The Northern Provinces

The Northern Provinces are Cathay's shield and its most war-hardened region, the cold and storm-swept lands that lie against the Great Bastion and bear the full weight of the north. Chief among them is Nan-Gau, the great fortress-province through which the Bastion runs, where whole cities exist to garrison the wall and supply its endless defence. Here the Celestial harmony is a thing defended in blood: every generation the Chaos hordes hurl themselves against the Bastion, and every generation the soldiers of the north throw them back, at a cost the softer southern provinces can scarcely imagine.

The provinces answer to Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon, eldest daughter of the Dragon-Emperor, who guards the Bastion as her sacred charge and rides its storms in dragon-form. Under her rule the north has become a land of grim discipline and cold courage, its people forged by a life lived within sight of the Wastes. They are the least given to luxury and the most given to war of all Cathayans, and they carry themselves with the quiet pride of those who know that the whole vast empire behind them sleeps safe because they do not. When the beacon-fires blaze along the Bastion, it is the sons and daughters of the Northern Provinces who march first to hold the line.