The first missions for the factions spawn randomly on the map. And they could be close or very, very far.
This is especially brutal because the reward from these missions is the locations of havens... providing you with a way to travel the globe.
So I want to see that the game places these missions only where you can reach them.
Funnily enough, the DLC2 missions DO seem to spawn locally (according to the mission description) And those missions actually should be in a random spot as there is no lore logic in them being local.