Vemar
The Northernmost nation of the Five Realms, Vemar is a land of mountains, pine forests and tundra. Harsh and unforgiving, it breeds a folk equally hardy and resilient knowing that they have to provide what the land refuses to - either by hard work or by raiding and piracy. As a result, they’re expert warriors either on land or sea, with setting and executing ambushes a specialty.
The nation is a loose confederation of tribes and local chieftains currently ruled over by a High King/Queen of Vemar in the town of Gata. Many of these lords would heavily question his legitimacy to rule, but generally accept it as a fact of life that mostly benefits them regardless.
Their religion is polytheistic and animistic, focusing around a family of gods that represent key areas of their spirituality and philosophy.
Structure
The Vemar have a rather loose idea of both what government is and what it should be.
At the top is the current king or the queen, ruling from their settlement of choice - Gata as things stand - until they die, are killed or are deposed. The succession is usually not hereditary, but can be if no-one else is bothered enough to try to claim it for themselves. Fell-Hand Fjall, the current King of Vemar, follows five generations of his family on the throne precisely because none of the other chiefs fancied the job.
Beneath the monarch - equal to them, if you ask them - are the various Chiefs of the other clans of the Vemar. Generally speaking, these are people who have risen to the rank on merit or by force of personality - sometimes a mixture of the two. These are much more rarely hereditary positions as the Vemar feel that a healthy amount of change in this position keeps everyone sharp and moving forwards rather than stagnating.
Beneath each clan chief are the Thejns. These are the chief's most trusted and respected war leaders, typically living with the chief in their hall and being permitted to eat at their table. In times of war they act as the chief's generals in the field, while in peacetime they can lead small raiding parties across the border or act as diplomats as needed or as the fancy takes them.
Each Thejn has a force of fighting men and women that owe their loyalty to them directly known as Drengrmen, with each individual being known as a Drengrman. These are the professional warrior class of the Vemar and represent one of the most elite fighting forces in all the Realms. While not technically a part of any form of hierarchy for the Vemar, they command as much respect as their reputation gives them - and that tends to be a decent amount.
The common people are split into two groups - the thralls and the peasants. Thralls are the men and women that answer the call to war when it's sounded, whereas peasants are those that don't.
Culture
Despite being a kingdom, technically, the Vemar people don't really see themselves as being part of one. Instead, their loyalty is to their clan and their chief first and foremost, taking their clan name as their own. This also helps work out where people are from, as each clan has given its name to their primary settlement. And if that doesn't help, then any epithet they might have earned will.
Their name is actually one of the most important things to the Vemar, warrior or otherwise, as it makes it plain that an individual has done something to stand out from the pack in some way and is worthy of more respect as a result - in most cases, at least. Earning a name is one of the driving forces for becoming a Drengrman, for example, as it's relatively easy to earn a name in battle whether it be for something they've done or a wound they've taken.
As a result, Vemar society is fairly martial in aspect and they tend to see things through the lens of how rich a target it might be. As well as this, their customs are heavily influenced by a code of honour modeled on the example of Cathmor Thronebound, the first King of Vemar:
- Your world should be kept once given, unless circumstances drastically change.
- Follow your chief.
- Offer terms before battle.
- Don't harm the innocent.
History
Vemar has never really been a formal country. Settled early on in man's history in the Five Realms, the people gave their own name to the mountainous region in the north and made it their own.
Initially - and for a good while afterwards - the various clans had nothing even close to what could be called unity. Wars for territory and the like were fought between minor chieftains and settlements until the main population centres settled down. This didn't bring an end to the wars, though. Raids continued and petty kings rose and fell with stunning regularity, making the country unstable at best for most of its history.
Centuries later, infuriated by generations of war and bloodshed, the then chief of the Gata clan - the now legendary Cathmor Thronebound - realised that unless they united as one people in some way, they were at risk of being conquered by the rapidly growing Astril to the south. He made it his personal mission to unite the clans in at least a small way so that they would be able to resist this and preserve their way of life.
Using a mix of diplomacy and military force, he brought the chieftains of the other clans to his banner. The region around Gata is one of the few that could be farmed to more than a subsistence level, so he offered to provide portions of their excess to any and all chiefs that would kneel to him. All he asked for in return, as their king, was that they would fight for him when he called. Those that did not accept, he marched on with his army.
When they were camped outside a town he would first approach it on foot, alone and unarmed, and offer the chief a choice: single combat to settle the fight quickly and easily without too much loss of life, or he would signal his army to attack. Some fought and died, others saw his offer as honourable and swore themselves to his banner there and then. They, too, were supplied with grain from Gata regardless, and eventually the realm of Vemar was formed.
Demography and Population
Given the almost total hostility of the land, population centres are concentrated on the coast, for the most part, or around the areas where fresh water and food can be found relatively easily. The notable exception to this is the temple-town of Holmsa in the mountains, where they rely almost entirely on donations from people looking for guidance from the priests that live there.
In terms of population, whilst not as large as some of the other realms, they do boast a good number of people and the vast majority of them are accomplished warriors thanks to their tendencies leaning towards raiding and piracy, making them a formidable foe as long as they can unite long enough in any meaningful way.
