The Principalities of Hesh

Sprawling farmlands sprout from fertile land a mere stone’s throw from major cities serving as the center of technological achievements. Shantytowns with improvised buildings and infrastructure spring up in the shadow of towering city walls. Fresh water flows seemingly from nowhere into the heart of a metropolis, pouring from spouts and into reservoirs for use by the masses. Elaborately formed bridges span the width of wide ravines and deep rivers, enabling easier travel from one point to another.
A shop in the city has windows filled with small clockwork toys. A gnomish woman in the finest of silks picks her way carefully across the cobblestones, avoiding the heap of rags wrapped around the emaciated form of a human man holding a sign begging for food. A halfling farming community works together to bring in the season’s harvest before taking it to the nearest city for sale. Arguing in town halls, protests in the streets of the capital.
Welcome to the Principalities of Hesh.
A truly prosperous country, The Principalities of Hesh was once a place of free and fair trade, a place where the people didn’t simply survive, they flourished. But with success comes wealth, and the wealthy… tend toward greed.
Hesh’s upper class is obscenely wealthy, while their middle class – once the heart and soul of their country and economy – is shrinking by the year, and their poorest are growing poorer and poorer.
Split into six city-states and their outlying lands, Hesh is a collection of Principalities, with each principality ruled over by a “Prince” and his or hers council. These council are typically formed of the representatives of the most wealthy families and factions on a given city. There is a centralized government in Hesh, however, and all six Princes must sit in council with the High Prince, typically a representative elected from the capital city’s most powerful family or faction.
This is an old system, and one hotly contested week to week, month to month, and year to year. The people of the city-states cry out for a balancing of the scales, for each state to be allowed to establish its own laws without the need for approval from the High Prince and his council, while the High Prince and his council maintain an iron grip over the workings of their country, claiming they work for “the greater good”.
Hesh is a leader in technological innovation and provides much of the world’s citrus. One can usually find work in Hesh, often in the form of caravan protection jobs or helping the smaller farming communities with problems their city can’t be bothered to handle.

Government System:  Plutocracy
Races Makeup:

• 30% Gnomes
• 50% Halflings
• 15% Humans
• 5% Misc

Pro: Leaders in a variety of tradecrafts only advanced enough country to have aqueducts and other such advancements. Disciplined and well-equipped military, one of the only two places to provide arcane training
Con: Pockets of severe civil unrest. Rich are getting richer; poor are getting poorer. Unkind to their large refugee populace, which fled from the conquering of Taqam generations ago.