Kingdom of Vetenka

Vetenka is the kingdom in Andrig, known for its hardy woodsmen, keen hunters, and vigilant warriors. The Scouringwood Wastes push through Vetenka, and are beaten back with fire and steel. The forests' constant onslaught provides Vetenka with lumber, furs, and meats to sell; while Vetenka struggles to farm for itself, there is a boisterous commercial economy here.
Vetenka is a living frontier, the most perilous part of Andrig that sits always on the edge of destruction. Many times Vetenka has fallen entirely to chaos; there are no old Vetenkans left, only the remnants of ancient cultures. The people here understand that they are the bulwark against Kivish Scourings and the monstrosities of the Chaos Wastes. There is a pride to being the bulwark, a sense of guardianship and status. There is also a constant stress and fear; Vetenkans are always preparing for the worst even as they project cautious optimism. They are torn between a panicked impulse to wage desperate war against the threats on their borders, and a deep yearning to make peace somehow. They are survivors, displaced people making the best of a terrible situation.

Structure

Vetenka is a hereditary monarchy, where the crown is expected to move from parent to child (or grandchild). Supporting the monarch are seven counts, who each have a tract of land that they rule over in the interior. There is also a developing bureaucracy, staffed by a mix of merchants, clergy, and lesser nobles, who work to coordinate military action, production, and trade. This bureaucracy is led by the Royal Cabinet, a high council of four ministers: the Treasurer, the Minister Secretary, the Minister of Defense, and the Chancellor. The Treasurer handles the budget, the Secretary handles coordination between counts and noble-led labor contracts, the Minister of Defense handles military infrastructure, and the Chancellor handles the courts and commercial disputes. The counts all answer to this bureaucracy, and while they hold immense local power they are not very autonomous.
The current reigning monarch is Queen Fellakina I Neshelna, a silver-tongued Half-dryad with an eye for budgets and paperwork. She is a charming queen, competent and confident, but her empathetic attitude hides a deep callousness for human life. She learned all her life that this is a fragile land, and that many lives will be lost if anything goes wrong; there is no cost too high for success. She applies this attitude towards anything she does, and has normalized unflinching ruthlessness and radical intolerance for opposition. She is also rather prone to self-indulgence in feasting and revelry. Her enemies say she is the picture of a tyrant, but her allies point to the many successes her kingdom has achieved. Of Fellakina's weaknesses, a tendency to create contradictory or difficult-to-navigate laws is the most acutely felt of the commonfolk; her radical reforms have been very result-oriented, and her laws have been opaque and vague to the point of unusability to better accommodate the needs of her government.
Fellakina's daughter, Princess Kondra Neshelna, lacks most of her mother's sharp edges. She is a capable and competent administrator, skilled in the areas her mother is weak (notably law). Kondra is a deft navigator of court politics, and is almost scary in how well she reads people; she unsurprisingly works closely with her mother's spymaster. Kondra herself isn't very fond of assassins or blackmail, though; she prefers softer tactics that are less likely to make enemies. While her charm, ideals, and skills may seem like ideal monarch material, she has some major flaws as well. Most notably, she overcorrects for her mother's ruthlessness and is a little "soft" as a leader. She refrains from taking hard action even when it makes sense to, and while that is hardly an issue while her mother is in charge, it will be when Kondra takes power. The Princess also has no love for battle and is terrible at military strategy. She fails to understand the wasteland much at all, as she has spent her life either at court or in Hain - she has avoided all learning opportunities as well, as she considers wasteland trauma to be the source of her mother's worse traits. Kondra's last major flaw is that she is terrible at pacing herself, and is prone to intense periods of work followed by intense periods of burnout where she acts out or makes poor decisions. In short,

