Lenay

Lenay is a kingdom, located on a big peninsular, west of Bayport, a couple hundred miles away by water. It's a good sized country, divided roughly into two geographical regions. The northern 2/3 or so are highlands - the southern third called lowlands, though it is more mixed, with coastal plains separated by hills and moors in the middle. The north though is really highland: a very high mountain range runs through the middle of the country, dividing the highlands from the lowlands. Around these high mountains are foothills running to the sea on all sides. The far north, almost an island, is a wild place, its people fiercely independent, clan based, fond of their greatswords, pipes and haggis. South of this is the main bulk of the country, dominated by the mountains, though with good land and forests by the sea, especially on the west coast (where the rain and snow tends to fall.) Both east and west of the mountains, there are peninsulas, hilly places, wooded, cut up by rivers and little lakes, and so on. The coasts all around support decent farmland, and a rich maritime life. The only major city north of the mountains is Lenay City, the capital, located at the end of Lenay Sound, a long, deep bay separating the western peninsular from the mainland. It is a major port - a center of shipping to the far south (the Kingdom and beyond), to Oceanside, to Storm Island, and so on. In the last decade, or so, Bayport has begun to rival it, thanks to the increased trade from Waynesburg. There are no other major cities north of the mountains - there are plenty of towns and estates, especially along the coasts, but no areas that have developed into a real city.

The lowlands lay south of the mountains. (The Lenay Mountains, as they are called.) This area is lower, and in many places, a good deal less dramatic than the north. The west coast in particular is a pleasant land, a coastal plain giving way to rolling hills, that extends 30-50 miles inland, before rising into higher hills. (That are well short of being called mountains.) The west here is also wetter and more fertile than the east - it is good farmland along the water, and well into the hills, which also tend to be fairly heavily wooded on the west side. The east coast is a bit less inviting. Drier, the land less fertile - it tends to be moorland and heather on the east. The highlands run in long flat ridges almost to the sea, separated by low valleys, marshes and fens, as well as grassy and mossy plains. On both coasts (and in the interior) the land falls away to real lowlands in the south and east - much of the borderland of the country is plain swamp. There are 3 large cities in the lowlands. Newport is on the west coast, across Wickham's Bay from Oceanside. It is a port city - second to Lenay City (at least before the Bayport trade exploded), with strong ties to Oceanside and parts south. On the east coast is Sidney - another port city (located inside another big inlet, Sidney Gut, with Sidney Neck on the seaward side) - that has grown in importance with the increase in Bayport traffic. Finally, in the far south, is the city of Cinevia - it lies in the marshy lowlands where the inland countries like Regar and Troy meet Lenay and Oceanside. It is something of an anomaly in the land - the most recently conquered part of the country, and sometimes rather hard to fit in.

That is Lenay. Politically it is a kingdom, and has been for 150 odd years. Before that it owed fealty to the King in Norwich, due to some long ago conquest by the southerners - that had long ceased to be anything but a word by the time they put a king on their throne and declared themselves as good as anyone. Their location, on the sea, and protected by those mountains from land powers, has made them fairly impervious to outside trouble - but they tend to make up for it with domestic difficulties. They are in such a state now. There is a king - Nikolai II - who had the appearance of a fine king - a soldier, a hero, a would be conquerer - which got him in trouble. A couple years back he headed south to interfere in the affairs of some relatives - and got himself taken prisoner and held hostage. His brother Rudolfo is serving as his regent - and the story goes that Rudolfo has no intention of bringing his brother back any time soon. But he is meanwhile taxing the country to bankruptcy, in the name of paying the king's ransom. And this has brought about a terrible crisis. Rudolfo's men have been going around raising money; they have managed to alienate many of the barons (though others have joined in, hoping to use Rudolfo against their rivals), breaking up the country as they did; central authority has broken down - most power lies in the hands of factions, very little in the hands of the government. The main effect of this is that the navy - an almost completely national institution - has gone to seed: which has dire consequences on any efforts against piracy. (And of course, the result is that local authorities - merchant guilds and barons and the like - commission privateers to fight the pirates - though privateers are basically pirates with licenses.)

For all its troubles, Lenay is still fairly powerful and prosperous place. Though it is also a wild place - the highlands are often howling wilderness; the lowlands is fairly settled on the west coast, but the hills in the middle are still quite wild. The east coast is much less populated, and though perhaps not as likely to shelter dragons and giants as the mountains, there is plenty of cover for monsters and troublemakers of all kinds. The east is also plagued by piracy, all the way up the coast. This coast faces the waterways leading to Bayport, and, in the north, the high Oceanteeth mountains - it is a tempting place to hide. In the highlands, there are many deep, secret harbors, plenty of hiding places, and all of it not that far, by sea, from the barbarian coastlines of the Oceanteeth. The lowlands are a bit less inviting, especially for the big ships. The sea is shallower in this area, and tends to be very treacherous - there are only a few good, deep harbors, and even those tend to require pilots to get in and out. This area is also a bit out of the main shipping lanes, that run further north. Still - this is an almost open coastline for smugglers, and not that far from Bayport and the Waynesburg roads overland - there is a good deal of traffic back and forth, not much of it honest.