The World of Patriam

Snow-capped peaks and stoic clans under the Norkinian Empire, which styles itself the heir of the Drunathaen. Its coastal cities grew up behind titanic Great Walls raised against the wilds beyond, and its timber, which hardly rots, builds the finest ships in the world. Bjarn I united its four kingdoms under House Svoll from the capital at Hasteinsvoll, the first unified Norkinian state in twenty-five centuries, and the great Houses of Druokon and Sarin still answer to his heirs. Its warriors go into battle crying Aman Araela, honour and glory, and they do not rout or surrender. Where the Saga begins.

Rainforest home of the Empire of Hiwotsukeru, ruled from Hiwokan. The Hiwokantsu clan founded it after the Emperor of Wurtum banished them across the Great Sea, forty ships carrying thousands into the unknown. Disciplined and bound by honour, it has long stood as a vassal of Norkinia. Drunathaen ruins line its northern coast, and Watolian tribes hold the interior.

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. Its warriors are the finest in the world, and its people still keep the Amnaera Faith, reading every earthquake as Naorlaen striking Terosk down.

The Golden Plains of Kyrenthia give way to the alpine forests of Bouropheia and the rocky coasts of Aeigon and Raehun. Kaegonic city states rose here after the Drunathaen, and Pacis is the oldest of them. The Kingdom of Thenithria conquered the continent six centuries ago and holds it loosely now, while Pacis, Aeigon, and Kyrenthia have fought three Wars of the Bloodtree among themselves. The Kaegonhar speak for the Kaegonic gods from their temple-fortress on Mount Arkaeon, and answer to Thenithria. Norkinian colonies sit on the north-eastern coast at Aephos, and Bouropheia in the north has never been tamed by anyone.

Held entirely by the Kingdom of Thenithria and ruled from the city that gave it its name, which Hythaerion the Conqueror rebuilt in white elmin stone and red roofs to rival Ketan. It began as Thaenthorae, one of the first Drunathaen settlements, and grew into the first kingdom in either Kallonia. Its Legions and its navy, the only professional navy in the world, carried Thenithria to the height of its power. That power is old now, and its 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. Fortified Norkinian colonies cling to its eastern coast, and beyond them lies the edge of the known world.

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, and it paid tribute rather than lose the city.

Sand-swept kingdoms trying to win back an old prosperity, with the nomad hordes of the interior at their backs and coastal sandstorms fierce enough to need a scarf over the face. The Empire of Akaria holds Akros and its capital, Kaaron. Thenithria conquered these coasts once, and has never quite let go.

Badlands and steppe in the north-east of Khyros, roamed by nomad hordes, the largest of them the Uyn'Hyr, and by large insectoid creatures and fast-running predators. Deep in the mesa lies Khaara, a kingdom carved into the walls of its canyons, the only settled people away from the coast.

Home of the Pruzhan Empire: cold, temperate, and the largest region of Khyros, with living things found nowhere else in Patriam. The setting of Patriam: Renatus.

Conquered by Araedan the Great and never quite held by anyone since. In the south the Amnaera Faith endures. In the east the Tohaeilan Clans answer to no one, and the Imadri keep watch on them from their monastery castles.

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.