Culture

Vetenkan local culture embraces cautious optimism and a gritty work-oriented ambition. You can make your life better, you can advance in status - not a pauper into a prince, perhaps, but there is a "Vetenkan standard" of upper-lower-class life that is seen as universally achievable and desirable. Everyone can make something for themselves, and those who try should be lauded. Hard work can solve most problems; a willingness to set out and make a new life can solve most others. If it sucks, hit the bricks and start anew. If you can't do that, you are a dependent - and therefore should quietly contribute and stay out of the way of the next generation of go-getters. This attitude gives agency to some, though certainly not all.
Work hard, play hard, get your due - this cultural attitude from the Kingdom of Verzavek to the North is accepted here as well. The intense religiosity of the Kingdom of Dovenar to the South is also here. There is a sense of comradeship against great Kivish and wasteland threats in Vetenka; all hard workers are contributing to a battle against evil and against the wilds, which permeates society. If the community sees them as contributors and hard workers doing the best they can, they are to be supported no matter the hardship. Lazybones, vagabonds, and swindlers are to be brought low and yoked by the community through vigilante justice and chains of debt. If they truly wanted to be self-serving, they should have gone into the frontier to fight for their self-serving dream like a real Vetenkan. 
In terms of food, the coast loves itself some smoked eel. Blood pudding is a national delicacy, as is black bread pudding. Pears are the fruit of Vetenka, and frequently appear in even common dishes. In the months of August and September, Vetenkans of all classes eat their beloved "Harvest-supper": string beans, pears, and salted bacon. Tilsit cheese is the standard Vetenkan cheese. Pear wine, beer, and Sanddorn (sea-buckthorn wine) are the local drinks.

History

Ancient History (Pre-1450)

Vetenka's ancient history is largely obscured by war and ruin. In the 400s ME, it was a vital part of Andrig - first as a home of wealthy city-states, then as an imperial province. The nearby chaos waste, now called the Scouringwoods, was net yet known as the incredibly aggressive home of monsters that it now is. When the province was destroyed by the first Kivish Scouring in the 500s, it is said that the forest began to grow dark and brooding. As Vetenka was destroyed again and again, the Scouringwoods began to drink in that violence. The woods crawled into Vetenka's countryside, tearing apart the ruined farmland and reclaiming the land as verdant forest. Monsters poured out, carving through the few towns or sanctuaries that remained. More than any part of Andrig, the early Scourings emptied Vetenka of people. The Eastern ruins of Vetenka proved to be such a challenge that the Kivish Empire used them as a testing ground for their royal family - the Children of Verkhon, the elite royals and aristocrats who were subjected to years of nonstop frontier violence as a way to "harden them up" before they could rule. The Children of Verkohn remained as a weird cult in the forest even after the empire collapsed in the 1000s ME. The Scouringwoods accepted them and their violence in a way, though it never stopped testing them.
In the 1100s, the Kingdom of Verzavek began trying to colonize Vetenka. The Kingdom avoided the unruly Children of Verkohn, who were allowed to hold onto the interior, while Verzavek built up the coastline. Normal life returned to Vetenka. Farms and towns flourished for two centuries, before relentless war returned to Vetenka as Hain and Kizen fought over the land yet again. Even then, it took until the 1400s for Vetenka to be absolutely destroyed - the 'War of False Prophets' saw mass violence that completely destabilized the landscape and led to a number of fresh recruits voluntarily joining the Children of Verkohn cult. The Children invaded in the 1420s, slaughtering those few who remained; the last refugees followed a strange mystic named the Mad Seer Zoromet into the wilds, seeking a legendary paradise somewhere in the wastes. These refugees were never heard of again, and likely died in the wastes.

Kivish Vetenka (1450 - 1729)

