“Every town on Perseverance tells you a different lie. It’s your job to figure out if that lie is worth dying for.”

– Fennick Jal, contract arbitrator

The land may shape a person – but it’s people who redraw the map. In the Temperate Bands, survival isn't just a matter of weathering storms or avoiding predators. It's about who your neighbors are, what grudges you inherit, and what lines you're willing to cross to keep your town alive.

From neutral valleys where no one draws first, to syndicates built on abandoned company ruins, to fungal enclaves that don’t speak aloud, these settlements carry more than history – they carry momentum. And when that momentum collides with legacy, desperation, or ambition, something always gives.

This is where the stories of Perseverance get personal. Where the names on the map start meaning something. Where the real trouble begins.

Settlements of the Temperate Bands

The towns of the Temperate Bands don’t cling to survival like those in the Belt – they build on it. These are places with roots: permanent structures, multi-generational families, and customs passed down like heirlooms or weapons. The air smells of tilled soil and old grudges. Dust here settles with intent.

These settlements take many forms. Some are ranching towns, centered around livestock syndicates and centuries-old grazing claims. Fence lines double as battlegrounds. Courthouses and slaughterhouses sit on the same street. Others function as trade nexuses, positioned at skimmer crossroads or on barge routes, where tariffs are currency and information is the most valuable cargo. A number began as communal enclaves, founded by Dustborn clans, dissident engineers, or those fleeing war, violence, or the weight of their past. Finally, some are company towns, remnants of Commonwealth-era projects – geothermics, bio-harvesting, transport infrastructure – long since privatized, abandoned, or self-liberated.

Regardless of their origins, the towns that last do so because of reputation. In the Temperate Bands, a town’s name is currency – feared, respected, mocked, or revered.

Sanctuary

Neutral ground in a world with none

Once a no-man’s-land during the Freight Wars, Sanctuary occupies a deep valley in the Southern Band, flanked by basalt cliffs and mist-fed terraces. Its founding principle – enforced by tradition, architecture, and unspoken threat – is neutrality. Anyone may enter, anyone may stay, and anyone who draws first dies second.

Sanctuary is run by a rotating council of outsiders, selected from travelers, merchants, exiles, and even convicted criminals – anyone with no long-standing tie to the valley’s factions. The council arbitrates disputes, runs the resource banks, and ensures the ancient code is kept. Weapon-carrying is allowed, but violence is rare. Not because people are peaceful – but because everyone knows what happens if the Sanctuary is broken.

Smugglers use it as a neutral meet. Pilgrims treat it as holy ground. Agents from enemy factions sleep on opposite balconies, sidearms within reach. And when the storm outside gets too loud, Sanctuary holds fast – not because it's stronger, but because it remembers what happened last time.

“The valley doesn’t care who you were before. But cross the line here, and no one cares who you are after.”

– Oril Neme, council scribekeeper

Dawncross

Trade hub of taxes, tension, and temple-led control

Straddling a fork in the High River, Dawncross is a compact riverport city built in stacked tiers along fortified docks and cliffside gantries. Its wealth comes from tolls – not just on goods, but on time, transit, and conversation. Every bridge and mooring has a watcher, and nothing enters or leaves without a Tollwright stamp.

The Tollwrights are a caste of merchant-priests, cloaked in indigo silk and biotech implants, who claim both divine and economic jurisdiction. They maintain Dawncross’s vast canal conduits, encrypted barge ledgers, and steam-coded prayer towers that announce price changes in drifting song. Beneath their rule, the town runs clean – but not fair.

Dawncross is full of murmured deals, unregistered back-halls, and underground warehouses that stretch for blocks. The Tollwrights tolerate smuggling, as long as it’s elegant. Brutality is frowned upon, but corruption is formalized, complete with permits. You can buy almost anything here – just make sure you bribe the right shrine.

“You pay the river to float you. You pay the Tollwrights to let you land.”

– Grel Dumar, skiffmaster

Whitebluff

Hard laws and harder silences

Perched on a pale cliff at the edge of the Broken Steppes, Whitebluff is equal parts refuge and warning. Originally a Dustborn spiritual waypoint, the town expanded during the collapse of nearby steadholds. Reinforced by retired Rangers and ex-militia families, it became a fortress of order – rigid, independent, and unrelenting.

Justice in Whitebluff is public and swift. Trials take place at sunset, and exile is the most common punishment. Duels are legal, but regulated. Outsiders are watched. Even citizens walk softly. Despite this, the town thrives – not through fear, but through craftsmanship. Whitebluff produces some of the finest rigging components, bone-forged tools, and ceramic armor plates in the hemisphere.

People come for trade, stay for security, and leave when they’ve had enough of the silence. The town’s code is carved into stone outside the central hall: “Speak what must be heard. Do what must be done. Leave no task for another.”

“We don’t punish cruelty here. We punish excuses.” – Sella Varn, justice warden

Virey’s Claim

The company left. The workers stayed.

Virey’s Claim began as a geothermal harvest colony, owned by a now-defunct Commonwealth energy subsidiary. When the market collapsed and the shuttles stopped coming, the site should have died. Instead, the workforce stayed behind, barricaded the control center, and rewrote their own rules.

