01
The Frostfang Mountains
The great mountain range that walls Rimefang off from the imperial south. Its high passes are the only ways through, watched and held against the Empire. This barrier is what made the secession possible.
FrelleineAventhalFennmarkTiguriaKaldrik
About Rimefang
Rimefang, the Frostbound Wilds, lies in the far north of the world, walled away from the imperial south by the great range of the Frostfang Mountains. It is a hard and beautiful country of glaciers, forests, plains and river valleys, colder and more remote than any land the Empire holds.
Rimefang is no empty waste. It is a nation, or something close to one, five kingdoms bound together under a single faith. That faith is the Scivian Ecclesia, raised upon Emeric Scivia, the undefeated general the Empire executed and the north came to worship as a martyr and a god. In his name the northern kingdoms threw off imperial rule, endured the blockade and the war that followed, and made of the far north a realm apart.
Geography
The Frozen Dominion of the North
02
The Frozen North
The dead white far north beyond the settled lands, a country of glaciers, ice-fields and killing cold. Nothing lawful lives there. The feral Drall prowl its wastes. It is the frontier Kaldrik holds so the rest of the north need not.
03
The Heartlands
The sheltered, liveable centre of Rimefang, where most of its people live. Here lie Aventhal's river valleys, Fennmark's open horse-plains and Frelleine's grain-fields, the warm and fertile heart of a hard land.
04
The Tigurian Massif
The isolated dark highland massif of the south-west, cut off on all sides and veined with the black marble that is Tiguria's wealth. It is a knot of grim mountains scarred with quarries.
05
The Surrounding Seas
The waters that bound Rimefang on its seaward edges. To the west lies the Vizir Strait, where Tiguria ships its marble through the port of Bracca. To the east lies the sea between Meridia and Attox, Frelleine's long road out to the southern markets.
History
The Making of the Frostbound North
01
The Southern War
The Empire's long and failed attempt to conquer the burning land of Kethra and reach the rich isles beyond it.
For twenty years the northern kingdoms were bled dry feeding conscripts into a war that was never won. It was here that a leatherworker's son named Emeric Scivia rose to become the Empire's finest general.
The grievance it left in the north would outlast the war itself.
02
The Execution of Emeric Scivia
The day the Empire killed the general it had come to fear.
Summoned to the imperial seat under false charges, Emeric was condemned as a false divinity and a traitor and put to death in public.
The Empire, which had murdered the gods themselves and dreaded their return, could not abide a man worshipped as one.
In killing him it made him a martyr and lit the fire that would burn it out of the north.
03
The Unification Wars
The years in which the fractured northern kingdoms were forged into one nation by faith and by force.
Aventhal led the rising, and those who would not join were brought in by the sword.
At the First Synod of Aventhal the Scivian Ecclesia was founded and the north seceded from the Empire.
The imperial outposts were driven out, the Frostfang passes held and the starvation blockade endured unbroken.
04
The Founding of the Scivian Ecclesia
Born at the First Synod of Aventhal, the church that would rule the north.
It raised Emeric Scivia as martyr and god and set the Voice at its head, three faceless rulers so that no single figure could ever be worshipped as one man again.
It bound the five kingdoms into a single faith and made of the far north a realm apart.
What the Empire feared into being, the north made law.
05
The Frelleine Civil War
The war tearing the largest kingdom of the north apart in the present day.
When King Albert Orsava's daughter was found poisoned, he blamed her husband Erik Dunn and seized the Dunn lands, taking the city of Jarvik and its people to the sword.
Erik, innocent of the murder, proclaimed himself king to survive.
The Ecclesia lets the two houses bleed each other, caring only that the war does not spread to Fennmark.
Factions
Powers of the Northern Realm
Rimefang is a realm shaped by faith and blood, by the unwavering power of the Scivian Ecclesia and the ambitions of ancient houses. Here devotion is a shield as much as a sword, and rule is earned in the cold by lineage, steel and sacrifice.
01
The Scivian Ecclesia
The martyr-faith that rules Rimefang, raised on the worship of Emeric Scivia as god. It bound the five kingdoms into one church and governs them by devotion and by force. Its laws are harsh, and to flee south to the Empire is treason paid for by one's whole family. What the faith cannot win by reverence it takes by fear.
02
The Voice
The three faceless rulers at the head of the Ecclesia, always three and never named. They divide the law, the faith and the war between them, so that no single hand can ever hold it all. The arrangement was made after Emeric, whose worship as one man frightened the Empire into killing him. The Voice will never again let the north bend the knee to a single figure.
03
The Legia Martyris
The holy legion of the Ecclesia, raised from the levies of the five kingdoms and led by the Sword of the Voice. It carries the word of the Immortal, guards the sacred sites and wars against the Empire. Many of its soldiers are branded or scarred in the faith, and they fight with the grim devotion of men who serve a god. It is the reborn army of Emeric, sworn now to the church he left behind.
04
Domus Luthen
The ancient ruling house of Aventhal, keeper of the holy heartland and one of the oldest houses in the north. Old King Aldous Luthen is deeply pious, yet he guards the crown against the reach of the Ecclesia. His trouble is that he has outlived his children and holds no heir. On his death the fate of Aventhal will fall to the church he spent his life resisting.
05
Domus Karsk
The lesser house that rules Kaldrik, kept deliberately low by the Ecclesia to hold the balance of the kingdoms even. Its king, Roggan Karsk, is a capable ruler of the frozen frontier, trained in war and blooded against the Drall. His flaw is the dice. Those who know him say he would gamble the very throne he sits on.
06
Domus Avaric
The great and proud house of Fennmark, whose power rests on its monopoly of the Fenni. Under the cold King Darion Avaric it is the largest paymaster of the Ecclesia, and its gold bends the Voice's decisions to its will. Darion means to make Domus Avaric the strongest house on the whole continent. It is the one house the faith cannot keep low, for the north cannot do without its horses and its riders.
07
Domus Gessan
The ruling house of isolated Tiguria, high in rank yet content to keep to itself. It could claim a greater place among the kingdoms and simply does not trouble to. Its king, Duncan Gessan, is an old man who rules from a chair, his back broken long ago in a fall from the quarries. He wants nothing more than the quiet kingdom he already holds.
08
Domus Orsava and Domus Dunn
The two houses of Frelleine, once joined by marriage and now at war. King Albert Orsava blames Erik Dunn for the poisoning of his daughter and fights to destroy Domus Dunn entirely, past all custom and mercy. The wronged Erik, innocent of the murder, has crowned himself king to survive. Between the two of them the richest kingdom in the north is tearing itself apart.