Following the end of the War of the False Prophets, the Children of Verkohn were drawn North into the military of the Empire of Kizen. While they were still radical and maintained a presence in the Scouringwoods, their involvement in formal geopolitics ended their days of raiding the Vetenka region. Some Truthful Path raiders persisted, but the main force of the Children of Verkohn now fought for the colonial efforts and not against them. The Truthful Path built up the port-citadel of Oltega as a connection point between their old lands and their new focus, and protected a cluster of new colonies there. Meanwhile, big Vezaven landlords sponsored colonial efforts moving in from the Northwest. 
According to their treaties with the Kingdom of Hain, the Empire of Kizen agreed not to annex or vassalize any land in Andrig, but these treaties did not bind their military aristocrats as individuals. From 1450 to 1680, Vetenka was formally composed of several independent states, that were ruled by merchants, cults, or aristocrats tied to the Kivish military. Over the late 1500s and 1600s, Vetenka was increasingly Kivish in all but name. By 1680, there were only two rival Vetenkan kingdoms that were heavily intertangled with each other: one ruled by Verzaven merchants, and the other ruled by the Children of Verkohn cult. 
In 1680, the Children of Verkohn's Northern branch embedded in the Imperial military participated in a radical theocratic Truthful Path coup. The Cult base in Vetenka quickly conquered its Verzaven rival and demanded annexation by the Empire in 1681. Vetenka retained its special status in those early decades as the laboratory of radical policy - slavery was first re-legalized here, and the military ruled with an iron fist. From 1680 to 1730, Vetenka was a miserable land of slavery and warfare. The castles and infrastructure grew, but so did the body count. Gruesome experiments were conducted here before anywhere else. For those fifty years, Vetenka was perhaps the worst place any slave could be taken to. 

Early Vetenka (1729 - 1954)

Vetenka was liberated by Hainish knights in the 1730s, and the land was claimed by House Neshelna of Hain. The line of Vetenkan rulers are known as the Krondenzols, the children of Lord Kronden Neshelna. The Krondenzols inherited a difficult situation - the majority of local people were fleeing the monster-ridden land now that they were free, and the fledgling Kingdom of Vetenka was only dubiously independent. Due to a mapping error, it had been granted to both the Kingdom of Ustavet (Hainish-occupied Onaribek ) and given its own crown as an Andrigan kingdom. Ustavet saw its overlordship as a necessary and benevolent imposition; King Kronden I rejected the need for Ustavetan rule and felt that it would only invite Verzaven kobolds into his country. King Kronden managed to secure the coastline and was generous with land grants for any who would stay; he even negotiated with the paladins of Theia the Liberator who had entered Andrig to give them some operating rights in the country if they protected his people. 
King Kronden's rule, which lasted most of the 1700s, helped split Andrig from Ustavet and made Verzavek its own country. It also started a series of serious problems that would plague the young kingdom. The coast was the only secure area, there were tensions between local communities, local paladins, and local lords, and Vetenka was right at the edge of more powerful and important places that they were economically dependent on. The early monarchs, from the 1700s through 1825, focused on trade over all else, to avoid being subsumed into Ustavet. To support Vetenka as a commercial kingdom, the royals leaned on their vassals to extract resources from the countryside while they imported grain from the South. The nobles were irritated by the lower-status work of business; the Theians and communities dislikes the extractive policies and the opening of the old Kivish mines and mills. The Theians led an uprising in 1825, after the death of the Queen, and were brutally put down. The vassals, having 'saved the kingdom', marched their forces into the capital and seized power. The daughter of the old Queen fled, and waited in exile for five years before returning with knights to retake her kingdom in 1830. The new Queen, Vulndra I, shifted the kingdom from trade to inward expansion from 1830 to 1864. These are generally seen as the best years of the Krondenzol line by modern Hainish historians; Vetenka expanded, became more self-sufficient, and stabilized.
After 1864, the next Queen was far less competent and far more distracted by foreign events. In 1870, Ustavet fell into a terrible civil war - and Vetenka foolishly leapt in to try and seize control of Verzavek. While the Queen proved remarkably effective at war given her small army, she only managed to extort local landlords and undermine Ustavetan authority in the South. Even after the Ustavetan civil war ended, she continued raiding and extorting to bring in loot for her vassals and to develop her lands. Her antics were only ended in 1908, when the new Kingdom of Verzavek marched into Vetenka, captured the heir to the throne, and forced her to sign a treaty. Entering the early 1900s, Vetenka was isolated, poor, and crumbling at the edges. Infighting escalated. Hainish monarchs pushed Vetenka into a foolish minor war in the 1930s. After their inevitable defeat, noble rebellions became common. Monsters slipped in amidst the chaos. Outright civil war and monstrous invasion shattered the Kingdom in 1949. The rebels slew the monarch, and were put down by her daughter - but the monsters ultimately carried the day. Chaos reigned in Vetenka, until House Neshelna's Elector Princess, Fellakina Neshelna, sailed an army in to reinforce her wayward cousin. The monsters were driven away, order was restored, but the interior of Vetenka was left scarred and weakened.

