THE VREE WILD STATES



Delran, The Kingdom of
Capital City: Dunlevao
Other Cities: Tarfin's Delve, Hilgard, Axmaker, Supplyside, Hillbay
Ruled by King Curdan II of House Laurenna
Funded in Part by: Feyl Donok
Majority Alignment: Chaotic Good/Neutral Good
Founding Date: 907 Shares border with Feyl Sley, Tessera, Savannah, the Midlands,
Jutenrok Mountains, Sangradoro Mountains.
The noble House Laurenna of Feyl Donok had long wallowed in debt, until King
Declan VI offered them a deal: found and run an "independent" kingdom in the
Midlands, and the throne will assume your past burdens. This was a chance at
redemption, and House Laurenna grabbed it. They turned their Donokian holdings
over to the throne and moved to the limitless Midlands. Dunlevao, a small outpost
at its founding in 907, is now a town of almost 5,000, profitably trading on the
shore of Lake Pontumon, and since 920 it has been generally safe to found new
towns--profitable mining towns--along the Sangradoros and Jutenroks. This has
been a relief, for Delran has not had an easy time. They have wrestled with
Tessera for control of crucial trade routes, failed entirely to find a useful
friend in Feyl Sley, and at Declan VI's insistence, they have skirmished endlessly
with the forces of Savannah. Presently the army is so distracted by Savannah that
some feel the kingdom's smaller towns (and new mining towns) are once again at
risk of being overrun by kobolds, goblins, orcs, and thieves. Declan VI, declaring
his displeasure with Curdan II's progress, has sent his eldest son and heir (also
named Declan, nicknamed "Seven") to act as Curdan's chief advisor. Seven
has been a burden on Curdan, however, and the good House Laurenna--along with
many others in the kingdom--now quietly suspect that Declan VI sent Seven here
mainly to get him the hell away from Ving Raute.



Feyl Sley, or The Feyl of Sley
Capital City: Mortlau
Other Cities: Innport, Comfort, Vantage, Big Hope
Ruled by King Fraddon IV
Funded in Part by: Feyl Claudia--with messy competition
Majority Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Founding Date: 901
Shares border with Delran, the Midlands, Sangradoro Mountains, Angenrok
Mountains
The village of Comfort was founded by the first Galagans to cross the Angenroks,
in 892, and is today the first waypoint that all Vree reach after descending into
the Midlands. Gold was discovered in the Angenroks in 895, sparking a rush and
increasing Galaga's interest. In 901, a Galagan a garrison sent to protect Comfort
and the gold-mining town of Breakback, founded the city of Mortlau, capital of a new
province of Galaga. Mortlau, strategically located to project force into the
Midlands, found itself on the defensive, however, right in the middle of heavily
infested orc country. By 910, Galaga was exhausted by its attempts to tame this
corner of the Midlands, and they granted Mortlau its total independence. But the
new country had never wanted independence, and when the mine at Breakback went
bust in 912, it looked like there was no reason to stay. Orc raids intensified, and
by 915 the Feyl Sley lay nearly abandoned. One village, however, the lakefront
town of Innport, began to prosper. Not outrageously, but just enough to supply
King Fraddon II with the revenue he needed to maintain an army capable of securing
the high plains of the north end of his kingdom. Feyl Claudia took note of his
effort and granted a large loan of gold--effectively making Feyl Sley their client
state to this day. But by 926, the north half of Feyl Sley was a secure and relatively
wealthy farmland, in 930 the Kingdom of Galaga began to improve the trail over the
Angenroks, and in 932 a new vein of gold was discovered, giving the Feyl Sley
everything it needed to try to tame the depressed, orc-run southern half of its
territory. The trouble is, since the second discovery of gold, other Firms States
have jumped back in, attempting to gain influence over weak Mortlau--among them
Galaga, Dantoria, Kilbatten, Garonlok and Feyl Donok. While this should mean a boom
time, Feyl Sley has instead slid into shadowy conspiracy and dangerous intrigue.
In 935, King Fraddon III was murdered in his sleep--by an unknown agent. And
Fraddon IV is no shrewd leader--neither his handling of the foreigners vying for
his fealty nor his handling of the orcs has met much success. Feyl Sley is a
beached and battered ship of state holding out little more than hope for a strong tide.



