[PurpleXVI]

Origins

Places: Kasdek

Kasdek is a nation of only moderately warmer clime than the Shivercoast, and probably the least naturally forested nation of Known Achen. It's a rough land for a rough people, little bit cliffs and home of the largest mountains in Known Achen(Though even those are relatively small compared to mountains on, say, Earth.).

Highly militaristic, it is one of the few nations that still permit slavery. Slaves are considered to have about as many rights as furniture, and anyone who kills or harms a slave merely has to recompense the owner in money or goods to get away without any punishment. Many of Kasdek's slaves are of the short races, used to work in the country's mines.

The nation is ruled by the iron-fisted Lord Kolmod who allows no one to even speak ill of him. He enforces his will with some of the most elite troops in all of Achen, but his people at least live in the knowledge that when they are innocent, they are safe. Still, it speaks volumes for the safety of the guilty when even theft carries a penalty of mutilation.

Lord Kolmod crushed the last rebellion against his power six years ago, and no one has attempted to remove him from his throne since. It might have helped that he had every single rebel(And there were hundreds.) nailed, still-breathing, to the walls of his castle.

Kasdek has extensive quarries of marble, flint and gemstones, and this forms the basis of it's economy. The only farms are a few grape farms in the north, and without food imports from Rhost, Kasdek would collapse in a matter of weeks.

Notable people are the aforementioned Lord Kolmod, the dwarven rebel leader Thorst and Kolmod's court mage Elben, an Elesian who got run out of his country for being spectacularly immoral in his magical experiments.

Lord Kolmod

An easily described man, Lord Kolmod is iron-fisted law incarnate. He lawful to the core and would never even think of breaking his own rules. He has little respect for those who twist or exploit the wording of the law to their own ends, and his single chaotic trait is that he tends to have these put to death in public under a charge of "perverting the law."

He is rarely seen without an armed escort and for good reason. While their ruler is lawful, there are many people in Kasdek with less respect for the laws and many of them have friends or relatives who've been the victims of Kolmod's ruthless "justice."


Thorst

Born into slavery, Thorst never had a family name. From the moment he was old enough to be put to work, he hated seeing his fellow dwarves in shackles, and soon grew to hate his owners. It was only a few years in the mines before he one day whipped up a frenzy among the dwarves, halflings and gnomes, they overran their captors, took their weapons and for several years lead a succesful guerilla war against Kolmod's forces.

Of course, it was not to last. Kolmod recruited Elben and with the assistance of the powerful mage, the secret base of the rebels was found and every last rebel except for Thorst was captured, though no one knows how he escaped. Supposedly he is still on the run, pursued night and day by Kolmod's men, but many say this is merely a legend for the sake of justifying ever more ruthless laws and random searches.


Elben Redmantle

A member of the powerful Elesian Redmantle family, Elben was rich and pampered from birth, with the best teachers, nearly unlimited resources and a natural urge to learn, he soon shot up through the ranks of the Elesian Magocracy. However, soon people were noticing how the people just above him in the ranks had a habit of getting into bad accidents, or just outright dying for no apparent cause, and their friends decided to investigate Elben's activities.

What they uncovered was more than they ever expected, the young mage had been summoning demons, one of the few practices forbidden in Elesia, and sabotaging the experiments of rivals to remove them. Before they could bring the mage to justice, though, his infernal contacts alerted him to the fact that his cover was blown and he skipped the country just inches ahead of a mob wielding not torches and pitchforks, but fireballs and magical swords.

He first sought refuge in Pur-Bien, but agents of Elesia were hot on his trail and he had to move fast. Heading south, he eventually arrived in Kasdek where Lord Kolmod was in need of an unscrupulous, ambitious and above all powerful mage to assist him in destroying Thorst's rebellion. Elben was more than happy to do this in exchange for a safe haven, and ever since, the two have had a very succesful partnership.


(I'm working on a rough map of Known Achen, so I won't be bothering to put in the geographic location of Kasdek.)