...Because I hadn't made a fantasy thread in a while.
The Thread
Highcaller Tarhellon lifted a piece of silk cloth soaked in a herbal mixture to cover his mouth and nostrils as he entered the house, stooping through the doorway to avoid the low beam. The building was a squat, ugly affair, one of many such ramshackle arrangements in the slums surrounding Allaermouth, and with them it formed what some were calling the Commons - a second city surrounding Allaermouth, built of wood and home to those too poor to afford a decent home of brick within the city's walls. Ordinarilly, Tarhellon would have stayed clear of this festering warren, but the duties of his Order superceded his preferences for surroundings. The air inside the house was rancid - the natural fragrance of the herbal water doing nothing to diguise it - and with all the windows shuttered the Highcaller's eyes took a few moments to adjust to the lack of light. Tarhellon took three steps forward and found himself in the centre of the room - how a family of eight could live in just this and the presumably similarly-sized room above it was beyond him. Looking around him, the Caller saw the shape of a body slumped on the floor with its back to the wall. The figure's head was slumped forwards, hiding its face. Tarhellon raised his staff uncertainly and prodded the head up against the wall with its tip. A woman's face, pale and cold with death, and he saw the how the skin seemed to hang off her bones, which were clearly visible beneath it. Leaving the woman's head to roll limply to the side, Tarhellon spotted the cushion that she seemed to have been clutching against her chest on death. After a few moments hesitation, he knocked the cushion onto the filth-encrusted floor with his staff. A baby lay in the woman's arms - she had smothered it before she died. A kinder fate than starvation, or death by the same disease, perhaps... turning back to the open door briefly, Tarhellon saw the city watchmen who had been sent as his escort hanging back outside in the daylight, their faces fearful. The Caller turned back to the darkened room and began to climb the stairs to the house's only other floor alone, there would be nothing to threaten his like up there at any rate, and their terror would if anything make them a hindrance to his task. Reaching the top of the creaking stairs, Tarhellon lifted his left hand to the wooden bannister before hesitating. Some bad humours were thought to travel through the skin to infect the blood - best not to touch anything. He rested instead on his staff as he entered the second room. The air was even worse up here, and he nearly retched despite the cloth. The windows were again shuttered, and without the open doorway of the room below, it was impossible to see. Tarhellon lifted his right hand almost absent mindedly and flung the shutters open with an invisible hand of air from across the room. Golden sunlight streamed in, catching motes of dust in the air. The Caller's eyes, though, were on the bodies. Five more lay about the room on soiled blankets that they had apparently used for want of beds - there was a single bed over below the window, he noticed. The shape of the household's father was not hard to recognise, being by far the largest, and the other bodies were certainly the house's remaining children. This did not bode well - this house had only been tainted two days before, he knew, the first in its street, and the plague (the Wasting Plague, as the city's poor were beginning to call it) must have moved fast to kill all the family in such a short time. Tarhellon made a note to have the bodies taken later by the convicts put to labour by the watch, and turned to leave the room. And it was then that he heard coughing from the bed beneath the window.
Meanwhile, life in the Master's Keep continued much as normal into the early hours of the night's darkness; servants emptied ashes from the hearths of the Halls and cleared debris from the tables, men-at-arms patrolled the walls of the fortress and kept watch from its towers, and the Monks maintained their silent vigil in the Temples left one of the deities seek to commune with the world of men. And all the while, Lord Krainegh lay dying on his chamber's floor. He no longer had the strength to speak, but in the privacy of his mind, he found himself cursing his own failings. The years in attendance of the King's court at Allaermouth had seen him old and slow, and he had not had time to react as the assassin leapt from the shadows of his room and plunged a dagger into his chest. But the man had missed his mark, and though Lord Krainegh knew he would be dead, the assassin's blade had not taken his heart and killed him instantly as it should have done. Warily, he lifted his head. Dark and ruin greeted him - the assassin had ransacked his room after doing the deed, and Krainegh knew that the man had taken his papers and his journal. But he had left parchment - blank parchment, but parchment nonetheless. Krainegh turned himself over on the stone floor of his chamber, pain lancing through his chest, and begin to drag himself toward it, lying as it was on the woven carpet near his writing desk. After what seemed like an age of struggling across the cold stone floor, he reached the parchment. The room seemed darker now, and the floor seemed even more frigid than before, and Krainegh knew he did not have much time left. There was no pen to hand, and so, raising himself on an elbow, he put a finger to his wound and began to write on the blank in blood. He had been killed for his new knowledge, but it was crucial that he pass it on.
