The Kingdom of Okar

The lands of Okar are the frontier between the Free Realms and the Lands of the Eye, and the northlands that play home to the goblinoids and the giantkin. For eons, those who hold the line against these threats to peace, order and stability have resided in Okar. From high elven ancients to wood elven rangers, then finally on to half-elven aristocrats, Okar as been referred to as both its own independent realm and as a part of various others. Today, there exists both a City of Okar and a Kingdom of Okar that includes the ancient and cursed cities of Mitra Sar and Aith (now called Thorn). 
For more than an age, Okar has been a largely abandoned land without organized government. As a result, various folks have used its near-wild status as a refuge or a place to seek out opportunity and secrets. Okar has a long and storied history as a bulwark against chaos and evil, and as a base by which its sister realm of Othune and other Free Realms have been saved.

History

City-State
During the Age of Myth, Okar and its surrounding area was home to the city-state of Mitra Sar, an ancient high elven outpost dedicated to metalcraft, and later, artifice. The surrounding area fell under the influence of Mitra Sar, but its towns and villages were largely allowed to exist outside of organized government.
It is during this era that Urza the Orange adopted Mitra Sar and the territory as his new homeland. Before his ascension, he worked here creating wonders and helping his master, Yaro the Wandering Star, create the first runes, forms and tomes of arcane magic.
Silvermoon
During the Age of Heroes, the City-State of Mitra Sar joined with the neighbouring city-states of Ellarune Dure and Aith/Thorn (and the Tannithi Forest to the southeast) to form the Realm of Silvermoon. The capital city of Silvermoon became the city of Aith (Thorn), and it was home to the renowned and beleaguered Prince Mishra before his fall and the rise of the Black Empire of the Worm King. Silvermoon was renowned for its artifice from Mitra Sar, its drama and music from Aith (Thorn), and its great architecture and temple-grounds from Ellarune.
When Mishra was humiliated and disappeared into exile, the realm of Silvermoon was subject to the predations of the Worm King, Nymarga the Green. The orphaned child of a high elven noblewoman and a wood elven priest, Nymarga the Fanedweller was raised in the temples of the city-states of the Garden. He grew to become a genius level intellect and an expert in the ways of magic both divine and arcane. He hated his people and the culture for what it did to misfits. In his rise, Nymarga used the souls and flesh of the high elves to power his profane quest for immortality. Silvermoon was no exception. The cities of Mitra Sar and Ellarune were cursed, and the city of Aith was drained of its high elven peoples. His lieutenant, the fleshcrafter Endrekh Sahr, took up residence in the realm and used its peoples as the fuel for his experiments.
Satrapy of the Black Empire
Okar weathered the dominance of the Worm King relatively well when compared to the realms of the Garden and the other high elven enclaves in what is now the Lakelands. Under the negligent governance of Endrekh Sahr, Othune and its more-developed surroundings were the focus of many “flesh harvests” but Okar was protected due to their oath to keep to their watchtowers and to guard the Black Empire from the orcs, the goblins and the giantkin.
Notably, it was at this time that Nymarga himself authorized enough resources for the watchtowers to be upgraded and the most central of them to be upgraded significantly. The current Watchtower of Okar was founded and built during this time, and for an Age and a Half, it was the tallest structure in the western lands. It would form the center of the city of Okar an Age later, as well…. It was during this time that there became a separation between the lands of Othune and Okar, with the latter falling under the purview of the Watchtower Kings.
After the Last War
Othune rose up in rebellion very quickly after the return of Mishra the Purple hundreds of years later, but the fallout after the rebellion was not good for the area. It had been bled too much by the Worm himself in the early years, and then again during the satrapy days by Endrekh Sahr and his followers. Othune was largely cleansed of its older, high elven inhabitants by this time. It wouldn’t be until the various peoples of Okar would take notice and strike.
The peoples of Okar were huddled together under the protection of the Watchtower Kings and their agreement with the Worm King to stand aside and look to the external threats beyond. By and large, they did, but in doing so they founded the City of Okar itself around the Grand Tower. It was only when the attention of the Black Empire was drawn to other lands in rebellion that the Watchtower Kings would themselves abdicate their power and allow the Torchbearers -- as much a religious order as a militant one -- to take the reins and make war upon the Fleshcrafter and force him and his vile creations into hiding.
By the time of the Battle of Lundar Plateau and unleashing the Unsound upon the legions of Leshrac Blackheart, the power had shifted from Othune under the Worm to the Torchbearers from Okar. At the end of the Age of Heroes, the Torchbearers would preside over the re-founding of the Kingdom of Othune which unified the territories of Mitra Sar, Thorn (formerly Aith), Ellarüne Duré, and now the newly-founded cities of Okar-proper and Ellarüne Lyria.
Blood and Fire
During the time of what would be called the Second Founding, the Kingdom of Othune would be vibrant and active in the consolidation of peace and order throughout the surrounding territories. Not long afterwards, the wood elves of the Tannithi Forest would formally rejoin the realm and create an even stronger bond between the elven and half-elven peoples of the area. (Incidentally, the Tannithi elves are amongst the last remaining wood elves in the far northwest and far western lands of the People of the Blood. The remainder fled the ruins of the Black Empire and founded the “New Realm of the Elves” on the western shores of the Sea of the Saviour -- what the humans of the Free Realms and Lakelands call Lyria or the Queen’s Realm today is that same realm.
The time of the Second Founding of Othune left Okar as the frontier province to be reinforced against the orcs, goblins and giantkin who were resurgent and opportunistic in the times of the downfall of the Worm King.

