Kings Of Kings

The year is 4710, one decade after the disappearance of House Rogarvia, and with King Noleski Surtova still holding power all of Brevoy lies on the edge of civil war.

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. Until recently, the iron rule of Choral the Conqueror's family-run 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 Surtova 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 war. They rightly fear such an event, for Rostland is smaller than Issia, 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 known as The Stolen Lands, a untamed area infested with bandits and monstrous creatures. If Brevoy falls into civil war, it won’t be long before the violent, opportunistic vultures of The Stolen Lands move to take advantage of Rostland’s problems.

While these Stolen Lands are technically a part of the River Kingdoms, 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 initiate change in the Stolen Lands by issuing charters to several groups, sending them south into the wild Stolen Lands. These initial charters are simple enough: re-open the old trade routes along the rivers, tame the savage beasts that have terrorized the area for decades, and rid the area of the banditry. 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 towards The Stolen Lands, 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.