Avernum is the most important city in the Northern Searing Plains. The reborn Empire moved back to the scorched and abandoned region soon after the Calamity and found it ideal to settle because of the new resources that can be found in the vicinity: salt, rare minerals, and even obsidian. Thus, Avernum was built at the center of the Smolderbone Flats. The city mostly lacks the religious apparatus of large provincial settlements, but has a fairly large military presence there under the direct control of the Prefectus, its governor. Rumor is that due to its backwater status, the city of Avernum follows Imperial regulations more loosely, and it has become essentially the private kingdom of the reigning Prefectus.

Countless vagrants, opportunists, bullies, and broken men end up becoming highwaymen and bandits on the forsaken continent of Xeryn. These individuals are often organized into marauding gangs by the more charismatic lowlifes. Liberated tribes, made up almost exclusively of escaped slaves, also roam the Realms, taking what they will and can.

Truly, these men and women are a plague on the Empire, as there are neither enough resources to hunt them down, nor would it be entirely possible due to the many places where they can hide in the wasteland. Also, there seems to be an endless supply of people who end up becoming such lowly criminals.

The Brigand here is one such individual, and one of the first of many enemies the player can come across in Vagrus.