High Rock

As you know dear reader, I, your author, hail from this most fortuitous province. High Rock is the Northwestern most of the 9 traditional 'provinces' of The Empire , and the homeland of our people, the Bretons (sometimes disparaged as the Man-mer, the Manmeri, or the Half-Elves*).

While claims have been entertained by overzealous Imperial bureaucrats that Orcish culture can also be traced back to High Rock, this nonsense is easily dismiss-able by the merest modicum or research. Worry not, our homeland is not the progenitor to that devilish race of beast-men.

Geography

High-Rock is a beautiful land of temperate climates, rolling green hills, windswept rocky crags, and isolated valleys and moors as if designed by its very nature to craft a people most perfect. Soft enough to fill us with eloquence and charm, and allow for the rich artistic nature of our people to shine, yet hard enough to foster an unnerving fighting spirit! It's quaint hamlets and the austere grandeur of its cities is something that must be appreciated, for this peace was hard won, and long fought. Indeed the stability that High Rock now enjoys today was but a dream for most of it's violent and troubled past.

High Rock is marked by two distinct facts of geography, its coastline and its mountains.

To the North and West the great Peninsula of Bretony stretches out into the untamed Eltheric, and the frigid Shivering Sea. the wild storms of those oceans batter the land, leaving a rough and rugged landscape whose highland strongholds and isolated valleys have long cultivated the independence of numerous Breton clans. But to the South, the sheltered waters of the Iliac Bay hold sway, fostering trade and commerce, and connecting the great urban centres of High Rock to those across the bay in the province of Hammerfell.

The mountains too, play an important role. High Rock's geography is split in half by the towering Wrothgarian and Kuralian ranges, the first standing like a pole in the centre of High Rock, the latter running much of the length of the Bretony peninsula. South and West of the Mountains, is the 'Heart' of High Rock and the core of the Breton people. But the mountains pose a stern barrier, and past Wrothgaria, the people become queerer.

*It may be true that elven blood is stronger amongst the Bretons than in other races of man, but this influence is largely overstated. For example, the pointed ears of our people are unlikely to be of Elvish origin as is so often claimed by Imperial sources, instead they should more probably be ascribed to direct divine manipulation by Cynaree or Julien, that we might better hear the words of the Divine Court.

History

It must be noted that the 'Province' of High Rock is not an actual legal reality - nor has it ever been. Unlike the other so called 'provinces', High Rock has never been an independent unified Kingdom. High-Rock has always been divided into multiple different polities, city-states, and petty Kingdoms, all vying for greater prestige and control.

It is true that in the early days of the Third Empire - Provisional Governors directly ruled over a significant chunk of the province but even by the middle of the first century of the Third Era - High Rock was being ruled as a set of independent client states. Today it is ever fractured - with a number of local elites governing directly in the name of the Emperor and bowing only to him. Thus there is no such thing as High Rock outside of a general term used colloquially to describe the common homeland of our kindred.

Regions

High Rock may be divided into the following geographic regions:

- Bretonny

Imperial Client States

High Rock has always been incredibly fractious and divided, a legacy of the Breton refusal to conform and our penchant for disagreement. But recent events have overturned this historic reality at least along the Iliac Bay, where the countless petty kingdoms have been amalgamated into two.

- Kingdom of Daggerfall

Petty Kingdoms of the Mountain Holds