Under the enlightened rule of the Herzogin, Eliamund, South Province could reasonably boast to being the most cultured and genteel realm of the Aerdi. The first Aerdian university was founded with her encouragement and patronage. The poets and troubadours who were welcome at her court composed ballads of chivalry, romance, and courtly love that then spread throughout the Kingdom. Perhaps owing to a culture dating back to the realm of Flan queen Ehlissa, women enjoyed a greater role in South Kingdom than in the more patriarchal north.
In the North, legends painted Ehlissa as a wicked enchantress, cruel to her subjects. The Southron troubadours, however, sang of her as a wise and benevolent, an interpretation encouraged by Eliamund.
This bright age did not last. The Turmoil Between Crowns saw Eliamund forced from the throne. She lived out her remaining days in an abbey.
The South Province of 576 CY was not the land it once was. An ill-favored cousin of the Overking, Faastal, sat upon the ducal chair, a man incompetent as he was arrogant. He had been given a task that would have challenged someone of greater talents: to put down rebellion in the South and return the cities of the Iron League to royal control. Faastal crushed the people with taxes to fund his military blunders and dealt over-harshly with any dissent. His efforts only served to stoke the fires of rebellion he had been sent to quell.
For the rebel bands hiding in the forests and the towns barricaded against the Herzog's men, Eliamund became a symbol of their struggle and was given devotion like a saint or hero-god.
3 comments:
This is one of the best ones so far because it takes what wasn't really a problem in the folio (how the Iron League has survived the past century with minuscule population, even if the terrain is defensive and Nyrond is helping) and turns it into maximum greyhawk fun. Of *course* the real hinge is that the hold on Ahlissa is so brittle that it's impossible for anyone to project real force farther south. Of *course* this is a nation on the brink of revolt.
And I think it answers a few larger questions. First, the modern League is basically the "whole of the South Province" that rebelled around 450. Second, depending on how you read the description of his current effective power base, maybe half these hexes are more or less autarchic or "unreliable at best." And third, the population supports a "formidable" mercenary pool . . . so big that it threatens to bankrupt the local economy and probably intensifies political discontent.
That's the drama. Not so much the survival of the league, which is mysterious but well established. Whether Ahlissa folds and suddenly the Nyro-Aerdian Treaty Organization expands.
BTB I would run your South Province as a populace on the edge of revolt (DMG 94): 20% of the total population (!) ready to join the uprising the next time resentment flares, which is about as many people as Irongate and Sunndi put together plus 4,000 recruits a month.
I think he's keeping a lot of these people quiescent for now by running something like a modern professional army: sign up with the recruiter before you get drafted and we'll pay you cash. But he can only find 6000 mercenaries (TD 57) and the minute the checks stop this becomes the core cadre of a full-fledged ehlissist revolutionary movement.
You're making these ideas of mine so much better!
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