The Whistling Marches is…

the once-contested region between dead Hespoine and dying Angue. Once thought to contain riches beyond imagination, the mines have long since run dry. The treasures of the lost ages of Oerth are protected

Few travel to the Marches by choice, for it is a perfidious region of goblin-plagued forests, stony mountains, haunted tombs, and wayward settlers who futilely churn the earth and then die horribly.

Those traveling to the Marches do so to make their fortune, escape their past, or because they have nowhere else to go.