Regarding Goblins, Hobgoblins and Bugbears
The goblins occupy a strange place in the worldview of the People of the Blood. It is believed that they were a failed and rejected creation of Getima the Fierce Queen and Seedrik the King-in-Exile during their time as a secret coupling. Unlike the Goddess of the Hunt, goblins were a deep disappointment to the Fierce Queen. Rejected in their entirety, they were exiled into the crags, mountains and tundras of the northern wastes. The goblins existed in squalor and separated from any divine spark for an age, until another exiled power took to hiding in their dreams.
After their defeat, Irré the Black Sun and his consort Leera the Crimson Moon both took up hiding places in the dreams of the goblinoid peoples. From there, the pair guided the development of the goblins and embarked upon a campaign of breeding smarter and more resilient forms of goblin. Concurrent to the rise of the Worm King, the goblinoids were split into subraces. The masters of the new “Empire of the Black Sun” would be the hobgoblins, taller and more organized than their smaller cousins. Their enforcers would be the bulky and mystically inclined bugbears, who would perform the priestly and arcane functions for the nascent realm honouring the God of Cruelty and Catastrophe.
Despite his methods, the Worm King still existed as a part of the People of the Blood and regarded himself as merely the best of them. He did not pay homage to the Black Sun nor the Crimson Moon. In fact, Nymarga did not regard the Pantheon in anything other than a neutral stance. With the ascension of Urza for his efforts at ending the invasion of Vadrik, Nymarga would demand, seek and win his own ascension into true immortality. As a result, he viewed the Divine Usurpation as an active threat to his own designs, and took steps to neutralize its influence on any of his intended outcomes.
This is why he reinforced the lines of the Watchtower Kings. Knowing that they were bound by their oaths of duty and fealty at the beginning of his Black Empire, the Watchtower Kings would see to the goblinoid, orcish and giantkin threat. When the Empire fell, and the Watchtower Kings stepped aside, the power of the oaths were circumvented and Othune and Okar entered a new age. One in which the hobgoblins would exploit to the best of their ability.