Now it operates as a syndicate-run collective, supplying power cells, coolant, and high-efficiency field tools to settlements across the Band – no questions asked. It's a haven for former company techs, independent mechanics, and those looking to disappear inside a hierarchy built sideways.

The Claim runs like a machine: quiet, deliberate, and ruthlessly efficient. Every citizen is assigned a function. Every outsider is logged, tagged, and monitored until they leave – or contribute.

“The company abandoned us. So we built a better one.”

– Head Tech Ko Revin, collective council

Stillhold

Biotech silence and fungus-fed dreams

Hidden in the folds of a steaming ridge basin, Stillhold is an isolated Dustborn enclave surrounded by hot springs and photosynthetic fungal farms. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the Bands – and one of the least understood.

Stillhold operates under a nonverbal council that communicates through symbiotic mycelial networks and scent-coded banners. Outsiders are permitted entry only during the Glowing Days – a biannual period when the fungus fields bloom in iridescent blue, and negotiations may occur.

It’s whispered that Stillhold biologists work on adaptive gene therapies, neural mycotics, and living armor. What is certain is that the town does not export citizens – only sealed cargo, marked with no return address.

“You’ll know if Stillhold wants to speak. The ground will whisper first.” – Kaelen Vos, Dustborn interpreter

Some of these settlements have begun forming loose federations, bound by shared water rights, mutual defense pacts, or common enemies. Others drift toward feuds that span generations, sending bounty crews or infiltrators to tip the balance in land disputes, religious schisms, or old corporate debts. Beneath even the most “civilized” surface lie smugglers’ tunnels, cult shrines, unlicensed labs, or forgotten crimes sealed under new construction.

For players, these towns are narrative foundations – staging grounds for power struggles, quiet rebellions, or homecomings that don’t go as planned. Each one holds stories etched into dust and stone, waiting to be told – or to explode.

Livelihood, Lineage, and Conflict

The Temperate Bands are where most folk on Perseverance were born – or where they first learned the cost of staying alive. It's where stories don’t begin, but where they deepen: shaped by inherited grudges, long-lost debts, and traditions that outlast the names tied to them. This is a land where survival is often collective, but always contested.

Families bury their dead here. They settle old scores, and teach the next generation to ride, shoot, fix a condenser, or read the sky. For many characters, this region isn't just backdrop – it's the cradle of identity, pride, and grudges that don't fade.

Much of life here revolves around lineage and land. Ranching dynasties guard their grazing rights with bitter tenacity, passing down not just territory, but blood feuds and boundary lines etched in rusted wire and half-forgotten treaties. Across the river networks, trade coalitions rise and fall, held together by fragile alliances and checked by price wars, sabotage, and the constant threat of piracy. Some towns once built on stolen goods and vigilante justice have clawed their way into legitimacy. Others, once noble in purpose, have drifted into corruption or become playgrounds for mercenaries and monopolies.

The land also draws the displaced. Refugee caravans, fleeing drought-blasted farms, corporate land seizures, or the fallout of distant conflicts, settle wherever they can – often in the margins between old claims and newer ambitions. These communities survive through resilience and shared purpose, though they are rarely welcomed with open arms.

These tangled histories and alliances manifest as Community Keywords – born from shared memory, mutual obligation, rivalry, or resistance. From rancher cooperatives and water rights syndicates to barge guilds, forgotten cults, and mutual defense pacts, these affiliations define who will ride for you, lie for you, or bury you.

And no community is truly safe. Corporate expansion pushes outward, charming or crushing as needed. Rust blights poison croplands. Megafauna migrations uproot entire ranching operations. Political sabotage, broken truces, and quiet revolutions all smolder just beneath the surface. Even the strongest tradition can crack when the weight gets too heavy – or when the wind shifts.

In the Settled Lands, survival isn’t just about endurance. It’s about who stands beside you when everything else falls away.

“Blood might bind you. But it’s what you build after that decides who digs your grave.”

– Grenda Marlow, Free Miners’ negotiator

Frontier Dangers in Gentler Lands

“The grass hides just as many bones as the canyons – they’re just quieter about it.”

– Gellan Mord, surveyor for hire

The Temperate Bands may look safer than the cracked dustlands of the Equatorial Belt or the icebound silence of the polar fringe – but appearance is a trap. Here, danger doesn’t roar. It waits. It stalks. It falls from the sky. This is a land where the deadliest threats don’t always look like threats at all – until they move.

Ironhorn Stampedes

“You don’t run from a stampede. You run sideways and pray.”

Every migration season, the vast ironhorn herds awaken from dormancy and begin their thunderous run. Stirred by shifts in the magnetic field and internal chemical triggers tied to skyshift cycles, they move with single-minded force – and they don’t stop for fences, farms, or towns.

Their hooves are reinforced with layered chitin and trace alloy, capable of pulverizing dry stone into powder. They trample irrigation rigs flat, shear off topsoil, and crack roadbeds like glass. A single rogue herd can flatten a township in minutes, and the survivors are often those who had time to flee – or saw the signs in time.

