Last Home sits on the edge of the Plateau of the Twilight Lands, overlooking the Drylands, at a point where the cliff down to the plains is particularly shallow. This is, naturally, the route that most travellers take down to the plains. Tax expeditions set out from here towards Darkin, Hellgrass Reach and Harradum. The town is heavily geared towards travellers, with many inns and corrals for Crdlu, as well as a thriving market where Twilight Merchant Satraps exchange goods with plains Caravans. The walls here are of earth reinforced with wood, forming a broad circle around the town. Gatehouses of dressed stone guard the roads in and out of town, while farmland presses close. The heart of the town is the crowded Suk, while temporary rulers and Bonded Ones make their home in the House of the Setting Sun.
Two main routes enter Last Home from the Nightwards, the Corn Road that leads across the plateau to Nistray and the Lion's Path that runs down into the forest and turn turns towards Ur. Ningaur's Steps run Counter-Daywards towards Darkin, while, The Lesser Road runs parallel to the One River, through the Plateau lands. Once The Reachway ran Turn-Daywards towards Hellgrass Reach, but most now join the road upriver at Sword Landing.
Last Home is the main gateway to the Drylands for most traffic from the river valley, and as such is ruled by the Orders of all four great cities. The town is overburdened with officials, Mages and Bonded-Ones, who devote far more time to jockeying for power with each other than they spend on running the town. So long as they do nothing to upset the public appearance of calm and the trade through the town the local Merchant Satraps can do much as they wish. Defence of the city is generally relegated to the town's own force of soldiers, distinctive with their white shields and capes, although armed forces from each of the Cities serve as a supplementary guard for the nobles and Mages. These out-town soldiers change every season, rotating through the four cities over the course of a Short Year.
Shurruk is a scrappy and rag-tag settlement not far from The Black Pits. Subsisting mostly on animals that have been poisoned by the fumes rising from the Pits, the inhabitants of Shurruk are stained black with grime and tar. Water, metal, and crops are all in short supply here, and the people are ready to turn to Banditry if they can get away with it. A trail winds from Shurruk, past the Pits and eventually joins the Steps between Der-Maki and Sirara.
Sirara is a thriving farming community set amongst the Dust Slopes near to Last Home. It is surrounded by a patchwork of stepped fields, bright bands of corn and chilli, dotted with Kail trees and dust slope blooms. The central village clusters around terracotta pipes where water channelled from nearby springs is drawn for drinking and irrigation. The largest buildings are quite grand, the stucco walls brightly painted, while smaller houses are scattered through the fields.
Sirara sits close to Ningaur's Steps, which is at this point a wide and irregularly paved avenue of ancient manufacture that runs between low stone walls down towards the Twilight forests, which are easily visible from Sirara. Dirt paths wind through the stepped fields, running from the avenue past small houses. Order Magi from Last Home visit Sirara once a year to renew it's warding spells.
This strange feature lies to the Turnwards of Ningaur's Steps, between Sirara and Der-Maki. Amidst a stony plain lie a series of depressions in which lakes of black tar well up. These expanses of shimmering hot tar are deadly to animals the venture close, scalding them with noxious steam, or collapsing under their weight and enclosing them in pitch. Some attempts have been made by both Derzak and Nistray to mine the tar in the past, and a scatter of abandoned buildings, little more than shells of rough stone and dried cactus, are found near the pools.
Exposure to the fumes from the pools for more than a few minutes inflicts fatigue. Any exposed person must make a Physical roll resisted by a 14, taking the margin of failure in fatigue. Roll again every quarter of an hour.