Savannah, The Royal March of
Capital City: Stronghold
Ruled by King Quade
Funded in Part by Garonlok
Majority Alignment: Lawful Evil, Chaotic Neutral
Founding Date: 927
Shares border with Delran, Tessera, Uqbar, Zu, the Midlands.
Founded in 927 by agents of Garonlok, Savannah is the newest and most aggressive
of the Vree Wild States. It claims as its territory a long narrow strip of land
north of all the other Wild States--explicitly an attempt to hem them in and some
day control all the Midlands for itself (and for Garonlok). But the merciful fact
is that Savannah works overtime just to control its own territory--it has claimed
too much and by its constant raiding of trade routes, it has aggravated too many
neighbors to hold everything securely. As a result, it has fallen to war with all
of its neighbors at one point or another. This has meant the first and only large-
scale, organized conflict between the Vree and Suhndi people. Which is just fine
with Savannah's backers in Garonlok, who see Savannah not as a state but as merely
a proving ground, where a green army can be toughened for use mainly back in Vree.
For now, Savannah's king is content to abide by this expectation--it keeps the money
and arms coming. But it is impossible to say what trends will dominate Savannah's
future: the constant warring has turned Savannah's leadership into a Lawful Evil
order that may ultimately break from far-off Merkiant--while the general population
of Savannah sometimes shows the more chaotic bent of most Midlanders, and might well
grow to resent the forceful regimentation of the ever-present army. Ultimately it
may be commerce that sets the tone in Savannah, not marching--and if not, then
possibly those aggravated neighboring Wild States will find a way to unite to
overrun the place.



Tessera, the Kingdom of
Capital City: Angler
Ruled by King Hieronymous the Half
Funded in Part by Vreconok
Majority Alignment: Chaotic Good
Founding Date: 894
Shares border with Delran, Savannah, Zu, Jutenrok Mountains, Sangradoro Mountains.
In 890, Feyl Donok and Vreconok sent separate missions into the Midlands to explore
and report back, but in 893 the two competing teams faced a harsh winter and were
forced to ally themselves to survive. When the snows melted, they decided to stay,
and together founded the city Angler, capital of a new country. Back home, this
nearly led to blows between Donok and Vreconok, but those kings reached an agreement
in 898 that demarcated the Midlands between them: everything east of the Jutenroks to
Donok, everything west to Vreconok. Both kings recognized that in reality, they
would end up controlling very little of the territory claimed, but this treaty,
precipitated by Tessera's founding, is significant because it signaled it was game on
for the Vree in the Midlands. As for its own fortunes, the Midlands were still
nearly impossible to reach until Galaga improved its trail, so Tessera's human
population grew very slowly in the first years. It became, however, something of
a mecca for Halflings and even Gnomes, who began to settle the area under its
human leadership. Vreconok sent a trickle of money and supplies during these hard
early years of struggle while Donok's attention turned to the founding of Delran on
the other side of the Jutenroks. In 912, however, Tessera grabbed their attention by
forcing its own King Simon to sign a document that hamstrung his authority and rendered
their kingdom in effect a Constitutional Monarchy. They had been inspired to do this
by what they had learned from the traveling merchants of the Wine States, who lived
under a similar quasi-constitutional arrangement--but it raised a bright red
flag in the eyes of the traditional and powerful monarchs back in Dolmen and Ving
Raute. Working through agents, those two governments cooperated to effect an
overthrow of King Simon and revocation of the Constitution in 922. They manipulated
the installation of a Vreconok-approved, strong royalist named King Dennett, and
Vreconok pumped much money into his court to guarantee against any more thoughts
of constitutions. In the years since, Tessera has remained a client of Vreconok,
but its merchant class deposed Dennett in 926 and elevated a man named Ahrun to
the throne. Ahrun, a roguish nobleman exiled to Tessera for insulting the king of
Vreconok, made a fine protest king, but when the newly founded state of Savannah
invaded Tessera in 929, Ahrun immediately and rather nobly abdicated to clear the
way for a more capable war-time leader. The merchant class, quite surprised, after
two days of anarchy, declared a Halfling named Hieronymous their king. The Halfling,
a merchant himself and former teacher of military strategy at the war college in
the free city Rauk Keysa, in turn surprised the invaders and drove them from Tessera.
Today, Hieronymous plays ball with Vreconok but also is careful not to exercise his
kingly authority too firmly in Angler; he respects the memory of the brief, crushed
experiment of 912-922.



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