The World of Patriam

Frigid coasts and mountain forests, where the timber hardly rots and builds the finest ships in the world. The Drunathaen raised their cities on these shores and the Great Walls behind them, and for six centuries the Nuokaenian clans they had driven inland threw themselves at those walls. A marriage ended that war and made one people of two. Norkinia was united once under the Kingdom of Nuokaenia, broke again into four kingdoms, and was gathered under House Svoll by Bjarn I when he came home from Hythaerion's funeral. Three centuries later the Imperial Reforms of High King Haeduron I left one throne at Hasteinsvoll and the Imperial Houses of Druokon, Sarin, and Sjuraen with little. Its warriors go into battle crying Aman Araela, honour and glory, and they do not rout or surrender. Where the Saga begins.

Rainforest and river country at the eastern edge of the known world. The Empire of Hiwotsukeru holds the northern peninsula, founded by the Hiwokantsu clan after the Emperor of Wurtum cast them out across the Great Sea in forty untested ships. They made landfall on a barren coast of grey mountains and built from nothing. Norkinia planted colonies on these shores soon after and took the young empire as a vassal, and the two went to war for the first time a generation before the Saga. Drunathaen ruins line the coast, and the tribes of Watol hold an interior that no empire has mapped.

Araedan the Great came ashore here from beyond the Great Mountain Ring and built Araedos, now a ruin fought over by warlords who all claim his son Aneksados as their ancestor. No one has united Taienmar since. Thenithria held colonies here for a time, and out of that invasion came the Imadri, warrior monks whose castles now stand across Eastern Inner Patriam. The old faith holds: each earthquake is read as Naorlaen throwing Terosk down. Taienmarian soldiers are reckoned the finest in the world, and the kingdoms that raise them have never stopped fighting one another.

The Golden Plains of Kyrenthia give way to the alpine forests of Bouropheia and the rocky coasts of Aeigon and Raehun, and the white cliffs yield the elmin stone that builds halls across half the world. The Drunathaen ruled the southern coasts from Paecoes until the Kaelonic Lords took it, and Pacis rose from their seat. Aeigon, Pacis, and Kyrenthia wore each other down in three Wars of the Bloodtree, and three years after the last of them Thenithria came north under Araelon I. It has held most of the continent for seven centuries since. The Kaegonhar speak for the Kaegonic gods from their temple fortress on Mount Arkaeon and answer to Thenithria. Norkinian colonists hold Aephos in the far north, and Bouropheia has never been tamed by anyone.

Held entirely by the Kingdom of Thenithria and ruled from the city that gave it its name. Thaenthorae began as one of the first Drunathaen settlements and grew into the first kingdom in either Kallonia. When Axia fell, Hythaerion the Conqueror held the whole continent, and he rebuilt his capital in white elmin stone and red roofs to rival Ketan. He fought more than two hundred and fifty battles and sieges without losing one. His Legions and the only professional navy in the world carried Thenithria to its height, while the frontier troops who hold the provinces go underfed and badly led, so revolts run on until a legion arrives to end them. A king rules here beside a senate, and the Citizens' Assembly gives the people a chamber without giving them power. That power is old now, and the hold on the north weakens every year.

A frigid land of hundreds of squabbling clans and warlord states, rarely united and largely ignored by the great powers, since it has little farmland or metal worth taking. The Drunathaen never settled here, and the rest of the world has held that against its people ever since. Norkinian colonies were planted on the eastern coast twelve centuries ago and stand fortified against the clans, and beyond them lies the edge of the known world. The Dajok is thought to have come out of Aungmar, and it hunts now from Norkinia to Northern Kallonia.

The City of Ketan was founded by Ketaridon, favourite son of Araedan the Great, as a new capital for the Drunathaen, and his line still rules it, the only undisputed descent from Araedan left in the world. Centuries of trade monopolies turned the Ketanite Empire into the Mercantile Empire of Ketan, governed in practice by its merchants. It has fought exactly one war. When Hythaerion sank its navy and closed the harbour, the Milagi family weighed a long siege against tribute and paid the tribute. What Ketanites will not fight for, their gold hires instead, down to the eunuch Ardons who take service as far away as Northern Kallonia.

Desert kingdoms along the eastern coasts, working to win back an old prosperity, with the hordes of the interior at their backs and sandstorms fierce enough to need a scarf over the face. Hythaerion spent nine years taking these coasts, and Thenithria has never quite let go of them. The Empire of Akaria rose while Thenithria was busy elsewhere, took back ground in the south, and now holds Akros and its capital, Kaaron.

Badlands and steppe in the north east of Khyros, roamed by nomad hordes, the largest of them the Uyn'Hyr, and by insectoid creatures and fast running predators. Deep in the mesa lies Khaara, a kingdom carved into the canyon walls, with wells sunk at the canyon floor and roads cut into the rock. It is the only settled people away from the coast, and it travels to the coast in large companies, since the open ground belongs to the hordes.

The largest region of Khyros, cold and temperate, and home to living things found nowhere else in Patriam. The Free Empire of Pruzha brought the whole of it under one rule nine centuries before the Saga, and its Imzurik holds it still. Little of what happens here reaches the courts of Inner Patriam, and little of what happens there troubles Pruzha.

Araedan the Great conquered Aeloen, and nobody has held it whole since. The Amnaera Faith endures in the south. In the east the Tohaeilan Clans answer to no one, and the Imadri watch them from their monastery castles. Norkinian colonies sit across the Norukaren Sea from Hasteinsvoll, close enough that their ships joined the host of Bjarn I, and when House Druokon broke, many of its swornswords crossed here rather than face the crown.

A burning chain of volcanic islands in the southern sea. Sailors will tell you a whole land once stood here, and that the fire has never gone out.