A Quiet Village
The people of Luisant are largely insulated from the rest of the Throne. News of the world-shaking decisions made by the great lords and ladies of the land comes months late, if at all, and the distant island of Dunland might as well be a dream to the little town.
Though travellers may be infrequent, they are not unheard of. Their adventurous stories and colorful rumors of far-off lands have contributed to what snippets of information your character has about the outside world.
Gotha is a stern land, its people seemingly perpetually mournful and silent in their funereal garb. Its capital city, Fenristadt, is the seat of the Throne’s power and the home of Emperor Herkheist, its majesty and size rivaled only by the Holy City of Lethia.
The machinations of these political and theological arenas are far out of reach of most Cappacione peasants, but the inhabitants of Luisant do share a much closer connection to Gotha: the lands of House Kreuzmoor. The Kreuzmoor is a swampy and rumored-to-be-haunted region that lies directly on the border of Gotha and Capacionne, abutting parts of the Old Forest that encompasses Luisant. In defiance of the tales of stone-faced Gothics, the people of the Kreuzmoor seem almost excessively cheerful, despite living in a nightmarish bog populated by reptilian troll-wolves.
Although they are less disaffected than the infamous bandit kingdoms of Lorassaint, the people of Luisant have small reason to feel much more than indifference towards their country. Little aid, if any, is sent in times of need, and the nobles of House Beauchane who rule them have been as isolated as they for many generations. Whether aid is denied through malice, neglect, or simply due to the difficulty of travelling to Luisant makes small difference to those in need.
Rogalia is a country of many stories. In the wildest of tales, Rogalia is a vivid amalgamation of Wyrd cities ruled by cat-eyed mages and isolated villages preyed on by bloody-mouthed vampires, determined to win back their erstwhile rule over the human cattle who live there.
The more grounded- and less glamorous- of story-tellers describe a morass of purely human war, little king clashing against little king until the very soil of the farmlands grows nothing but blood and corpses. All is overseen by the grinning eye of the Fire Drake, the mad mage who even the bravest of the little kings will not challenge.
The Dunnick Travellers sing around their fires, tales of their lost and enslaved brethren caught up in the oppressive, blood-slick, meat grinder of Rogalia.
Owned and occupied by the kingdom of Rogalia, Dunland is a fertile and lovely land that is either in rightful rebellion against their invaders or defiantly attempting to oust their lawful lords, depending on who you ask. Little is said of the land itself, perhaps due to sorrow, but the bands of roaming free or escaped Dunnicks known as Travellers have many grim tales of their time indentured to Rogalian lords.
The true love of any Hestralian is the sea that borders their country, and they take to it with joy and aplomb. The majority of Hestralia’s trade is by sea, and their navy is the wonder of the Throne. A zealous and colorful people, they imbue passion into all that they do- for a Hestralian, anything from dueling to fishing is an affair of the heart. This national temperament results in fierce warriors and fiercer lovers, along with a thriving network of piracy.
A fierce and largely untamed territory, Njordr lies on the frontiers of theThrone. It exists in an uneasy state of semi-truce between the Njords themselves and what is known as the Cold Throne, the houses of Gothic Nobles who rule the occupied parts of Njordr.
The true ruler is of course the bitter cold. Stories of Njordr describe it as a land locked in ice and snow, haunted by malevolent winter-born demons who keep the Njords wound in their evil spells.
Capacionne’s, and by extension Luisant’s, perception of Sha’ra is largely colored by the bitter war that has raged on and off along their shared border for the past 600 years.
The philosophers and priests of the Shariqyn are whispered to equal or even rival that of the Throne in wisdom and perspicuity, but they are as brutal in war as any other army. The tales of whole border towns held prisoner for torture before their slaughter at the hands of the Shariqyn have engendered perhaps undeserved enmity and fear between the two peoples.
Sha’ra is the only country to train and produce Water mages, masters of balance and reflection who, it is said, sustain their great desert cities far from any river or lake.
