Abhari Atlas – The Northern Reaches
The ‘Northern Reaches’ are not, properly speaking, any sort of political unit or special autonomy within the Illyrin Empire. Rather, the region is precisely as it sounds – the northern tiers of the Illyrin Crownlands, generally but not always held to consist of the northernmost 37 shires of Illyrin proper as well as the counties and free cities hugging the arctic coast. This should not be taken as exact – as is inevitably the case, arguments over any particular border county’s inclusion in the region abound. It should also not be taken to imply any uniformity or distinct mode of administration – every shire is governed by some arbitrary assortment of local notables, absentee aristocrats, appointed reeves, magistrates and lieutenants, and every other ancient vested interest to ever call them home,. It might be said that the direct influence of the court aristocracy is less felt than further south, but even that is hardly Law.
What, then, makes these northern reaches worthy of being separated out for study? Broadly, there are three reasons – 1) the coast of the Boreal Ocean and the Illyrin connection to the Outer Seas 2) its economic and social impact, and the relative distribution of power among different classes compared to further south and 3) the number, at least according to common wisdom, of wild spirits and unbound devils in the hinterland of the region.
This missive will first briefly sketch the history and geography of the region, then look at each of these points in turn.
A Brief Survey of Northern Illyrin
Rising from the rich and temperate fields of the imperial heartland into first rugged highlands and then frigid plains, the northern reaches was for centuries claimed by Illyrin monarchs who put only the most cursory efforts into governing them. There was, simply, not much in them worth fighting for. As long as no one actively contradicted the crown’s claims to sovereignty, one king or queen after another let a rough collection of clan chiefs govern the place as they liked. Amusingly, given the Illyrin obsession with antiquity, those chiefs can often claim far more ancient pedigrees than the imperial house itself. At least one is very probably an unbroken line descending from pre-imperial priest-kings.
The centuries since the charting of the Outer Seas have dramatically but not totally transformed this. The land has officially been divided into shires, the clan chiefs domesticated into proper nobles with court ranks and clearly defined holdings – the greatest variance between any two shires in the hinterland is whether the circuit judges are creatures of a local chief or a transplant who cares about such niceties. Narrow bands of truer civilization cling to major roads and rivers running from the south to the Boreal coastline, much more tightly guarded and governed by populations settled or transplanted on farmland forced (with some difficulty) to support them.
The coastline of the Boreal Ocean itself is a wonder of the Inner World, the greatest strongholds of civilization dug into a climate wholly unsuited to them yet seen. The Illyrin Crown ostensibly lays claim to the entire coastline, but the foot of the world is such a frozen wasteland that this is mostly an uncontested fiction. The Josephine Basin cuts far enough south to be navigable for most of the year, and so every port worthy of the name along its coast has been made a Free and Imperial City with its own charter and privileges – not to mention had a purpose-made ‘god’ created to make the land habitable and the climate only somewhat inhumane to inflict upon its residents.
The Boreal Ocean and Illyrin Colonies
The Boreal Ocean was for uncounted ages something of a curiosity – an ocean below the world’s great landmasses to match the Austral beyond them, but so frigid and so surrounded by frozen wasteland that navigating it seemed both useless and impossible.
This changed when the Illyrin Court first learned how to chart routes to one of the Outer Seas. Building infrastructure and ports so far from real civilization was a difficult and expensive endeavour, but after the first few embarrassments it was decided that sending every colonial expedition through the entire Inner Sea and down the Serpent’s Straight to the Austral was even worse (not least due to the epidemic of privateers in both bodies at the time).
So by imperial fiat marshes were drained and harbours dredged, land grants given and temples endowed, and the rich trading towns and cities of the Josephine Bay were willed into existence. The number of peasant labourers whose lives were spent in the act of creation is carefully unremarked upon at a level only matched by the question of who or what called the place home beforehand.
Every town (let alone city) in the Northern Reaches exists either as a facilitator of or parasite upon the flow of riches flowing back and forth from the Illyrin colonies to Alntyr and (in the form of fleets and armies) back. The necessity of settling them all with speed meant that in absolute numbers there are more cities with imperial charters and exemptions from feudal dues in the northern reaches than all the rest of the Crownlands – they are still popular destinations for runaway peasants from further south.
While still troubled by both icebergs and privateers, the arrival of treasure ships bearing tobacco, furs, fine silk and precious metals is reliable enough to set a rhythm to life throughout the region. Given the character of Illyrin government, it should come as no surprise that each port of note has the ancient and exclusive right to trade in the produce and treasures of some set of colonies on the islands and mainlands of a particular Sea, or else in the trade of a certain good or with a given principality. The merchant guilds collect the Royal Fifth on the Crown’s behalf, and at the same time tolls and surcharges for their own upkeep. They quite often have arrangements with the courtier who owns the colonial charter to collect their expected rents from the first shipment of each year as well. (Smuggling is as rampant as might be expected, with feuding ports quite eager to claim a share of each other’s revenues.) From there, barges and caravans carry riches south and enrich the swollen waystation- and castle-towns along the route as they go, before eventually returning laden with trade goods, weaponry, soldiers and colonists.
The Distribution of Power
Among the Josephine Ports, power and wealth are more determined by the nuances of the trading privileges a city’s merchants enjoy more than every other factor combined. Golerast is by far the greatest city upon the Bay, less due to any of its own virtues than the fact that its merchants claim a monopoly on the majority of trade arriving from the Viceroyalty of Desoi – itself by far the richest colonial possession in Illyrin possession.
