Kingdom of Reikerk
The Nine Baronies
The Kingdom of Reikerk is a federated monarchy located in southern Férulad. It is one of the major political powers of Auloa and is one of the most influential cultures in the region. It is ruled by the King of Reikerk, King Reginault I of Eraster. It's citizens are known as the Kerkish and are largely of the Kerkish culture.
For much of recorded history, the lands of Reikerk were a vast wilderness of forest, hill country, and scattered plains. Small communities of hill dwarves, forest gnomes, and wood elves lived in semi-sedentary groups, while goliath pastoralists followed herds of aurochs across the plateau. During the Middle Mithril Era, nomadic orcish and goblinoid clans established settlements in the east and western marches. No major population centers were ever established throughout the Mithril Era with the region considered a backwater at the southern edge of the world.
It was not until the Palladian Era, when the Palladian Empire began its conquests in Auloa, that the lands of Reikerk became known to the rest of Nioa and Iroa. The Palladians referred to the region Raggenia or Raegenia. The bloody invasions of Placidia, Czeršia, Savia, and Faleria led to large refugee movements south into Raggenia and Varangia. The Palladian state described the people as "barbaric yeomen" and the land as being "more crammed with insurgents, instigators, and rebels than any place in the known world."
This population influx led to a state of perpetual small-scale war between clans and tribes. However, it also led to a rise in anti-Palladian and anti-Imperial sentiment within the region. By the late 8th Century PE, human peoples like the Skoga had begun to cross the Southern Argent, invading Varangia and moving up the peninsula into the Dyrmark and Férulad beyond.
In the final years of the Palladian Conquest of Faleria, the Empire turned its attention towards Raggenia and prepared to invade the region. In
509 PE, the Palladian consul Questor Belanaeus entered the eastern territory of Skallad with an army of some 7,000 and bid the local orcs to submit to imperial rule. Though some tribes surrendered to the invaders, the Palladians were surprised at the level of animosity and active resistence the indigenous displayed even prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Within weeks, the Skalladic peoples had as one agreed to cut off trade to any tribe known to be associating with the invaders, forcing the Palladians to forage earlier than anticipated. Belanaeus's camp, Fort Beacon, had been meant to become a base of operations for a larger invasion. But halfway through construction, it was attacked by a massive force of Skallad warriors. His supplylines cut, Belanaeus was forced to retreat. Rather than let what he had hoped would become a major fortification from falling into enemy hands, the Palladian consul burnt his own fort as his men fled. This complicated the retreat and in the chaos, a third of Belanaeus' army were killed. Another third would be lost as the orcs harried the invaders back to Faleria.
Questor Belanaeus' pride wounded and facing political backlash in Iskendra, the consul rallied a much larger force to take the region. For nine months, the consul prepared the most advanced weapons of war of the Strategion. In Nioa, he mustered 10,000 veteran soldiers and drafted an additional 20,000 in Placidia and Faleria. Among them were 1000 light horse, 500 heavy horse, 250 mounted hippogriffs, 200 giant eagle auxillaries, as well as clerics and paladins from the major holy orders of Uriah, Telerashi, Balan, Ezrahil, and Calorba.
At the same time, the chieftains of the Skallad had sent word throughout south Férulad of the attack on their territory and asked that any clan or warrior that held vengeance in their hearts journey to the holy site of Shades' Henge. There, Watchers of Milcon and druids of Acien Tali blessed a pact to defend the lands west of the Skal River and kill any Palladian soldiers that should cross it. Three chieftains were elected to lead the defense. These were the Dyrmark orc Cherchesh, the Wesserkiln hill dwarf Baltwar Widowkin, and a lowborn goliath called Siggfelmyrnë or Maidenspear.
It is unknown how many actually pledged themselves at Shades' Henge but it likely was an ongoing event.
In early 510 PE, Consul Belanaeus crossed the Skal River once more and began to lay siege to the local towns and hillforts. He had some success, as the winter had been harsher than usual in the region and the Palladians had made certain to stay well supplied.
The Raggenian alliance initially tried to repel the invaders as they did the year before. However, this strategy proved ineffective and at the Battle of Huldhorn, they failed to break the Palladian line and suffered devestating casualties.
The Raggenians switched tactics, and hoping to bait Belanaeus, divided their forces. Widowkin took up a traditional defense of fortifying townships and hillforts throughout the region and coordinated the evacuation and resource management of settlements in the Palladians' path. Meanwhile, Cherchesh's orc hordes harried the Palladian's supply trains. He was eventually forced to withdraw, but proceeded to move west, through Skallad and into Palladian held territory. Here, Cherchesh waged a campaign of utter terror against the Palladian settlers, burning farms, sacking towns, and killing all unmarried adults. While Cherchesh was in Faleria, Siggfelmyrnë took up his duty of harassing the Palladian army with guerilla attacks. She also sent word further into Basceron and the still independent goblin tribes of Czeršia, and offered them trade deals in exchange for fomenting uprisings and border skirmishes in their territories.
