History
In 50 HE, the catastrophe known as the Leviathan Impact occurred, destroying Haven in the wake of cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunamis. While some ruins stood in the city center, swaths of land stretching from the coasts to hundreds of miles inland were effectively reduced to a junk-strewn wasteland. Tragically, it would be some time before Haven's distant fleets and territories would receive a full account of what had happened to their city; the only witnesses to the event that had survived were the few members of The Guild occupying their Haven Base in the Winterpeak Mountains. When The Guild sent their message out, most distant surviving Havenites responded with despair or resignation, mourning the loss of their great city.
Before The Guild's message could reach them, many of Haven's merchants had already completed their return journeys. They were shocked to find a post-apocalyptic, junkyard-like hellscape waiting for them in place of their home ports. Many of them were unable to come to grips with what they were seeing and mentally fell to pieces. Some turned their ships around and sought refuge elsewhere, but those short on supplies had no choice but to go ashore and try to seek out food and water. Eventually, a group of merchant crews and traders who had landed on the northern part of Haven's west coast began cooperating and formed a sizable camp on the beaches. Together, they ensured they each had food, water, and shelter, and helped guard each other from the horrors that had been spotted roaming through what was left of the city.
This camp was formed out of necessity, but as they worked alongside each other together to gather supplies, defend their camp from the monsters stalking the ruins, and help each other grieve the loss of their city, strong bonds were forged between the crews. When the first ships were resupplied and could have set sail for another city, their crews chose to stay and help their new allies.
Beyond newly-forged loyalty though, there was another factor motivating the traders to remain in this wasteland: scattered throughout the miles of debris fields, many of the invaluable treasures of Haven were still intact. Soon enough, their excursions into the ruins transitioned from being a matter of survival to a series of looting raids. Before long, their small camp would become a town in its own right, and the trade of rare artifacts and materials from Haven's ruins was their industry. They built up a small port, and soon enough trade ships began to arrive seeking to buy what had been plundered. This town was given the temporary name "New Haven," and by 55 HE it would grow into a sizable city and a well-known hub for trade of rare and exotic goods; in addition to the Havenic treasures that could be bought there, the people of this city were filled with an almost extreme capitalist spirit and took no objection to the purchase and sale of goods that any other government would have banned outright. Such goods included magical artifacts of extreme or even unknown levels of power, cursed items known to attract the attention of demons or evil gods, mind-altering substances deemed illicit in nearly all other lands, rare magical creatures tamed for personal ownership, and perhaps most controversially, slaves.
Traders began to arrive from far and wide to conduct their business in New Haven, and New Haven became ludicrously rich both from their own trade and from collecting fees on all of the trades they helped facilitate that would have normally been black market in nature. In addition to the first traders who had settled the coast, who were largely Fjordssons, other groups began to migrate to New Haven and settle there permanently as well. These settlers were from many walks of life, but the three biggest groups among them were Xuuluu arriving from Bandari far to the east on Gerrim's southeast coast, Cruzadores arriving from Cruzado in the south, and even Bilraqighani from Bilraqighan, their island in the Gerrim Sea. As the cultures of these diverse humans began to mix, New Haven would transform again.
Soon, in addition to permitting trade of normally-forbidden goods, the city also began to allow and even promote other activities, such as extreme high-stakes gambling, manufacture of illegal goods which had previously merely been traded within the city, and even research into new and unknown technologies, magics, and psionics. By 60 HE, the city was known the world over as a place where any item, act, or service was attainable for the right price, and if it wasn't, you could pay a bold inventor, sorcerer, or psion to make it possible. Around this same time, its name was changed to reflect the maturing of its status; rather than New Haven, this city came to be called Norvesh. This is a slang term formed from a mix of different human languages and its approximate meaning is "strength in the northwest." Interestingly, this name stuck only because it was collectively adopted by the people of Norvesh; by this point, they still had no official government, and they were intent on keeping it that way. Norvesh operated in a unique high functioning state of civil anarchy never before seen, and its citizens valued this way of life above all else.
