Galderia

Galderia is known for two things: its crossbowmen and its sword-canes.

The crossbows are the greater part of its reputation abroad. They are high-quality bows, or are at any rate taken for them, and the people who carry them are skilled, and a Galderian is trained to shoot from a young age, which is a hunting matter before it is a military one. Hunting is on the national flag. The quarry is the Galderian elk, a hearty animal that usually takes two bolts to fell; the only way to get the second is to run after it reloading fast enough to shoot before it bounds out of sight, and carrying a second crossbow would answer but is expensive and is not sportsmanlike. Galderian stags stand taller and run faster than the deer of Idir. The Stalingrad family builds to the top of that trade, out of Galderian yew, gald elk sinew and tazion steel, by a method held in the family for generations.

The second thing is the sword-cane. It is a cane and it is a sheath: turn it and draw, and there is a blade in it. Landor de Bellun walks on one, a gift from someone he knows there, and it would be enough for one man in a street, or two.

Near the capital, Galderium, the country is a small mountainous region of rivers and springs, and a Galderian who grew up there will tell you he has not found water since that he rates as highly. Its colors are green, gold and white. Its tongue is Galden, written in characters like the Latin ones, and shared with Amulta and Yovance, which both seceded from it. The accent carries: Amultan soldiers picked Galderia out of a stranger’s mouth on first hearing, a Peredhel commander named it on sight, and a merchant on the far side of the border has to translate the language in his head before he can answer in it.

Galderia is not against magic. It once had a strong tradition of it, and lost it well over a hundred years ago when Amulta seceded and took most of it away. There are temples there on the scale of Peredhel’s. The fire-festivals of Krelene are kept in Galderia too, though less than in Peredhel, and a Galderian street puppet show is where a child first learns what a quasit is.

Government

Nobody has named the ruler of Galderia. There is a Throne and it keeps vaults, and gems cut in Loshev by Yullen Gemsmith sit in them; one of them is set in a ring worn by a lady of Galderia whose name he did not give. The country has a nobility of its own, and Galderians keep the history books of how the west stood before the secession. Who sits on the Throne was never written down. No count of Galderia’s people has ever reached Idir, and no Galderian city but the capital has been named.

Laws

Galderia has a great many strict rules about how criminals are handled and is not shy about the punishments it hands down under them. Very few of those rules are stricter than the ones covering a man who abandons his duty to the military. Most Galderians go through some degree of training young in how to defend themselves, and more so if they grew up near a border, where the watchtowers are manned by people who live in sight of them. Asked whether he serves, a Galderian will say that they all serve, differently from the Dhel, and that they are not forced to. The cells are real all the same, and a man can grow old in one.

Currency

Galderia does not use moonies. Feda do not circulate there; like Idir, it runs predominantly on Peren coin.

Foreign Relations

Peredhel

Peredhel’s only direct neighbor without open conflict. The treaty between them is wary and it holds, and the trade that crosses their shared border is a critical artery of Peredhel’s economy and its diplomacy. Peredhel’s dealings with Ustos and Escaria run either by sea or through Galderia’s well-established networks, so the peace is worth more to Peredhel than the ground along the border.

Amulta

Amulta was Galderian ground, and seceded, peacefully, well over a hundred years ago, taking most of the country’s magic with it. They remain allied: a longstanding treaty sends Galderian food and materials to Amulta and helps keep its war supplied, and Amulta sent Gish to bolster Galderia in return. Amulta’s spell-canes, canes infused to release simple magics, began as an offshoot of the Galderian sword-cane.

Yovance

Yovance parted from Galderia the same way and about as long ago, and speaks the same language. What it has become since is a slaving nation. Galderia’s own dealings with it were never written down.

Campaign Updates

Galderia has never been visited, and almost everything known of it came out of one man. Aldo grew up near Galderium and left, and what he brought out was the training and the gear: a solid-rod crossbow of the Galderian pattern given him by Edrick with a homeland maker’s mark on it, sent home to a master for repair through Yullen Gemsmith’s contacts and returned oiled and restrung; a Stalingrad later, modular and fitted by Hinta with a flint-strike igniting-bolt attachment and a bolt case; armor cut in a forced green with gold accents, as a nod to the place. Six Galderian-quality heavy crossbows, fetched through an old contact near the border, arm the company’s own base.

He does not talk about it warmly. The one look at the country from the inside is a nightmare he had in a stripped room in Haudh-Gwenn: a boy who tried to walk off a border watchtower post, was caught by his own townsfolk while they were bidding for companionship downstairs, and was left to grow old in a cell for abandoning it, tormenting the new guards as they came through and watching his plans fade. He woke unrested and stayed that way. He has not gone back.