The Imperial Heartlands, more commonly called simply the Heartlands, are a relatively densely settled region in southern Sekhaa, consisting mostly of the lower elevations of the watersheds of the Sahvarr and the Oresh. Though the boundaries are not precise, it is generally held that the region is defined by the Gulf of Shaad to the west, the foothills of the Spine of Sirdanth on the northwest, the Denoric Gulf and Windward Sea to the north, the Sibakh Hills and Haatar Range to the east, and Uvuun's Reach to the south. The region is generally considered part of the Cerulean Tangle and those parts of it not intensively used by takmar are mostly rainforest, cloud forest, and wetlands.

The Heartlands are so named because this region was the core of the Empire that once dominated southern and southwestern Sekhaa and the near Brightness. Since the fall of the Empire, the political landscape has consisted of a fragmented patchwork of city-states with both intense mutual rivalries and a strong sense of their common history and past greatness. Heartlanders tend to be perceived by other ethnicities as self-important and parochial, acting as if the Heartlands were still the center of the world and everyone else quaint provincials as best and barbarians at worst.