The Sun rises, he scrawled, and then fell flat against the ground, the last of his strength having finally left him.
Northbrook
The sun did rise the very next day, and the morning light soon illuminated the peaceful town of Northbrook. Despite its proximity to the Wood of Ghosts, Northbrook is a quiet place whose citizens are largely untroubled by the lurking beasts and barbarians that threaten the other inhabitants of the Westrealm. The only town for miles around, Northbrook acts as a market town for the farmers living in the fertile valley between the Wood of Ghosts (Blue 3.), the White Hills (Blue 4.) and the Ice Peaks to the North. Northbrook is wooden walled, with most of its buildings being wooden too - but a few buildings in the settlement are brick and rooved with slate. Baron Thanthelm, the ageing feudal master of the region, was a warrior of some repute during the days of the Third War of Pirhannis (15 years ago), but nowadays keeps mostly to his home at Northbrooke Manour with his handful of surviving (and mostly equally ageing) retainers. The Baron rarely intervenes in the daily lives of the townspeople except to collect slight taxes and occasionally to aid tradesmen in their business, and he is well-liked by them for it. Northbrook's population of around two thousand people have no idea that they are about to become the centrepiece of attention...
Characters
I was going to try pre-set characts here, but I think that would remove a lot of the interest from my perspective since I'd know all your characters beforehand and have no surprises. Instead we'll be trying something new here; you will post a name, age, gender and most importantly role for your character, and I will PM you some details, after which the rest of the history and physical appearance and such will be up to you. The role is the most important, being as it is the basic type of character you have:
Warrior - swords and spears and such, fairly self-explanatory. There's a wide breadth of warrior types available, so don't think this will be in any way less unique or interesting than roles (like Elementalist) that required a little more explanation.
Thief - cloaks and daggers and such. This is less a type of actual thief as a type of character who tends to prefer stealth and the like. Again, the thief will be no less interesting a role than any of the others.
Priest - ah, getting more specific now. The Priest dedicates his life to the worship of a particular deity. Pick a Priest and a deity (see below), and you'll start off in good stead with said deity. As a Priest, most of your fighting will be done through words and intrigue, but you will be able to invoke the powers of your chosen immortal to various effect on your friends and enemies. Note that the exact role of a Priest varies enormously on the deity that you follow, so choose carefully.
Elementalist - Fireknight, Waterseer, Stoneweaver and Starcaller are the four castes of magic user in the Westrealm. Each is radically different from the others, and they have little association between them - the word "Elementalist" has long since been lost to the common tongue, and magic users are called only by the cast to which they belong. A handful of children in every thousand are born with an innate ability to channel magical energies of one of these four elements. Invariably identified in their early childhood, these gifted few are then trained by the cast of their element. Far from a mere difference in exact powers and abilities, the four castes are themselves radically different in nature. Fireknights are fierce warriors as well as casters, and are bound to obey the Burning Master - a powerful political figure by virtue of the cumulative might of his men. Waterseers are the most mystical of the four, channeling their powers to mostly peaceful ends - including prophecy, at which they are the most capable of the four castes - with their exact abilities and function depending on which of the five Water Sects they belong to. Stoneweavers are the wealthiest of the four castes, and the Earth Council (a ruling body of elder Weavers) is said to have vast stores of gold taken from its numerous mines; almost all normal Stoneweavers are travelling monks, set to travel the Westrealm in search of the enlightenment that will make them one with the Earth - the same enlightenment that the founder of their order acheived so long ago - and Stoneweavers are usually capable in unarmed combat as well as in channelling their abilities. Starcallers place great emphasis on study, both of lore and of their abilities, and this makes them the most influential of castes in politics; a Starcaller's learnings are thought invaluable by most of the nobility, and those that can afford suitably-sized donations to the Sky Tower generally keep a Caller at their keep - the Tower for its part controls the lives of its junior disciples, sending them on errands and missions to further its own interests.
