Ardheim

Languages: Talahaean, Weisspeil (northern dialect), Rotspiel (southern dialect)
Administrative Divisions: Red Country (south), Grey Country (central), White Country (north)
Cities: Galbriga, Weissgard, Dreihaus

Geography

The temperate highlands of Ardheim lie between the Spine and the forested plains of Kavala. The great Oldwood forest once stretched from one mountain range to the other, but since the fall of the Holy Kingdom the wild places have been driven back into pockets and preserves to make space for cities and growing urban populations. The mines in the eastern foothills of the Spine are rich in coal, tin, silver and iron, while the cleared lowlands are rich growing and grazing country.
Ardheim is split into three administrative divisions. The south of the province is the Red Country, governed from the provincial capital in Galbriga. This is the stronghold of the traditional aristocracy, the families of the sacred estates who broke with the God-Queen and burned Rotstadt during the War of Hubris. The centre of the province is the Grey Country, the centre of mining activity in Ardheim and centre of power for the guilds. The great urban centre of the Grey Country is the trade town of Dreihaus, which controls river trade across the province. Finally, the north of Ardheim consists of the largely ungoverned White Barrens and the White Country: a broad stretch of lawless, monster-haunted wilderness, and the rugged borderlands below Berngaard, which are governed from Weissgard. The government of the White Country is constituted from a mixture of estates and guilds, but dominated by the Orders of the Forbidden.

History

Even in the time of the Regime, zenith of civilisation, the Oldwood was the untamed domain of the Wood Elves. Yet it was a human who eventually declared that the great forest was now the ‘Holy Kingdom’, and proclaimed herself its God-Queen. What her name was, none recall, but she was a druid who was reputed to migrate her soul from one body to another each time she aged. She rose to power fighting against a lich known as the Dead Hand, master of the Cult of the Undying King, then made alliances with the druids and the fey to transform her domain into a place of unbounded nature and wild energy, strange and unpredictable.
She and her ministers were overthrown by the Union late in the War, after the paladins and templars battled through the hosts of otherworldly (fey) monstrosities.
The God-Queen’s capital was Rotstadt in the warmer south of the Kingdom, close to the current provincial capital Galbriga. The north was ruled almost as a client dominion by the White Baron, a title held by the Queen’s current favourite, from the fortress of Weissgard, which now belongs to the Orders of the Forbidden.
The northern part is still known as the White Country, and is separated from southern Ardheim by the wilderness of the White Barrens. The south is now called the Red Country, the area south of the Barrens is the Grey Country, and is adminstered from the rising mercantile power in the city of Dreihaus.

Social/Political

In the Holy Kingdom, society under the God-Queen was a strict arcanocracy, with noble houses ranked according to their collective arcane or druidic power, and the Queen's favourites forming a council called the Ring of Oak and Ash. Strict rules of honour governed their interactions to prevent internecine strife. After the War, the former aristocracy was purged, and many from the lower ranks of the peerage attained greater rank by informing on erstwhile patrons for their ties to the sacred hierarchy or the fey; all in the name of family honour, of course. The Guilds were weak to begin with because commerce had little place or status under the Queen’s absolute rule, but they were theoretically pure of fae influence. The result has been a steady shift of power and influence from the rural aristocracy to the urban middle class. Although many of the druids of Ardheim were unaligned with the God-Queen, their ties to the Feywild prompted a backlash against them, and resulted in their ongoing persecution by the Church. This assault was led by the Orders of the Forbidden.
Ardheim is now the main industrial power of the Republic. It lacks the technological innovation of Altea‘s academies, but with its resources - especially ores and coal from the mines in the Spine - and the development of water-, wind- and even steam-powered factories, Ardheim’s manufacturing base is unmatched. Most of the cities of the province have predominantly industrial economies and consequently large urban populations. The growth of the cities is driven and guided by high elf urban planners, who are often overmatched by the speed of modernisation and thus the cities do not serve their poorer residents well. The wealth of the cities is concentrated in the hands of the few, most of whom are the masters of the guilds.
The countryside of Ardheim is still somewhat wild and weird from the influence of the Primal Wild, despite the constant attentions of the Church of the Eightfold Way, Banishers and the Orders. In an attempt to curb this wildness, as well as to feed the demand for wood, both for construction and for fuel, much of the ancient forest of Ardheim has been felled in the past century, leading to considerable tension between the Wood Elves and the High Elves. As in the cities, wealth belongs to the few, in this case the rural landowners, mostly survivors of the old aristocracy. A drive towards partitioning the land into larger and larger farms has led to a shift of population from failing villages to the over-populated slums of the cities. Only around the mines is the rural population stable.