Calenard
Calenard is the land of the Calen people, known for their affinity with hounds and horses as well as agriculture. Calenard produces more food than any of the other regions due to its supply of fertile soil and supplies the Empire with a large amount of its grain and meat.
While Calenard is now a region ruled by a king, it was once much larger and ruled instead by several ranging clans that each chose their own leader not by birth or riches, but by deed and popularity. In time these ranging clans settled to become kingdoms over the majority of the southern and central regions of Harental. Only in times of war would the clans' kings come together to choose one among them to act as general and ruler their armies until the war was done. With the establishment of the Aestaran Empire, however, the number of internal disputes and outward rebellions among the various Calen eventually became too unstable for them continue to allow, forcing a monarchy in place of the federation of kingdoms that existed before.
The Calen military is one of the least heavily equipped and historically most dangerous in Harental, once ranging across the lands to conquer much of its flatlands in the south and southeast before the Empire. It is heavily made up of light cavalry skilled with short bows on horseback in addition to their war hounds.
In addition to their military and agricultural prowess, the Calen are well known for the unique hounds they raise to defend their lands and fight alongside their soldiers. Once inhabiting the Green Hills mountains in southern Calenard, the domesticated Calen hounds stand three feet tall at the shoulder and weigh as much as a grown human. The Calen have tamed these beasts since before they mastered the horse, and they are treated with more respect than most domesticated animals, given their own lodging, citizenship and honorable burials upon death. There are legends of a time when the Calen could speak with their animals, but that has been limited to a kind of pseudo-language used by the hounds in the form of gestures and noises that houndmasters are trained to understand.
Aside from the normal goblin, ogre and other incursions in their lands, the Calen have to deal with an old rivalry with the centaurs that range across the fields and make their homes in the forests to the north and south. The exact reason for this long-standing rivalry is only theorized anymore with most conflicts that arise being made on principle alone.
History
Before conquered by the Empire, Calenard was one people ruled by a council of kings, each with their own subset of the Calen population and their own strongholds, and for a time the Empire kept this tradition in place with the kings no longer being a part of a private alliance between each other, but their own independent ruler who reported directly to the Empire. After a number of rebellions by various Calen kings, the Empire continued to dethrone rebel kings in place of loyalists until only two regions remained: the region of Calenard to the east, and the region until the reign of Sigmund I that was known as Fairshore, each awarded to the most loyal among the dynasties.
Type
Geopolitical, Country
Alternative Names
Land of the Houndmasters, Green Sea, Savage Greenland
Demonym
Calen
Parent Organization
Location
Controlled Territories
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