Anything else - Think I've forgotten something obvious yet desirable? PM me the role you think I've forgotten and I will return you some character details, if I think the role is appropriate.
The Map
View here:
Tripod is not great. Not great, but free.
Main Features
Mountain and forest and swamp and road should be fairly self-explanatory. Red markers represent large (5,000 people or more) inhabited settlements, with the square red markers being national capitals. Grey lines indicate national boundaries. Blue markers are just places of interest. A blue marker in a forest generally applies to the whole forest - they're there to act as labels so I can put descriptions of the respective areas in.
Note that the starting point, Northbrook, is the yellow dot.
Named Areas
These are the larger areas of the map that your characters will, one way or another, have heard of already.
The Nothern Waste
The northern extent of the Kingdom of Allaer is marked by the Greywall - a huge fortification dating back to the days of the Dominate, its original name lost. The Greywall itself looms eight stories at the towers and six on the walls, and is supplied and reinforced from Castle Northguarde (Red 1.) - around which a sizeable settlement has developed. Beyond the Hills of Remorse (Blue 1.), which can be seen from the Greywall's towers on the clearer days, the land is ice and snow for most of the year round, and there is very little that will grow. This Northern Waste is the domain of the Fironasi Barbarians - a savage people whose frequent raids into the civilised lands of the North originally prompted the Dominate to construct the wall. In centuries passed, misguided Kings of Allaer have attempted to conquer the Northern Wastes and subdue the Barbarians; such Kings generally died on campaign, from cold or disease or Fironasi axe, or else murdered by their own generals. However, five centuries ago it is said that King Tertyran the Great successfully drove the Barbarians back passed the Hills of Remorse, and founded a new settlement and constructed new fortifications there. Tertyran's son, Janaeyr the Weak, squandered his father's gains, and ten years after their conquest the Hills were retaken by the Barbarians - the new wall overrun, and the people of its settlement slaughtered or taken into slavery - and it is this event that gave the hills their name.
King's Sea
The navigable waters of the Westrealm are simply referred to as the King's Sea by the seamen, and run from the Hills of Remorse (Blue 1.) in the North to Goodport (Red 9.) in the South, and to the Death Reach in the West. Ships that stray past the Hills of Remorse do not return - they are usually supposed destroyed by Fironas - and treacherous reefs past Goodport act as a barrier to the South, the decaying wrecks of older vessels a testimony to the foolish individuals that have tried to break through. The King's Sea was once full of merchant vessels carrying goods throughout the coast of Old Allaer, but since the Barons' Rebellion established the new Kingdom of Pirhannis in the South, breaking Old Allaer in two, trade in the King's Sea has lessened greatly. The Kingdom of Allaer still maintains nominal control over the waterways thanks to the King's Fleet in Searock Keep (Red 2.), but after the Barons captured the Rainlands and Mercantis in the Fourth War just five years ago, even the sanctity of Searock Keep is in doubt, and half the fleet has been moved to Allaermouth left the fortress be overrun. The emergence of Fironasi pirates in the North has done little to help the sealanes around Castle Northguarde, but with the Lords of the Greywall already forced to levy peasants to man the towers - which are still undermanned at that - there are no resources to spare in the North for vessels to halt them.
The Death Reach
Far enough from the shores of the Westrealm, the ocean floor suddenly drops away beyond the range of any sanding on any ship. This depth marks the Eastern limit of the Death Reach - the vast expanse of deep ocean that Shilanis, Lady of the Seas, supposedly calls home. Shilanis is amongst the most wrathful of deities, and any ships that stray into the Death Reach are invariably lost to the storms that pervade the area - those few ships that do manage to return from the place every century tell of great dark clouds ammassing as if from nowhere with tremendous winds and waves that quickly threatened to swamp them. Priests of Shilanis will occasionally venture a short distance into the Reach to drop offerings to their mistress into the dark ocean below, and even these holy missions are wrecked from time to time, on which it is usually assumed that Shilanis was displeased with the gift offered. There are very few ship's captains willing to take their vessels into the Death Reach for any amount of gold, and those few that offer their boats for use by the Priests of Shilanis do so in the hope of currying favour with the goddess by aiding her followers.
