The Eslum

In the farthest north, at the very roof of the world, are the Eslum Home Islands.
For centuries Eslum society has been bound by ancient feudal traditions, with the noble families waging war for honour and prestige, while the church taught piety and reverence for the Goddess.
In recent years, however, these two foundation stones of Eslum culture have been challenged by a third power in society.
New thinkers, speaker of philosophy, art and exploration have begun to question the established order. Their challenges to authority and dogma have sent shock waves through the establishment, filling some with awe and others with dread or anger.

The Eslum have a great affinity for a sea. The ocean forms the basis for their religion, their trade and is the source of most of their food. Living inland is looked down upon, and their capital cities are built on smaller islands around the mainland.
Eslum are excellent sailors, and their ships are generally the best in all Harkovast.
Due to their superior navies, the Home Islands have only rarely come under serious threat of invasion and no foreign force has landed successfully on their shores.
The Eslum consider this a sign of divine providence. The Home Islands are theirs alone, by the will of the Goddess. The Eslum are not particularly xenophobic, and often view foreign cultures with curiosity. Foreigners are welcome as guests, but any attempt by foreigners to arrive in force or impose their will on the Eslum would be one of the few things that could unite this most divided of peoples.
The Eslum Nobility are raised to be warriors and leaders. Their proud family lines stretch back as far as recorded history. The greatest honour for them is to serve their Prince as an armitori, the warrior elite of Eslum society.
Armitori fight in some of the heaviest armour in Harkovast, Etaro armour. Some of these suits are older than the warriors that wear them, repaired and reforged for each new generation. Armitori also make use of suss bird mounts, expensive and difficult to maintain in the cold north.
In war, formations of regular soldiers with pikes and crossbows make up the bulk of their armies, but it is always the Armitori that are viewed as the decisive weapon.
The Eslum nations wage almost unending war on each other, but it is a low intensity conflict, fought more for pride and glory than with the expectation of ultimate victory.
With their capitals situated on islands away from the mainland, and their costal fortresses heavily defended, the only territory that changes hands in these wars is the central area of the mainland. The fact it changes hands so frequently is another reason the Eslum regard these areas as worthless.
Outsiders might view these conflicts as pointless, and the ceaseless, low level hostility as barbarism.
To the Eslum nobility, these conflicts are a mater of honour, earning them glory and allowing them to demonstrate their courage. This is their chance to defend their homeland and gain prestige on behalf of their prince.
Their wars are fought according to exacting standards and rules. Pillaging or harming civilians or their property is an unforgivable war crime, punished by summary execution. Battles are generally arranged between their factions, fought at agreed spots. To the Eslum this is the civilised way to conduct a conflict, not some mad blood thirsty brawl.
Due to this near permanent state of war, the Eslum Home Islands are fertile ground for mercenaries to ply their trade, and most foreigners who travel there do so for this reason. Armitori from down on their luck families or whole have not received much of an inheritance often become mercenaries and can become quite rich selling their elite skills. Armitori in the service of a prince view these mercenaries with disdain, and for good reason. Their are stories of mercenaries switching sides mid battle or acting as bandits in quieter times when work dries up.

