Kaevil
The country in which the campaign takes place, divided by The Sundering and now ruled by the seven great families of House Orloi, House Caervil, House Raendor, House Malmor, House Genlith and House Greendale.
Structure
The land has no overall ruler and has not had a king since the fall of Edregard III .
Now Kaevil is divided between seven noble houses.
History
The land of Kaevil has no king and no royal family anymore.
The last king of Kaevil, King Edregard III died in the last battle of the civil war after swearing his final oath to protect his people forever. He was cut down by his enemies who then sacked the capital city Sildern and left it in ruins.
The civil war began due to the ambition of Count Ruthven of House Malmor who desired to expand his territories and had been forbidden to do so by Edregard. Ruthven conspired with other houses and raised an army against the king. The battles raged for a decade but came to an end 120 years ago with the fall of Sildern.
Following the death of the king and the extermination of the royal house that followed the land of Kaevil was divided but an uneasy peace began. The houses that had opposed the king began to refer to themselves as the Dawn Alliance since Malmor’s lands are in the east.
The remaining houses call themselves The Oathkeepers since they never betrayed their king.
Mythology & Lore
Until the fall of the Royal House the religion of the land of Kaevil was an integral part of the society. The people worshipped a small pantheon of deities representing core imperatives of life:
The High Father – a god of Law and of Order represented as a stately king
The Iron Face – a god of knightly strength depicted as a helmed warrior
The Lady of Sanctuary – a goddess of life and fertility and of life beyond death
The Whisper – a goddess of mystery and secrets represented as a hooded woman
The Lord of Sand – the god of death, the one who ends life and eventually all life.
Of these five deities only the Lady of Sanctuary now has open followers. The High Father’s worship was tied to the royal line and that has been extinguished. Ideas of knightly nobility and virtue were shattered by the treachery of the civil war. The Lord of Sand was never worshipped so much as dreaded. And the Whisper was always the lady of secret cults and mysterious rites.
Priests and Priestesses of the Lady of Sanctuary still work more or less openly, though they rarely adopt the title or the trappings. They tend to work with their communities offering wisdom, healing, blessings and so on. Where Priests and Priestesses of the other deities exist they tend to do so without drawing attention to themselves. Their temples are often ruined or abandoned. They are distrusted.
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