The Civil War in Othune and the Sundering of Okar
It wouldn’t be for a thousand years after the Unsound and the Long Winter, but the Second Founding of Othune (including Okar) would be subject to another great challenge. This time, the threat came from within the royal family of Othune in Ellarüne Lyria, in the form of a jealous brother corrupted by the last remnants of the Worm. By the end of the civil war, the Kingdom of Othune would have a dead king and an infant for an heir. Okar would bear the brunt of the opportunistic attacks by giantkin raiders, incursions of orcish hordes, and assaults by goblinoid legions of the Black Sun.
By the time of Fortias the Brave eight centuries later, the situation had grown dire. Okar’s surrounding lands had been ravaged by constant warfare with only three* of the seven watchtowers holding fast and avoiding conquest or destruction (*Okar-proper, Moonstone and the Needle). Othune was on its heels, unable to support the Torchbearers to the degree that it used to due to the severe damage inflicted upon the Great Foundry and Armoury that would lead to its redevelopment into the Grand Arsenal we know today.
Despite the difficulties, Fortias the Brave would be the bridge that united the Torchbearers with the bloodline of the Watchtower Kings. He would be proclaimed Warden of Okar and the singular Watchtower King by the King of Othune, thereby officially separating the two lands once more.
With the coming of Fortias the Brave and then Yarna Greatspeaker, and then the ultimate defeat of Leshrac Blackheart, the lands of Okar are ravaged seemingly beyond repair. Okar is largely abandoned save for some stalwarts who hold the line in the remaining two citadels -- not Moonstone and not Okar-proper. It is at this time that the old Throne of Okar, the one created in Aith for the Prince of Silvermoon, disappears…
Tears for an Empire and the Rise of the Guild of Wizards
During the occupation of the region by the Dwarven Empire, the Torchbearers are often reinforced with human levies and several dwarven legionary engineering cohorts. This leads to some protected routes to the three rebuilt and reinforced Watchtowers. Despite these efforts, the Grand Tower is left alone, Moonstone is lost to the wilderlands once more, and the Needle remains abandoned. The remaining three Watchtowers are redesigned by the dwarven legion’s engineers and constructed using human labour -- they hold and are quite effective deterrents to the orcs, but the goblinoids and the ogre tribes largely circumnavigate Okar and Othune in favour of attacking Eos, Aldoon and even the Imperial Remnant.
Regional stability is threatened when the last dwarven legionary leaves their permanent station at Grand Fork in the now-human realm of the Grand Duke of Istvan’s Reach, Faradan the Second of House Koskun. And while the Grand Duke’s son and grandson would see the fall of their house and the rise of King Elsin of Eos several decades later, the Shield Lands would turn to their own affairs and leave Othune and Okar to its own devices.
While the Free Realms were established with relatively peaceful negotiations, Othune and Okar would be held from much of the development of an independent, western economy and political order due to the maturation of the Arcanum at roughly the same time. While Othune and its Grand Arsenal were still the primary source for many quality and magically enchanted arms and amour, the advent of the Church’s domain in Eastern Icatia and the establishment of the Grand Tower of the Arcanum in Eos meant that Othune and Okar might enjoy reasonable relations with their neighbours, they would not enjoy the economic benefits of the human world of trade and commerce.
An Ebon Praetor's Prophecy
Since its founding somewhere in the Free Realms and the Lakelands, the Order of the Ebon Hand has always had an interest in the far off affairs of Othune and Okar. While it was relatively straightforward to infiltrate the human realms to the south, the Ebon Hand took great pains to ensure their activities were subtle and pervasive in the lands of half-elven blood. It wasn’t until the events in Tannith Vale and the Midnight Massacre that the Ebon Hand took a more active role in the affairs of Othune and Okar. On the tail of a prophecy bidding the (re)establishment of an independent Kingdom of Okar, the Order attacks and completely destroys an Abbey and order of Sworn Sisters of Hatha.
Now, it becomes evident that the Order has been pursuing the work of Endrekh Sahr the Fleshcrafter, and they have adopted the use of blood magic, fleshcrafting and the breeding of the stitched-together enslaved race known as thrulls. Coupled with their martial prowess, skilled espionnage, and already-considerable knowledge of arcana and the underworld, the addition of these ancient secrets pose a serious threat to the stability of the entirety of the Free Realms.

Territories

A hill-bound forestland serves as the border between Okar and Othune, it is cut by two rivers that flow southeast through Othune and into the Kingdom of Eos where one becomes a tributary to the Brigden River and the other cuts deeper south and into the borderlands of the Republic of Westervale. The borders between Okar and the orcish lands to the east are a combination of rocky scrublands and gently rolling, grassy hills. To the north, the terrain is mostly rocky scrubland that moves into craggy and broken valleys and foothills. 
Central Okar is primarily oriented around the two river valleys that play host to Aith/Thorn in the south and Mitra Sar in the north. The rivers come without two leagues of one-another, separated by a large and round hill where the grand tower of Okar and its surrounding city is located. When sown and managed properly, the agricultural lands are very productive when planted with crops such as potatoes, oats, and hardy grains that can stand wetter environments. The lands surrounding Mitra Sar are host to some of the largest and most-ancient fruit and nut orchards, but it has largely been overgrown due to lack of inhabitants.

Type

Geopolitical, Kingdom

Capital

Okar Tower City

Demonym

Okaran

Leader

King Rylanor the First

Government System

Monarchy, Absolute

Power Structure

Feudal state

Economic System

Mixed economy

Official State Religion

The Old Faith

Location

The Free Realms

Neighboring Nations

• Kingdom of Othune

Related Ethnicities

• People of the Blood