Highmoor

The Archdiocese of Highmoor occupies far northwestern Ensor, where the highlands of the realm merge with the still more forbidding country of the High Hinterlands. Like the Hinterlands themselves, the Highmoor is a rugged land of clans and small fortified towns, some of which operate independently enough that they could almost qualify as city-states. But urban life is not well developed in the north, and these towns are generally only rude outposts built around the castle of the local lord, who considers himself more clan chief than anything.

The city of Strathrose is the exception, and boasts a small but very fine cathedral along with a number of other attractively designed buildings featuring the work of Ensor's skilled stonemasons. There is also a good university here, which has produced a number of well-known theologians and men of letters. The Highmoor, as the name implies, features great expanses of near-treeless moorland draped across the high steep hills. But there are also heavily forested lands lying further in the interior and close to the headlands of the Meander, and these places are where the prized Highmoor pine and other good timber for the kingdom's ships is harvested.