The River Allaeris
The mighty river that gives that Kingdom of Allaer its name flows from the Ice Mountains in the North down to the Allaeris Delta, where it fractures into a large number of much smaller runs and continues to the sea. Many expeditions have set off Northwards from Saeton (Red 4.) in the hope of finding the river's origin (for, as it is well known, River Kin store their treasures at the farthest spring of their realm), and few of them have returned, those that did having turned back miles into the Ice Mountains.
The River Velerian
Smaller than the River Allaeris, the River Velerian flows from Lake Veleria, and it is assumed that this waterway (or its parent body) originally gave the name to the Veleris Dominate. Lake Veleria is a dark place, and many learned men claim the waters of the river cursed and refuse to drink from them, but there is no evidence of the waters themselves being impure, though the Velerian River Kin are said to be particularly cruel.
Lake Veleria
Enclosed to the North by the Evenwood and to the South by the Endless Peaks, Lake Veleria is a remote area of the Westrealm. Lake Veleria, and the Isle of Night on which sits New Veleris (Red 12.) fall under the control of neither the Kingdom of Allaer nor the Kingdom of Pirhannis. The Exon of the Dominate of Veleris controls the entirity of the Isle of Night, and extends some control to the shores of the lake - occasionally going as far as to send raids though the Hundred Peaks (Blue 12.) into Pirhannis. Lake Veleria is known to be the source of the River Velerian, and the latter's twisted River Kin are said to dwell on the lake's floor near whatever submerged spring gives it sustenance. South of Lake Veleria lie the Endless Mountains, which, according to the explorers that have ventured into them from Pirhannis over the years, are endless as well as barren and wild. Needless to say, no man is ever known to have passed through the mountains.
The Great Steppe
Travel East through the Great Forest - be it Dawnwood, Noonwood or, more dangerously, the Evenwood - and eventually one will observe the trees beginning to thin, and the woodland becoming sparse and giving way to grassland. Reach Castle Eastguarde (Red 5.), and from its keep or towers stretches rolling grassy plain in all directions and for as far as the eye can see - the Eastern Hills excepted. This vast, uneven plain is known as the Great Steppe, and is home to the Plainsmen. Since the people of the Westrealm expanded out past the limits of the Great Forest, the Plainsmen have raided their settlements, and with their vast hosts of skilled warriors the Kings of Allaer are generally powerless to stop them. King Dornir, three decades passed, constructed Castle Eastguarde - a particularly impressive fortress - and the settlement around it with the intention of putting a stop to the Plainsmens' attacks, for though unmatched warriors on the open plain, they are loathe to put siege to a place and tie themselves down. However, the Plainsmen more often than not simply bypass Eastguarde and attack the vulnerable small towns and villages along the Great Forest's edge, and at any rate Eastguarde has been undermanned even longer than the Greywall, with the current King having sent his soldiers West to the Pirhanesian boarder. The lands East of the Great Forest remain generally dangerous. The Plainsmen are keen traders, and ramshackle arrangements of wooden huts form trading posts at various points around the edges of the Great Steppe where human and Plainsmen merchants exchange their respective wares. Of the human merchants who attempted to venture deep into the Great Steppe to trade with the Plainsmen in their own dwellings, however, few are seen again. The Great Steppe is warm in the Summer but often choked by snow in the Winter.
Red Labels (Note that most of the points on the map are unlabelled; these are locations your character knows little or nothing of. You will need to look at maps or question NPCs in the thread to find out about them.)
