Keston Province
(KEST-un)
Keston Province is no longer a province of the Kingdoms of Foere, having declared fealty to the Crown of Suilley. It has always been sparsely populated, and is still reeling from the devastation of the Wilderlands Clan War. The province is well-governed, but even before the war only the areas around the main roads were particularly safe or civilized, and at this point the province’s interior is no more than a sparsely settled wilderness.
Keston is relatively unaffected by the receding presence of Foere; it has its own troubles, and the province is occupied by the attempt to recover from the war. Times already changed for Keston in 20011 A.E., when the Wild Clans descended from the Wilderland Hills, and events beyond the borders seem very distant these days.
Structure
Since declaring its independence from Foere, Keston Province has been governed as a feudal vassal to the Kingdom of Suilley, very much along the same model used by the Kingdoms of Foere with their subject states. The King of Suilley appoints a Lord-Governor for the province, but the feudal ranks below the Lord-Governor are hereditary. These nobles offer their fealty to the King of Suilley, but report to the Lord-Governor as the King’s representative. Hence, travelers in the province find the usual mix of barons and knights, all with greater or lesser landholdings. Four dukes make up the governmental layer between the barons and the Lord-Governor, and these four dukes are extremely powerful in the province and even in Suilley. These four families, along with the Lord-Governor at the time, are the ones that delivered Keston into Suilley’s hands by seceding from the Kingdoms of Foere. The Lord-Governor who engineered the secession became rich in land and titles himself, but his family is by no means as powerful as the dukes, and his descendants do not much involve themselves in the province’s government other than as ordinary members of the nobility.
Keston’s current ruler is the retired general Baron Miltrin Cormien, who was elevated to the position of Lord-Governor by the young King of Suilley, Ulrich IX. Cormien is a disciplined administrator, staunchly loyal to the Crown of Suilley, related by blood to all four of the Dukes of Keston, and a figure of legend among the common folk after his defeat of the Wilderland Clans.
Assets
Wool, livestock (sheep), flax, foodstuffs (apples), grain, linen, quarry stone, coal, lead.
History
Keston is very lightly populated, with most of its folk living in the towns and villages along the length of the South Road and the Gap Road. Few settlements remain along the Trader’s Way after the ravages of the Wilderlands Clan War of 20011 A.E.. There has never been more than a scattering of hamlets and freeholds in the province’s interior or along the edge of the mountain ranges.
Annexation by Foere
Before becoming a province of the Kingdoms of Foere, the lands of Keston were subject to waves of Heldring raiders over the course of thousands of years. As Foere expanded, it took steps to secure the region in 20714 A.E., establishing a garrison town at Kingston and drawing boundary lines for a royal province. Most of the area’s inhabitants, scattered in their hamlets and tiny villages, remained completely unaware of this change in status. Local warlords were forced, one by one, to call themselves “knights” and enter the feudal hierarchy of the Foerdewaith by pledging fealty to the same chieftains they had always followed. These chieftains, in turn, discovered themselves actually to be “barons,” who paid small amounts of tax to a distant governor in exchange for not being attacked. Once the concept of “taxes” had been gotten across by the burning of a few motte-and-bailey forts, the isolated settlements of the province settled into their new titles and life continued as before. In a very real sense, Keston Province was annexed by nomenclature rather than by armies.Changed Allegiances
In 20181 A.E., Lord-Governor Fenevic Jaounehelm (JOWN-helm) switched his feudal allegiance from the Overking of Foere to the King of Suilley, following the lead of Count Catrebrasse of Toullen. This event is described in more detail under the entry for the County of Toullen.Wilderlands Clan War of 20011
Keston Province’s recent history is dominated by the events and effects of the recent Wilderlands Clan War. Some 10 years ago, early in the year of 20011, a great horde of raiders emerged from the Wilderland Hills, burning the village of Bynum and fortifying it to use as a base for ravaging the countryside. The Lord-Governor of Keston at that time, a veteran of several petty border wars, began assembling his forces to counter the invasion, invoking the feudal duties of his four dukes and their barons to provide soldiers. The army of Keston, such as it was, consisted of a core of trained infantry with the various small cavalry units ordinarily responsible for patrolling the province’s roads. Now, barons and their knights, accompanied by small levies of varying quality, assembled in the mustering-fields around Kingston underneath the colorful pennants of the feudal lords. Their numbers were small, and the then Lord-Governor chose to send the faster-moving elements of the army forward without the levies, ordering the less-organized and less-experienced militia force to follow behind the veterans and knights along the South Road to the Provincial Military Road, and then north to the borders of the Wilderland Hills. In the first contact between the forward elements of the army of Keston and the raider horde, at the ill-fated battle of Sontanne Hill, the Kestoners engaged a mixed force of hill barbarians, orcs, and ogres. Sontanne Hill might have turned out to be a decisive victory for the more organized soldiery of Keston, but the humanoids turned out to have the unexpected support of several margoyles and their lesser gargoyle kin that flew over the human army, swooping in and out to the kill. Demoralized by the attacks from the air, the army of Keston retreated back to forested cover, leaving the raider horde in possession of the field. Perhaps even worse for morale, the Lord-Governor of the province was badly wounded in the rearguard action, his leg crushed. The few prisoners taken from Sontanne Hill revealed that the army of raiders had been organized by a clan of margoyles from the Forlorn Mountains that hoped to seize a domain for themselves in the lowlands. Not particularly intelligent, for margoyles are not, this clan had nevertheless managed