Territories
The ancestral lands of the Vemar are the territories north of the itshmus formed by the Vemar Bite and The Throat and include the island of Nordrland to the North-East of the mainland.
Whilst it would be somewhat of a stretch to say that the current monarch holds claim to all of this territory, it would certainly be accurate to say that the Vemar culture itself does.
Military
The exact size of the Vemar military is constantly in flux, given that pretty much everyone of fighting age is an active warrior of some sort in one warband or another. That said, the military doctrines of the Vemar are quite apparent and fairly simple.
Due to most usually operating in small units, they've developed a method of war that tries to avoid large scale, pitched battles as best as it can, relying on raids from land or sea and ambush tactics in general to do as little fighting as possible whilst also being as effective as possible in their attack. As a result, siegecraft is not an area in which they excel as a nation but some individual commanders may have, through experience and necessity, some aptitude for it.
As a result of their focus on raids and ambushes, though, they are renowned archers and scouts as well as being masters of distraction and feints in battle. Indeed, a common tactic used in a raid is to send a handful of scouts in ahead to sow confusion ahead of the main warband to disrupt their preparations and hamper their abilities to mount a coordinated defence.
They typically don't go in for destroying settlements entirely, because if it's been destroyed it will take some time before it's back to being worth raiding again, thus hurting their own profits and goals significantly.
Each clan has a loose military structure based around the warriors within each clan's range of influence, and can typically draw from most of its population if a full scale army needs to be raised. Whilst this is very similar to a levy system, each fighting is significantly more skilled than a standard levy due to Vemar's martial culture and their general way of life.
Within each clan, the Thejns lead most of the raids with their own personal warbands made up from men sworn to them directly and these can vary in size depending on the fame of the Thejn in question. As a result, both warbands and clan armies are incredibly changeable beasts in terms of size and unity composition.
Depending on the location of the clan's holdfast, some clans are also far better on land or sea than others, some are better at ambushes than others and so on.
Religion
Religion, to the Vemar, is almost an abstract concept. Whilst they don't actively worship their gods, they acknowledge their existence and the influence they have in their day to day life.
There are far too many minor gods and goddesses to name in the pantheon of Eldaskali, ranging from hearth-gods to the gods of local forests, but arguably the most important of them make up the first family of the gods. This family is made up of almost animistic representations of things the people of Vemar encounter on a day to day basis, or have no wish to encounter.
It is rare for people to venerate the entire pantheon, instead choosing to honour the ones that are much closer to their daily lives - a warrior honouring Lady Vaettr and Ogaefa as the goddesses of death and war respectively, whilst also giving the god of luck and destiny, Surtr, an appropriate amount of respect. A farmer, meanwhile, would have very little interest in those three and would instead honour Malm, the goddess of nature and the harvest.
Despite this division of spiritual labour, as it were, all the people of Vemar honour Rejkr, the father of the gods, and Hlaeja, their mother, as a matter of course. Without them, to their mind, no-one would be here and so the worship is owed to them.
Various shamans and seers wander the land, offering insight and divination wherever they go and are a semi-official part of the priesthood of Holmsa that caters to the spiritual needs of the people of Vemar. Everyone agrees that such things are mostly guesswork at best, but given their tendency towards the superstitious they veer on the side of caution and pay attention regardless.
The Vemar are generally fairly accepting of other religions, feeling that all gods from all places are really their gods in funny hats. The one exception to this that stands out is the cult of the Vaettringr - extremist worshipers of Lady Vaettr who practice profane and black arts to the detriment of mankind.
Foreign Relations
Their closest neighbours are the kingdom of Astril to the south, and it would be fair to say that relations with them, diplomatic or otherwise, are fairly strained. Part of the problem with being the closest neighbours of the Vemar is that it makes them their first choice for raids, either by sea or over the border by land. The most northern settlements in Astril, therefore, are far from the biggest fans of the Vemar despite the official policy of the kingdom being to mostly let them be.
The people of Astril typically see the Vemar as backwards savages with next to no redeeming features, due to their tendency to wear furs, look unkempt and live in fairly rudimentary longhouses as opposed to dressing in softer cloths and living in stone buildings. In return, the people of Vemar view the people of Astril as pampered, soft and arrogant.
To the South-East, the land of Ladren maintains distinctly hostile relations with Vemar. Despite not mounting any campaigns into the North, following a historic failure in the past, they do not tolerate any Vemar in their lands and the Vemar choose not to antagonise them if it can be at all helped, especially now that Ladren's power has been on the rise for the last few generations.
Further to the South-East, beyond Motrein, is the republic of Ostaria. The relationship between the two is odd, to say the least. To the Vemar, the people of Ostaria are a weak people that make good targets, despite being worthy seafarers - something the Vemar respect a great deal. As far as Ostaria is concerned, the Vemar are a minor annoyance and anything lost to their raids is just the cost of doing business.
Type
Geopolitical, Kingdom
Capital
Alternative Names
The North
Demonym
Vemar
Leader
Leader Title
Head of State
Government System
Monarchy, Elective
Power Structure
Confederation
Economic System
Barter system
Official State Religion
Location
Related Ranks & Titles
Controlled Territories
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