Kingcardine

Art Credit: CGlas, https://www.deviantart.com/cglas/gallery/45772402/environment

Assets

With nearly 8 million people and almost 60,000 square miles of land, Kingcardine is home to great wealth and plentiful resources. The nearby Rune River is abundant in mineral deposits, aquatic resources, and meat, among others. To the west is the Vastwood and its many lumber yards, as well as the foothills of the Green Line, rich with game and metal. Among Kingcardine's most valuable assets is its neighbor, Waleah. Through trade and good relations, the nation is able to access Mirinium, and the many magical devices made possible by the wonder metal.

History

Kingcardine's beginnings are highly mythologized, but despite conflicting testimony on its exact founding, there is still a well-known story, perhaps slightly embellished by history. It began as a single merchant stall in the dirt of a wide and flat clearing, a way station between The Colum Kingdom and the far east, meant for travelers and settlers to get their bearings in relative safety before resuming their journey. It didn’t take long for a roadside inn to pop up, then several taverns, an assortment of complimentary service shops like blacksmiths or tailors, residences, parks, and tourist attractions, the telltale signs of civilization. A major moment for the town-to-be was the incorporation of its first merchants' guild, an organization that still operates to this day, named Kingcardine First Trust. The guild began as a coalition of traders who were more comfortable in the city than traveling the road and pooled their resources together to establish a series of civil projects to make Kingcardine feel more like the city it was beginning to grow into. They came together to form an interlinked system of banks, a system that is now spread across the whole of Kingcardine, and called themselves the National Bank of Kingcardine.
The settlement continued to grow every day, becoming a conurbation of many dozens of urban areas and townships, but it lacked a solid and trusted government structure. Without a land grant from Colum or official recognition from the crown, Kingcardine was technically an unincorporated territory, no different from a random hamlet but for its size. This gave a grand idea to its most powerful institution, the National Bank. Because their city operated as though it was a member state of the Terisian league, but had no representation among the Colum Protectorate nor any obligation to operate under its strictures, they could take advantage of a legal loophole. The National Bank was able to organize all of Kingcardine’s existing infrastructure, shops, and citizens under itself as a corporate hierarchy, assuming direct control of the city and its nearly million inhabitants. An official guild charter was written in 1286 E.Y. and included among its inventory several hundred businesses located within an area of 20,000 acres—the charter also included a membership numbering more than 700,000. From that point forward, Kingcardine was considered to be the largest guild in the world. This acknowledgment. however, is purely a legal hypothesis and none who interact with or live within the city are required to accomplish guild tasks or complete quests. Regular citizens live and work within the nation as they would any other settlement. Those who are well connected in their business, or can draw their heritage back to the founding of Kingcardine, bear special responsibilities as well as unique benefits that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.
Individuals or business entities that own a controlling share of any organization that was incorporated under the National Bank in 1286 are automatically given rights as Guildmasters, exercising those rights as the Board of Directors, the official government of Kingcardine. Over the centuries, many of the businesses have merged, been acquired, and shallowed their executive class, even still the Board maintains more than 12,000 members. Although each has rights to vote, speak, and direct, each member is only as powerful as their controlling share and the number of organizations they command. The Chief Executive of the Board is none other than Pendleton Van Eiss, a man who can trace his family back to the Kingcardine’s first inn, the Gilded Snail. His share of the city is not known, and estimates are purposefully foiled by his corporate secrecy campaigns, but it can be intuited that he possesses at least twice as much as his next closest competitor, Lady Diare Luren, who controls 7% of all incorporated businesses in the city.
With one of the largest populations in Terisirae and the second largest number of adventurers, Kingcardine is a massive geopolitical force. Since the Impetus, it has been a popular stop thanks to its incredible security, its proximity to the Rune River, and its access to the wonder metal Mirinium. Enormous and powerful guilds flock to the city, including one of the coveted High Powers, the Rune Runners, which was founded within its area in 643 Y.E. Because of Kingcardine’s long history, financial strength, and plentiful markets, the Merchant’s Hollow has seen success where other similar settlements have failed. For all its past, and far into the future, Kingcardine will always be one of Terisirae’s premiere settlements.

This entry is narrated by Isaac Razor 

Founding Date

1800s E.Y.

Type

Geopolitical, Country

Alternative Names

The Board, Big Bucket, Merchant’s Hollow, Executive Empire

Demonym

Kardinian

Head of State

Pendleton Van Eiss

Government System

Oligarchy

Power Structure

Autonomous area

Economic System

Market economy

Legislative Body

The Board guides Kingcardine’s legal, judicial, and market practices. It is a corporate round table comprised of all the majority shareholders for the city’s incorporated businesses, making it the largest representative republic on the planet by an immense margin, each with a voice proportional to the amount of the city they hold in their names or in the names of a businesses they operate. While it has over 12,000 members, many of them combine their voices and shares into blocks that vote with similar interests, the oldest of these blocks hold so much of the city under so few names that they are colloquially referred to as families. In fact, five families control more than 40% of Kingcardine’s votes and voices. They are the Tyrodius, Razor, Kelaria, and Luren families. The largest are the Van Eiss, whose only surviving member, Pendleton, is the single richest and most powerful man in all of Kingcardine, and commands more total votes than the other four families combined.

Parent Organization

The Country of Terisirae

Neighboring Nations

• Waleah