Brevoy
Brevoy is a proud land, known throughout Golarion for producing able warriors, regal nobles, and clever rogues. Yet Brevoy’s two regions, Issia and Rostland, have long held one another in contempt and now stand on the verge of civil war. Both Issia and Rostland were independent nations until Choral the Conqueror’s barbarian armies and red dragon servitors united the regions into a single kingdom two centuries ago.
Recent notes
Until recently, the iron rule of House Rogarvia maintained a fragile peace between the two regions. But a decade ago, House Rogarvia mysteriously disappeared, and the conniving leaders of Issia’s House Surtovas supplanted them as Brevoy’s rulers. Now a labyrinthine political landscape plagues the nation, full of secret alliances, provincial loyalties, and nefarious plots; civil war seems inevitable. In Rostland to the south, the swordlords see in many of Issia’s recent political moves the swift approach of such a war. They rightly fear such an event, for Rostland is smaller than Issia, it has fewer armies, and its rolling hills and grasslands offer very little in the way of natural defenses. Worse, unlike Issia, whose northern border stretches along the Lake of Mists and Veils, which offers some defense, Rostland’s southern border lies along a stretch of wilderness infested with bandits and monsters. If Brevoy falls into civil war, it won’t be long at all before the violent, opportunistic vultures to the south move to take advantage of Rostland’s problems.
This southern region of wilderness is called the Stolen Lands. While these lands are technically a part of the River Kingdoms, several of which have advanced claims in the past, Rostland has long viewed them as “stolen” from it by bandits and monsters. Many attempts have been made to settle the Stolen Lands, but to date, none have succeeded, making these 33,000 square miles of unclaimed wilderness the largest swath of unclaimed land in the entire River Kingdoms. As tensions mount in Brevoy, some of Rostland’s swordlords hope to change that fact; they have issued charters to several groups of adventurers, sending them south into the Stolen Lands. These initial charters are simple enough: re-open the old trade routes along the rivers and scatter or defeat the bandits who have made them too dangerous to use. Beyond that, it seems apparent that Rostland wants to encourage new nations to grow in this region—and believes that by supporting these nascent kingdoms as allies, it’ll gain loyal support in any coming conflict with Issia. It’s a bold and brilliant political move—for if Rostland turned its own resources to the task, not only would such a move weaken its defenses against the north, but the blatant power grab would certainly force Issia’s hand. By sending free agents south, the swordlords of Rostland hope to create new allies without sacrificing their own position of power in Brevoy.
Yet as with most complex and brilliant plans, there are plenty of opportunities for disaster.
History
In the far northeastern reaches of Avistan, the land and its people become harsh and unforgiving. Winters are long and deadly here, forcing common folk to scratch out a meager existence farming the near- frozen soil and fishing its rivers and lakes during an all- too-short spring and summer. All the while, the lords of the land plot in their keeps and strongholds, jealously eyeing their neighbors’ domains. This is the nation of Brevoy.
The northern half of Brevoy consists of the once- independent nation of Issia. A stark landscape of sparsely vegetated, rugged hills, the region exhibits a uniformly poor quality of the soil that makes it nearly impossible to grow anything here. The people live primarily on fish from the Lake of Mists and Veils, a diet supplemented by food shipped up from Rostland or areas farther south. In centuries past, the people of Issia were infamous raiders, and their river-raiding craft were feared along the length of the Sellen. South of the Gronzi Forest lies Rostland, a vast rolling plain of fertile grasslands, dotted with farms and small villages, and serving as breadbasket of the north and homeland of the Aldori swordpact.
On the whole, Issians are a reclusive and enigmatic bunch. Each village has its own traditions dating back hundreds of years. Outsiders find themselves distrusted and shunned. Rumors of bloody rituals and human sacrifice remain unsubstantiated, but in the faraway cities of Restov and New Stetven, people whisper that the true masters of Issia remain hidden beneath the waters of the Lake of Mists and Veils, emerging in the dead of night to strike terrible bargains with the villagers.
The people of Rostland are mainly farmers, craftsmen, and tradesmen. Most are outgoing, happy, and welcoming of strangers—as long as the strangers are willing to conform to the local customs, of which there are many. This apparent welcome is somewhat misleading, however, as the people of Rostland are obsessed with honor and personal standing and take offense at the slightest provocation. One wrong word is likely to find the offender in front of the local magistrate or facing a prospective duel. But if outsiders take the trouble to learn their customs, Rostlanders prove to be fast friends and staunch allies.
For more than a thousand years, the Surtovas ruled the lands of Issia along the central southern banks of the Lake of Mists and Veils. This long-lived family of pirates and scoundrels is known to be made up of crafty schemers. Lacking both natural resources and a large population, Issia has never possessed anything like a mighty military force, and has traditionally survived by outsmarting its enemies.
While the Issians toiled in the northern reaches of this harsh landscape, the much more forgiving southern plains were colonized by Taldan explorers, arriving under the leadership of Baron Sirian First, a fiery, impulsive noble forced to emigrate from Taldor after losing one too many duels. They named this realm Rostland. In the early days of the colony, bandits struck from hidden camps in the River Kingdoms, nearly destroying the budding colony before it had a chance to get started. The bandit leader was himself a master swordsman and challenged the baron to a wager: half the baron’s fortune against the bandit’s head. Unable to pass up the challenge, Baron First took the wager and was broadly humiliated by an ignoble defeat. After he paid the bandit, he disappeared for several years. Most assumed he had fled to another land, too ashamed to show his face after such a defeat.
The people were surprised when the baron returned several years later a changed man, a swordsman the likes of whom the world had never before seen. Calling himself Sirian Aldori, he promptly challenged the bandit lord to a rematch, whereupon he disarmed and defeated the bandit in seconds. Re-establishing his rule, Baron Aldori issued an open challenge of 100,000 gp to anyone who could beat him in a duel of swords. Thousands answered the challenge from across the world. Some were earnest and honourable duellists, while others tried to cheat with magic or other tricks. It didn’t matter. Sirian defeated them all, forever cementing his reputation as the greatest swordsman in the world. At first, Sirian refused to teach his techniques, but eventually he selected a small group to train. He made them change their names to Aldori and to swear an oath not to reveal anything they learned to someone not of the swordpact. Through the generations that followed, Sirian’s pupils became known as the Aldori swordlords, a force feared throughout the continent.
Then, in 4499 ar, the delicate balance of power between Issia and Rostland fractured as a mysterious Iobarian warlord named Choral the Conqueror stormed into the region at the head of an army and with the allegiance of several red dragons. Choral confronted the Surtovas on the shores of the Lake of Mists and Veils, and they surrendered immediately to the powerful warlord and were therefore spared the retribution that nearly destroyed their southern neighbors in Rostland. For most of the following 2 centuries, the descendants of Choral the Conqueror, powerful House Rogarvia, led the people of two formally separate(and vastly different) nations, gradually welding them together to forge the nation of Brevoy. During that time, the Surtovas worked, slowly and carefully, to advance their position in the royal hierarchy of Brevoy—and their diligence paid off when the Rogarvias mysteriously disappeared nearly a decade ago.