Red 3: Allaermouth, capital of the Kingdom of Allaer, is the nearest large town to Northbrook, and is in fact the largest city of the Westrealm, boasting 30,000 souls in all. Located in the fertile wetlands where the mighty River Allaer meets the King's Sea, Allaermouth is surrounded by farmland and is a prosperous trading settlement besides - though not quite so much as it used to be. The Master's Keep, the gigantic fortress that has served as home to the mighty Kings of Allaer for centuries (or, at least, since it was built following the sack of the city in the third Fironasi invasion), looms impressively over the slate rooftops of the city, all but impregnable behind its high walls and higher towers. The city itself has outgrown its wall in recent years, and wood-built slums have built up around the three gates - the Snow Gate, the Forest Gate and the Stream Gate. Allaermouth features goods of all kinds and qualities, as well as temples to all the gods, passage by boat to almost any of the coastal towns and the Sky Tower - the Starcaller's home - which rises even higher than the Master's Keep.
Blue Labels
Blue 3: The Wood of Ghosts is, as perhaps hinted by its name, well-known to be haunted. The people of Northbrook and the smaller villages surrounding it know this well, but occasionally a foolhardy lordling, elementalist or adventurer will appear in the town with the intention of mounting an expedition into its reaches. The Wood of Ghosts, a thick and ancient forest, appears foreboding even from the outside, with the deep darkness cast by its canopy all too visible to onlookers. Usually, only those who venture into its fringes return to speak of the place, but even slightly into the forest they tell of the trees taking on a weird, twisted shape, of the feeling of invisible eyes watching them from the dark shadows and of strange, sinister carvings in the bark of some of the trees. Occasionally, very occasionally, one of the aforementioned adventurers travelling purposefully toward the forest's centre will return, almost all of them driven mad. Insane or not, many of these surviving few will return with strange artifacts - weapons, small ornaments, pieces of masonry with carvings visible on their surfaces. Some of these artifacts are recognised as of Old Veleran origin. The second group of artifacts are of a style belonging to a people unknown. Northbrooksmen generally avoid the place wherever possible, but they will occasionally chop trees from the forest's edges - only in very large numbers, and only then in the daylight hours. The owners of some of the outlying farmhouses that lie closer to the forest speak of strange noises from the woods at night, and these and the mutilated corpses strung from tree branches that the woodcutters occasionally discover keep the people mindful of the wrathful dead. There is an ancient road, thought to have once been cobbled for the crumbled stone that lies about it, that leads out of Northbrook to the South and dissapears into the trees. Where this road leads to, the people of Northbrook do not know. Since the local people fear the Wood of Ghosts so, there is no contact or knowledge of the Forest Kin of the Wood of Ghosts.
Blue 4: The White Hills, so named for the chalky earth beneath their grassy slopes, are largely uninhabited, being of poor soil unsuited for farming. However, they do play host to a few scattered shepheards, as well as to an increasing number of bandits - those mostly in the South of the hills, preying on travellers along the Forest Road. The White Hills are not dangerous ground, bandits excepted, and some travellers to and from Northbrook choose to use them as a shortcut to the Forest Road, or to Allaermouth, though the time gained by taking this route to the latter is less. Though some of the shepheards claim the White Hills contain ruins, though there are no artifacts to evidence this. The White Hills are too small and too low-lying to play host to Mountain Kin.
Nations
You all begin in the Kingdom of Allaer, and most of you will have been born there. The other nations (one of which is also another species entirely) are outlined below:
The Plainsmen
The Plainsmen are a different race altogether from men, each possessed of four arms and covered in smooth scales rather than skin. Their facial features are similar to those of men, but they are completely hairless and have no noses - only slits for nostrils. The Plainsman's teeth are sharp (they are though to be carnivorous, though those merchants in contact with them claim that they eat plants as well as meat), and they have forked tongues not unlike snakes. Unlike snakes, however, Plainsmens' blood flows warm, which is just as well for them, since the Great Steppe that they call home can become cold indeed during the Winter months. The average Plainsman stands a little taller than the average human male, with their females being comparatively shorter. Though extremely strong and agile - thanks in particular to their two additional limbs - the Plainsman's hands are large and clumsy, and their traded goods demonstrate little ability at craftsmanship.