Some settlements try to redirect the herds with sound cannons, bright drones, or controlled brush fires. Others bunker down and hope. A few take the dangerous route: skiff-mounted outriders who ride just close enough to push the lead bulls sideways. Not all of them make it back.

Dusthowlers

“If you hear it breathe, it’s already too close.”

Dusthowlers are pack predators – low-bodied, long-legged, and unnaturally silent until they want to be heard. Their signature call is a throaty, modulated moan that travels for kilometers on wind. Locals say it’s not a hunting signal, but a kind of warning – for other packs, or perhaps just for fun.

They move under cover of dusk and cloud, using scent trails and terrain memory to close in on prey. Herd animals go missing without a trace. Security drones vanish mid-patrol. On especially dark nights, people swear they can hear their own names whispered from the edge of camp – just before the howlers rush in.

Some steads claim success using bioelectric fencing laced with ammonic repellents. Others have standing pacts with Dustborn guides who know how to read the signs – a silence too sudden, a dust trail too neat.

Skyfall Events

“Anything that falls from orbit lands with a purpose. It just might not be yours.”

While orbital debris from the Commonwealth is supposed to be monitored and mitigated, not everything in the sky belongs to them – or obeys their protocols. Forgotten satellites, failed colony skiffs, abandoned research probes, and derelict defense platforms drift above Perseverance until gravity and entropy do their work.

When they fall, they burn bright and hit hard. A skyfall can carve out a crater a kilometer wide, scatter radioactive debris, or crack open vaults best left sealed. Fires sweep across the plains. Wildlife mutates or flees. And within hours, scavenger crews, mercenaries, and corporate lockdown teams are already en route.

Some call skyfall sites cursed. Others call them opportunity. Most survivors don’t call them anything – because they don’t get the chance.

Buried Vaults and Silent Machines

“We built cities above bones. And now some of those bones are humming.”

Beneath the rolling plains and quiet basins of the Temperate Bands lie remnants of Perseverance’s past – terraforming cores, cryo-research pods, AI-controlled seed vaults, and unknown constructs that predate Commonwealth mapping altogether.

Most remain inert, their seals corroded shut or their power systems long since drained. But when one activates – due to a seismic jolt, a magnetic pulse, or a foolish salvage attempt – the consequences ripple far and wide. Crops fail for kilometers. Communication nets short. People dream of strange symbols etched in light. And sometimes, something starts speaking from underground, asking for access codes no one remembers giving.

A few local factions specialize in securing these sites. Others seek to awaken them. The Dustborn tell stories of machines that remember the world before it was called Perseverance – and of the mistakes buried to keep it that way.

Environmental Collapse

“Gentle doesn’t mean kind. It means slow. And that’s the scariest kind of death.”

Unlike the Belt, where you can see the storm coming, the Settled Lands betray you with slow failure. A drought that doesn’t end. A blight that starts in the leaves and ends in the lungs. A shifting river that strands entire towns.

Fungal blooms can spread through grain silos overnight, releasing spores that suppress memory or alter behavior. Rot creeps through automated irrigation lines and reprograms them into self-watering death traps. Even the soil itself can turn – becoming hostile to life for no reason anyone can find.

Sometimes, the land just decides it’s done helping. And when it does, it doesn’t yell. It whispers – then it starves you.

The Temperate Bands might look like the safest region on Perseverance. But looks are easy. It’s survival that’s hard.

Stories Rooted in Soil and Blood

The Temperate Bands are where the drama of Perseverance becomes intimate. This is not a land of clean slates – it’s a land of tangled roots. Characters may come here to make a name, start over, or outrun their past, but in the Settled Lands, the past waits in the dust like a snake under the floorboards.

Here, the stakes aren't just survival – they’re who you stand with, who you stand against, and what you're willing to lose. A quiet inheritance dispute might escalate into a skirmish that burns three steads and fractures a once-unbreakable ranching alliance. A long-forgotten promissory note, signed in desperation by a dead parent, resurfaces with a bounty attached. A community on the edge of collapse puts its faith in an outsider who doesn’t even trust themselves – or worse, who does.

This is where intergenerational conflict play out with grit and grace. Children of former enemies join the same salvage crew. A forgotten war crime comes back in the form of a Commonwealth auditor. A rusting freight barge, lost for decades, floats downstream one morning – still loaded, still sealed, still dangerous.

These aren’t always grand, explosive plots. Sometimes the most powerful arcs are quiet: a former smuggler returns to rebuild a house they helped burn. A Dustborn mechanic discovers the vault tech they salvaged was once used to suppress her own people. A settler decides whether to sell out their town to the corporation offering water... or watch it die on principle.

These stories blend slow tension and abrupt, often irreversible turns. The drama grows from community friction, familial debt, social code, and the pressure of memory. It’s not about defeating evil – it’s about deciding whose side you’re on when there are no clean hands.

And always, the land listens. The wind across the steppes. The silence in the barrow car. The unspoken question at every dawn:

What’s worth protecting – and what must you become to do it?