Modern History

From 1954 to 1988, Queen Vulndra II reigned in Vetenka. She focused on the coastline after the intervention of 1954, and generally sought to imitate the strategies of old King Kronden. That is to say, she focused on trade and resource extraction, even at the cost of food production. The mass chaos of the early 1950s basically killed the idea of serfs being bound to the land in Vetenka, and Vulndra II embraced that mobility and reshaped the legal category of serfdom into more of a work-patronage relationship. She curated a close relationship with the hyper-feudal Kingdom of Dovenar, trading lumber and furs in bulk for grain. To Hain and Dovenar, she sold the idea of Vetenka as a stalwart march against the Kingdom of Verzavek; to Verzavek, she sold Vetenka as a trade partner. To legitimize herself to the South, she promoted Uvaran religion and empowered the clergy; however, she chose not to intervene to protect Uvaran peasants during the Verzaven land protests of the 1960s and 70s. 
In 1988, Queen Vulndra II died peacefully, and Queen Fellakina I (named after the princess who saved the kingdom thirty years prior) took the throne. Fellakina has consolidated and expanded the innovations of Vulndra, creating a small bureaucracy and reigning in the nobility to make Vetenka even more profitable and efficient. Her diplomatic and administrative talents have shined, even as she has made a mess of the Vetenkan legal code. Vetenka hasn't quite prospered, but it has navigated a period of radical reforms with remarkable grace and stability. While Vetenka may be finally finding a place for itself in the world, it faces immense challenges: it barely controls its own interior lands, it struggles to keep its own people content, and menaces from the chaos waste are growing. Some doubt that the heir, Princess Kondra Neshelna, has the military acumen to rule - though she certainly seems to have mastered the art of court politics.

Demography and Population

Around 75,000 humanoids live in Vetenka. Most are Starspawn

Territories

Vetenka is 55 miles along the coast and 65 miles into the interior. The land is mostly temperate forest, flatlands towards the coast and hillier further inland.

The kingdom is divided into eight counties:

• Karined, The crownlands, are easily the wealthiest and most populated part of Vetenka. The only truly safe part of the country, arable and firmly controlled. Contains the three main Vetenkan towns: Oltega, Perkentost, and Dorholn. 
• Gottorin, the valley of the great black forest, is a great source of lumber and furs - the most ruthlessly exploited part of Vetenka, full of mines and lumberyards. Absolutely unsafe, but not exactly under siege by monsters - almost all wandering monsters get filtered out before reaching the Southern edge
• Barzinbrol, a small valley with small lakes and intense farming. Recently, it has been suffering from flooding and minor natural disasters. Contains the old ruined Temple of Theia 
• Tallinbalf, a rocky land of hills, bogs, and misty forests. Not too dangerous, but also not too valuable.
• Drokarn, a hilly region with one large mountain and three large valleys. The ruins of a large prismhold are here, though it is full of traps and monsters. 
• Shossen, a large battleground against the Scouringwoods. The Western rim is mountainous and well-fortified, but anything else here is contested.
• Olinmosh, mountains containing ancient ruins surrounded by chaos waste lightly claimed by Vetenka. The ruins once served as a base for the Children of Verkohn, and retain a bad reputation. Recently, this county's small settlements have started to fall apart at the seams; monsters run wild and the count is said to be going mad.
• Silfmar, a small contested valley at the edge of the wasteland, a militarized forest region known for its great hunts into the darkest forests. Facing increased pressure with Olimosh's troubles.

