Kingdom of Vye

The Kingdom of Vye is a land of thick forests, coiling mists, and deep shadow.

Its people project an eerie calm and certainty which most visitors find unsettling. All attend their duties placidly, often working communal farms or some endeavor of public works from dusk til dawn with no meaningful break. No overseer shouts them to the fields, no whip kisses their backs, no song passes their lips - only a dim smile and a nod to their fellows on passing. Mile after mile fields corn or beans or flowers, no sound out of nature but the creak of a cart or the swish of scythes.

Natives of Vye dream vividly of their labors. They dream of waking and working, then wake and work. At times the dreams are strangely clouded and their labors become obscure, but at times mists from the woods cloud their fields as well. Without interruption, the cycle of sleep and awareness slowly blends to a calm oneness, a veneration of Vye through thought and action unbroken.

Gasmithon

Gasmithon is made of intermingled clans. Though each has their strongholds, they interact in relative peace. The clans were unified several hundred years ago in the Gasmith Pact. Under that agreement, they later entered as a nation into the Treaty of Still Waters.

The Bouchol Clan focuses heavily on martial training and endurance, while members of the Wood Clan train in wilderness lore and stealth. These ideological differences in survival disciplines along with competition for land and innumerable ancient slights and grievances sow constant tension between the great clans. It falls to the Aylar Clan, a small but influential clan of many records and scholars, to act as mediators between the two.

There are dozens of smaller clans, many of which have strong bonds or enmity towards the major clans and may serve as their pawns or proxies.

Harvest Fairs

Every autumn, when the stubble of the years' crops stretch across the fields, towns gather in meadows and squares to celebrate the hard work of the community and fortify themselves against the long winter ahead.

Jorvik's celebrations around this time are particularly large and woven with tradition, including hop crow races, traveling sideshows, and speeches by traveling senators.

Jorvian National Freedom Party

An expansionist party, also referred to by its acronym JNFP, whose support rests heavily on opposition to Vye's ideals and, to a lesser extent, those of Acadia. They have warmer but idealistic relations with Gasmithon, and are supportive of and supported by many free-spirited Borderlands.

The JNFP is very focused on "intrinsic rights", "basic freedoms", and "human liberties". They're accepting of golems and magi except for those that strive to dominate others.

Rather a single issue party, but fervent and fiery and lots of rhetoric. They don't pay much attention to domestic issues, but are extremely tolerant of individual needs and so support programs that Osvithin often "forgets". They depend heavily on volunteer work to support their programs.

Volunteers also form the army, and the bulk of their ranks are from the JNFP. They patrol the national border and make forays into Vye-influenced borderlands.

Ubeans

Ubeans are a extremely nutritious, hardy, and productive bean species. Milled with corn and rye, they are baked into salty breads providing the staple food of the lands.Vines and pods are a pale green, but the beans themselves are vibrantly varicolored.

They are also roasted and ground with roots of chicory or dandelion to be brewed into hot coffee. (True coffee is known in the lands, but it is a luxury traded by the Xichalta at astounding cost.) Blended, powdered, and strained, they yield a milky beverage or a solid curd.

The plants of the beans are great boon to farmers as well - their roots revitalize soil, and the stalks can be plowed under as green manure or harvested as nutritious forage.

Salon Beriquiste

Jorvik’s cities have long traditions of boarding houses. They emerged naturally as cheap living for workers and their families and gave travelers and merchants a safe, reliable temporary home. In recognition of the benefits these houses bring, most cities subsidize and monitor them somewhat.

The houses have always little communities unto themselves, where everyone gathers for shared daily meals and conversation. The cheaper ones invariably drew artists, thinkers, and performers who struggled to turn these gatherings to their own passions. Where they congregated the thickest, the dining rooms and common spaces of the houses were pressed into service as open parlors for their patrons and associates, or performance spaces and galleries.

Competition between these artist houses became common with each trying to attract to themselves the best talent.

Tarsus College

Aylar Clan University; also closest thing to a central power for Vitae, located in the ancient Gasmith city of Tarsus to which it gives its name, climbing terrace upon terrace along a crashing waterfall.

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