Protectorate of the Black Marquis
This realm is ruled by a single despot guided by the principle of “shared” wealth—shared in that any who wish to do business here must share their wealth with the Black Marquis, paying protection money for the privilege.
History
In 4700, a Chelish corsair prince named Morgan the White had a dream: he wanted to find a piece of land somewhere adjacent to ship traffic, build a small community of fellow pirates, and extort that ship traffic for every copper he could. His plan had a catch, though—he needed to find a place with water-going traffic that wasn’t already guarded by some enormous empire’s bristling navy. The answer was the River Kingdoms. He gathered every pirate ally he had from the Sodden Lands to the Mandagara League in distant Vudra and convinced them to “retire” to a choice piece of land astride a tributary of the Sellen River in the northern reaches of the River Kingdoms. With these fellow pirates, he created a complicated protection racket known as the Pirate Pact, established through the Marquis Convention (a loose contract of obligations and rules) and crowned himself the White Marquis of an area he called the Protectorate of the White Marquis. For 2 years, Morgan the White’s plan worked flawlessly: hundreds of pirates, scoundrels, thugs, and freebooters arrived from all over Golarion each month, bringing weapons, ships, and their skills, and very quickly the protectorate was boarding a large percentage of the river traffic bound for Numeria and the crusades in Mendev beyond. The White Marquis attended the Outlaw Council in Daggermark during the protectorate’s first year and guaranteed the other leaders of the River Kingdoms that his activities would never directly jeopardize the livelihood of those flying flags of their kingdoms and that they would instead rob outsiders of everything they could. Given that this idea didn’t violate any of the Six River Freedoms—which only apply to Riverfolk— the Outlaw Council accepted the protectorate into its ranks.
In very little time, the ship traffic that regularly traveled the western waterways wised up and began stopping in the pirate capital of Deadbridge on the way north or south to pay a toll. So long as a vessel paid the toll, it continued unmolested across the remaining 30 or so miles through the protectorate’s territory. Those who attempted to sneak past Deadbridge or chose to fight off the protectorate’s protection racket were boarded and slain, their vessels commandeered in the name of the marquis, and their goods sold off into black markets from Tymon to Restov in Brevoy.
The success of Morgan the White inevitably led to his downfall as one of his strongest allies, a Vudran maharaja buccaneer, slew the White Marquis in his sleep and usurped power in a bloody coup. Though his name is not remembered, this despot styled himself the Crimson Marquis and led for a brief period before a half-orc ally of the White Marquis named Ultrar Duneshifter (who took power as the Rogue Marquis) jailed him. These events, piled so quickly one on top of the other, destabilized the Pirate Pact, and for several years the region devolved into thievery and chaos.
During this time, three different marquises all claimed power and ruled from the three towns of Deadbridge, Farhaven, and Bodie’s Haunt, effectively cutting their branch of the river into three different protection rackets. In 4707, one of the residents of Deadbridge, a porcine man from Numeria named Urdul Bazzak, decided he’d had enough and made a deal with his home nation that if they would send armies south and smash Bodie’s Haunt for him, he’d reduce their prices for all Numerian traffic on the river. The Numerians reluctantly agreed, and while Bazzak sat astride his horse on a nearby hilltop, he watched as the marquis of Bodie’s Haunt was drawn and quartered and the entirety of his community slain. He immediately sent word to the marquises of Farhaven and Deadbridge that the same was about to happen to them, and in a matter of weeks went from a nobody in Deadbridge to the self-styled Black Marquis, the current enforcer of the Pirate Pact.
Today the protectorate knows relative peace. It continues to extort river traffic through its territory, and has made deals with Numeria, Mendev, and Brevoy to reduce the likelihood that one of these three nations will crush it out of existence, and holds a loose alliance with the current ruler in Daggermark. There are troubling stories brewing from inside the Echo Wood, though, that giant spiders and other web-spinning creatures are building vermin-infested nests throughout the Azlanti ruins scattered about the wood, but no one has bothered to explore too far away from the river to confirm the accounts.
Any who are willing to work for the protectorate may do so, but they must first swear loyalty to the Black Marquis and work for at least 6 months as deckhands on one of the ships before being recognized as full members of the Pirate Pact, with all the wealth-sharing and responsibility that comes with it. Adventurers are frowned upon here, as are crusaders, Pathfinders, and anyone else who might disrupt the way things are.