High Ridge Market

The Frontier's largest trading city, built on a natural mesa that overlooks the surrounding plains. High Ridge Market is where the Frontier's scattered settlements come to sell, buy, and settle grudges. Its tax collectors are feared as far as Brack Hollow, and its merchant guilds exert more practical authority than any lord. Farpoint to the south is its only rival in size. On the Varnhalt Frontier, this site sits inside the patchwork of crossroad towns, mesa camps, and trade-protected routes that radiate from Old Varnhalt. The Loosening is constant here — mile markers contradict, paths loop — so settlements rely on local pacing and on the small island of stability around the Black Stone Tower in the eastern hills. The Frontier has no central authority; this place answers to whoever its trade depends on this season.