The cities lack any real class of military or agrarian patricians, and so these merchant guilds would enjoy nearly uncontested power over local government, were it not for the agents of the Throne. Quite uniquely among Illyrin dominions, central control over these cities has actually grown tighter and harsher in the past generations – the title of Lord Admiral of the North has reliably been given to a trusted imperial favourite and empowered to ensure the keeps and garrisons within each city are kept manned and maintained at local expense.
The reasons for this are hardly mysterious – the merchant guilds and trained bands of the Ports were, after the Imperial Colleges, one of the greatest pillars of support for the fallen and much-reviled Avernal Regency. More damningly, they provided both escape for numerous fugitives from it and a base for several rebellions against its fall. The prohibition against any burgher or freedman of a Josephine Port matriculating into an Imperial College or calling up a devil remains strictly and lethally enforced. This causes some small amount of resentment.
The cities do still retain the right to grant their freedoms to new arrivals as they please. They rarely do, but that does not stop a steady stream of runaway peasants running for the perceived liberty of their walls, a transient workforce the guilds find quite convenient. The potential escape, and the lack of ability to really prevent it, plays no small part in explaining the relative liberal terms peasants near them live under. An overly harsh or unpopular chief or count would soon find themselves without subjects to rule over.
Wild Spirits and Metaphysicial Unrest
The churches of the Josephine cities bear special mention – each city has a collection of patron gods, consciously and deliberately made spirits, powerful enough to keep the city’s harbour free of ice throughout the year and its hinterlands fertile enough to support the populace’s orchards and gardens (according to local folklore they also ward off the leviathans and mariads who call the ocean home). Such power is not easily sustained, and the collection and delivering of tithes and sacrifices to the local pantheons is a central duty of each major guild, and consumes the better part of local taxes. The spirits themselves are fascinating, strange and instantly distinct from their natural peers beyond the city’s borders. Either information on their creation or the capture of one for dissection and cataloguing would advance the study of aetheric engineering by decades.
Of course, sailors are the same the world over – despite the obvious preeminence of local spirits, small shrines to every ocean- and travel-god you might name can be found in each port. Many of them are foreign enough that the matter of how (or if) they should be incorporated into Orthodox doctrine is an ongoing and deeply tedious debate among Imiran theologians. It is likely that some zealous Witch-Finder might have forced the issue, but the cities themselves are generally free of them – those that wander north are far too preoccupied with affairs in the hinterlands.
The Illyrin crown has, as mentioned, generally governed the Northern Reaches quite lightly – this is even more true for the Imiran Church. The ancient priest-kings and divine sovereigns were humbled and subjugated, but far less thoroughly than in the richer and more consequential lands to the south – and very few were exterminated or replaced. The result is that, should one’s expectations be set by the rest of the Empire, northern spirits are ancient and proud entirely out of proportion with the power they can wield. Many are intelligent enough to be aware of this, and nurture their resentment over it like a dynast their favoured heir. What the Church calls the ‘Thousand Gods Heresy’ – grasping spirits demanding more in the way of honour or upkeep than the official calendar of rites allots them – flourishes in every valley, with many chiefs entirely ignoring the official church dictates in favour in favour of either their own clan traditions or mercenary bribery for blessings against their rivals. Most recently, it was a matter of some scandal when an imperial messenger accidentally entered the domain of a forest-spirit which had grown wild enough to hunt and feast upon the soul of unwanted trespassers.
This was a step too far, and a punitive expedition will likely be launched in the spring – but the messenger would not have ever been sent were it not for the more obvious and embarrassing variety of dangerous spirit to trouble the Reaches.
Devils – their creation and their calling – have been a part of Illyrin power for centuries, but it was only during the Avernal Regency that their use became as widespread and integral as it now is in the Illyrin heartland. In fact the increasingly arbitrary and reflexive use of ‘damnation’ to punish mutinous nobles was the most violent of the grievances that led to its overthrow (and played no small part in ensuring the erstwhile Lord Regent’s memorably lengthy execution). Those who had prospered under the Regency were left both terrified of potential reprisals and with ready access to a staggering array of bound spirits. The inevitable ensued.
The rebellions themselves were largely limited to the Northern Reaches (at least in the Inner World), and crushed in short order. The scars are still evident sixty years latter, at least in the more remote and inhospitable shires. Shattered legions and fugitive conjurers bartering their skills have left the region scattered with all manner of poorly- or unbound devils as well as written guides and uninitiated mystics capable of calling up even more. This pleases the imperial court not at all, and the official Colleges of Binding and other favoured diabolists even less. The most blatant and embarrassing cases have long since been dealt with, but ‘devil-hunting in the highlands’ remains an idiom for lengthy and unpleasant assignments away from court. Especially as there are still enough genuinely dangerous spirits hidden away that an appreciable fraction of those sent out on it never return.
The Northern Reaches are as far from the Commonwealth as it is possible to be while remaining upon the Inner World, and of little economic or strategic interest – even in the case of another war, a fleet would have to chart a route from an outer sea to the Boreal Ocean, and from their navigate through the arctic waters to a hospitable stretch of coastline; our navy has shown little capability of either. It’s study is thus a matter of purely scholarly interest.
That interest is profound. There are vanishingly few places in the Empire where its devils and artificially created gods are held so loosely. On a social level, it is likewise a fascinating case study in the instinctive hostility of the imperial throne to powerful merchant classes – the tensions between the trained bands of Golerast and its imperial garrison are worthy of study in their own right. And of course, no progress will be made in mapping the routes used by the Illyrin navigators to connect their empire on the outer seas without becoming familiar with their home ports.
As such, while it cannot be considered a high priority, further study of the region is recommended as resources allow.
Academic Hira, Special Adviser to the Secretariat, reporting the results of their fact-finding mission to the Illyrin Crownlands.
