The Worldwound

It’s a bit unclear in canon what the Wardstones do, and they canonically don’t cover the whole area of the Wound. In our version, they project a forcefield that encloses the whole enormous area where the Abyssal rifts are. The strength of the forcefield depends on how far apart two Wardstones are, and they’re generally every ten to fifteen miles, but in a few places the physical geography doesn’t permit that and in a few others a wardstone fort has been overrun and the stone lost, and so in some places the wardstones are more like 30 miles apart. The forcefield functions sort of like a Forbiddance; demons cannot teleport across it, take damage when walking through it, and are stunned for some time after successfully crossing even if they make it. It’s weaker where the forts are more distant.

Terrifying witch huts hold the Irrisen border and the border that is labelled ‘realm of the mammoth lords’. No one outside Irrisen knows how they do it, but it’s holding the demons back.

The southern edge of the Worldwound, where it borders Ustalav, is actually a narrow strip of land that was originally Sarkoris and is now a protectorate of Lastwall, which holds those Worldwound forts. The locals resent their foreign, arcane-magic-using defenders; Lastwall has its usual problem (see the bit about how we fixed the church of Iomedae) with not-without-reason thinking they’re better than everyone else.

Mendev holds the eastern border of the Worldwound. Mendev and Lastwall would at a glance look like natural close allies, what with both being Iomedae-following countries trying to hold the Worldwound, but in fact that diplomatic relationship is incredibly fraught. Mendev’s nobility has limited patience for the influence of a foreign state in how they run their affairs (historically with nearly unlimited privileges). Mendev’s leadership also resents being deprioritized among the Church’s many priorities, as they’re under an existential threat and Lastwall seems willing to see them die of it.

The northern border of the Worldwound is held by Cheliax, both directly by the Chelish army (northwest) and by divisions of the Hellknights, especially the Godclaw (northeast). These forts are supplied by Teleport. This is an extraordinary expense and no one but Cheliax, which is funded by Hell, could possibly afford it. This limits everyone’s ambitions to engage in another war in Cheliax.

There is a treaty that restricts the ability of churches and governments that are signatories to mess with other signatories’ Worldwound operations, which mostly prevents direct clashes between ideologically opposed allies. The treaty also protects (for example) Chelish defectors who go to the Worldwound to work as independent adventurers, and many adventurers at the Worldwound are ‘sheltering under the treaty’ in the sense of being wanted by one or more treaty-signatory governments who will arrest or assassinate them if they cease to count as protected by the treaty. The Church of Abadar arbitrates treaty violations.