Gildam Confederacy

Gildam Confederacy is an organization of six merchant towns and smaller communities along the coast bordering the Posprey Swamp between Fultar and Bevil. The confederacy was organization founded by former Fultonian communities to protect their mutual trading interests and form common defense. The Gildam Confederacy was founded by the cities around the Posprey Swamp to protect their mutual trading activity and for their common defense, and dominated commercial activity along the coast for hundreds of years. While currently still a great power, their influence has waned with the rise of the resurgent Fultonian Empire, with her powerful navy and her own merchants. The Gildam Confederacy never established any real political unity, and each town remains legally independent with their own local governments. The six main towns are Kathalas, Pripyat, Posprey, Covelo, Trinad, and Hania.

Structure

There is no political unity among the six towns, with each controlling their local territory and a portion of the hinterland. The inland areas are relatively poor swamp land, and there is little need or economic incentive for violent strife over the coastal lands. All six towns are governed by Regums and Councils. The title “Regum” was the title of the senior-most elected official. The Regum’s specific functions, and religious, executive, judicial, legislative and administrative powers differ from each city, but all have their powers shared with a city’s Council. The Councils generally have members from patrician families, but generally also include merchants, priests and sometimes even craftsfolk, fishermen and other members of the poorer classes. Most of the towns even have a legislative body consisting of all free citizens called a Conventus. Only in the town of Covelo is the Regum truly hereditary, although most of the towns Regum are elected from the aristocratic families. In general, a Regum can do nothing without a Council and the Council can do nothing without him. Therefore, the generally follow a mixed government model, combining monarchy in the Regum, aristocratic republic in the Council, and a democracy in the Conventus, or people's assembly.

History

The Confederacy came into being when various commercial associations among the towns coalesced, a process encouraged by the natural interdependence of trade in these regions and largely initiated and controlled by Prosprey. All of the towns held a central position and a vital interest in trade between Fultar in the south and Bevil and the Chaotic Coast in the north. The towns along the coast of the Posprey Swamp were key trading stops in the Fultonian Empire’s reach to its northern provinces, which are now the nation of Bevil and the petty states and towns of the Chaotic Coast. After the Guar Conquest, these towns maintained their allegiance to Fultar and remainded part of the Empire. Over the proceeding centuries, lands slipped from Fultar’s control, including the southern Barony of Atlan, the Fultar Forest and most of the Tesser River Valley, with the exception of the free cities and towns of Immersea, Critlip, Rakar and Olan. Fultar could no longer provide assistance to these towns and coulg not protect them monsters and orcs from the Posprey Swamp, human pirates, or the newly formed nation of Bevil. The dominance achieved by various towns and traders came about largely as a result of cooperation that took two forms: 1) merchants with a common interest in some particular branch of foreign trade tended increasingly to form guilds or other associations with each other; and 2) the towns formed loose economic and military unions. Those towns and their policies were dominated by great merchant families, and those families were linked by kinship and by mutual interest. From around Year of Iron (YR) 650, there appeared associations among the cities that increased in size and intimacy and had as their fundamental purpose the removal of obstacles to trade. As early as YR 700, Posprey and Covelo agreed that a common law obtain between them in many commercial matters, and that rapprochement led in around YR 730 to a formal alliance to secure common action against robbers and pirates. This was only one of several such agreements with the various cities, in which Posprey was usually prominent with their principal objectives always the suppression of piracy and other threats to trade. By YR 800 all towns having the “law of Prosprey” had agreed on common legislation for the defense of merchants and their goods. During this time period, the Confederacy first hired, and then through conquest, assimilated the people of Henarria. Today, the Hennarians are loyal subjects that benefit from providing land based warriors to Gildam and access to markets and booty. Henarria, has little native industry, but is amply supplied and rewarded by the Confederacy. The Confederacy’s existence and its importance were based on the fact that it controlled, by virtue of vigorous action and geographical position, the main currents of northern trade over hundreds of miles of coastland, and control of access to the Celtic hinterland. The major aims of the merchants who built the Gildam Confederacy are clear. First, they wanted their traffic to be secure in the wild and often barbarous conditions. The overriding purpose of many of the associations that preceded the full league was to secure combined action against pirates, land robbers and the monsters of the swamp, and the need for such action always remained. With the same general intent, an increasing effort was also put into the provision of lighthouses, marker buoys, trained pilots, and other aids to safe navigation. Second, they combined to obtain assured bases for their trade abroad and to secure the most-favourable conditions in that trade. Finally, the Confedracy could be used as an instrument for establishing a monopoly in those branches of trade and in those areas where it was firmly established.

Territories

From north to south as the crow files, the Confederacy is about 350 miles; however the coastline is much longer as it meandering with doublebacks and full of inlets. To the immediate north is Bevil, to the east the Posprey Swamp and the Venebones and the Nation of Galletica, and to the south Northern Fultar. The southeast of Gilldam includes the only farmlands, and hills of Henarria.

Worship

The towns of the Gilldam Confederacy worships the gods of the Fultonian Religion, but the highest honors goes to Hantithenus and Neptune, rather than Tya Nehru.