Southwestern Hegemony

### 1500-1600 Barons of the South

The southwest had long been a fertile land.  The Marches provided great farming and herding, while the Heddlu and Ysgol woods teamed with game.  The lands were very feudal in nature with individual noble lords carving out their own plots in the valleys, wood and hills.  Given a somewhat lengthy time of relative peace, the population of the southwest grew substantially.  Small holdings dotted the countryside in service to the lords who seemed to control every inch of land from the Vaddoren Keep to the Southland.
The increase in population, however, was not limited to only the nobles, and peasants of the Marches, for the Ka races in the region grew as well.
Orcs, Goblins and Ogres enjoyed the fertile hunting grounds just as much as the more civilized Madur who kept more to the coastal lands.  As years passed by, the intrusions of the orcs into the civilized lands grew.  Soon much of the land in the wood and hills of the Southwest was unsafe for any but the most experienced hunter to venture through.

In the high mountains and eastern hills of the region, the Great Orcs and Ogres threatened the halls of the Kingdom of the Ffydd Dwarves.  The dwarves of the Ffydd accentuated the insular nature of their race.
By the sixteenth century, King Kardur of the Ffydd had limited access[1] to the Kingdom from outside sources to an unprecedented extent.  Contact was permitted only under very careful and scrutinized supervision.  The nobles of the Southwest had all but stopped trade with the high mountain dwarves.  Once in a while, a representative of the Ffydd Dwarves would show up at a Council at Vaddoren, or in the halls of the Coten Dwarves, but for this to occur it needed to be a special occasion which King Kardur deemed worthy of attendance.  This xenophobic nature led to comparatively small growth in the population of this once great kingdom with regard to its neighbors, both citizens of the Mote and the orcs alike.

The city of Fathe Nun became the largest city in the entire southern continent during this period, and the towns in the which supported it prospered and grew as well.  However, as the more and more came to the Mote to live, the strife between the civilized folk of the area and the orcs grew accordingly.  The leaders of Fathe Nûn called upon willing and relatively wealth families from the city to control and govern the border regions of the Mote.  Families with sufficient motivation now were entitled as Barons of the Marches,protecting the valley along the Ffydd Hills in the North to the Cyrfrinach Hills in the South.   These new barons would change the makeup of the Marches through today, as Fathe Nûn would be forever beholden to the nobility of the valleys.

### 1550-1720 Queen Finda of the Southland

The growth of the Fathe Nûn port and the peace of the valleys inspired the ruler of Gale’s Head in the Southland.  After the reigning Lord Standrum of Gale’s Head was killed in a battle against the orcs in the Teledu Wood in 1550, Queen Regent Finda Aeris came to power until her infant son, Gordon, came of age.  Queen Finda quickly took command and immediately called upon the leaders of each of the hamlets and towns of the Southland.   She formed the Diet of the Southland to govern the needs of the Halfling peoples.

For centuries, the peoples of the Southland were divided.  There were really only two cities[2] while the countryside was peppered with hamlets barely in communication with one another.  As the population of the orcs grew tremendously in the Mote , so too did their population grow in the plains of the Southland.  In fact, when the Barons of Fathe Nûn began to stem the surge of the orcs in the north, many of the Ka clans moved into the plains and hills of the south, endangering the scattered villages across the plains.

As one of the first acts of the Diet, Queen Finda called for each hamlet, town or city to have some magician or shaman or soothsayer present whose responsibility it was to communicate with the towns closest to them should they be in danger.  This web of protection would enable every town in the Southland to understand the dangers that each other faced and to provide help if the situation became dire.  Although the hamlets enjoyed their relative insular nature, the threat that the growing orc population posed brought them together, at least a bit, in hopes of protecting their lifestyles.  Over the next few years, the web enabled the scattered peoples of the Southland the ability to push the orcs away from their settlements enough so that they could live fairly peacefully.  Unlike the to the north, where the orcs were pushed into the hills, mountains and deep forest, some orc clans were present in the Southland Plains and began to settle there, albeit not in close proximity to the hamlets of the halflings.

Under Queen Finda, the Southland grew in population and prosperity.  She spent much of her family’s own wealth to build up Gail ’s Head, and to make it the largest shipbuilding city along the southern coast of the Southland, which is true still to this day.  When came of age, he bequeathed his right to rule to his mother and instead became Steward of the Harbor, to oversee the rise of the sea trade in which Gale’s Head now enjoyed.

Queen Finda also tightened relations with the Barons and Sea Captains of Fathe Nûn to the north.
Queen Finda invited a docks representative from Fathe Nûn to sit in on the Gale’s Head Board of Trade, and a Lord of Fathe Nûn to sit in on Diet matters.  The openness to the trade and governing bodies of the realm has insured the close alignment between the Marches and the Southland from the reign of Queen Finda through today.

## Links

Chronology of Eirethune

Previous, Rise of Glenhome

Next, Ebb and Flow of the Northeast Fiefs

## Notes

[1] King Kardur was said to be aware of the environs of his own kingdom. Supposedly, he had the *Visor of the Ffydd* crafted which allowed him to observe any area within 100m from where he was, as long as he was familiar with the location previously. This allowed the King to instantly be aware of what was going on near the entrance to his halls whenever he wanted.

[2] They are the same two cities as there are today: Gale’s Head and Farrish.