The Nations of New Far Shores: Ibarran, the Heart of the Crusades
The Nations of Ereda
Ibarran, the Heart of the Crusades
History
Ibarran's history is full of bloodshed and war. Finding itself as the closest of the kingdoms of the Realm to the Caliphate of Sahradia, the two countries were fierce enemies, seeing conflicts and occupations on both sides right the way through history. Even when Sahradia was nothing but a minor inconvenience to the Realm at large, there would be continuous territorial battles over the land itself and over the Sahradian harassment of the Ibarrish shipping routes.
Originally, a great portion of the Narrow Sea's coast was under Calavrian occupation, not Ibarrish. Roughly six hundred years before The Fall, Ibarran was a small corner of the Realm. There had been wars against the Calavrian invaders, but because Calavria stood above other clan-based nations in their unity and advanced perspective on warfare, the Ibarrish had very little opportunity to defend themselves, and less opportunity to take back their land. The Ibarrish population within Calavrian lands soon saw acculturation, integration and assimilation into Calavrian walks of life. The population of Ibarran, however, was widespread over vast distances, and that allowed for a certain degree of division. As Calavrian methods started to infringe the border, unrest was seeding in Ibarran.
What began the initial revolution was the gradual weakening of the Calavrian Empire, which sparked within Ibarran a coup d'état against the Calavrian-instituted king, King Haitrus. The Ibarrish nobility were little more than former peasantry that had been elevated by Calavrian lords more due to favoritism than by any actual rights, and the peasantry that were left saw opportunity in the weakening of the Calavrian state. For them it was a deadly cycle, the times offering them the opportunity to take back Ibarrish soil with the anti-monarchists using Calavria's fall and the success of the revolutionaries to spur on anti-monarchist sentiments. It was these times, with a state of near-constant warfare diminishing the supplies of the land, that the Ibarriard mentality of making do with what you've got came about. The Ibarriards were so ardent in their belief of freedom from Calavrian reign that working households that supported the revolutionaries generally donated two thirds of produce to the cause. What was left was split between family upkeep or for trade.
The Seige of Sammeth, also known as the Twenty Day Siege, saw revolutionaries besieging the then capital, Sammeth. Conspirators within the city's militia let the revolutionaries into the palace gardens with the intent of killing the king and prince who were in attendance, intending to attack them whilst they enjoyed the gardens in the evening. They murdered the young prince, but the king escaped their grasp and as the palace locked down the revolutionaries were fired upon from above by archers. Turning events in their favour, the revolutionaries rode through the streets and rallied any sympathisers from their homes. Anti-monarchists from within the city rallied at the palace gates with wagons and barrels and began to blockade all of the palace entrances, nailing the doors shut and attacking any that tried to stop them. The palace guard were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and their bodies were strewn against the blockades in a macabre warning to any others that tried to stop them. The prince's body was beheaded and the head was set upon a spike above the doors to the palace, just below where the architects had long ago carved the royal family's motto of ecurior quo paratior, 'the better prepared, the more secure'.
Over the next eighteen days, the revolutionaries kept the royals and their guard locked within the palace, intending to starve them unless they abolished their alliance with Calavria and declared war on their neighbours. The king at first refused to make any such proclamation when forced by treasonous factions, but over the period of the next twenty days the imprisoned family and their envoy grew increasingly distressed by the perpetual ring of protesters keeping them prisoner in the estate. Servants and maids that tried to escape out of windows were more than likely spotted, pulled down and either offered a place amongst the revolutionaries or executed as traitors to Ibarran. Amongst them, there were very few who chose to give their life for the King.
On the nineteenth day of the siege, the Queen appeared on a balcony overlooking the front of the palace. She was naked save for a single long, black silk scarf, looked ill with fatigue, and paced back and forth whilst clutching her stomach. The revolutionaries hurled rocks at her, and one caught her in the chin. Bleeding from her mouth, she stood on the rail of the balcony, spread her hands and shouted 'may not the king's blood live forever' before stepping out and falling to her death on the steps below. The next day, the doors were opened by palace staff that had been won over to the anti-royalist mentality. The riotous crowd clamoured over their barricades and set about searching for the king in the palace, only to find him in his bed chamber, his daughter in his arms, having pitched the two of them on a sword together.
