter of time before they stop tolerating your existence. While the humans are settling or exploring an area, they will wipe out or drive off the Lizardfolk in that area. Usually though not always, the people trying to settle the area die in the process, but they’ll still cause damage before they die. And with effectively unlimited reinforcements, eventually the damage becomes too severe, and your options are whittled down until they become “Flee, or perish.”

I would like to point out that human expansion is not significantly worse in any moral sense compared to the other races. Elves for instance, are every bit as expansionist as the humans are, the Elves are simply not as good at it. Allow me to explain: Elves live for millennia and possibly forever, so their plans to expand tend to include long build up periods so that their conquest will be as close to "perfect" as possible, with few losses and resounding victories one after another. During the time while the elves are building up, however, humans will eventually end up attacking and completely trashing the elven plan to take over where the humans lived, often even resulting in the weaponry and armor they were planning to use against the humans falling into human hands instead.

Similarly, while the dwarves are not particularly aggressive when it comes to above ground territories, if you ever want to get your own diamonds or metals or anything else you’ll find below the earth? As soon as their mining operations come sufficiently close to your own, the dwarves become a scourge. If they can fight and win, they will do so. If not, they will tunnel all around your own mines to prevent further expansion and strangle your efforts to collect resources by claiming the tunnels ahead of you. They only share what is below ground with humans because they cannot stop them, mostly because while humans are continuing to slowly expand in every direction, while the dwarves have their hands more than full courtesy of the goblinoids and troglodytes and all those other wonderful underground neighbors that have been trimming them back every time their greed causes them to overextend.

Sure, theoretically you could always just try trading with the dwarves for access to underground resources and live together in peace for a long time; but numerous races have trade agreements with Dwarves, and to a large degree dwarves tend to limit their external trade to their low quality stuff, the stuff that they just see little or no value in, and even that they will usually only offer to trade at absurdly high prices. Such blatant discriminatory practices tend to rub people the wrong way, and if the restrictions dwarves impose on metals were to be scaled to impact all of metahumanity, it would be downright crippling. Without the many external threats enforcing peace as the desirable state of affairs between humans and dwarves, they would be at each other’s throats in the blink of an eye.

And so on it goes for the rest of the sentient creatures. At the end of the day, every race will fight for resources. Even the seemingly friendly and cheerful halfmen are downright vicious when it comes to taking what they want, they'll just usually prefer to rob people to take what they want rather than go to war over it. Not going to war over resources and just taking them instead doesn't make them saints; the reason they don't typically go to war is because they don't do well in war; so they stick to lying, cheating, and stealing instead. I'm not saying halfmen are inherently evil or anything like that, they're no worse than anyone else, really. They do what they do in order to survive and to thrive. If a race were unwilling to fight for resources, they would have gone extinct in their early stages rather than growing to become regional or global power houses.

The only thing truly special about humans is that they seem to have a difficult to beat balance between fast reproduction and having sufficient intelligence to allow multigenerational development of their magic, technology, and tactics. Kobolds and Goblins and Orcs, Goblinoids in general, they breed remarkably quickly. But they are short-lived, and they are dumb. They are cunning; capable to tricking people and crafting crude traps. But they are dumb. They do not develop and retain significant multigenerational knowledge, they are unable to develop their craftsmanship to support high quality weapons, and so on. Whether it's due to their culture or their relatively short lifespan or some combination of factors, they are at a significant technological disadvantage compared to the "goodly" races even before you factor in the racial class problem that monstrous species tend to suffer from.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the goblinoids, elves live for thousands of years, with their actual maximum lifespan being completely unknown to other species, most people claim they are completely immortal, at least with respect to age. Elves are amazing at many things: They have powerful spell casters, excellent blacksmiths, weaponsmiths, boatwrights, and much more besides. Let us be honest though, they had *better* be amazing at all those different things. If you practiced your craft for 1,000+ years and you were only “ok” at it, comparable to someone who had been practicing for a decade or two, that would be a strong indicator that you were… cognitively challenged, to put it delicately.

From everything I have heard about Elves, they certainly seem to be cognitively challenged even allowing for the skill they end up being able to display, but that is attributable to the sheer quantity of experience any given elf will have. On average, any given elf will at least become very good at the one or two things they focus on. Lack of skill is not the reason elves are losing ground to humanity. Their problem is that rather than being able to have a kid every year the way that the humans can, few elves will have more than one kid a century, often not even that, and they appear to be incapable of having more than one per decade. Humans are good enough crafters that their best can compete with elven crafted goods, and once the technology gap has been reduced to a manageable level, humans are fast enough at replacing their numbers that using swarm tactics against elves becomes effective.

In summary, you now know roughly what is in our immediate vicinity. You also know why I say that humans in this world are like cockroaches armed with pistols. Because they established bases in the area that we were helpless to remove, and then used superior technology, tactics, and a continuous reinforcement strategy to drive us out of one home after another. And you know why I do not hold that against them. Because all of the other races would do the exact same things if they could.