Military

Vetenka's military is split between a bureaucratically organized defensive guard, and a scattered handful of feudal warbands. One could call this a standing army, but Vetenka is never truly at peace. This standing army is not meritocratic, but rather is organized along social class lines. The count splay major roles as commanders. The general flexibility of the bureaucracy has been more effective here than in the Kingdom of Nidever, though it is also more difficult to command the entire military at once - this is a defense-in-depth structure designed to repel many strong attacks, not act in large operations. Thankfully, that is rarely a problem here.
Vetenka's warriors are rather varied; they tend to fight on-foot with a mix of heavy infantry, light axe-infantry, javelin-throwers, and archers. The war-axe is the most iconic Vetenkan weapon, useful in cutting through thick branches and killer plants as well as monsters and beasts. Vetenkan forces organize in small, close-knight groups with a fair amount of autonomy, to better navigate the thick forests and hills.
It is worth noting that the Spring Knights have a chapter-house in the citadel of Oltega, as do many of the other Knightly Orders; Oltega is a last stop of sorts before the holy city of Trostev. Sometimes, the knights of the capital even venture into the kingdom itself.

Religion

Vetenkan is an Uvaran state, with a politically powerful priesthood and laws restricting land ownership to Uvarans. These property laws are basically not enforced if you are homesteading in the interior, as the state is more eager to have bodies in the deep woods than it is to have religious purity. In general, the Uvara-only politics serve more to push out Kivish merchants and landlords from the Kingdom of Verzavek. The elites of Verzavek do still have great influence here, but only through proxies. The local populace has a firmly anti-Kivish attitude, and are eager to exclude any poor traveling kobolds from settling down. Despite this, a clique of Kivish hunters and trappers has formed in the interior that has earned the respect of many Vetenkan top hunters; lower-status Vetenkans struggling at the trade deeply resent these newcomers. 
The Cult of Theia the Liberator was once a great force here, but has been banned and generally crushed; some commonfolk even actively resent the Goddess for abandoning them and throwing them against impossible odds to make martyrs of their ancestors. Others glorify Theia in private, but avoid actually working with her. Some of these folk make quiet pilgrimages to the old mostly-abandoned Temple to Theia in the county of Barzinbrol. 
In terms of local religion, Vetenka's Uvarans tend to be split between nature-worship and dualism; there are two conflicting traditions that share the same religious space. On the one hand, Vetenkans have a list of nature spirits that they worship to try and appease or commune with, representing the forest and its animals. On the other hand, Vetenkans often imagine the woods as fundamentally corrupt and evil, to be cleansed through civilization and conquest by the power of the pantheon. Vetenkans switch between these positions fluidly, largely depending on whether they think the forest can be negotiated with at the moment; many do not see this as "religion of convenience", but rather a purifying application of Uvaran middle-path principles. But not everyone feels this way. To some, these two strains of religion just aren't compatible. Many people who lose loved ones to the forest tend to radicalize either against the forest or in appeasement of it, and this can be a source of local conflict. In more state-controlled areas, Uvaran priests mediate these sorts of disputes, but it can fester deeper in the interior.
Generally, the Goddess Varsha tends to be popular as a mediating force between nature spirits and civilization; she is also embraced as a patron of hunters. Kragen is embraced as a protector from harm, and Rugon is embraced as a patron of forest-workers and homesteaders.

Laws

Vetenka's legal system is a mess of competing legal structures and contradictory laws; court cases drag on and can be entirely unpredictable. Unsurprisingly, most commoners avoid this expensive rat's nest of legal turmoil and just enforce customary law. This is tolerated, sometimes even encouraged, by local lords and their appointed sheriffs. Mob justice is semi-validated here, as communities are allowed to enforce blood justice. If one of their own is killed (or mangled, etc), and they know who did it, they can lynch that person if they attempt to summon a sheriff and one does not arrive in three days. A community can choose to demand financial compensation instead, in the form of a heavy fee. If the accused has a title, it is not legal to try them for blood justice - they must be tried in a royal court. 
In terms of titles and status, there are basically several tiers of Vetenkan society:

• Nobles (in the form of knights, burghers, and counts), who have formal titles and generally are immune to customary law. Given the inaccessibility of royal courts, they are basically legally free to do as they please in common spaces
• Freemen, who are commoners who are not bound to a lord. Many hunters and trappers are freemen, and many people can become freemen by requesting to become a homesteader
• Serfs, peasants and workers who are bound not to the land but to a lord. A Vetenkan serf is tied to a village community, who can move with their lord's permission to a new worksite. Altogether, Vetenkan serfs are not that far from Freemen, legally; they have many rights and can largely do as they please as long as the entire village decides to do it. The line between serf and freeman is porous, but still there - while most runaway serfs aren't caught, a community-less person in the safer coastal areas will likely be seen as a vagabond and generally mistreated.
• Debtors, often former criminals or runaway serfs who failed to advance their place in society, are the true bottom-class of Vetenka. Debtors are basically indentured servants; those with significant debts (that will require a lifetime to pay) are branded or mutilated, and will never reclaim their honor and status. Debts are not inheritable. 

Agriculture & Industry

Vetenka's main industries are farming, foresting, mining, and trapping. The forests here grow quickly, and must be beaten back to maintain clear farmland; the animals here also flourish in size and numbers. Lumber and charcoal are exported in large quantities; the ruling Neshelna royal family exports large quantities of high-quality lumber to Telgen in particular. Furniture, industrial charcoal, raw timber, and firewood are all siphoned from the eternal forests to needy kingdoms North and South. Great quantities of fur and ivory are also extracted from the local fauna. In terms of mining, Vetenka mostly produces lime and potash. Potash mining is also bolstered by local woodash production. Wheat is the dominant local crop.
The coast has a robust manufacturing sector; soap production, dye production, and fur processing all take place in small towns in the crownlands. The crown subsidizes businesses on its own lands while it keeps the interior dependent on them for food and coin; both gentry and commoner of the interior counties are economically dependent on the coast. While the crown has tried to make Oltega (the capital) into a city, Vetenka's craftsmen are still scattered across numerous small towns. Part of the problem has been Vetenka's trade weakness; part of the problem has been its insecurity.
Vetenkan lumber is some of the finest quality (short of a specialty wood, like Nidevan ironwood it is durable and consistent, and it makes remarkably consistent charcoal (that also keeps its shape fairly well). Vetenkan charcoal isn't just good fuel - it works as binchotan charcoal, smokeless and odorless and very hot-burning. Cooking using this charcoal can allow for dishes that would otherwise be very inconvenient, if you know how to use it. Vetenkan pear cider is quite good, as is Vetenkan maple syrup.

Trade & Transport

Vetenka has commercial aspirations and has good relations with many North Stildanian merchants, but it struggles to retain a local merchant population. Vetenka is still not seen as safe my many merchants, who remember that the coast was ravaged by war and monsters less than a century ago - the robust merchant community of old Vetenka fled to neighboring kingdoms then, and has been slow to return. In many ways, Vetenka is a resource colony for greater Hain rather than a kingdom that invests in its own people.

"Fight Against the Dark"

Founding Date

1730

Type

Geopolitical, Kingdom

Demonym

Vetenken

Ruling Organization

The Kingdom of Hain

Government System

Monarchy, Absolute

Power Structure

Feudal state

Gazetteer

• Oltega, the capital citadel
• Perkentost, the hunter's town
• Dorholn, carpenter's town
• The Ruined Temple of Theia
• Kaltermend, the ruined prismhold
• The Ruined Citadel of the Children of Verkohn

Currency

Sunekan Golden Lions, Silver Foxes, Copper Stars

Major Exports

Lumber, beasts, furs, ivory, charcoal, lime, potash, bleach, soap

Major Imports

Grain, steel, horses, meat, textiles, salt

Official State Religion

Uvara

Location

Andrig

Official Languages

• Hainish language

Related Ranks & Titles

• Burgrave
• Cherl
• Dienstmann
• Edler
• Eigen
• Graf
• Junker

Neighboring Nations

• Kingdom of Dovenar
• Kingdom of Verzavek