A council of influential revolutionaries was formed. They took command of a military bolstered by the fall of their monarchy. The old regime of Calavria was collapsing, the spirits of the Calavrian defenders no doubt the apparent ease of their defeat by an enemy without a monarch. Yet, even when the Calavrian territories were drawn back to the River Venturi and the lands of Ibarran were fully restored, a new problem came to light: the uncertainty of rulership.
Within three months the council had elected their first ruler, Lord Rolan of Miragonna, working under the pretence that every four years a new Lord would be elected to the position of head of state. Lord Rolan’s first and primary objective was to see to the people of Ibarran. He took an entourage and visited every city and nearby towns to witness the damage of the revolution, then used of his own savings to finance transport for masonry and lumber to where it was needed. ‘I would sooner bankrupt myself,’ he said, ‘than see a wounded Ibarran.’
His words were more-or-less true. Come the period of his re-election, Rolan had invested a great deal of his personal finances into rejuvenating Ibarran. He continued to do so even after his second period as head of state, and he remained a prominent philanthropist for the remainder of his life even when he no longer sat on the council, eschewing all of his personal wealth to live as a pauper. It’s his words that are to this day the motto of Ibarran: ‘Our land above all else.’
Rolan was not an idyllic leader, however. As the heads of state after him would find, Rolan had begin to plant seeds of discontent between Ibarran and the goblins of Sahradia. He demanded that Sahradian imports be bought at a fraction of their cost both to save coin for Ibarrish expenditure and to allow greater amounts of Sahradian wears to be bought for the Ibarrish people. This had not been done lightly, and in fact Rolan had caused several offenses to the Sahradians in that time. Over the centuries to come, as new heads of senate took to Ibarran’s helm, relationships with the goblins got worse and worse. Anecdotally, it is said that Lord Edelmar, when being visited by a Sahradian ambassador, sat the goblin down in the council building and made him watch as every other petty case from local serfs and peasants was brought in and dealt with, stopping when the Sahradian ambassador shrieked his outrage only to inform the goblin that he would have to join the back of the queue.
It was two-hundred-and-thirteen years after the formation of the council that Lord Edelmar ruled and, when he died died suddenly in his sleep with only six months left to serve as head of state another councilman, Chrisden Cortez, was sworn in his place temporarily. Within a week of Cortez’s rule certain councillors began to question his intent. Cortez had numerous friends elsewhere within the council who seemed willing to back his more radical decrees, and apparently he had enough influence to apply pressure to those he didn’t have in his pocket. When the time came for re-election, Cortez was reinstated as the head of state. Other councillors had identified Cortez’s power block and were content in stripping his power down from the shadows, buying support from trading families who would up the price of their wares and seed discontent amongst the serfs towards the taxes so they might back Cortez in a corner financially. Had they been left to their politicking, this might well have worked.
General Amadis Pasha, however, believed strongly that the council was going to collapse in its own power much as the Calavrian senate did all those years ago and was not willing to wait quietly whilst Cortez finalised the increasing corruption of the council. After two years of enduring the same game that the other senate members were playing, Pasha’s met the end of his patience when Cortez decided on levying a tax on families that had Calavrian blood in them - The Heritage Tax. Pasha was outraged more than any other of the senate members as he himself had taken a Calavrian wife. Pasha’s disquiet was matched by many other Ibarrish that had Calavrian family members. The tax actually saw households screened by Ibarrish militia for the tone of their skin and hair colour.
It is needless to say that this fractured Ibarran once again. As Pasha announced his protest and began gathering forces to challenge Cortez’s rule, families with Calavrian descent refused to pay the taxes. The efforts of the council to back Cortez in a corner by tightening the economy fostered a violent grudge between Ibarrish and Calavrian families, the former blaming the latter for the meagre funds with which they could barely afford food and clothing. These accusations often went further. Extremist thinking pinned bad harvests and poor rainfall on the bad omen of allowing a Calavrian as your neighbour.
