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The Kingdom of Calantyr
Grid
Realm: Sovereign
Population: 6 million
Language: Common
The modern-day Kingdom of Calantyr derives its name from its primary inhabitants, the Calants. The Calants arrived over a millennium in the past, and over the intervening centuries have either driven out, killed, or intermarried with the region's existing inhabitants so that the Calant identity is mostly universal. Calants originally arrived from the north, and also have a sizable presence in the southern parts of the Twelve Kingdoms, and constitute an important minority in the Kingdom of Vir.
The notion of a unified Calant kingdom is relatively new. Historically the Calants were divided amongst a number of powerful nobles, the most important being the princes of V'Tavia. That city profited from its protected location on an island at the mouth of the River Tav to wage successful wars not only against other Calant princes, but also against the much more powerful Empire of Otessa to the west. More than one Otessan army met its end on the banks of the Tav, and historians cite the stubborn resistance of the V'Tavians as one of the key reasons why the Otessan Empire ultimately collapsed into today's anarchic Twelve Kingdoms.
The V'Tavians, emboldened by their victories over the Otessans and enriched by tribute and spoils of war, began expanding. V'Tavian armies pried away whole provinces from the collapsing Otessan Empire, but ran into stouter opposition in the east. The princes of the Coeur d'Ennui used the V'Tavian threat to rally eastern Calant nobles to their banner, and strengthened their cause by forging an alliance with the dwarven city of Durabar in the Irontooths.
The two principalities struggled for decades without either gaining a real advantage. While the V'Tavian citizens had born the cost of their defensive wars against the Otessans without complaint, their princes' wars of conquest were not so readily welcomed. V'Tavian nobles rebelled several times over the capital's taxes and levies, and the newly acquired Otessan provinces slipped away into independence. The princes of the Coeur, too, saw their fortunes destroyed by war, their best farmland rendered useless by the constant warfare. Pirate lords based on the island of Tartessos wreaked havoc on Coeur fleets.
Neither side ultimately won the convincing military victory it sought. Instead, the struggle was ended politically, with a marriage between the Prince of V'Tavia and the Prince of the Coeur's eldest daughter. The two leaders proclaimed the existence of the Kingdom of Calantyr. The new kingdom was ruled by the prince of V'Tavia (who kept the title Prince) and governed from that city, but the princes of the Coeur (now Dukes) kept significant autonomy. When Calantyrian leaders meet the V'Tavian is considered first-among-equals rather than superior to the Ennuian. In practice the Coeur is governed independently by its Dukes, with kingdom-wide coordination only for matters of warfare; the Coeur pays no obligatory taxes to V'Tavia (though in practice the dukes make frequent gifts).
This arrangement has lasted for nearly a century now. Courtesy of the troubles in Otessa and Ardashir, the kingdom of the Calants finds itself today the most powerful state in the region, though its decentralized power structure has kept Calantyr from employing an aggressive foreign policy. As an oasis of relative stability in western Meditra, it has a strong economy, and its urban centers of V'Tavia and the Coeur d'Ennui are bustling. Behind this image of strength, however, Calantyr faces many of the same problems dealt with less successfully by its neighbors--a fractious nobility, constant border incursions by nomadic tribes and goblinoid races, corruption, and covert worship of dark gods among the kingdom's most powerful figures. It remains to be seen whether today's stability is a presage of future glory or a temporary window of peace between times of chaos.
Geography of Calantyr
Calantyr is popularly divided into two regions: the Willowfields, and the Marches.The Willowfields
The Willowfields are a network of valleys named for the willows that grow along the banks of its many rivers. It spans from the River Tav in the west to the Windhurst in the east, encompassing most of Knight's Lake, Bredonshire, V'tavia, Three Rivers, and the Coeur d'Ennui. Roughly four-fifths of Calantyr's population calls the Willowfields home.
The Willowfields are, above all, civilized, though this quality is expressed in a variety of ways, ranging from the bucolic villages of Bredonshire to the cosmopolitan ports of V'tavia and the Coeur d'Ennui. Though there is still plenty to fear, it is as safe a countryside as exists in this world. Manors have long been more fashionable than castles in much of the Willowfields, and one rarely encounters a dangerous beast that has not been placed there deliberately. It is, for now, a prosperous place, whose inhabitants are concerned more for their crops and shipments than for their safety.
The Marches
The Marches are wide swaths of countryside dotted with castles and small, fortified towns. They provide a buffer between the Willowfields and the dangers that surround Calantyr: the glamodrim of the Irontooths, the soldiers of Ang'arta, the elves of the Delverness, the horrors of Pafund Mal, and the armies of the Northmen. The Marches are presided over by the margraves, a special class of nobility descended from Calantyr's greatest knights.
Life in the Marches is very different from life in the Willowfields. Much of the land is untamed still, home to magical beasts and even pockets of orcs and hill giants. Banditry is commonplace. The yeomen of the Marches are famed for their skill with the longbow -- a skill that they must often call upon in defense of their farms and towns. The margraves and their knights patrol the countryside frequently, and though they are generally able to keep the peace, it is a constant struggle. In many places, their efforts are impeded by the land itself. The Rivenmarch, for example, consists largely of moorland and chalk scarps whose cultivation can sustain only small villages. In Trachot, the foothills of the Irontooths also stifle agriculture, as well as providing a natural hiding place for all manner of undesirables.
The boundaries of the Marches are far more fluid than those of the Willowfields. In recent years the southern borders of Helmsdale and the Underwood have edged northward to allow Ang'arta more space, and the western border of the Rivenmarch has expanded into the Delverness with the fighting over Pafund Mal. With the recent fall of Vir, it seems the eastern borders will shortly be redrawn -- though how, precisely, none can say.
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