Neighbouring States of the Marches

The Caelorast Imperium
Found to the north and north-east of the Marches, the Caelorast Imperium is the region’s greatest success story, and biggest failure. Once a superpower controlling the lands from the northern Frigid Seas to Khatoun, and from the Sapphire Sea to well into the Western Expanses, the Imperium now is but a shadow of its former self, a decadent empire of squabbling elite and disenfranchised and disinterested subjects.

From the city of Caelor, the pale skinned Caelorasts built a nation that ruled the region for close to two millennia before crumbling. Successions of successful, warlike Emperors conquered the Marches, the Fjordlands, and much of the Inland Sea kingdoms, linking them thousands of miles of Imperial highway and setting up intricate systems of governance and taxation.

Now with most of their vassal states lost, the empire trudges along, but no longer a threat to its neighbours. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the Imperium enjoys relatively cordial relations with its neighbours, engaging in trade with many of its traditional partners. Caelorast linens and objets d'art are still widely appreciated, and the empire still engages in the slave trade with other slave dealing states.

The Inland Sea
North and to the west of the Marches, past Marsonn, are the lands of the Inland Sea. A great landlocked saltwater body, the sea’s convoluted coastlines and adjacent land are home to innumerable minor kingdoms, republics, city-states, and other nations. From single city-states to kingdoms of half a dozen cities, the Inland Sea is a defined almost as much by its ununified population as it is by its geographic presence.

The sea itself covers an area many times the size that of the Marches. Deep and with abundant fish populations, the sea supports dozens of individual states. Each of these cities or small nations are separate from one another, but are related to each other by as much shared culture as geographic proximity.

Each with its own identity, the Inland Sea nations are similar to the individualist nature of the Marches, but infinitely more fractious. Constantly warring and allying with one another almost at a whim, the Inland Sea kingdoms are fast to become enemies but fast to become allies once again. Each summer, at least a dozen individual conflicts break out, drawing mercenaries from all over the region. This has become so routine that the term “Foreigner’s Season” has come to mean summer.

Khatoun
The kingdom of Khatoun is a trollish nation of near a dozen cities in the warm lands south of the Marches. Currently ruled by the Witch Queen Y’Bitha, the nation follows the curve of the Sapphire Sea as it curves south and west, a land of tall grasslands, sparse forests, and adobe settlements.

Reasonably distant from the closest other trollish kingdoms, Khatoun is relatively free from the complex alliances and treaties that bind most of their nations in complex webs. Due to this isolation from other trollish states, Khatoun is more reliant on its non-greenskin neighbours than other trollish kingdoms are. Foreign trade is as important to Khatoun as it is to other nations in the region, and the citrus, spices, and pigments that come from Khatoun are prized as far as the Fjordlands.

Khatoun and the Marches have enjoyed more years of peace between them than war, but relations are not always so cordial. Due to the fractious nature of the Marches, the border between them and Khatoun is vague. As such this no-man’s-land harbours all manner of bandits, monstrous tribes, and worse.

The Sapphire Sea
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Stretching from the eastern coast of the Marches as far as anyone knows away to the west, the Sapphire Sea is the largest body of water known to the Marches region. Bordering the Frigid Seas to the north, the Uram Straits south of Khatoun, and the Equatorial Empires far to the south, the Sapphire Sea connects much of the region to one another. Major trade routes hug the coasts, from the Fjordlands to Sheyandeng and everything inbetween.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Far to the southwest from the Marches the tabaxi homeland is found. A vast archipelago known as Tabax’tilac, its innumerable islands are covered by jungle, mountain and savannah, and is the home of the burgeoning tabaxi empire. From this archipelago the many tabaxi colony missions set sail, claiming any empty coastal lands for the homeland.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">The sea itself is far from uninhabited. Many aquatic races make their home in the Sapphire Sea - from the coastal settlements of locathah, mermen and sea elves, to the deep water civilisations of tritons and sahuagin, and the abyssal empires of the aboleths, kraken, and stranger beings yet.

