Evantar (Ev-ahn-tar)
Tucked away in the furthest Northwestern corner of Eketen is the region known as 'the Azavarn' or 'the Dragon's Claw', a pocket of reclaimed coastal wasteland insulated from the Deverkel Wastes by a small range of mountains and hills. The beating heart of the Azavarn is the town of Evantar, which has led the region into pseudo-independence since the Empire fell into chaos some twenty years ago.
The sea grows more strange and unpredictable as one approaches the wasteland; the Haunted Point of Raynok, the nightmare core created by the only oceanic Ederstone meteor, twists the waters and their inhabitants into something alien. The waters are often a soft grey-white with streaks of inky blackness and opalescent bubbles, and they crash on the shores near Evantar bearing bundles of dead organic matter that aren't seaweed but aren't anything else either. The beaches are stained strange colors and the sand feels abnormally soft. The hills over the beaches are verdant green, but the trees can twist in strange ways and often bear oddly-shaped leaves. Small villages dot the approach to the town, all of them on hills and enclosed in small walls. The ocean is just as much a source of potential terror as the land, and no one is taking any chances.
Inland, dirt roads and rocky paths wind through the farming villages. The sense of tension and readiness to face the horrors of the world don't leave when one goes further in. The alien sea is replaced by strange clouds drifting in from the East and all kinds of unusual plant and animal life. Nonetheless, the roads are usually decently safe and life seems to keep at a normal pace. Trading caravans and farmers trundle down the roads towards town, soldiers march along the way, and the occasional wooden watchtower stands over a crossroads.
The town of Evantar sits along the coast, its grey walls and towers sometimes matching the warped waters beside it. Fields of corn, rice, and potatoes all radiate out from town, a mass of agricultural work done under the comforting watch of a fortress. The town itself appears to be mostly that: a fortress. Behind the outer walls of the town are the interior walls of a castle complex, and more walls around essential castle-related services. The town within those walls is cramped and certainly lively: markets bustle with barter and common goods, large outdoor corpse appraisers dissect bits of dead mutated life to search for anything of value, and tradesmen toil away in their workshops. Soldiers are everywhere, and the most valuable trade goods seem to find their way up to the castle; the smiths always forge swords before plows in Evantar.
At the Eastern corner of town is the Castle town, the walled enclosure for military-related shops, markets, residences, and services. Recruits practice in the training yards, fletchers chat as they ready arrow after arrow in the courtyards, and stablehands trot the mounts out to pasture. The officer elites all live here, in modest but comparatively spacious and luxurious houses and apartments above the common barracks and workshops. The top brass live in the fortress proper, in the flurry of paperwork, maps, and steel that is Evantar HQ.
At the Western corner of town is Port-town: a more run-down part of town connected to the docks. The docks themselves are unusually large for a town like this - at the South end, a huge abandoned drydocks now serve as a place for the homeless, the sick, and the lost. The North end is still used, with selkie ships or Hainish caravels arriving now and again, but these merchants and travelers are essentially sectioned off into their own luxury portside housing away from the rest of the decrepit harbor. Fishermen still use the center docks, and an enormous cat community helps them maintain the place; the cats have even taken over the old port authority building, which has become a self-governing cat dance hall and mayoral palace.
At the Northern corner of town, monster hunters and merchant caravans comingle. The orderly homogeny of the rest of town becomes a brilliant mixture of languages and fashions, as portside merchants, land merchants, and wasteland mercenaries brush shoulders and trade stories.
Evantar is practical; Evantar is orderly; Evantar is safe. These are the guiding tenants of this town, and by extension this region. It isn't big, it isn't perfect, but it sustains life.
Demographics
Government
Evantar is ruled by a military oligarchy known as the Council of Commanders, which is elected from among the top officers. At the top is the General, who is elected for life as the supreme executive from among the 6 commanders. Beneath them are the upper officers, who are elected from among the lower officers, who are chosen from the most disciplined of the subaltern soldiers. Local neighborhood elites and artisan masters act as the loose and largely-powerless civilian government, whose primary purpose are just to find ways to implement the military's commands.
The General of Evantar, master of the Dragon's Claw and supreme authority of the land, is Yoska Delvergen. Yoska is a Vesper from Selvergen who joined the military not long before the civil war. She was stationed in Evantar by pure coincidence, and ended up rising in the ranks as a military leader and monster hunter from 2000 to 2015. In 2015, as the old General Rimura retired, Yoska was chosen as a suitably callous and pragmatic replacement and was promptly elected. She has continued doing the impossible militarily, but her popularity has waned: she is too conservative, too married to the old ways that she inherited and almost died dozens of times trying to preserve to lead well now that trade and imperial politics are back on the table.
