Bechafen is the capital of Ostermark, a grim and fog-bound city rising from the marshlands of the Empire's far eastern frontier. Built where the rivers Ashquy and Whitewater meet, it is a place of stilted houses, misty causeways, and dour, hard-bitten folk who have never known the security enjoyed by the softer cities of the west.
As a bastion of the Empire of Man, Bechafen guards one of the realm's most exposed borders, staring out across the bleak marches toward Kislev, Sylvania, and the trackless wilds beyond. Its markets throng with fur-trappers, mercenaries, and Kislevite traders, and its garrison stands in perpetual readiness, for threats gather from every direction at once and peace is a word the Ostermarkers scarcely believe.
Raiders from the northern wastes, greenskin war-bands, and the ratmen who gnaw beneath the marsh all covet the city, while the nearness of accursed Sylvania means the dead are never far from thought. Bechafen has burned and been rebuilt more than once, its people grown fatalistic under the weight of endless siege. Yet its stubborn defenders hold their fog-shrouded walls with a grim tenacity, knowing that if Bechafen falls, the whole eastern flank of the Empire lies open to ruin. It is a city that endures not through comfort but through sheer, weary refusal to yield.
The atlas continues