<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Tesh’viir
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The region directly west of the Marches continues to rise into an area of dense mountain ranges. Accessible mostly from the north, close to where the Marches meet the lands of the Inland Sea, the land snakes up higher in altitude, a mountainous region of forbidding peaks, deep valleys, and hidden plateaus. In the middle of these mountains, the Tesh’diyl ranges, sits the necrocratic nation of Tesh’viir.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">The nation as a whole follows the teaching of the goddess Viir - the god of ascetic undeath. Contrary to Gurgich’s strictures of selfish, gluttonous undeath, Viir’s faith and teachings are those of using undeath as a tool for personal advancement, but not as a self-destructive one. While individual subjects of Tesh’viir run the gamut of personal beliefs, the society is one of lawful, disciplined introspection and self-improvement.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Directed by a ruling class of powerful intelligent undead, Tesh’viir is divided into three main social classes. At the top, a number of extremely capable undead masters control the country. Numbering anywhere from a dozen to near a hundred at one time, these immortals splits their time between directing their nation, conducting their own magical research and entertainments, and playing their own centuries long, deadly social games with one another.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Under the ruling class is a body of citizens - intelligent undead not powerful enough to join the elite, and a large number of mortal (albeit death-touched) families. Despite many preconceptions, the life of the mortal citizens is not one of fear or peril. They and their undead social peers spend their lives supporting family industries, interacting with other races and nations, and jockeying for status. Every so often, through ones own power and ability, or spaces opening up, a member of the citizens will be elevated to the ruling class - though never as a mortal.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Finally, the nation rests on the shoulders of its large population of mindless undead. Fulfilling the roles of labourers, soldiers, and anything that does not require intelligence to complete, the nation employs thousands of animated skeletons, zombies, and other less common undead examples.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Small, due to restriction by geography and necrology, Tesh’viir is necessarily independent from its neighbours. The nation produces its own foodstuffs, ore and timber, and other raw goods, all worked and gathered by the nation’s vast legions of mindless undead serfs. Eschewing traditional trade, the undead state focuses on two main interactions with its neighbours - the trade of magical components and research, and finance and banking.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Despite its size, Tesh’viir has a number of arcane schools and academies, and those few places which are offered to non citizens are hotly contested. The nation also produces much in the way of raw magical components, such as gemstones and specialist materials, and Tesh’viir components command high prices in human and dwarven markets. Finally, also as much as for their magical prowess, the Tesh’viir are known for their banking. Referred to as “Moth Banks” (after Viir’s holy symbol), branches can be found in a number of cities outside Tesh’viir, and are usually highly regarded and trusted.

<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Aqir and Esiq
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Across the Uram Straits from Khatoun are the twin kingdoms of Aqir and Esiq. Though the region is known best by its two largest kingdoms, the lands are also home to a number of small republics and city-states, both around and between Aqir and Esiq. Warmer and drier than Khatoun, the kingdoms are lands of dry plains and vast deserts, punctuated by long, thin mountain ranges. Populated with dusky skinned humans, the copper-coloured desert elves and the elemental-kin known as the suli-jann.

<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The Equatorial Empires
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">Further south from the deserts of Aqir and Esiq are the lands of the Equatorial Empires. In the equatorial regions can be found dark skinned halflings and humans - ranging from the deepest gold to the purest ebony - jungle and savannah elves, gnomes coloured like living gemstones. Said to be the home of technological and magical marvels far more advanced than those found elsewhere - including those found in the dwarven holdings - the empires rule lands of fertile river valleys, flood basins, and savannah bounded by dense jungles and high mountain ranges.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;font-weight:bold;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">The Fjordlands
<p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"><span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">To the north of the lands of the Caelorast Imperium, the lands grow cold and mountainous, forming vast peninsulars like fingers into the northern Sapphire Sea and the Frigid Seas. Peopled by humans with white skin and hair, dwarven enclaves, and mountain and snow elves, the Fjordlands are split into numerous tiny fiefdoms who war against one another and raid their neighbours, occasionally coming under the banner of a single charismatic leader to invade other lands before fragmenting again. The Fjordlands are also known as being the home to a great number of giant tribes, dragons, and far stranger beasts.

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;font-weight:bold;white-space:pre-wrap;line-height:1.38;">Sheyadeng
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);white-space:pre-wrap;">Found further south from the kingdoms of Aqir and Esiq in the Sapphire Sea, the island nation of Sheyadeng is considered the closest example of the equatorial peoples. A nation of black skinned humans and jungle-dwelling elven tribes, Sheyadeng is reknown for its sailors and nautical traders - ships flying Sheyadeng colours can be found as far north as the Fjordlands, and are welcome in almost any port.

<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;">The Western Expanses
<span style="font-size:15px;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);white-space:pre-wrap;">Stretching west and south from the Inland Sea and the mountain ranges of Tesh’viir, the Western Expanses are horizon spanning reaches of grasslands and low hilly ranges. Sparsely populated, the Expanses are home to nomadic tribes of humans and gnolls, animals herds, and long-forgotten ruins. Further west and souther still, the lands where humans originally came from are said to be, along with nations of tengu, snakemen, and other races.