Idir

Idir is the grassland at the center of Erôth: a land of independent city-states with no capital, no crown, and no government of any kind above the town. Its people and everything belonging to them are Idiran. It is also called the land of curses, and the name itself is ancient Mól for no crown.

Whether that makes it a region or a country has never been settled. Outsiders count it among the countries of Erôth beside Galderia and Yovance and the rest. Idirans describe it from the inside as a scatter of towns that govern themselves and answer to nobody. Neither has ever had to give way, because nothing has stood over Idir long enough to make the question matter.

The Land

Grassland, mostly, dotted with towns and thorps and with the wreckage of the empire that used to own it. Mól stonework, ore-veined, lies about the region the way field-stone lies about a farm. Two great rivers run through it and meet at Haudh-Gwenn, which is the whole reason Haudh-Gwenn is what it is; central Idir is simply the land between the rivers. Mountains close the west and hold Draazstone. East of the water stands an ancient forest that is said to swallow those who go into it. A lake sits between Loshev, Forven and Harad.

The signature hazard is the plains cat, and the rule that follows from it is to never cross the plains with fewer than six armed. They are bigger than a horse and they take lone travelers. The mountains hold lions larger than plains cats, though not known to hunt people, along with giant golden eagles and wyverns. The deer run smaller and lighter than the Galderian stag. Honeysuckle is the region’s prominent flower, common enough that a native may wear it in ink and be read by it.

The settlements named so far are Loshev, Haudh-Gwenn, Forven, Harad, Ridh, Ostrad, Westwood, Draazstone, Veren, and Vigil, and there are more than that. A complete list was never written down, and neither was a total population, a border, an area or a founding year for the region as a whole. Haudh-Gwenn is the nearest thing to a capital and is never called the capital.

No Crown

Idiran towns are effectively independent city-states with their own governance, and the country between them is left lawless by common consent. It is neither policed nor claimed, which is precisely why the Free Folk can live in it unmolested.

Nothing sits above the towns because of the curse: rulers in Idir go mad, and their realms come apart around them. What can be gathered about the seven keeps that bind it, from common folk and old tomes and tavern rumor, is set down in one traveler’s notes. Peredhel surrounds Idir on every side, has wanted it a long time, and has never installed lasting control over any of it. Idirans reckon it is the curse that keeps them free, and that Peredhel’s appetite for war is bound up in the same working, so that the empire cannot stop until the thing is broken.

That is not a comfortable arrangement to live inside. Native Idirans carry a steady low dread of being conquered, and put it in a phrase: maybe we will all be Dhel one day.

What Idirans Hold

• Freedom: Idirans pride themselves on independence, and many hold Vroga Waruk, invoked here for liberation rather than for battle, as close to their hearts as the Martyr.
• A horror of captivity: there is no slavery in Idir, and a guard on the Haudh-Gwenn bridge will be aghast at the bare concept of it. Open support for the trade is near-universally reviled. Over the border the Dhel keep slaves openly and by law, mandated from the top down.

The rest of the code follows from those two. Prejudice against Peredhel and against its people runs deep enough that a man from over the border keeps his holy symbol under his shirt among friends. Lady Eravil Dark Eyes dominates Peredhel and is kept down here, and her worship is dangerous to display. Beside the Martyr and Vroga Waruk, Idir keeps Cindra, strongest in the east.

Names work differently here too. Up-region Idirans have no set family names, and take a name from the place they come from, which is the Idiran naming custom. Martyr’s Day, the quadrennial festival, is far larger in Idir than in Peredhel, and the Free Folk mark it loosely. Fire-festivals go the other way and are less common here than across the border. Coffee comes upriver through Loshev and is common in that town; everywhere else drinks tea.

Coin and Horses

Idir runs predominantly on Peren coin. Its banks are invite-only, want a sponsor’s name as collateral, take their fee on conversion and again on transaction, and issue writs honored between Idir and Bardh across the border. Keif is the region’s narcotic and the currency its smugglers count in, and the old paths and roads of Idir serve as cut-throughs for people who would rather not be seen on a highway.

And the horses. Idir has the finest equine stock in Erôth, bred and alchemically improved under the Mól by the House of Säv, who were publicly the empire’s horse-breeders and privately its gatherers of information. Four thoroughbred lines are still raised by families around Veren who have kept the method inside the family for something near a thousand years: Farid, Rihal, Jalil and Khalid. Wild mixed stock runs the plains besides, quick and tenacious and free-willed, and catching one is only the beginning of the work.

Campaign Updates

The working that lay over the whole region is gone. Three of the seven keeps were broken inside a few minutes of one another at sunrise, which is the condition the curse sets for anything to stick, and breaking three broke the thing above them as well. Idir took an immense wave of energy at that moment, and behind it a dark wave that some people saw and some did not.

That is not the end of the curses. The keeps that were not broken still carry their own, each one of them, and each has to be gone into and broken by hand the way these three were. What came out of the same hour in the other direction is that the old keeps of Idir turn out to be endpoints of a network from before the region was schismed, and most of them are now linked and working again. Beams of light went up from the Twisted Grove and from points west, northeast, southeast and east when they woke.

Idirans have always reckoned it is the curse that keeps them free, and that Peredhel’s appetite for war is bound up in the same working. Most of that working is now gone, and nothing has yet tested the reckoning.

The region’s politics have moved further than its curse has. Ostrad was taken by bloodshed for its food, one Idiran city-state conquering another. Beltran Grayeras, who commanded the largest standing force in Idir and held Haudh-Gwenn through every office that mattered at once, is dead in a street outside an inn, and what becomes of his family has not settled yet. Peredhel still surrounds Idir, and has still never held a foot of it.