Several years later, ships from distant Haven territories began arriving on the shores near Norvesh, and troops and settlers began moving inland to begin the task of reclaiming their land and rebuilding their city, motivated by their new leader William Whittington II. The people of Norvesh agreed to help them with their rebuilding efforts, on the condition that Haven respect their city's sovereignty and not expand too close to their outer borders. The Havenites agreed, and over the next two decades Haven and Norvesh would work closely with each other (as well as with the emerging east-coast regional power of Phulubos) to restore the city of Haven to its former glory. To the surprise of Norvesh, this happened at a pace that hardly seemed possible; within 10 years Haven had expanded several hundred miles outward from the rebuilt city center and its borders were in contact with Norvesh. In the next 10 years, Haven returned to its former size, and at a population density even higher than it had had before its destruction. Much to Norvesh's discontent, Haven had largely ignored its agreement to respect Norvesh's borders, and Norvesh was now totally surrounded by Haven, effectively a part of the larger city.
Rather than remain totally independent, Norvesh agreed in 75 HE to integrate with Haven in the interest of easier trading rules, but under a very specific set of terms. Norvesh was to be a special autonomous district of Haven that would largely be allowed to maintain its ways and its trade customs, with the exception of the trade of a small list of banned items that Haven absolutely would not permit, notably slaves and magical items capable of wide scale destruction. The Norveshi elite found ways to circumvent these rules with the establishment of an organization called the Dark Bazaar; officially, Norvesh was operating to Haven's exact standards, but in reality any Norveshi person of any status could continue to do whatever they wanted with the help of the Dark Bazaar. Even outside of the Dark Bazaar, business could be conducted in Norvesh that could not legally take place anywhere else in the city, and so Norvesh continued to generate staggering amounts of revenue from the transaction fees of all deals taking place in its markets.
The most significant event in Norveshi history, and possibly one of the most important events in all of history, was the result of the magic experimentation that had been ongoing within the city for many years at this point. A team of sorcerers led by Maximilian Vandergrosse (of Norvesh's powerful Vandergrosse family) was experimenting with magical portals to locations farther and farther from Norvesh in the hopes that such instantaneous routes would dramatically accelerate trade and transportation. So far their results had been limited, but one day an experiment was performed in which the runes etched to target the portal contained an error that went undetected until the portal was opened. The error resulted in a portal targeted to a location outside of not just the Material Plane, but outside of reality itself. The sorcerers who had conjured the portal were reduced to ash on the spot, and as Maximilian Vandergrosse and his team stepped through the portal, they discovered what would eventually become known as the Extradimensional Realms.
At first, it was not known that these were entirely different versions of reality, but this became apparent over time; seemingly ordinary objects, when transported back through the portal, were revealed to have incredible properties. For example, the earliest instance of this was in the discovery of extradimensional mahogany: In the Extradimensional Realms, wood obtained from mahogany trees is mostly unremarkable, but when transferred back through a portal, it becomes nearly indestructible. This discovery is eventually what led the Iron Helix Syndicate to purchase portal access from the Vandergrosse team so that they could launch a raid on the extradimensional human land of Portugal and steal massive quantities of mahogany to craft mahogany armor (among other things).
The exploitation of extradimensional lands and resources has been the primary factor driving Norvesh's mindbendingly rapid technological progress, yet at the same time the very existence of the Extradimensional Realms has been kept as a close secret among the Norveshi elite and a select group of powerful outsiders. To the rest of Haven and the general public the evolution of Norvesh has appeared to occur at an impossible rate; some see them as a shining beacon of progress and a bold people pushing the limits of the possible, but most view them with suspicion and contempt, afraid of how they may upset the delicate balance of power that has kept Havenic society intact even through disasters like the Leviathan Impact. Still, the Norveshi are a young people, and the type of impact they will have on the world remains to be seen.
Personality
Due to the technology, wealth, and youthful energy that abounds within Norvesh, most Norveshi possess a distinctive arrogance that most other races find difficult to tolerate. What makes this especially unbearable for some is that for most Norveshi, this extreme outward confidence is far from unfounded; Norveshi are extremely intelligent and tend to excel at most things they do. However, those few adventurers able to look past the cockiness of the Norveshi will find that they radiate positivity and humor, and can make for amazingly supportive and loyal allies.
In addition to their arrogance, the other unifying trait of the Norveshi is that they have very little respect for rules, laws, governmental authority, and even ethical boundaries. They are accustomed to the anarchic nature of life within Norvesh, and they will pursue the things they want even if they have to cross numerous societal boundaries and put themselves or others at serious risk to get their way.