Another reason for Yoska's difficulty governing is a feud in the shadows behind the officers: a fight within the leading clique that threatens to rip Evantar apart. For among the founding officers of the Evantar government, there was a group known as the Champion's Club, who discussed what philosophies should guide the land and what policies should be taken. The Champion's Club was also a Lunar Cult of Wimbo Aizitu, God of Heroes, whom they beseeched for guidance and support in fighting back chaos. For much of the last decade, Wimbo has supported them (and tried unsuccessfully to restrain their worse tendencies), but he has grown frustrated with them over the years. Now, faced with the God's displeasure, many are pushing for them to turn to other Gods (such as Orchid of Blue, Ishkibal, Jade Atharzen, or Lily of Red), while Yoska and the old guard believe that only loyalty to the God of heroes will save the province.
Also complicated matters are agents of the Duke of Kasteny, ruler of Selvergen and one of the larger imperial vestiges. The Duke has been pressuring Evantar into asking him for vassalage, and many would prefer to have outside help in their struggle.
Defences
Evantar's defenses are grand for the region: a modern well-built fortress and two sets of firm walls, manned by a sizable garrison.
Industry & Trade
Decades ago Evantar was a center of trade and shipping, and shipbuilding and dockwork were two of the town's largest industries. When Evantar was cut off from this trade and placed under new leadership, the town pivoted towards more local industry: carpentry, weaving, farming, and mining. Basic smelters at nearby villages send ore here to be forged into weapons and tools, and raw resources from across the region are sent here to be turned into something more. Evantar is the sole manufacturing center of the region, as specialists are taken from villages to work for the military in town. Plenty of farmers, fishermen, and the herders also use Evantar as a safe haven to keep their children safe while they work outside the walls. If Evantar falls, the entire region loses their artisans and the province dies; this is by design.
Land caravans moving to trade across the Deverkel wastes use Evantar as a base to resupply and trade at, and an increasing number of naval expeditions do as well. A lively trade in monster parts is also here, connected to merchant caravans South.
Infrastructure
Evantar has a fine sewer system, freshwater system, and town roads, all built by the old empire when there was a belief that Evantar would one day blossom into a trading city. There is also a large port, but that is not well maintained and is doing less well; only the efforts of cats have stopped it from falling entirely to decay, and cats can only do so much.
The biggest issue currently facing Evantar is medical infrastructure: the only hospital is reserved for soldiers and it relies more on a handful of paladins than any real medical tradition. The efforts to centralize all artisans and limit them to 'practical' trades led to the destruction of local medical traditions, and there is a severe shortage in any kind of herbal medical practitioners. The cramped conditions and intense stress of the town lead to some pretty bad outbreaks of disease.
Guilds and Factions
The Officers: The military is the government here. Soldiers stand above everyone else. Officers stand above them. They tell the artisans what to do, they manage construction, they determine what the law even is. Cross them at your peril, as the only thing that can bring justice against an officer is another officer.
The Champion's Club: A not-so-secret club of officers that meet in Evantar castle, the Champion's Club is a Lunar Cult devoted to Wimbo, God of Heroes. The Club is an ideological and social group more than a religious one, though its rituals are complex and arcane (to better exclude outsiders). They are currently divided between Wimbo loyalists, who believe that great personal sacrifice is required to win back their God, and dissenters who want to pivot to other Lunar Gods.
The Merchant Families: The families with connections to wasteland groups, who manage the land caravans to Hain. They also manage diplomacy and contracts with wasteland monster hunters and mercenaries. Perhaps the only group able to challenge the military without brutal reprisals.
The Uvaran Temple: There is one large Uvaran temple in town, supported by three chapels. No other religion has any kind of established religious structure here, and everyone turns to the Uvaran priests regardless of belief. The handful of novice priests are led by the one elder priest, Father Artel, a compassionate prism-like Starspawn man who is beloved by the townsfolk. Father Artel is close with the Merchant Families and prefers them over the military, to much enlisted grumbling.
The Mischief Court: The Mischief Court is the local Jellicle Court of Evantar and the government of the local cats. They rule from the abandoned port authority building and they welcome all who would join them - they define catkind by joining the jellicle dances and balls, and anyone who will speak their language and dance among them is welcome. They maintain the docks, which they call the Fishyweather Walk, and they are said to be patrons of pranksters and petty thieves in town. The government doesn't like them, but tolerates their antics as long as they keep the docks in decent shape. Their leader is named Elder Revelation, an old star-touched cat of interwoven crystal and flesh whose wisdom and gentle nature are respected across town.
