Jennden

Jennden is the only truly significant settlement of the lands north of the Harp tributary, and it is home to 6,000 people. It is an overcrowded city, filled to the bursting point with refugees from old Almor and riddled with poverty and disease. The city's despot, Prince Jichrisen, has not been seen for almost a year now, and the city seems to be ruled by a military triumvirate, with both human and orcish troops administering a savage order. This faceless junta is a force Carwend must deal with, for maintaining the forces here is crucial to keeping the threats of Almor at bay.

Jennden is a city where virtually none of good align ments live. Visitors are targets for robbery, assault, and murder. Because of this, few head south from Innspa along the once well-traveled highway linking the cities. Indeed, while the evil mercenaries, thieves, and murder ers of the city are well-known, its worst evil is not. Jichrisen was abducted to Rauxes during the Greyhawk Wars, and Ivid's priests worked their magic on him, with wholly unpredictable and spectacular results.

Jichrisen's family has always had a streak of lycan thropy in their blood, partly due to a Rax-Nyrond streak. Now, the werewolf lycanthrope-animus has become a snarling, marauding thing which is kept chained and magically restrained in the dungeons of his own castle while his brother, Horamy, heads the junta ruling the city. Unfortunately, the strength of the monster is increas ing, and the magical bonds which restrain him grow fragile. If Jichrisen were loosened upon the lands, the fate of the people of this city—and far beyond—hardly bears thinking about.

Jennden anchors a string of a dozen or so small keeps along the east bank of the Harp, keeping watch over Almor. Each keep has 50 to 100 infantrymen, with the luckier ones having a mage or two to support them. They would not realistically provide much defense against invasion from Almor, but the very fact that they are maintained and troops drilled outside them hopefully sends some kind of signal to Szeffrin about the readiness of these lands to defend themselves.

The southern keeps, in particular, tend to lie in the fiefdoms of good-aligned Cranden princes and Darmen nobles. Their troops have correspondingly better morale and equipment. Some are supported by light cavalry units which patrol the river banks—ever watchful for fiends and humanoids.