Wooly Slopes Barony

The "Wooly Slopes Barony" is currently under new management with a new Baron. It formally called the Wooly Slopes Province or "New Uwcharedia Province", but the colloquial name sticks.
The new heraldry standard is the handsome adjacent icon.

Wooly Slopes Heraldry by Me with Worldspinner's heraldry program

The Wooly Slopes Province is one of the largest fertile areas in the Border Baronies, but it has the downside/downslide in that much of the land is at an awkwardly steep angle.
Conventional farming is difficult in most places though farming has been achieved to a limited extent with careful terrace farming.
This realm is best known for its sure footed sheep and goats and sure footed shepherds.

Demographics

As it stands now, the Wooly Slopes Barony has about 90% humans 5% gnomes, 5% everyone else.
The humans are about 70% Borderlander humans, 10% Swynfaredian humans, 10% Fumayan humans, 10% other.
Demographics BEFORE the regime change.

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Uwcharedia and New Uwcharedia (better known by it's colloquial name, the Wooly Slopes Province) are about 93% humans and 7% Other. Over half of the non-humans are gnomes.
Uwcharedia’s original province (Old Uwchardia) has about 70,000 commoners and about 6,000 nobles.
Uwcharedia’s Wooly slopes province has about 50,000 commoners and about 5,000 nobles.
The nobles are about 95% ethnically Swynfaredian and 5% mixed Swynfaredian. Most of them are the grandchildren or great grand children of sorcerers and sorceresses.
The common people are roughly 70% Borderlander humans, 15% Swynfaredian humans, 15% other.

In the Wooly Slopes province, most commoners work in herding or directly support herders with only a small number of farmers. This is supplemented to a limited extent by hunting and reagent gathering in the outlying regions.

Government

Uwcharedia is top heavy with an unreasonably high number of nobles. All the nobles are Swynfaredian squibs or the children of Swynfaredian squibs.
Both Old and New Uwcharedia are sliced into many small holdings with a noble lord or lady having exclusive income/tax rights from that land.
Old Uwcharedia has a lot of bitter land disputes between petty nobles. While the nobles in New Uwcharedia tend to have bigger parcels they have more to fight over. Fights over grazing rights are especially coomon, land claims are stationary and sheep and goats move.

Defences

The steeply sloping terrain makes it difficult to build houses in this region but it is near impossible to build large fortifications.
It is not impossible to build small fortifications. The area is dotted with a few watch towers and hidden supply caches intended to give archers good vantage points to fire at foes (and a generous store of arrows and other supplies). Most of these locations were set up by the previous owners of the land before the Uwcharedian government conquered the region and then they were conquered again by the new government, mostly intact.

Industry & Trade

Subsistence farming and herding. A little bit of reagents trading and a lot of export of wool goods.
The realm was destabilized by a regime change, but the new regime has lowered taxes substantially (at least for now) so it is hoped the realm can recover economically soon.

Assets

Sheep and goats. Goats and sheep.

History

New Uwcharedia was an independent border barony that was invaded and annexed by Uwcharedia with help from the Kingdom of Swynfaredia, primarily House Goirsonad.
Sometimes called the Crooked Barony, not just for the slopes but for the rulers. Much like a stereotypical Border Barony, a lot of new governments came in with high ideals but grew corrupt over time, only to be overthrown by a new government with high ideals.
First a republic got hijacked by wealthy merchant interests than it was overthrown replaced with a feudal system with a just Baron, but the Baron's heirs got greedy and they too were overthrown.
Moderately recently, the region was ruled by an indepedent semi-feudal coven of wizards, formerly entitled the "West Borderland Coven". They were popular with the common people. As long as the coven got their reagents, they mostly let the shepherds conduct their affairs as they saw fit with light taxes and minimal interference.
Then a Swynfaredian strike force of sorcerers overwhelmed their magical wards and murdered all the wizards, installing a well-connected squib from House Goirsonad.
The new rulers uncovered "evidence" of maleficium including necromancy and skin changer witches but almost no one believed the stories.
Most of the reagents are tied up in a fifty year agreement with House Gorisonad to pay the war debt to Uwcharedia for military aid received but they only operated this for thirty-one years before the realm saw a new regime change that was not friendly to the Kingdom of Swynfaredia or House Gorisonad.

Architecture

Houses are small and carefully built foundationally to be level for the inhabitants.

Geography

Green lush, not-so-gentle slopes is the norm here.

Natural Resources

Farming opportunities are limited but the realm can feed itself with lots of mutton, goat meat and occasional hunting and fishing.
Most of the useable land is grazing land not farmland. And wool is the main export. The secondary export is reagents. Occasionally, naturally occurring sideways growing herbs develop enough latent magic to be useuable as potion ingredients.

Alternative Name(s)

New Urcharedia, West Borderland Coven, the Barony of the Crooked Slopes

Type

National Territory

Population

Roughly 55,000 mortal souls

Inhabitant Demonym

Slopers (colloquially), Uwcharedians (officially)

Location under

Border Baronies Region

Owner/Ruler

Baron Arwid Nerozik

Related Traditions

• Borderlander National Industry

Characters in Location

• Baron Arwid Nerozik

Related Reports (Primary)

• Kormatin Solo Session 13, 8-31-2022, brutal climax of Borderlands Coup

Related Materials

• wool