Some of the councilmen saw Pasha’s gathering of a new revolution and realised that it was not just Cortez ‘s seat of power that was at risk. By backing the Heritage Tax they had fostered the bloody atmosphere Ibarran was suffering, and Pasha had openly named them his enemies. The Ibarrish military had seen almost a third abandon their posts and join Pasha’s forces, and whilst the peasants’ response had been generally bilious towards the Calavrians, most of them were wise enough to recognise that Cortez was also in some way responsible for the state of the economy.
The next six years saw a multitude of conflicts, of which Pasha and his men were only behind two. Civil disputes happened regularly. When the Great Pestilence came, Calvrian-hostile civilians declared that the Calavrians that were suffering it were getting their dues from the gods. When an Ibarriard suffered it, it was because of the dirty Calavrians polluting not only good Ibarrish bloodlines but the very water they drank. Meanwhile, Pasha and his forces had retreated to the west, to the city of Santhiago.
In light of General Pasha’s retreat, Cortez realised that any army he could muster would have to cross a great deal of territory held by loyalists to Pasha. Not wanting to allow Pasha the opportunity to regroup and fortify, Cortez acted quickly, appealing to the goblins of Sahradia to lend aid. The caliph answered and sent a force of Sahradian vessels to assault the coastal town of Santhiago. Whilst Santhiago was held under siege, Cortez’s forces moved south-west to meet with the Sahradians. Santhiago was not long in falling to the combined forces of Cortez and the Sahradian goblins. A coalition between the Sahradians and the Ibarrish court saw the beginning of goblin occupation, presented by Cortez as an answer to the economic strain that Ibarran had seen over recent years.
During the early years of the Sahradian occupation United Church was formed within Andermark and missionaries had taken to spreading the word of the church across various nations. The war-weary peasants of Ibarran proved to be fine targets, particularly those that were still in dire straits after Cortez’s unwieldy taxes, or those that took issue to the fact that Cortez was willing to purge Calavrian blood from his nation but saw him as all-too willing to bend the knee to a goblin sultan. The United Church declared the goblin gods Amirr and Isall as heathen gods that should be abhorred and that tolerance of the goblin infidels was what brought about the Great Pestilence. A devoutly religious people, those civilians of Ibarran that found their worship enveloped into the United Church were easily won over by this way of thinking. Particularly in northern Ibarran, resentment towards the sultan grew.
On the death of the sultan with no named successor for Ibarran, the nation was split into seven sultanates between his seven sons. Between them, the goblin sons were ill-equipped to deal to rule over a fraction of Ibarran, let alone collectively as a whole. For instance, one of the western sultanates was neglected as that son spent most time overseas in Sahradia. After a marital dispute between two of the brothers, Santhiago was announced the nation's capital, causing a rivalry between the Santhiago sultanate and the Sammeth sultanate. There was a resurgence in the east of anti-Calavrian attitudes that saw some violent border conflicts, which the local sultan answered with a death sentence, putting thirty-eight men to the noose.
The chaos that this atmosphere fostered was all that was needed for the United Church to enact their retaking of Ibarran. The Liberation took seven years all-in-all, with paladins from Damryn, Andermark, Lancereaux and Calavria alike moving in to reclaim the lands for the Realm. These seven years would become the bedrock of the Sahradian Crusades, the blazing trail the United Church cut down through Ibarran leading the way for further conflicts against the heathen goblin pantheon.
The seven sultanates were each taken over by seven Ibarrish dukes, lords that were local to each area and best knew the tribulations of their people. They would convene at the Cortes of Santhiago, where the Archduke sat. Santhiago became the capital as the Duke of Sammeth saw only female heirs, and over the coming centuries Ibarran saw numerous Archdukes that were capable enough to dismiss the Ibarrish fears of a single leader, fostered a respectful foreign policy with the Realm, and each of them devout and passionate followers of the United Church that sought their overseas enemies on Sahradia destroyed.