History
Evantar began as a fortress outpost intended to support possible colonial efforts in the region in 1740. It was created by the Kingdom of Azavarn, an Eketeni state that was essentially an aristocratic offshoot from the larger kingdom of Raldet that was eager to claim new land to legitimize itself. Azavarn struggled to fight the wasteland alone, and its uncompromising and unforgiving attitude to the groups that already called the region home seriously undermined their attempts. A century later, in 1850, Azavarn seemed doomed to be yet another failed wasteland expedition: their commoners were mass-defecting from their labor camps, their neighbors were raiding them, and their warriors were dying faster than they were being replenished. When the rising Empire of Eketen offered them vassalage, Azavarn accepted, but their leadership quietly tried to maintain their independence. In 1870, Azavarn used the chaos of a nearby rebellion in Selvergen to try to remove imperial agents and steal imperial resources, hoping that it was too small to be noticed. They were wrong, and the local elites were purged and replaced with the Eketeni military and a small Central Eketeni aristocratic family, the Benevs.
From 1871 to 1880, Azavarn was radically changed by the new regime. Less force was used to compel work and more security was offered. Local groups were bribed or entreatied. The region still struggled, especially since a surge of young people left as soon as they were allowed, but the stage was set for the province to become something better. And, with the nautical journey to Hain charted in 1880 by the expedition of Captain Olonya, Azavarn was ready to thrive. Evantar was the departure point for Olonya's route; Azavarn served a purpose now. From 1880 to 1960, Evantar exploded in wealth and population. The empire invested in superior defenses, sewers, and water infrastructure, as well as in more troops for the countryside. And then, in 1960, imperial attention pivoted Eastward, to the brewing civil wars.
As a military center that has rich, out of the way, and largely autonomous, Evantar attracted many of the more eccentric and radical officers of the Eketeni military. Those who plotted the destruction of the Eastern aristocratic establishment would seek posts in Evantar to accumulate trade money and scheme; the local Benev family felt like they were being invaded. In 1989, the internal feuding between the Benev counts and the military clique reached a fever pitch, and the officers were able to use their political connections to drive the aristocrats out entirely. The clique now enjoyed total autonomy and freedom. Over the 1990s many of the more ambitious of these officers left to pursue their goals across the Empire, forming a covert faction dubbed 'the Heirs of Avenek'. The less ambitious idealists who wanted more radical but local change stayed, and used the province as an experiment in total military-bureaucratic rule.
When the Heirs of Avenek assassinated the Empress in 2000, Eketen entered a civil war that the Empire never recovered from. The local clique carried on business as usual as their former compatriots tried to take over the empire, but the status quo they relied on was over. As the empire fought, trade withered; without state insurance and subsidies for naval convoys to Hain, captains sailed South instead of North for trade. As imperial funding for Evantar's defenses suddenly ended, monsters began to wander past the abandoned outposts and into the province. Without naval patrols and squiddle mercenaries, the waters were no longer safe. The naval route to Hain just about died after nearly a quarter of the imperial caravels vanished during trips to Hain from 2000 to 2002, and Evantar's primary source of income ended.
The utopian officers decided that now was the time for strength, and began aggressively reorganizing the region to be more self-sufficient. Mines were opened up, lumberyards made, and "non essential" artisans were forced to become laborers or soldiers. Resistance was greeted with swift, merciless force. Villages who supported resistance were abandoned to monster attacks. It was a tough time and the government grew to be very unpopular, but things became more stable and less draconian over time. Many died, control shrank, and the land became more dangerous, but self-sustainability was achieved. A new identity, that of the communalist warrior-survivor, emerged both as a coping mechanism and was co-opted by the military. The clique's popularity slowly recovered as village elites identified with the new order. When the great ceasefire was called in 2014, a new order was formalized in Evantar, complete with military elections and official titles.
In 2015, new ships from Hain began to arrive with some regularity and trade returned to the land. Other imperial actors also began trying to trade and work with Evantar, hoping to drag this isolationist enclave back into imperial politics. Evantar has tentatively accepted overtures to return to the greater world, but they do so with great suspicion: they would rather be independent and die as their own tiny microstate than surrender the power they've built over the last decade.
Independent Evantar
Founding Date
1740 ME
Type
Town
Population
4,000 humanoids
Inhabitant Demonym
Eventaran
Location under
Owning Organization
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