Kudo

The old nation of Kudo wasn't forged by governors, but by legendary heroes, who founded its most famous and proud cities. Now that the place has cooled down, it's become a nation of trade that thrives with the continent as a whole.

A talkative seaside

Kudo has dozens of fishing villages, and its shores bristle with docks and shipyards. Seafaring is no longer safe because of the Duumvirate War, so the shipyards are quiet, but Kudo still maintains a massive fishing industry. In fact, they've been at war with an overfishing crisis for hundreds of years now.
These days, Kudo's fishing industry receives help from the sea god Chelys, who drives millions of fish westward each day, to where they're needed most. Now the Kudoan fish market features specimens from all over the continent, including some truly monstrous beings drawn up from the deepest parts of the sea. Kudo may have the world's best fishing spots, which are well-visited despite the enormous taxes.

Grumbling diplomacy

Being an old and weathered nation, Kudo has frequently been wounded by unrest and threatened with war. Nowadays, any brewing hostility is restrained by an ironclad trade network: the provinces in Kudo can't live as they do without help from each other and the rest of the world. Certain parts of Kudo have held on to animosity for centuries, but the network that keeps them together is similarly tempered. Neighbors might sometimes try to exploit the chained-down Kudo, and sometimes they push their luck too far.
A derisive idea of Kudo is spreading throughout the continent: if they didn't have so much to gain through trade, the Kudoans would be on the other side of the war. "Ornit-adjacent," they're sometimes called. A lot of this slander may have been seeded by Ornity's own speakers, who have been softly attacking Kudo for a long time: the deep connections and reliance between Kudo and other nations form a sort of power which rivals that of Ornity.
Despite how the pessimists describe them, most Kudoans want to help in the Duumvirate War, and believe that their neighbors should have all the resources Kudo can provide. This military aid is being throttled by just a few powerful governors, who are fighting their own war of words with the rest of the country.

The Shadowfell

In order to repair the trade networks damaged in the Duumvirate War, many Kudoan traders and adventurers carved out some seaside outposts in the Shadowfell. Many of them have some Shadowfell Influence, and after trying to deal with the local monsters on their own, they grudgingly accepted help from Aphygia and Carrithel.

Demographics

Kudo is a mercantile country of growing wealth and a growing impoverished class. Its population is mostly earthlies, born and raised in Kudo, and one in every thirty people is gnomish, a percentage more than twice that of other countries in Agrophon.
Traders and workers often visit from beyond Agrophon, and are gladly welcomed as Kudoans. But there are small unaligned communities within Kudo's borders, trading and negotiating for relative autonomy, that are excluded.

Geography

Kudoan towns, and even some cities, are constructed "along the grain," where traffic and production chains are aligned with natural geography. They're sometimes difficult to navigate; Geranaea is the most notorious. But the design of Kudo has a surprisingly efficient, even druidic sensibility, carefully thought out to mimic a real ecosystem. Finding your way around is intuitive--reading a map isn't.

Population

75,000

Inhabitant Demonym

Kudoan