With Czeršia in revolt, Basceron pressing into Placidia, and Faleria under siege, Belanaeus' campaign was becoming more and more of a liability for the Empire. Yet, the consul protested the Empress's invitation to return. He had had some rather large victories, particularly against Widowkin, and believed he could force the alliance's surrender.
While a portion of his auxillaries penned Widowkin in the dwarf's ancestral fortress of Wesserkiln, Belanaeus marched on Shades' Henge, intent on taking the hill and delivering a blow to the alliance's morale. However, when the Palladian army arrived at the site, they found that all of the prominent holy leaders had fled, leaving only the old and infirm of their orders to guard hilltop. Still hoping to demoralize the enemy, Belanaeus ordered all of the elderly clerics to be put to the sword. The mass executions did shock many of the local population, but did not surprise the alliance, who prepared a response.
As Belanaeus withdrew from Shades' Henge and moved north towards Wesserkiln, his main army was ambushed by Siggfelmyrnë in a night raid. Despite the element of surprise, one of Belanaeus's personal knights slew Siggfelmyrnë herself when she attempted to capture the consul. However, the Maidenspear's attempted assassination had only been one of the goals of the raid. She had focused her attack on the army's many mobile siege engines and mounted units, killing scores of horses, oxen, hippogriffs, and other livestock.
The attack crippled the Palladians's ability to take Wesserkiln and forced Belanaeus to retreat to Beacon and his new fortress, Castle Brightwatch. On their way, the Palladians passed the Sinkstep Pines, a damp forest just south of the Skall River. Due to the terrain, the Palladians were forced to march in triple file, instead of the usual defensive configuration, where the Pines transitioned from forest to swamp. With their flying scouts disabled, the Palladians had no idea that hidden in just beyond the treeline was a force of 50,000 enemy troops.
They had been gathered in secret by Siggfelmyrnë and Cherchesh and included several thousand Washgrove goblins and 500 wardruids that had fled Shades' Hill months prior. Despite Siggfelmyrnë's death, Cherchesh had narrowly managed to hold the disperate army together. When the Palladians had moved deep enough into the trap, the orc warriors led the charge and slammed them into the swamp.
Any attempt to defend the line was soon shattered, and the Palladians scattered. Many Palladians attempted to flee into the swamp, only to be snared by the wardruid's green magic and slowly drowned. The very few that managed to escape the orcs and goblins and evade the druid's vines found themselves hunted, not by Cherchesh's men, but by wild beasts and monsters. Some say they were drawn the the site by the wails and smell of blood. Others claim that they had been summoned by Siggfelmyrnë, believing that when she and her warriors slaughtered the Palladians' animals, she had actually sacrificed them to the goddess Acien Tali. After a day of battle and pursuit, some 35,000 Palladians lay dead, including Questor Belanaeus.
Any remaining Palladian holdfasts established in Raggenia soon fell or surrendered. The Empress, shocked and horrified by Belanaeus's utter defeat, asked more than a dozen legates and high ranking officials to journey to Raggenia to negotiate a peace deal. Eventually, a mid-level bureaucrat named Artex Gallo arrived at the now occupied Castle Brightwatch and signed the Treaty of Beacon.
The Palladians would never again launch a substantial invasion of Raggenia. Several generals and consuls attempted to launch campaigns against individual groups, but the wholesale subjugation of the region was scarcely considered by imperial authorities. Border skirmishes and proxy wars would be fought in the region until the end of the Palladian Era, but the Skall River had become a well known border and the extent of the Empire's reach in Auloa.
Though the Palladians never again sent armies into Raggenia, their faith did begin to seep into Raggenian communities. Reactions to these evangelization efforts varied, with the more zealous followers of Balan and Ezrahil often struggling compared to those of Porcia, Telerashi, Calorba, Elenea, and Qingu. The sect of the Gloriae in particular faced resistence and even persecution, likely due to its association as the official faith of the Palladian Empire.
During the later half of the Palladian Era, the Great Exodus of Man shifted from the northern hemisphere to the southern, and Auloa saw a great deal of human migration from the Argent Ocean. This influx led to increased instability, which often escalated into internal conflicts that spilled into Palladian-held provinces like Faleria and Czeršia.
The situation was further exacerbated in 703 PE, when Emperor Paxertes issued the Lexion of Civil Mortality, which redefined the legal and social classes of the Palladian Empire. This allowed human settlers and some groups of dwarves and halflings to apply for Palladian citizenship. Though this eased relations with the new human settlers, it enraged many other lineages, particularly those that had been struggling against Palladian oppression for generations.