The Saharadian Crusades were fought over a period of two-hundred years, not including the numerous isolated conflicts and various declines and resurgences, with numerous territories taken and won back by both sides. In this beginning of this period Ibarran was quick to use the sudden increase of trade from crusaders travelling to Santhiago to strengthen their relationship with Damryn and fully inaugurate themselves as a worthwhile member of the Realm. With the Sahradian Crusades were ongoing by the time of the Fall, Ibarran’s economy flourished under the attention of the passing nights. This bolstered economy was almost unnoticed within the more rural areas of Ibarran, rather more centralised around the coastal cities such as Santhiago. With the boost in mercantile trade and sea-travel, Santhiago quickly became a prosperous staging ground and an important trade-hub
Since taking the seat of Archduke, Joaquim Tejadasaw from strength to strength. He proved to be a shrewd economist and an excellent public speaker, the only weakness Joaquim ever displayed was that of his love for women. He was a known charmer in various courts, said to have a velvet tongue (in every way applicable), and sired bastards to no less than thirteen different women.
Even the family of the Archduke meant less to him that the prosperity of Ibarran, however. There was only one revolution against him, a small affair that saw one of his youngest sons taken hostage and Joaquim told that his boy would be put to death if he didn’t surrender power, to which Joaquim told the boy’s captor: ‘Then you must kill him. I did not bring a boy into the world at the price of Ibarran’s freedom.’ The boy was killed but the revolution was crushed, and no-one dared try afterwards.
The Fall to many Ibarrish was seen as the greatest trials that the world could have possibly given them. The Ibarrish forces, compiling of the men-at-arms and trained bands of varios Dons, mustered caballeros and crusaders that were yet to set sail to Sahradia, moved to Lanceraux to aid in the defence of their neighbours. The Legion were for a long period not seein in Ibarran, which only caused paranoia in the Ibarrish: it must only be a matter of time, after all.
It was this paranoia that saw the Ibarrish generals pull their forces out of Lanceraux. Believing the enemy had been sighted at home the Ibarrish numbers depleted rapidly, leaving the Lancesians spreading their forces, as well as Damryn’s and Andermark’s, all too thin. To these nations, the withdrawal of the Ibarrish is seen as one of the reasons why Lanceraux ultimately fell. These opinions are usually held in ignorance of the truth, that Legion were simply unstoppable by human means.
Yet these opinions are still held, and the Ibarrish are all too aware of that fact. Ibarran fell without grace, gaining no aid from Lanceraux or Andermark as their own losing battle occupied their attention. The widespread nature of the settlements of Ibarran allowed the Ibarrish to adopt tactics that best suited them, guerrilla warfare. Light cavalry and mounted archers harassed the slow-moving army, which under the harsh climate began to show its first signs of faltering. Although victory was unlikely, it might have been possible for them to keep the Legion occupied enough for Damryn to rally.
Unfortunately this was not so and, coupled with an opportunistic strike by the goblins at Santhiago, the fall of Ibarran was a dead certainty. The forces of Ibarran were split to defend against two fronts. The Legion rallied its forces and, distinctly less harried than before, swarmed across the peninsular. Archduke Joaquim Tejadasaw is reported to have last been seen sealing the doors to Santhiago and is presumed dead.
Cultural Overview
Before the Fall
Ibarran was a sparse, sandy land at the southern-most point of the Realm. The semiarid climate meant that the large tracts of territory that were all but uninhabitable were broken up sporadically by verdant, rich pastures. It is for this reason that whilst Iberran is one of the largest nations, the population is low for its size, but by no means lacking in its agriculture.
The separated nature of the country meant that, although the Archduke ruled the kingdom from within the walls of the white city of Santhiago, he had to place his trust in the regional lords, the Dons, to supervise their fiefdoms and keep them healthy, loyal, and well-defended. Ibarriards were a heavily community-based people. The rough terrain, hot days and cold nights and the often huge distance between townships fostered an atmosphere where villages depended heavily on one-another and their local Don. In light of this the Ibarriards put a great deal of stock into celebrations and festivals throughout the year in order to keep up local spirits and remain thankful for the little things.
