King's Road

All the roads lead to the Capital. How the roads are built can either make or ruin an empire. While there are multiple instances of the King's Road, there is typically only one per county, each road leads from the capital to somewhere important.

Notable King's Road connections

Capital -> . . . -> [ ??? ] - > . . . -> Amberline -> Crowald

What King's Road Means

The maintenance of the King's Road is delegated to the administration of the counties where it goes through. Failure to maintain and secure the road, is a high misdemeanor. There is a special unit of imperial paladins that are tasked in dealing with issues related to the King's Road. Lords who fail to uphold security, will find their positions threatened and given to other nobles. As such potential bandit raids or highway robberies occurring on the King's Road are always exclusively instigated by a noble, and done by either mercenaries or sometimes even knights.
This has made some portions of the road unsafe, and sometimes the escalated power-struggle for maintaining the King's Road has escalated to the point where the imperial paladins have intervened and investigated. Often resulting in capital punishments to the nobles involved. Due to these reasons, inciting trouble at the King's Road is seen as a diplomatic incident and sometimes even as a declaration of war. There are times when the head of a great family has forced a county with the King's Road running through as its direct vassalage, in order to prevent any incidents.
Because of the associated perils with the King's Road, the people who use those roads, are well aware and follow rumors of possible unrest in a county. Sometimes this is seen as taking detours from the King's Road in unstable counties or waiting for additional travelers in order to have more safety in number.
Of course taking an early exit and taking a detour removes the imperial protection from the King's Road. However, when you have two lords in verge of a conflict waiting to overthrow the other, would you take the risk of potentially being the spark that is used as the casus belli for declaring war on the other.
In general travelers who journey the King's Road are all insured by the crown. A standard reimbursement is provided to those who are injured, killed or lose their possession. These payments are forcefully taken from the county who was responsible for that part of the road. The only exception to this are injuries or death caused in dangerous sections due to the neglect of the travelers. One such example is stopping/camping in the Haunted Crag against the warnings of the road patrols.
Masquerading as a patrol of the King's Road is high treason, punishable by death.

Type

Road