The Plainsmen are civilised, though barely. The men clothe themselves in armour both in war and out, with only the nobles (or, the members of what is apparently the higher tier of their society) wearing mail armour. The women clothe themselves with rough cloth and animal skins. An apparently nomadic people, the Plainsmen warriors always fight mounted from the backs of their desert wolves - cold blooded reptilian predators that have been seen feasting on human flesh in battle. The average Plainsman warrior carries into battle no less than twenty heavy javelins, as well as a heavy steel lance and at least two daggers. They throw the javelins distances much further than any human could manage, with such force as to penetrate even the finest plate armour. Their lance charges are formidable, especially with the speed and savagery of their desert wolves taken into account. The nobles in particular with the mail armour make fierce heavy cavalry. Ordinarily, these mounted hosts are all that humans see, but when one of their camps or caravans is threatened it appears that the non-warrior men (full hunters, armour crafters, beastmasters and etcetera) are also mustered to the defence. On foot Plainsmen are slightly less dangerous, but still formidable opponents, and capable of running at great speed using their two lower arms as well as their legs (often while throwing makeshift wooden javelins with the upper two arms). Plainsmen show little grasp of mercy in victory, the reported pattern is that any captive that bore arms against them is put to death - frequently after torture or being forced to fight as sport - while the other captives are taken back to the caravan, presumably as slaves. Patrols from Castle Eastguarde occasionally come across the rotting corpses of what were presumably human prisoners lieing on the Steppe. The Plainsmen never pass into the Great Forest, and indeed stay well away even from its verges. Their society appears to be organised into tribes, each comprising one nomad train, and post-battle sites discovered by patrolling scouts from Eastguarde indicates conflict between these tribes is frequent.
The Velerans
The Exon claims the whole of what he refers to as the Dominate of Veleris - which included the entirity of the Westrealm, as well as a great deal of other then-provinces that are known only through the few surviving Dominate records. However, the Exon's Dominate of Veleris is not the same as that before the Fall, and its people are little more civilised than the Fironasi Barbarians. The few merchants that risk the trip to New Veleris (the lands East of the Hundred Peaks and South through the Evenwood are cursed, as is well known) along the road from Stonebridge in Pirhannis tell of a wretched people living either in mud houses or else in the shattered shells of Veleran ruins. The cannibalistic tendencies of New Veleris have been supported many times by the merchants' stories. These rumours do nothing to ease the fears of the residents of the Hundred Peaks - territory beholden to Pirhannis - who are subject to increasingly frequent Veleran raids. The King of Pirhannis, for his part, refuses to send any of the Pirhanesian Army to defend his Eastern lands, and despite the steadfast resistance of the Peaksmen, it is known that many of the raids have taken captives - though some merchants claim that Pirhanesian prisoners are sold as slaves to the Plainsmen rather than eaten. The only other real clues as to the Velerans' society come from the items that the merchants return from the Isle with - for the most part, simple gold, but also Pre-Fall era Relics and wood carvings. New Veleris is known to stand on the site of Old Veleris (capital of the Pre-Fall Dominate), but how any of the old city's people survived the devastating events of the Fall is unknown - and this question lends substance to the rumours that the Velerans turned to, and still pursue, the dark worship of the Old Gods.
