Vestfal

## The many regions of Vestfal

North to south we have these climate zones:

Ereb - Equatorial / north of equatorial zone. Equator probably separates them from Q’in. Very desert climate with a heavy but quick rain season that passes overhead and stops in Kingdom Plantae. Lots of oases and sinkholes from tectonic activity.

Q’in remnant, Tian Jin, big river basin with mountain to the south. Heavy rain and thin soil - lots of dams and terraced paddies. Invasive bamboo forests here also.

The Scour / Hisarlik, Egyptian / North African climate, hot side of Mediterranean. Sirocco wind powers East to West in Spring, winter is a more sea breeze. Long lasting weather systems. All the topsoil was blasted North and South. Cypress, olives and acacia very common on the hills, messy alluvial plain is a bit toxic but full of mineral deposits near surface, some magical. Upriver isn’t safe to drink from and there are tons of monster lairs, so it’s mostly settled near the sea. There’s a desalination plant out by the seaside.

Tafel - northernmost official Vestfalian district, everywhere north and east of the Donau. Holland meets the subtropics. Wheat belt, reliant on irrigation and reclaimed / fertilised land to the West. Locals dress way too modestly for the climate, but like expensive black dye and fine white lace. They are the most puritan about the no-divine-magic rule, sometimes even saying no to arcane magic. East of Tafel is the Iberian migration route’s winter apex, less fertile and very arid in summer, lots of green in the winter rainy season. Apple is the Iberiyan ‘capital’ but it is seasonal only. The large town of Osterdam keeps a cautious eye on Apple from the other side of the Donau RIver.

New Hessia - a temperate district, well to do, with Bela the capital as its crowning jewel. New Hessia is loosely bordered by the Donau River to the North and the edge of Schadenwald Forest to the South. Consistent if slightly rainy weather, many cabbages and legumes in the provinces. Easily the most pleasant place in Vestfal to live. To the East: the Iberiyan riderlands, and the military base of Post keeping watch over the border with Ladinh.

Schadenwald - a grim forested district, more reminiscent of the northern Balkans or Poland. Roughly on parallel latitude with Delemont and Lago. Lots of elder and pine trees, misty, lugubrious and prone to storms. To the East: Gopniki Okrug, even more desolate and constantly raining. Vlast is a big centre of industry and raw production, that serves Bela. To the West: Wandell, a summer holiday hiking spot for the rich people from Bela, reminiscent of Bavaria. There are decent mineral and magical resources all through Schadenwald, including sources of arcane power and lots of monster lairs. The locals are skilled artisans, weavers and poets. Schadenwald was the site of some kind of ancient magical war (though not as impressive as the Scour) and a lot of divine practitioners come from this region. Iberiyan riders tend to raid and graze here in high summer, in the shade of the forests.

Ros and Voyivod - to the West, lots of fjords with a glacier that feeds them and sweeps up from the south. To the East - monstrous badlands. Voyivod is an old Ggantija territory and is full of old giant ruins. It’s also very icy, rocky and tectonically unstable in ways that thwart cartographers. Sometimes it’s as though whole mountains move on their own accord. Voyivod is also prone to spectacular thunderstorms in Spring.

## New Hessian high culture

#### Life in the big city

Bela, the capital, has no fewer than four satellite cities serving it. Festerdam and Molen supply food from Tafel and rarities from Midia, Q'in and Ereb. Inne has lots of factories and alchemical labs. Novy Gorod, an island city originally founded by Gopniks on the Donau River, has a cursed bridge that keeps collapsing. It has a University and a lot of weird slums, and it's where the dwarves of Bela tend to congregate.

The culture is reminiscent of Vienna in the main city of Bela, but closer to Swabia or Holland in its satellite cities. The urban hub is quite decadent. Bela is a creative city full of art, science and technological innovation, but it is also horribly wasteful and oppresive. In high summer its ancillary port town, Inne, produces noxious fumes and pollution. Large shoals of dead fish have been washing up on the shores near Inne and Festerdam with increasing regularity.

Bela's military style is almost Napoleonic, and features cavalry units that are loosely inspired by Iberiyan culture. There's a horse market town, Hussa, upriver to the West.

