Eastreach Province
Eastreach Province is still loyal to the Kingdoms of Foere and is governed by a lord-governor sent from the overking’s court. The province has always suffered from fragmentation and decentralization in a complex feudal system, and the social order is now suffering very badly from corruption fueled by bribes from Bard’s Gate. Internal travel is grinding almost to a halt due to tolls charged by petty barons, and as rural settlements become more isolated, the wilderness is beginning to creep back into civilized areas.
The official boundaries of Eastreach are defined as follows, beginning with Eastwych in the northeast. From Eastwych, the border runs south along the Sinnar Coast and the north shore of the Amrin Estuary. From here, it runs north of the Amrin Ferry by some 50 miles, thence along the Estuary Road to the crossroad with the Wain Road. From here, all agree that the border extends somewhat diagonally northwest to the Great Bridge over the Amrin, but the exact line has never been properly established. From the Great Bridge, the boundary line follows the banks of the Great River Amrin downriver to the southeast, then travels north along the Glimmrill River almost to the coast, then eastward along the shoreline back to Eastwych. Bard’s Gate controls the Amrin River Ferry, all of the waters of the Amrin Estuary, and the Estuary’s entire southern bank.
The lands north of the Great Amrin River, from the Glimmrill Run to the Great Bridge, are an unsettled wilderness all the way to the edge of the Stoneheart Forest, an expanse occupied by monsters, outlaws, and others who choose to live beyond the reach of established authority. Neither Bard’s Gate nor Eastreach claim these lands, as they are dangerous and offer no measurable likelihood of tax revenues. From time to time, a lord-governor has offered minor patents of nobility for anyone willing to establish a freehold in the area beyond the Great Amrin. None of the resulting settlements has lasted more than a generation, and most came to a rather bad end.
The central and western lands of Eastreach are relatively populated and stable, with several farming and trading towns along the major roads. The northeast portion of Eastreach is likewise fairly well populated, with the frequency of villages increasing as one draws nearer to Eastwych. By contrast, southeast Eastreach is but lightly populated, and in the Forest of Hope and along the coast of the Sinnar Ocean, there are virtually no settlements at all.
History and People
In the year 2765 I.R., heralds at the Foerdewaith Court at Courghais issued the royal “Decree of Full Provincial Status to the lands of Eastreach, in Vassalage-Perpetual to the Overking in Foere.” A hundred copies of the long document were painstakingly written to parchment, seals were affixed, and Foere had officially launched a privately funded invasion of the lands all the way from still-fledgling Aachen Province to the shores of the Sinnar Ocean. In essence, the so-called “Eastreach Decree” granted patents of nobility over lands not yet actually taken. Responsibility for “pacifying any unlawful resistance to the overking’s decree by subjects in such lands” was left to the knights and barons “upon taking possession of their lawful demesnes in the province.” In other words, if a Foerdewaith noble, or even a mercenary leader, could carve out a piece of Eastreach, they owned it. However, and unbeknownst to the overking of Foere, the Decree of Eastreach was accompanied by a second, unwritten law: the law of unintended consequences. The disorder and corruption of Eastreach Province clearly have their roots in the decree.
In the same year as the Eastreach Decree, Foere also established Pontus Tinigal on Pontos Island to form a base for the new Foerdewaith navy. This was a long-planned maneuver Macobert had organized years before, and already involved a decree that an admiral of Foere and a town senate would govern the salt-producing town of Eastwych, thus ensuring that the navy would have a supply port on the mainland. Annoying as it might have been for the citizens of Eastwych to learn they had been given away to a foreign navy, the town’s special status as a naval possession spared it from the plunder and chaos the Eastreach Decree caused in the rest of the province. Refugees from the countryside streamed into the town during the invasion, and the admiral happily pressed them into service and shipped them off to Pontus Tinigal where they began reluctant careers as unpaid oarsmen on the poorly constructed galleys of the new Foerdewaith navy. It is to be noted that the shipbuilding skills of the Foerdewaith navy improved quickly over the years, but due to this incident, its popularity among the native Eastreachers took some time to repair.
Corruption and internal division are slowly eroding Eastreach Province, although the process is too gradual to be obvious. The flow of money from Bard’s Gate pays the nobility well for their cooperation with Bard’s Gate commerce, but little of the wealth makes its way into the lives of the common folk of the province. The rich grow richer; the poor grow poorer. As more of the petty nobility try to get a place at the trough, they are creating more little borders within the realm, all of which charge tariffs on farmers and traders passing through. The result is a slow withering of overland journeys in the areas not served by the official high roads. As an example, trade down the Canyon River is on the increase, with merchants and traders becoming more willing to risk a long, dangerous circuit around the much-shorter but exorbitantly expensive overland trek through the country roads.
With the intense focus on money, the nobility is coming to see the peasantry as a resource, instead of perceiving themselves as guardians of the peasantry. More wilderness is encroaching upon the province as the commonfolk lose their optimism and drive in the face of irresponsible feudal lords, who are far more interested in collecting taxes than in supporting the welfare of their tenants. Land is beginning to go fallow in some places, forests are no longer patrolled, and the risky business of smuggling is becoming more common than ordinary trade. To foreigners, the creeping rot in Eastreach is fairly apparent, but the solution is much less clear.
Trade and Commerce
Eastreach Province, although it remains loyal to the Kingdoms of Foere, is on extremely good terms with the mercantile and political emissaries of Bard’s Gate. Gold flows into the coffers of the province (and of the lord-governor) to ensure that overland trade between Telar Brindel and Bard’s Gate remains unmolested. The high sheriff of internal revenue in Carterscroft oversees a force of sheriffs at the three main road-crossings into the province, where they document the number of wagon axles, people, and animals passing in and out, so the tax can be billed to Bard’s Gate in the following year. Bard’s Gate travelers are given a special token when they cross the border from Aachen on the Wain Road or the Cross Cut, and at the Estuary Road just north of the Eastgate crossroad. The same office operates taxing-posts along the internal roads to levy tolls upon anyone not holding one of the Bard’s Gate tokens handed out at the borders. The position is a lucrative one, and an honest person has not held the post in centuries, as far as anyone can tell.
