Phlandish

Phlandish occupies a strategically important location at the junction of roads and trails leading to Tricaster, Zulern, and One Ford. The land for several miles around is owned by a brutish Ulek exile, the self-styled Count Merleche of Phlandish, who treats his subjects (the 3.50 villagers and those in outlying tenant farms) as little better than slaves.

Merleche himself lives in a grand manor house just outside the village, and his ruffianish “house guard” terrify the local folk, extracting ruinous taxes and tithes. So far, the locals have not risen up and murdered him, probably because the land is very fertile in this area and crop yields are very good, so that most folk can hide some of their produce and manage to get by. Not even Merleche’s hated dwarven castellan uncovers all the contents of the barns.

Merleche is playing a cautious game with Greyhawk. He has established a transit camp, as it were, on the edge of his lands, where Greyhawk militiamen are given good food and drink, all the while claiming that his own militia patrol his own lands and maintain order. Greyhawk‘s militiamen don’t press the issue, so everything remains stable for the time being. Merleche pays a very nominal tribute to the Free City-this on the implicit understanding that he is left alone to administer his own lands as he sees fit.