An Overview of the Western Kingdoms
The Drakkar Penninsula is home to a fierce and warlike people called the Drakkar. The Drkkar have many small kingdoms and jarldoms on the ruugged and inhosptiable penninsula that they call home. Every year they hed south in their longships to raid, trade and pluinder and as such are much feared throughout Erehwon.
The Drakkar were first "discovered" by the western kingdoms some 300 winters ago when they howled out of the seas to loot, burn and plunder the defenceless coastal towns and villages of the Druth and Skeltish kingdoms. Many cities and towns were sacked by the raiders who would attack and then disappear back into the trackless ocean in their longships before any sort of resistance could be organised. Before long almost every land trembled before the unchecked might of the Drakkar and several kings began offering them bribes not to attack. Sometimes these offerings worked but more often than not they attacked anyway for battle seems to be little more than a sport to these hardy warriors.
Druthnia
Druthnia is the largest human Kingdom in the continent of Eehwon. Several centuries ago the forefathers of the Druthnians, savage and warlike tribesmen of which the Druths were the strongest and fiercest, first began to migrate from the vast eastern steppes into the area now known as Druthnia. These warriors displaced the Skelts that had been living in the region driving them ever westward. The Druthni tribesmen were not one people but rather were successive waves of invaders sharing a common cultural origin but often speaking different tribal dialects, that swept out of the east. The first tribe to migrate to the region were the Avaks, they were followed by the Velgoths and the Druthni and finally came the Vors.
Each of these warrior tribes settled in the region and left their own imprint upon the land. For many years the tribes remained separate and like the Skelts warred amongst themselves as often they did against other races. Eventually a powerful warlord emerged amongst the Druthni, the strongest of the tribes and this leader, Klovic, proclaimed himself king of the Druths. Klovic then spent the next few years subjugating the various tribes and forging a kingdom of his own.
Since the kingdom has continued to prosper and today Druthnia is the most powerful human kingdom in Erehwon. The king continues to rule in the city of Drenan, the capital founded by Klovic.
The Iron kingdom lies beneath the mighty peaks of the Kharnik Mountians in north western Erehwon, in a region commonly called the Northlands. The kingdom is the largest dwarven realm in the north and perhaps in all of Erehwon as well.
Sharmra
The island kingdoms of Sharmra are the last homeland of the Skelts. The island of Sharma itself was once a mosaic of petty kingdoms warring amongst themselves but was eventually united by Uther of Gwyneth who forged the tribes into a single kingdom and managed to defeat both the Drakkar and the Druthni to ensure his peoples survival. For his efforts Uther was proclaimed the first High King of Sharmra a title which his descendants still hold. Sharmra is said to be a verdant land full of rolling hills, green meadows and idyllic woodlands. To the far north the land becomes rockier, colder and more barren rising upon into the Northern Highlands. These rugged mountains are the home of the highlanders, fiercely independent clansmen that in times past have formed the backbone of the Skeltish armies.
Vorland
Vorland is the eastern most of the Western Kingdoms and is seen by the Druthnians as a buffer state between themselves and the nomadic Nardir that inhabit the plains further to the east. In former times it was known to the Drutnians as the Ostmarken (or the Eastern Marches). Until the 67th year of the Western Calendar the Ostenmark was the homeland of the Vors. But in that year the Druthnians began a war of conquest in the east and before long the former lands of the Vors had paassed over to the control of several Druthnian earls. The Druthnians persecuted the ethnic Vors and tried to assimilate them into their own society. However by assimilation the Druths meant to make the Vors their vassals, a people without a culture of their own. The Druthnian plan was for them to be the ruling class while the common Vors would become little more than slaves. The Vors were purged of their own nobility, their libraries and monasteries burned, and all aspects of their culture and language brutally repressed.
The Vors however remained a majority and even though their own nobility had all but been wiped out by the invaders a few leaders remained hidden in wilderness fasts and they eventually rose up against their Druthnian overlords. The rebels proclaimed the leader of the revolt as their King and declared the creation of the Kingdom of Vorland. The Druthnians sent an army to defeat the rebels but the canny leader, "King" Vladmir refused to meet the Druthnians in pitched battle preferring instead to harry their lines of supply and fight a guerilla war instead for he knew his lightly armed and ill equipped solders would be slaughtered by the heavily armed and well disciplined Druthnian knights. The Druthnians incensed at trying to fight an enemy that refused to fight an honourable war resorted to terror tactics of their own burning villages sympathetic to the rebels and destroying crops. This caused a huge famine in the land and helped to crystallise support for the rebels and hatred for the Druths. Before long the entire population had risen up against the Druthnians.
King Vladmyr used the time he'd gained fighting his guerilla war to train up an army of his own and eventually the rebel army caught the Druthnians in a trap and slaughtered them almost to man. The hatred leader of the Druths, Earl Gurdoth, was captured and executed in the capital of Vorland.
King Athelred of Druthnia realising the futility in trying to continue to suppress the Vors chose instead to offer them an armistice. He met with King Vladmyr and after many days of negotiations the Druthnian King accepted the Vorland's independence and sovereignty over their land and a peace treaty was signed. Thus was the Kingdom of Vorland formed.
This page was last updated on
Thursday, 11 October 2001