The Fironasi Barbarians
The Barbarians take their name from Fironas - the God of Winter who they worship to the exclusion of all other deities. The Barbarians continued to attack the Greywall long after the fall of the Dominate, and have breached it three times since the Allaerians took over its defence. On the third such occasion, the Barbarians reached Allaermouth (Red 3.) itself and burned the city to the ground; they are a warlike people, and fierce warriors. Fironasi Barbarians fight almost entirely on foot, armed for the most part with axes and spears. The only mounted troops they employ ride the Soguths - gigantic beasts that grow to half the height of the Greywall's towers, and can carry a hundred men on wooden platforms mounted on their backs. The Barbarians use these Soguths instead of the siege engines that they doubtless lack the intelligence to construct. Barbarian attacks have all but ended over the past century, with the whiskey traders (the only merchants that the Barbarians will deal with, and, indeed, allow into the territory alive) returning with tales of in-fighting between the previously united tribes. This quiet period has allowed King Harrein to move well over three quarters of the Greywall's soldiers to guard his southern borders against the much younger enemy of the Kingdom of Pirhannis - all on the advice of Lord Sarnford, his most favoured counsel. The Greywall is now critically undermanned to the extent that the masonry is crumbling unrepaired in many places. The Barbarians trade furs, gems and weaponry to the merchants that are brave enough to venture North and offer them whiskey. These merchants will tell that the barbarians a backward people with no grasp of currency - but that they do at least live in proper houses, as opposed to the Plainsmen who live only in the grasses of the steppe, even if those houses are of primitive and poor construction. The Barbarians live in tribes that encompass several villages, with the larger settlements walled by wood, and the tribes appear to exist as the absolute authorities in the absense of a King (surely the true mark of a civilised people). The tribes that live nearer the mountains are the most prosperous and powerful (the weaponry that the Fironasi trade out is of surprisingly good quality, leading some to speculate that they are skilled at metalworking), while the tribes with territory nearer the coast are poorer, turning as last resort to fishing (and, more recently and to the alarm of seagoing merchants, to piracy) in order to sustain themselves. The Barbarians appear to submit to a caste of tribal Cleric-Nobles, who manage the worship of the Barbarians' patron deity Fironas, but who also act as leaders both in battle and at peace. Needless to say, these holy men tend to take the best of the Barbarians' wealth for themselves (many merchants have noticed that they are only allowed to deal with the Cleric-Nobles on reaching a settlement).
The Pirhanesians
Sixty years ago, King Aculan III (named the King of Fools by later generations) took the throne on the death of his father, Maethiris the Wise, and immediately declared his intention to conquer the Northern Wastes and destroy the Fironasi Barbarians - as many monarchs had declared before him. However, again as had many monarchs before him, he did nothing to act on this intention for three years of his reign, and rather sat content in the Master's Keep whilst demanding increasing taxes of the Lords so as to finance his lifestyle of tournaments by day and banquets by night. On the night of the third anniversary of his accession, however, Aculan sent out the order to all the Lords of the Kingdom of Allaer to levy their low men and procede to the capital at Allaermouth in preparation for war on the Fironasi. After three years of high taxation, and two years of failed harvest and famine, and with Valeran raids on the South of the Kingdom persisting, a large number of the Barons (low-ranking nobles) of the South refused the King's orders, supported absolutely in doing so by the peasanty. As soon as open defiance of the Master's Keep has sparked, the first dozen were joined by more and more of their peers, until eventually the majority of nobles in the South of Allaer had made clear their intention not to join this latest folly against the Fironasi. The Lords of the North, being closer to Allaermouth and to whom the Fironasi were a real and present danger, declared for the most part in favour of the King - and those few Northern Barons that did oppose the call to arms were quickly crushed by loyalists seeking to curry favour. All thoughts of Northern conquest now abandoned, King Aculan declared the Southern Lords as traitors and ordered the Northern Lords to war. In their turn, the Barons of the South, now disowned completely by their monarch, stated themselves independent of Allaermouth, installing Lord Jitaerin, a great champion of the last major conflict with the Plainsmen, as their new King in his line's capital of Pirhannis. From the outset, the assembled Barons ensured that their new kingdom would not go the same wayward path as Allaer, and wrote the nation's laws of government in such a way as to ensure that true power would rest in a council of around 200 of their number. Pirhannis lost some territory to the Allaerians in the ensuing war - named the First War of Pirhannis - but remained independent until the time where the King of Fools was murdered by an unknown hand and his son, King Aculan IV, succeded. With Aculan IV being a boy of just four years, Lord Falnar - one of his father's more acclaimed generals - was accepted as Regent, and he quickly ended the war with Pirhannis, seeing that Allaer's armies were too weakened to complete the conquest. The Kingdom of Allaer attacked Pirhannis twice more, in the Second War and the Third War, and was soundly defeated in each to the point where ancient bastions of Allaer such as Searock Keep are now threatened by the Barons' soldiers.
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