Physical Description
The Norveshi are descendants of a number of other human lineages, and so they are highly diverse in appearance compared to most other human groups. Some have the light skin and hair of the Fjordssons, some have the dark complexion and skin markings of the Xuuluu, but most tend to fall somewhere on a gradient between these two profiles. They are standard in size for humans, generally ranging from 110 to 280 pounds and standing between 5 and 7 feet tall, though most tend to be on the leaner and shorter side.
Though the Norveshi do not possess any single unifying physical trait, what is distinctive about them is that the overall level of beauty among the Norveshi people is uncannily high. Some attribute this to the fact that the first-generation Norveshi were charismatic merchants and traders whose physical charms had been one of the keys to their success, while others believe that among their wondrous new technologies must be some device that allows them to alter and perfect their appearances.
Complementing the physical beauty of the Norveshi is their preference in clothing and armor; most Norveshi armor is designed to show as much skin as possible, and in many cases the more ostentatious sets will even be made of precious metals rather than durable iron or steel. An ignorant attacker may assume that the Norveshi are left terribly vulnerable and exposed by these design choices, but upon swinging at a Norveshi adventurer they may find that their blade is rapidly redirected away from their target or that it mysteriously collides with empty space before it can make contact. Effects like these are the result of advanced Norveshi technologies incorporated into their equipment, their mechanisms kept highly secret- especially from outsiders.
Relations
The Norveshi as a people do not have any consistent relationships with any other faction or people, with the single exception being that they all harbor a resentment of Haven's government and many yearn for the days before Haven's return. In truth, if the Norveshi were ever able to unify, there is little doubt that they could and would secede from Haven, but their constant internal competition prevents this from taking place. The relations between the Norveshi people and other peoples are largely dependent upon the schemes, plans, and missions of Norveshi families and companies, and these are everchanging.
Norvesh, as one of the 13 districts of Haven, has a representative on the Havenic Council, a new government entity established by current Haven ruler Jack Whittington. However, because of their collective disdain for Haven, the powerful Norveshi families, business leaders, and aristocrats refuse to dignify the Havenic Council by nominating any among their own for the position. On several occasions they have been known to nominate members of rival organizations as an insult. As a result, Norvesh's seat is often empty, occupied by a deliberate obstructionist agent, or occupied by a low-status individual seeking to rise above their position in Norveshi society; several of the individuals belonging to this last category have been dramatically assassinated in recent years.
Alignment
Norveshi tend to be Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Good, or True Neutral. Norveshi are wildly ambitious and will usually do whatever it takes to get what they want, but this same level of passion also carries over when they find a place in a party or guild; they are relentless in helping their allies reach their goals.
Lands
The Norveshi mostly inhabit Norvesh, one of Haven's 13 districts. Norvesh is one of Haven's special autonomous districts, meaning that Norvesh is mostly left to govern itself with only relatively minor regulation by Haven. However, unlike other special autonomous districts, there is no actual regional government. The rules in Norvesh are set by the powerful families and corporations that are based in the district, and these rules change and shift as the balance of power in the area sways. Regardless of the local political situation, Norvesh's lack of laws and Norveshi arrogance and disdain for the other peoples of Haven make Norvesh an outright dangerous place for outsiders traveling without some form of protection. Even for the Norveshi themselves, they must always keep their eyes open and their senses alert as to who is around them on the street and where the power and money is moving on any given day.
Religion
The Norveshi have no patron deity or shared religion, and are largely non-religious. A rare few individuals may worship one of the many gods with temples in Haven, but this is extremely atypical.
Adventurers
Norveshi adventurers are complex individuals that typically cannot be neatly sorted into the traditional adventurer tracks. Most Norveshi adventurers will possess attributes of multiple adventurer classes, preferring especially to combine elements of the Artificer, Fighter, Monk, Wizard, and Psion paths. The few truly massive Norveshi may also choose to include elements of the Barbarian class, and the very few truly subtle Norveshi may adopt components of the Rogue class. Norveshi Bards are uncommon, but though they are few in number these entertainers are often wildly successful; Norveshi beauty and confidence makes them some of the biggest forces of charisma and personality and they are renowned throughout Haven.
Due to their significant self-interest, technological inclinations, and aversion to religion, Norveshi Clerics, Paladins, Druids, and Rangers are nearly nonexistent.
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