Ravaged HamletReport
English：Ravaged Hamlet · Locations
Nine village remains scattered across Bast. They were Empire farms, and nobody went back after the Holy Nation burned through — the blank space on that part of the map is the shape that offensive left behind.
Ravaged Hamlets are the remains of abandoned villages dotted around Bast. There are nine of them in total.
Ostensibly these small settlements belonged to the United Cities, and were destroyed or abandoned after the Holy Nation's offensive into the region.
What they used to be
The history books answer that: "Bast was once a prosperous and fertile area, filled with many farmlands and towns for trading."
And the Holy Nation's method is recorded in the same book: "[The Holy Nation] proceeded to burn towns and farms to the ground."
So these nine ruins are very likely the bodies of those farms. On paper Bast is still core Empire territory today — the tax collectors still come, though the Holy Nation's prayer days never reach here. The most fertile ground in the north has been used as a buffer zone by both sides for fifteen years.
Nobody came back
The region was never rebuilt after the burning. The wiki assembles several threads pointing to the same conclusion: this land lost its value.
- The Rebel Farmers have abandoned the region and made no effort to reclaim it. In fact every Rebel Farmer squad in Bast ceases to spawn the moment Tengu dies, coinciding with the turnover of Heft, which suggests they moved out to The Great Desert as a body.
- The region carries hazards: Cannibals spawn in Bast frequently enough to spill into The Great Desert.
- The United Cities have abandoned frontier settlements before: Farm Ruin and Free Settlement are the same case.
Where those people went
The wiki offers two further inferences worth repeating.
First, the sheer number of hamlets in Bast helps explain how the Rebel Farmers sustain their population — that, together with the Empire Peasants in the cities and the Vagrant Camps, since both are displaced populations.
Second, the destruction here probably deepened the Empire's reliance on slave labour. Boss Simion says it plainly in Men of Dirt: "Eviction day — How could I ever compete with the prices of free labour!"
There is a closely related building elsewhere: the Farm Ruins at the northernmost tip of Okran's Valley. That is a similar small settlement, presumably sacked by the United Cities — the same story with the attacker and defender reversed, since the Holy Nation's offensive later stalled and was pushed back into Bast.
Why the player cares
Ravaged Hamlets have no guards and no loot worth a dedicated trip. What they provide is context: there are always fresh corpses on the ground in Bast to practise Field Medic on, and these nine ruins tell you the arrangement has been running for fifteen years.