While actual troops from Bard’s Gate are not allowed to travel the Eastreach roads (oddly, military forces of the Duchy of the Waymarch under contract with Bard’s Gate are a notable, if infrequent, exception due to long-held treaties between Foere and Reme), river traffic down the Amrin is neither stopped nor inspected by officials of the province under the general trade agreements in place. This allows Bard’s Gate to move soldiers and cargo down the Great Amrin River between the Estuary and the Stoneheart River branch. In Eastgate, merchants and river captains pay Bard’s Gate for access to the river, and these tolls are used, in part, to fund the payments made to Eastreach Province.
Along the eastern coast, the Coast Road and Lowwater Road are far worse maintained than the three great roads that intersect in Carterscroft. Although Eastreacher patrols ride the northern half of the coast, and Bard’s Gate sends riders from Eastgate along Lowwater Road, these patrols are sporadic and unenergetic. The forces of Eastreach use the duty to train junior officers, and Bard’s Gate uses it as punishment duty for disgraced officers, so the patrols are particularly ineffectual.
Loyalties and Diplomacy
Eastreach Province loosely maintains its status as a province of the Kingdoms of Foere and gives fealty to the throne in Courghais. As such, Eastreach marks the northeastern-most extent of the Foerdewaith realms.
Government
A lord-governor appointed in the Court of Courghais in Foere rules Eastreach on behalf of the overking. Most governors serve for five years and then resign or are recalled to Foere. The position is a lucrative one, for the lord-governor takes a share of most of the province’s rampant corruption. There are no regional governors below the rank of the lord-governor, as there are in Aachen. Rather, all of Eastreach Province’s governance beneath the lord-governor is (theoretically, in any case) a feudal pyramid with the overking of Foere at the top, dukes below the overking, barons pledging fealty to the dukes, and knights, in turn, whose feudal obligations are due to the barons. The lord-governor’s role is to be the voice and proxy of the distant overking, which allows him to call upon the dukes in the same way as the overking himself. A vast number of barons captured their lands independently, however, and thus do not report to any higher noble such as a duke. These highly-independent nobles must be called upon individually by the lord-governor, which is a monumental task for the central government. This highly unstable, volatile arrangement is a holdover from the original frontier land grants made to the nobles who led armies into the area, and the throne has never successfully reorganized it. In consequence, Eastreach is a patchwork of fiefdoms and freeholds, with only marginal interference by the greater nobles in the affairs of their vassals. The lord-governor maintains a royal court of law only in the city of Carterscroft, although the courts hear appeals from the judgments of ducal and baronial courts that administer most of the criminal and civil cases of the province. As one might expect, the application of the laws varies wildly from one barony to another.
The system works poorly, is riddled with corruption and graft, and is the direct result of the original “Eastreach Decree” of 2765 I.R., which granted lands in Eastreach based on the vagaries of military conquest. When the dust of that conquest settled, it became apparent that the Eastreach Decree had created a province carved into an impossible number of fiefdoms with overlapping and disputed borders, no provision for maintaining a centralized government, and no means of changing the system. Another factor that tended to protect the new barons and lords of Eastreach was that the Eastreach Decree assembled a particular sort of noble in the province. These were not parade-ground soldiers or tournament knights who had responded to the overking’s offer of lands that were not his to give. Rather, every siege-battered stone castle and fortified manor house in Eastreach now housed a complement of battle-hardened veterans: armed, trained, blooded, and considerably more loyal to their commanders than to the overking. The overking wisely decided that sweeping changes to the prerogatives of this particular group of nobles could wait a generation, and each overking has made the same decision since.
As a province of the Kingdom of Foere, Eastreach is required by the overking to maintain and shoulder most of the expenses of the Royal Navy of Foere, whose principal port on the eastern coast of Akados is the port city of Eastwych. The fleet prevents any maritime advances that might be made by the Empire of Oceanus onto the mainland. As a part of the agreements made between Eastreach Province and Bard’s Gate, the city of Eastgate maintains a second fleet, funded and commanded by Bard’s Gate, to patrol and defend the Amrin Estuary on Eastreach’s behalf. Courghais does not care for this perceived violation of their sovereignty, but Eastreach makes sure that a significant portion of the Bard’s Gate payments make it back to the royal treasury each year to keep the overking’s court appeased.
Wilderness and Adventure
Eastreach Province is no longer as productive as it once was under the rule of Foere, and the wilderness is beginning to encroach even upon areas once deemed completely safe. The eastern half of Eastreach Province was never particularly safe to begin with, and small communities in the east are actually finding themselves isolated from trade and protection, left to fend for themselves. This is particularly true in the belt of land between the Great Amrin River and the Forest of Hope, but the newfound phenomenon of the “widowed hamlet” is growing more common in the entire region from the central rivers all the way to the eastern seaboard. In addition to the obvious adventurers’ destination of Rappan Athuk, the whole of eastern Eastreach offers plenty of scope for wandering adventurers to fight monsters, rescue villages, and even for higher-level characters to take a village under their wing as a freehold. New castles are needed, for the old ones lie neglected and crumbling as beasts prowl their walls; bandits are rife, and predatory tax collectors often arrive with armed soldiers to take even more than the bandits would. It is an area that cries for heroes, and finds none to answer the call.
Region
Eastreach Province
Type
Geopolitical, Province
Parent Organization
Comments