As the Era waned, increased contact through war, trade, and religion led to the many culture groups of Raggenia developing a more unified sense of place. The term "Raggenia" had been used reluctantly by its inhabitants to describe the territory between the Skal River and the Blackweald Forest and so it was almost inevitable that a new name would slowly emerge to describe the region.
The term 'kerk' had long been used to describe the religious center of hillfort's bailey and in the Late Palladian Era, had become associated with the bailey's residences themselves. Eventually, this evolved into a term for a village or town large enough to accomidate a temple or place of worship. Those who lived within them, became known as the Kerkish.
By the Late Palladian Era, most communities in Raggenia were sedentary and their chieftains had begun to style themselves as 'barons.' Some of these petty lords tried to make assertions of kingship, but these bids generally preceded expansion at the expense of their neighbors and the violence that accompanied it became associated with monarchical acclaim.
Near the end of the Palladian Era, several large scale invasions would be launched by peoples from Raggenia, particularly orcs, goblins, and goliaths. The Empire was unable to adaquately respond to these incursions, resulting in the deterioration of the Palladian state's influence and the loosening of Palladian cultural norms.
With the Sundering Arcana, the Palladian Empire's grip on its Auloan provinces weakened enough for dozens of uprisings and invasions to emerge and ultimately shatter the imperial system. The Goblin Migrations touched off in western Reikerk and led to a series of violent sackings and the dissolution of the Province of Czeršia and ravaged the Province of Placidia. In the east, the Great Orc March resulted in ending Palladian rule of Faleria and drew sapped the strength the Empire's Savian provinces. In the north, the Goliath Migrations engulfed the Basceron in devestating wars, which bled into Reikerk's northern territory
The hundred years following the Sundering Arcana, was a period of violent social instability, as various groups attempted to gain power using arcane magic. Barons and chieftains waged bloody feuds against one another. One such chieftain, Thagmash the Cruel, launched a brutal campaign
The Kingdom is made up of dozens of feudal lordships, known as baronies, that pledge fealty to nine great houses known as the Nine Grand Baronies. Prior to the kingdom's inception, these lordships and baronies developed from chiefdoms that feuded with one another over territory and resources. On occasion, the lordships would band together against a larger threat, such as the Palladian Empire.
Structure
The second-largest and most prosperous of the nine, Reikerk is a fractured land of alliances ruled by counts, barons and viceroys.
Assets
Reikerk remains a fractured political zone, with each baron or count equal in military and economic power to the King. The kingdom's proximity of the wilds to Reikerk’s population led the Nine Dukes of the East to fund the Orphean League during the Iron Era, an organization of monster hunters and mercenaries who protect the civilian population from roving monsters and ranging barbarians.
History
Reikerk is one of the few parts of Auloa that resisted Palladian control during the 2nd Age. Initially comprised of largely dwarven and gnome tribes, the advent of the Sundering Arcana and the influx of human migrants from across the Varangian Sea along with the pressure from goliath herds and orc hordes along the Brinewater forced the Kerkish to expand. The Kerkish moved north through Varangia and attacked the Palladian settlements of Ashhall, Dunmeddow, and Beacon.
As the Palladian Age transitioned into the Blood Age, the Kerkish fell to infighting and endured waves of attacks from Varangia and Férulad. Eventually, Baron Merovech I of Badashen defeated of his opponents and retook much of Reikerk’s southern territory from the orcish warlord Thagmash. He allied with the clerics of Whitehill and was soon crowned King of Reikerk. However, in order to keep the piece, the new king of Reikerk struck a deal with the barons, allowing them to crown the next kings of Reikerk, giving them far more influence than nobles in other kingdoms.
Demography and Population
- Human: ~40%
- Hill dwarf: ~16%
- Forest gnome: ~14%
- Tiefling: ~12%
- Orc: ~7%
- Goliath: ~6%
- Other: ~5%
Territories
Geographically, the country is held together largely by the Obreblad, the continent’s largest river which flows from it’s source in the Czeršian foothills of Basceron through Reikerk, into Faleret at Tregora. It us known for its deep forests, rich farmland, and icy mountains.
Foreign Relations
Reikerk is frequently in border disputes with the Falerians to the north. They are also often raided by Varskogans on the Brinewater Bay and from the west, where the wilds of Czeršia push monsters into the more settled hamlets and villages of Reikerk.
Founding Date
Late Palladian-Early Iron Era
Type
Geopolitical, Kingdom
Capital
Alternative Names
The Nine Baronies
Demonym
Kerkish
Leader
Government System
Monarchy, Elective
Power Structure
Feudal state
Economic System
Traditional
Currency
Qingu currency: copper seeds, silver stars, electrum locks, gold royals, platinum oaths.
Official State Religion
Subsidiary Organizations
Official Languages
Neighboring Nations
Related Ethnicities
Comments