to use a mix of bad ideas, persuasiveness, and brute force to raise a truly massive horde of reavers to sweep down into the civilized lands. When groups of lost or fleeing soldiers from the defeated regular army met the advancing militias and levies on the Trader’s Way, and news spread through the militia, the second force evaporated, heading back to Kingston without officers, in a panic. The few barons that had been leading the levies were unable to rally them, and the army of Keston was effectively destroyed. Drawn by the successes of the advance force, new tribes and clans poured out of the Wilderland Hills, some coming all the way from the Forlorn Mountains to join the pillaging. The Count of Toullen, always a good neighbor to Keston Province, immediately sent a contingent of his own knights and solders to shore up the collapsing defense of Keston. Too badly injured to take the field, the Lord-Governor appointed Sir Miltrin Cormien to reassemble and command the army of Keston, largely because the knight was related to all four of the Province’s ducal families and had demonstrated great heroism in the Battle of Sontanne Hill. This turned out to have been a lucky decision, for as the war progressed, Sir Cormien’s blood relation with the great nobles of the Province was far eclipsed by his unexpected military genius. Making the correct assumption that his enemy was not a single army but rather a collection of independent clans, Cormien took the extremely unpopular step of ordering his knights off their prized Suilley destriers and out of their heavy armor, putting them in much lighter armor and onto lighter riding horses. This new force, small units of heavily armed light cavalry, fanned out across the contested area in western Keston guided by locals. By locating isolated clans and combining together for the battle, then splitting up again, Cormien’s small army managed to check the advance of the horde, although the largest of the tribes remained undamaged by the light cavalry tactics. By 20010, a small army raised by the King of Suilley finished mustering outside of Manas, and marched south along the Flatlander Road to assist in Keston’s defense. With the arrival of these heavier troops, the war settled into a more traditional pattern, with the allied armies of Keston, Suilley, and Toullen attempting to bring the large tribes into a pitched battle where they could be decisively defeated. These attempts failed, mainly due to poor leadership of the allies by the commander of Suilley’s army, the largest in the field. After a year of watching the army beaten back in petty defeat after petty defeat, the King of Suilley recalled his general and placed Keston’s Sir Cormien at the head of all the allied forces. The disgraced Suilleyn general, Baron Nalsibert, drank himself to death on the road back to Manas, capping off a long and incompetent military career. With Baron Nalsibert removed from command, and with a new influx of Foerdewaith troops from Vourdon and Exeter Provinces joining the allied army as a gesture from the Overking, Sir Cormien (now raised Baron Cormien) undertook a series of lighting advances against the horde, cutting off the army of the large Wormaganth Clan in a hamlet called Onjoun, and slaughtering them. The margoyle leadership of the horde now discovered that they actually had very little control over their “subjects,” and were virtually unable to respond as Cormien severed and destroyed their army clan by clan. The final battle took place deep in the Wilderland Hills, as the clans retreated farther into their home territory. At the ancient fortifications of Broch Tarna, the allied armies broke and crushed the remaining hill clans, bringing an end to the bloody, three-year war and sending the few surviving margoyles fleeing back to their haunts high in the Forlorn Mountains. Cormien himself fought in the vanguard of the army, losing his left arm to the infection of a wound inflicted during the battle. When the former Lord-Governor eventually died from the lingering wounds suffered at Sontanne Hill, the King of Suilley elevated Keston’s hero, Baron Cormien, to the position.Demography and Population
Territories
The southern border of Keston Province runs due west from the intersection of the South Road with the Provincial Military Road, with an eastern boundary at the Trader’s Way, 10 or so miles to the north of Albor Broce in Exeter Province. To the east, the province officially includes the eastern slopes of the Kal’Yugoth and the southern half of the Meridian mountain ranges, but these are wild areas unpatrolled save at the very edges.
Other than along the roads, there is very little in Keston Province that is not wilderness. In the western part of the province, many secrets lie buried in the charred remains of forgotten villages. Wolves — and far worse things than wolves — howl unchallenged beneath the night skies of empty, rural Keston. Farms lie fallow, and forests claw their way back into the long-forgotten grounds of their ancestral growth. A few hardy settlements remain in these newly crafted wilds, and some new villages are springing up almost like colonies in a foreign land. Many of these new hamlets disappear in time, but some persevere and prosper.
Technological Level
Foreign Relations
Keston was once a province of Foere, but in 20181 A.E., along with the County of Toullen, Keston Province rescinded its feudal obligations to the Court of Courghais and offered fealty to the Crown of Suilley. It has been governed indirectly by the realm of Suilley ever since.
Trade & Transport
The city of Kingston is well placed for trade, being at the crossroad of the Gap Road, the South Road which runs from Toullen to parts north, and controlling the Provincial
Military Road leading to the south through Exeter Province. None of these routes are very heavily traveled, but together they make enough revenue to maintain the province well. If the province manages to rebuild the ravaged rural communities lost to the depredations of the Wilderland Clans, it will become a strong nation over time. At present, however, the province is still struggling with the loss of farmland, villages, and rural population from the war.
Founding Date
20714 A.E.
Type
Geopolitical, Province
Capital
Demonym
Kestoner
Leader
Head of State
Head of Government
Government System
Monarchy, Elective
Power Structure
Feudal state
Economic System
Traditional
Parent Organization
Location
Neighboring Nations
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