I was aiming at adding content to the region because it appears very large and empty. This first appeared to me when my group started to travel alongside the shore due north east of Kelfour's Landing.
It took them days to get to the silver mine in the north. This is ok, if you want to have a bunch of random encounters and nothing else, but it was a little too empty for my taste.
I like the fact that there isn't much of anything in the way of civilization up there; it is a nice change of pace from the other areas of Jaiman.
To break up the monotony of regular encounters, I just have them find small leftovers from the former inhabitants: an old, small bridge still spanning a small stream, pieces of a larger one more ruined, foundations of a building but no building, a random statue partially overgrown, and other stuff like that. Also I had a couple of navigation hazards – the ruined bridge not fully spanning the gorge anymore was one of them. I find that sprinkling in some events that are more realistic than just monster encounters, especially ones where they have to puzzle out a way around the situation, help make the trip more exciting.
The group was part of a larger group that got accidentally sucked to Kulthea and they had some NPC guards with them. One morning, they woke up and realized that there was no guard on duty because the 3rd one disappeared (leaving behind only his spear, helmet and the stuff he wasn’t wearing for guard duty) and never got the 4th (and last) guard up for their shift. They theorized that some large night bird – or other flying creature – swooped down and snatched him* because there were no tracks. From then on, they camped under the canopy of the forest.
During their 10-day trip from the ruins of Quellburn to Kelfour’s Landing they only had 3 combat encounters with only 2 of them being at all seriously dangerous. One was with a pair of mountain troll – in their lair – and the other was with giant crustaceans (crabs) while exploring a partially submerged tower a few hundred feet off shore; the terrain was as much of a problem as the crabs were.
*They were right, but it was still very scary to them. (I gotta remember to use this for my new group.)