The Border Kingdom is strange and twisted in a manner few other places can equal. It's a buffer state between Nemedia and Brythunia and the more savage people of the north, the Border Kingdom was the last Hyborian nation to be founded. The desolate landscape is not as barren of life as one might think and bizarre, frightening things haunt the moors and scraggly forests. It’s a lawless place full of savages with deserted, disconsolate marshlands. It is the home of exiled nobles and rebel heirs of the greater Hyborian kingdoms.
Although the Border Kingdom is Hyborian, it is home to strange people, religions and ideas assembled from the surrounding kingdoms. This country acts as a trade route for merchants avoiding strict Nemedian taxes.
People in the Border Kingdom dress in whatever clothes they have brought with them or in whatever clothes they can trade, buy or steal from the caravans. Typically they dress similarly to the natives of whichever kingdom is closest to their homes. Most garments are worn until faded and tattered to uselessness. Inhabitants of the Border Kingdom have more to worry about than clothing.
Bounty hunters, barbarians, poachers, outcasts and other people who thrive in a unrestrained wilderness dwell here. Criminals of all sorts find refuge here and have hidden here for generations. Many of these have raised decadent families alone in the wild, creating in-bred hamlets and villages that eventually deteriorate into something less than human. Of course, the humans with their own vices are sometimes worse than the sub-humanoids.
Few inhabitants of the Border Kingdom are friendly. Most are paranoid. Outsiders are usually threats, so most are killed and looted quickly to minimise the potential danger a stranger brings. Out in the wild, a horse means more for survival than companions. Without a horse, the odds of surviving travel through this forbidding land are remote. Some inhabitants eschew the relative safety of the settlements, preferring the freedom of the roads. Some are merely bounty hunters but others are wandering tribes of gypsy-like clans.
Cannibalism, inbreeding, demon-worship, strange customs and religions seem to abound in the Border Kingdom. Wild, feral natives live in the swamps and fens around the wilderness of border kingdom. They live on anything they can find, including any human prey. They wield the most primitive of weapons.
The Border Kingdom as a land without a unifying king, ruled by barons and insane lords who do as they like and their laws are without constraint. These barons are often exiled or rogue nobles from the other Hyborian nations and bring with them the customs and habits of their own lands.
While much of the land is inhospitable and fit only for raising goats or sheep, some areas permit subsistence farming. Most of the larger towns exist on the trade routes, where robber barons earn a living extorting revenue from the traders that pass through in exchange for safe passage, although some desperate barons will loot the caravans regardless of any promises made. The merchants put up with this because the extortion and bribery is still less than the tariffs and taxes of Nemedia. Nemedia, of course, resents the lost revenue and raids the Border Kingdom in the self-serving belief that the robberbarons owe Nemedia for the avoided tariffs and taxes. Bounty hunters is a widely established profession for this purpose. Caravans caught using the Border Kingdom routes by the Nemedians are usually treated harshly, as are the barons themselves should they find themselves in Nemedian hands.
The Border Kingdom is always going to have an unfavourable trade balance because they have little to offer the surrounding nations. Some ore is mined out of the Cimmerian mountains but the Cimmerians take their toll on those who intrude within those depressing peaks.