The original site of the portal which brought the inhabitants of modern Vestfal through, is called Landfall. The site is not far southeast of Bela. The area immediately around the portal is all scoured up and riddled with magical energy.

#### Factions in New Hessia

Bela’s Technical Bureau (the Bureau) issues magical licences and inspects magical workings to ensure that it’s all properly arcane. The Bureau is also infamously corrupt. The Inspectorate General - aka the Witchfinder faction - are tasked with tracking down divine magic practitioners and either re-educating them or disappearing them. The Bureau and the Inspectorate can often work at odds - a Bureau licence technically overrides the Inspectorate's warrant to act. The Inspectorate has deeper pockets than the Bureau, though, which gives them the ability to recruit more informants. Somewhere in the mix, the Sons of Remus are looking to connect with one or another of these offical arms of Bela's administration.

The Vestfalian Friendship League is a fairly new but popular social movement that has sprung up in Bela, and that is especially popular among the rising middle class and petty nobility. Many Vestfalian interests would prefer to trade with Ladinh and open up more seafaring connections, and are concerned about Vestfal's militaristic mindest and trajectory towards all-out war with Ladinh. Members of the League commonly meet and recruit in Wandell during the tourist season. They wear patriotic blue jackets and congregate in small Lodges around Bela and its satellite cities. The League outwardly takes a secular but moderate approach to politics, but seems to turn a blind eye to personal religious practice - and a few people within the League have connections to a small underground railroad that sneaks Dwarven clergy out of New Hessia.

#### The Grand Waltz

Bela has its own version of The Season - full of long twilit evenings, seductive dances, opulence and plenty of bubbly Dewdrop liqueur. Those who can afford it, party in Bela in spring and travel south to Wandell for the hottest part of summer. The Grand Waltz is a time for Vestfalian citizens to cut loose and be decadent. Ultimately, though, it is a tradition steeped in conservative nostalgia.

## Gopniki Okrug

Gopniki Okrug is sometimes called "The Pale of Settlement" - seated on the wild Southeastern edge of frontier Vestfal, to the north of the icy Voyivod territories and east of decadent Ladinh. Vestfalian bureaucrats pretty much sent the starving Gopniki there because nobody else was willing to go.

#### The Capital: Vlast

The part-dwarven population of Vestfal shares its territory with Iberiyan riders, goblin shepherds and monsters and raiders that occasionally visit from Voiyvod to the south. Vestfal is multinational, so the Gopniki technically have 'nationhood' as an autonomous okrug within the bounds of Vestfal. In practice, Gopniki culture is under threat, religious practice has gone far underground due to persecution, and Gopniki themselves would be barely recognisable to the dwarves of the old Motherland. Gopnik citizens are forbidden from carrying weapons (though tools can be treated as an exception - many people carry menacing looking shovels, picks and entrenching tools). If Iberiya is a vibrant culture without a territory, Gopniki Okrug is a run-down territory with little resources and a disjointed cultural legacy.

### Law and custom

Gopniki law, also called Halaka, is based on a combination of historical precedent, religious dictates (worship of Elo) and more recent local customs. It is enforced at a community level with a restorative justice approach. "Tit-for-tat" fines and Witangemot-style community trials are common. Clerics are sometimes brought in to interpret the finer points of religious law, but for minor infringements, most matters are settled over a drink by community consensus.

No Gopnik shall kill another Gopnik, that is the rule of the law - even to punish crime. This means that murderers, sex offenders and war criminals are branded and exiled. Gopnik fighters are extremely unwilling to kill their own, as they would potentially face exile from their homeland (effectively meaning they stand no chance of settling anywhere else in Vestfal).

#### Gopniki - a hybrid people

Countries and cultures all around Terranuova are mixed - some intermarriage and cultural exchange comes with the territory of migration. Gopniki Okrug is distinct in that the other two dwarven-diaspora cultures tend to at least attempt marriage within their own tribes, but Gopniki seem determined to survive by coupling with partners from all sorts of species. Dwarven-human children are very common, or mostly-human children with just a hint of dwarven genetics - but dwarves from this impoverished oblast will also date and mate with supernatural peoples or even out and out monsters from the Voiyvod. The suffering of both indigenous and sentient non-humanoid fauna seems to resonate with Gopniki culture, meaning they are open to political alliances and intimate dalliances many kith would find disturbing.