The community’s vested interest in itself has lead to a fairly insular mentality within the Ibarrish. Multiple sayings that have their origins from Ibarrad revolve around the notion of being careful who you trust and looking after yourself and your family above all others. This has always been the way, through the occupation of Calavria, the revolutions that Ibarran to its goblin occupation and even beyond to the reconquest and the Crusades: if anything, as the years went on, these mentalities became more hardened. Even with the influx of paladins of the Holy Church seeking victory over the heathens overseas, usually worshippers of the same gods as they followed, the Ibarrish remained at least wary on a background level of the Crusaders. A lot of villages saw their able-bodied men depleted as fathers and sons went to war, or saw those strange knights sleeping in their barns on the way down to the Santhiago staging grounds. The image of a knight was not entirely unromanticised, however: songs and bard tales flourished in Ibarran about knights saving an Ibarrish beauty, or remaining stalwart in battle as they were spurred on by her mere memony. Since the Crusades there has been a great deal more children wanting to pursue the avenue of a caballero, a type of knight-errant.
Women in Ibarran are treated a little better than they are in the rest of the Realm. The self-sufficiency of most of the townships means that the contributions of women are both necessary and important. Whilst they are not expected to be warriors, there is a common tradition of their involvement in smiting, fletching, horse-rearing, and other tasks integral to both daily life and to warfare. In light of the fact that the defence of a family’s home couldn’t be a man’s duty, as his days were spent working to support the family, so most every Ibarrish woman will know how to at least load and aim a crossbow.
The Ibarrish were generally a people that were content with their lot in life, believing that they were a part of some divine scheme and that they would be given all they need provided they showed faith where faith was due. In the years leading up to the fall they believed that every tribulation and hardship they found in the path of life was fated and that, if they persevered through it, they would be duly rewarded either here or within the Heavens. For that reason the farmers of the lands would continue to arduously till the land despite the dry and arid nature of the soil, masons would do all they could to secure transport of foreign stones to build with, carpenters would work with the harder woods of the southern trees.
The merchant class and trading with other countries flourished due to these very reasons, providing the pivotal transportation and redistribution of both Ibarrish-made goods and imported materials. A merchant could expect a fine life, provided they were prepared to rarely see one place in any number of days. Ibarran saw a great deal of innovation in regards to trade, usually seeing trading families and merchant families allied together in marriage to make the trading process as lucrative as possible. Families of this calibre likely lived in Ibarran’s cities.
After the Fall
In Andermark today, the Ibarriards can just as easily be treated with the utmost of respect as the most vehement of distrust. The ignorant can all-too easily pin the fall of Lanceraux on the Ibarrish withdrawal and has lead to the stigmatisation that they as a people are, if not outright cowards, then certainly more interested in their own affairs than that of the Realm. Others, however, are not so quick to dismiss the piety of the Ibarrish and that the manifestation of the gods at the Last Battle of Andermark might well have been due to the unwavering zealotry of people like the Ibarriards.
Regardless, the Ibarriards are a hard-working people and have arguably bounced back from the Fall better than any others. Most Ibarriards were quick to find themselves work within Starkholm after the dust had settled, taking the defeat of the Legion as signs that they had placed their faith well and that not all was lost. The Ibarrish mentality that faith would reward kept the Ibarriards together, but this optimistic outlook was seen as blind faith in the eyes of others.
The Ibarriards represent a sturdy and reliable workforces for the most part, as well as the more devout members of any church they swear themselves to. The more wiley Ibarriards have ended up either in the slums along with other thieves or vagabonds, or have had sufficient charisma and contacts to pull themselves into the reeling and ever-shifting higher echelons of Starkholm. It remains true of the Ibarriards, even in these days, that they don’t do things by half.
Don Luis Avalos sits on the king’s advisory council, but he has not been able to attend court for some time. Don Luis has not been seen outside of his family’s procured holdings for some time, and instead sends his wife, the Lady Basilla, in his place. There are rumours abound in court as to why Don Luis himself does not attend court, but these rumours are usually whispered in the most quiet of corners, as it is widely believed that Lady Basilla is an ardent follower of Saralyne.