This is mostly a personal opinion question. My character comes from an outpost in far far flung Suvretz, eastern Volodmarz; no road, many mines, battlefields left as their warriors fell in the mist under the pines, fissures in the mountains that offer great riches in exchange for greater peril etc etc, how Volodmarz is. However I was wondering, when an outpost gets rich and gets built up and more people move there etc- at what point does it transition from an outpost to a vale? The outpost, ironically, enjoyed a brief surge in good fortune a while ago (which it is struggling to maintain, of course) which meant that the then-Boyar moved a less disposable workforce in and actually did some settlement building. (To capitalise on the sudden misfortune and rapid destruction that had befallen mines around them, naturally)
So- when does an outpost become a vale?
I was saying things like “oh I come from a former outpost-” which leaves people with rather the opposite impression from what I mean haha
My take would be that a Vale is somewhere people live and consider home. An outpost is somewhere people go (still maybe for years at a time) for economic/military reasons.
Look to Northern Canada or Russian Siberia - there are settlements that are entirely centered around an oilfield/mine/factory to the degree that no-one would live there without that thing - those are Outposts. There are also settlements where either pre-industrial people have lived forever, or are of sufficient size and diversification that they don’t completely depend on one resource/industry - those are Vales.
So, an Outpost becomes a Vale when there is a measure of economic diversity, and sense of community that is tied to the place as a home.