Sylvania

"It was a dreadful place; a land perpetually shrouded in gloom and mist, where abandoned castles glared down like hungry ogres on the dismal roads; where sullen villagers, some bearing obvious stigmata of mutation, mumbled dark warnings against going abroard by night; and where, one evening, a red-eyed, pale-faced nobleman studiedus hungrily through the curtained window of his night-black coach, for all the world like a Bretonnian epicure inspecting his next meal...Of all the awful lands that I had then journeyed through, I have no hesitation in saying that Sylvania was easily the most dire."

- From My Travels With Gotrek, Vol IV, By Felix Jaeger. Altdorf Press, 2505.

The County of Sylvania was once a former Imperial Province of the Empire of Man that had since begun it's mutual decline as a Imperial State all-together, its territories having since been absorded by the Grand County of Stirland. As far as most Empire folks are concerned, the county of Sylvania may as well be a different country all-together, a seeting backwater region that no sane or law-abiding citizen would willingly stray.

Despite its proximity to the lands of the Moot and the Stronghold of Zhufbar, Halflings  and Dwarfs  are virtually nonexistent there. Technologically, the land lags behind the rest of the Empire in terms of proper infrastrature and even the barest levels of education, where the commonfolk of Sylvania are still a highly superstitious lot that is still treating gunpowder as a new frightening technological marvel. The emergent middle class of the Empire scarcely exists here, and an unbridgeable gap between the peasantry and the nobility persists, one that has outshadow those within the lands of even Bretonnia. But perhaps the greatest feature about this backwater region of the Old World is that it is considered the rightful domains of the Vampire Counts of the Von Carstein bloodline.

The Land
"This land is my home, my birthright. The wind and rain are my allies. The trees and stones are my foot soldiers. The very earth will rise up against you should you try to take it from me. And my people will feast on your bones."

- Mannfred von Carstein, the Lord of Sylvania To the east, Sylvania is bordered by the World’s Edge Mountains, but in the other directions, its borders are less well-defined. The line between Sylvania and Stirland to the west has been redrawn every time independence has been declared; it has ranged from the edge of the Haunted Hills to the abandoned village of Murieste, and it currently stretches from the ruins of Mordheim down to the edge of Bylorhof Marsh. In the north, the River Stir provides a border with Ostermark. To the south Sylvania stops at a barren region historically claimed by Averland, but currently held by Stirland; however the haunted reputation of that place’s stinking marshes and fallow hills results in both Grand Provinces largely ignoring the area. The south-western corner of Sylvania edges onto Mootland, a narrow border that is steadfastly patrolled by Halfling Fieldwardens.

The jagged shadows of the mountains stretch over this land of night, and cold winds blow down from the peaks. It is a land of harsh winters that paint the ground blindingly white. To go out after dark in such a winter is almost certain death, but to go out at night in a Sylvanian summer is little safer. Storms frequently come down off the mountains along with the winds and snows. This makes for damp land with many bogs and lonely moors: Dark Moor, Grim Moor on the southern edge of the Grim Wood, the Bylorhof Marsh, Morrfenn, and the twisted Hel Fenn that witnessed the fall of Mannfred von Carstein. The Fennone people disposed of their dead in these bogs for hundreds of years, and many of the Von Carsteins’ Undead troops come from there. Though the unstable ground and threat of Undead makes them dangerous places, the Sylvanians are forced to visit them as they are the source of the peat that fertilises their fields and fuels their fires over the winter, and the area is also home to edible berries like the sweet cowberry.

It is in Sylvania that the woods of the southern Empire become dense forests, shadowy places patrolled by packs of large, perpetually hungry wolves. In the northwest is Verhungern or Hunger Wood, where the canopy of trees is so tangled that a permanent night is created underneath them in which many strange fungi grow. In the northeast is Grim Wood, which is haunted by an unseen monster that takes only maidens who dare to tread there. To the south is Ghoul Wood, said to be ruled by one of the Strigoi who has thrown in his lot with the Von Carsteins and lent them the aid of the flesh-eaters.

Bisecting the land is a string of chalk hills that make good sheep-herding country if nothing else, the Warten Downs in the northeast stretching down to the Haunted Hills in the west. Even when it isn’t chalk, most of the soil of Sylvania is a thin and useless stuff on which the people struggle to eke out a living.

Source

 * Warhammer Roleplay: Night's Dark Masters (2nd Edition) -- pg. 84