Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

and scattered with the bones of dead soldiers—have fallen
completely to banditry. What little coin remains in the
hands of Isger’s rulers is spent hunting down outlaws, and
the steward’s agents post bounties on brigand leaders and
resettled villages, drawing even more desperate warriors
to pacify things in the hinterlands. It remains to be seen if
these efforts are improving things or making them worse,
but so long as trade continues unmolested on the road to
Druma, the steward is content to treat Isger’s problems as a
secondary concern.
Jalmeray
KINGDOM OF THE IMPOSSIBLE
Alignment: CN
Capital: Niswan (10,300)
Notable Settlements: Padiskar (8,200)
Ruler: Kharswan, Thakur of Jalmeray
Government: Colonial Princely State
Languages: Vudrani
Religion: Irori, elementalism, mysterious eastern religions
Although he long ago departed the nation that still
bears his name, the wizard-king Nex weaved a centuriesspanning
life so incredible that tales of his exploits and
audacity stretch from the eastern coast of Garund north
to Varisia and beyond. About 4,000 years ago, as the story
goes, strange ships swarmed over the eastern horizon,
dispatching a vast retinue upon Nex’s port of Quantium.
The train of acrobats, dancers, mystics, and elephants
comprised the ostentatious entourage of Khiben-Sald,
greatest Maharaja of the eastern empire of Vudra.
The bizarre foreigners—at this time wholly unknown
in the Inner Sea region—became fixtures in the court
of Nex, and Vudran culture inf luenced the art and dress
of the wizard-ruled nation, triggering a strong sense of
orientalism that persists to the modern day. During the
decade in which he was resident in Nex, Khiben-Sald and
his folk inhabited the craggy forested island of Jalmeray,
off Nex’s eastern coast, decreed a formal holding of Vudra
by no less an authority than Nex himself.
Khiben-Sald’s traveling court erected dozens of temples
to their strange gods, attracting a wide variety of heretofore
undiscovered elemental creatures to the isle in an effort to
increase its considerable natural beauty and charms. It is
said that the maharaja’s court brought the worship of Irori
to the Inner Sea, and while the foreigners’ stay was brief,
its inf luence upon Nex, Katapesh, and Absalom can scarcely
be overstated. Distant Vudra became part of the regional
sphere, with ships of merchants, prophets, and explorers
regularly appearing over the horizon of the Obari Ocean.
When Khiben-Sald finally returned to his homeland, he left
behind only a handful of glorious monuments and bound
genies as a sign that he had ever been on Jalmeray at all.
Gazetteer: Nations
Slave Ships of the Inner Sea
Although despised by the revolutionaries of Andoran and
Galt, slavery remains a lucrative trade on the Inner Sea and
the backbone of most agrarian societies. The yellow-sailed
slave galleys of Okeno are the most famous and feared of
the slave-takers and sellers, but countless independent
operations ply the seaways with ships packed with manacled
human cargo. Pirates of the Shackles frequently raid the
Sodden Lands and Mwangi interior for fresh stock, while
older civilizations like Osirion and Taldor breed generations
of enslaved or indentured labor as a matter of course.
Humans of all races make up the hardiest and highestvalued
slaves, while dwarves and gnomes escape widespread
enslavement due to their reclusive natures. Common belief
holds that elves make the poorest slaves and invite the
most trouble, while halflings remain a popular choice in
cosmopolitan Absalom and in the cities of Cheliax, where
they are derisively known as slips. Orcs, gnolls, and other
barbaric races frequently raid human settlements to sell
their captives to slavers bound for distant ports.
The meddling Eagle Knights of Andoran, with the tacit
support of the merchant-princes of Druma, actively oppose
the trafficking of sentient creatures, planting sleeper agents
in Okeno and the crews of the most egregious slavers in
an effort to upset operations and free captives before they
are sold. A mysterious armada known as the Gray Corsairs
patrols the seaways in an effort to curb the slave trade,
notably succeeding in the summer of 4705 with the sinking
of three enormous Katapeshi galleys bound for Westcrown.
A few centuries later, Nex himself abandoned Golarion,
leaving his magical kingdom to an uncertain future. In
time a faction of dogmatic wizards called the Arclords of
Nex assumed rulership in Quantium, following the dictates
of a possibly apocryphal journal of arcane incantations
and revelations said to have been penned by the nation’s
archmage founder and preserved by his servants. The
Arclords ruled Nex for centuries before internal strife
forced them out of the good graces of the nation’s tolerant
citizenry, and hence into exile. The shamed arcanists set
off to cross the Obari Ocean into uncharted distant lands,
but instead put in at Jalmeray, using the nearby island as
an outpost from which to subtly inf luence the affairs of
their homeland.
Unable to best Khiben-Sald’s loyal genie guardians
and distrustful of the unusual, alien magics discovered
at the island’s heart, the Arclords sealed the old Vudrani
ruins and established their own holdings upon Jalmeray,
becoming a regional power with inf luence not only in Nex
but also throughout Qadira, Taldor, and Katapesh. The
apprentices of the first Arclord inhabitants of Jalmeray
spread throughout Avistan and Garund, establishing
schools of magical instruction in the ancient methods of
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