The three principalities of the Eslum are Cingordo, Corriera and Ricolotia.
Cingordo is the richest of the nations, and a centre of art of culture. Crown Prince Tremenzo might not be known as the wisest ruler, but he is a great patron of the arts of culture. He has attracted many of the greatest new thinkers and artist to his nation. The Capital city of Tesseli is a gleaming metropolis, known for its great canals in place of roads.
Cingordons are viewed as lazy, fanciful and arrogant by their nieghbours.
Corriera is the youngest of the principalities, originally formed from numerous smaller nations who banded together for defence from the aggression of Resadeo the Mariner. Even though the reign of suffering is over, the people of Corriera still feel hostility towards Cingordo, and their leaders have forged them into the most militant of the Eslum states. Corriera has the most powerful land armies and the most numerous Armitori of any of three nations. Recently they have become increasinly aggressive, taking more and more of the mainland territory.
Corrierans are viewed as aggressive and militant by their neighbours.
The final nation is Ricolotia. Traditional and high pious, the Ricolotians have the closest relations with the church of any of the nations. They believe in a life of simplicity and dislike new ideas or signs of decadence.
Their Crown Princess En-Draga is known as The Widow. Since the death of her husband she has become wracked with sadness and focused more and more on matters of religion and less on affairs of state. Corriera has been quick to take advantage of this weakness, seizing territory with little opposition.
The other nations view them as humourless fanatics, confusing superstitions for true piety, as well as being generally backward.
The power of the nations is also held in check by the power of the church, the Carizan.
From his great citadel, the Mareat, spiritual leader of all Eslum, directs the faithful.
The Carizan act as a balancing power, controlling the excesses of any of the Crown Princes or Princesses. While a Mareat does not directly have the political power to depose a Prince (no mortal holds such power) or power to remove them, if he condemns a rulers actions it would be considered a terrible political blow.
Warriors under the command of such a ruler would begin to question their ruler and the other two nations would be motivated to move together against a common enemy. Several times in history when one nation has grown too strong on the mainland, the Mareat has stepped in to broker a peace and return some balance between nations.
Resadio the Mariner stands out in Eslum history as one of the only rulers willing to completely disregard a Mareats council, only adding more to his terrible reputation.
The current Mareat, Velicho, is a deeply respected, venerable figure. He is known for being careful to protect the churches neutrality, trying to restrict his official statements to matters of faith rather than politics. His attitudes towards the New Thinkers movement are also unclear, with people on both sides pointing to different statements to try to argue why his views agree with their own.
Below the Mareat are the Bishops who carry out his instructions and are responsible for each church diocese.
Below them are the monks that make up the rank and file of the church.
They live spartan lives, attempting to free themselves from worldly temptations to focus instead on their faith. The monks also train the arts of combat. Though not as well equipped or as well trained as the mighty armitori, they know the ways of powerful artomancy. The blow from their weapons freeze their enemies bodies, turning blood to ice in their veins or forming ice where each blow strikes to make it increasingly difficult for an opponent to move.
Battlefield monks are a source of inspiration to Eslum warriors, reminding them that the Goddess will rewards their courage and patriotism.
By tradition, the Eslum religious orders are entirely male, with one exception, the Veritoria.
The Veritoria are the warriors of the church, both male and female. They are its guardians and its police. Combining the magical arts of the church with the strength and equipment of Armitori, the Veritoria are perhaps the great of all Eslum warriors. Veritoria also serve as a form of secret police for the Eslum, seeking to deal with immorality, treason and dangerous foreign influences. The current High Veritor, Felzio, is known for being particularly harsh in this regard. He considers policing Eslum morality to be his vital duty, and often goes far beyond anything his predecessors would dare. Arresting people within one of the nations without permission from the crown prince, often based on 'secret evidence' Felzio has made the Veritoria rightly feared by the common people. Those who are taken away to the dungeons below the Carizan Citadel are rarely seen again. Felzio sees the Eslum as a people drowning in sin, awash with greed, sexual deviancy and depravity, idolatory dressed up as art and all manner of other unspeakable evils.
In particular, the New Thinkers are the insitgators, arch heretics and criminals, who threaten to tear down the very fabric of Eslum society. Complacent clergy and decadent nobles are only encouraging what he sees as a fundamental threat.
So far no Prince has dared challenge Felzio for fear of angering the church, the Mareat seems to neither encouraged nor condemn him.
Felzio's most hated enemies are the three famous rogues, Bilbani, Senchos and most of all Ganobarro. These three are very famous amongst the Eslum, often provoking extremely different opinions.
Much of the nobility see them as typical New Thinkers, lazy and decadent, bothered with inflating their own egos, seeking pleasure and filling peoples heads with silly ideas, rather than getting a real job! But to Felzio, they are something far worse, and if it was not for Crown Prince Tremenzo's protection, he would almost certainly have been dragged away by the Veritoria.
To most people, these three are viewed as adventurous heroes, bringing back tails of daring deeds in far off lands.
To the New Thinkers, these three are viewed with the highest respect, considered the greatest geniuses in this age of new enlightenment.

The Eslum religion worships the ocean as living entity, that they refer to as "The Goddess". The Eslum are her children, blessed by her and protected by her. She is a fickle and often harsh deity, sometimes inflicting storms and disasters, other times bringing bounty and plenty.
Eslum are baptised in the sea and when they die they are buried at sea.
The food she provides is a sacred boon to her people and food grown from the earth is considered peasant food. Fresh water fish are considered actively disgusting and not fit for consumption.
Eslum believe that while other races were made from the earth or the trees or the wind, the Eslum alone were formed by the Goddess herself and placed on their Home Islands as a sacred covenant.
Other races may scoff at how literal the Eslum's deity is, laughing that they can shit over the side of a boat on the Eslum's Goddess. The Eslum find the idea that anything done by someone as small as a mortal could concern a being as great as the Goddess to be ridiculous and the idea that this demeans her would be like saying that a mother is demeaned when she cleans up the messes her baby makes.
Despite this, there is a practice amongst Ricolotian sailors of casting a small stone over the side of the boat before relieving themselves, referred to as "distracting the Goddess". Other Eslum consider this is silly superstition and the practice is one of many odd religious customs in Ricolotia that are not church approved.
Eslum society treats bother gender equally, with only roles in the church restricted for women.
Half castes are mostly treated respectfully, though they might be looked down on due to their percieved foriegn loyalties and are often restricted from high ranking positions.
Homosexuals have traditionally been outlawed, though the New Thinkers movement is bringing this attitude into question and many Eslum, while they might not aprove of the practice, don't especially want to see it punished. Hard line elements of the church, such as Felzio, see this as a dangerous weakening of Eslum morals.

Should the Eslum ever unite under a single ruler, they would be powerful indeed. They are inventive, imaginative and prosperous, with a very advanced culture. In art, music, architecture and literature, the Eslum have created marvels to rival anything found elsewhere in Harkovast. They are masters of the sea and powerful, battle hardened armies.
It is perhaps fortunate for the nations of Jaydia that the Eslum are focused inward, as a united Eslum would be a terrifying enemy indeed.

However...the Eslum's mastery of their domain is not absolute.
To the far north in Peridizon Tundra, a realm so cold even the hardy Eslum cannot live there, another people dwell.
The Eslum call them the Tritoro, for they have no name for themselves. Large and powerful, they are viewed as wild savages and cannibals by the Eslum, ferocious barbarians who will ambush and kill anyone who ventures into their territory.
The Eslum armies are useless in that terrible, wind swept cold and even their mighty fleets could not penetrate the thick, cruel ice of the coast. So the Eslum must tolerate their northern nieghbours, paying them little notice, as to acknowledge them is to admit an unhealed wound to Eslum pride.
For their part, the Tritoro make no effort to contact the Eslum and do not venture south, seemingly content to be left alone. Why they choose to live in such a dreadful environment and how they survive there is unknown, especially as they seem a very primitive people.
They are the bogey men to the Eslum, distant monsters, half shrouded in legend.
There are even those who doubt Tritoro exist, but they are there, along with terrible secrets, hidden in the tundra...waiting behind the ice.