Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

Pathfinder Chronicles
40
Incredible rumors suggest that the beasts that make
the realm famous somehow emerged from an impossible
underworld with its own false sun, a savage microcosm in
which the dinosaurs never died and humans never emerged
from their primitive origins. The Pathfinder Society has
mounted five expeditions to this rumored inner world,
but none of have ever returned from the country alive.
Mendev
CRUSADER THEOCRACY
Alignment: LG
Capital: Nerosyan (64,700)
Notable Settlements: Egede (39,410), Kenabres (12,330)
Ruler: The Crusader Queen Galfrey, Sword of Iomedae
Government: Monarchy
Languages: Common, Hallit
Religion: Iomedae, Aroden
Tales of demonic monstrosities spewing from the distant
north spread swiftly throughout Avistan in the beginning
of the last century. The “Song of Sarkoris” related the fall
of a wicked barbarian kingdom to cosmic horrors from
the Great Beyond. “The Ballad of Prince Zhakar” told of
the brave march into a chaos-warped land by a band of
Mendevian heroes who died one by one fighting their way
to the center of the blight, a “wound in the world.” Ministers
of congregations shaken by the death of Aroden seized upon
songs like these and reports of vile creatures from the north,
whipping their followers into a frenzy of religious fervor.
The clergy of Iomedae led the way, stepping from the
shadows of their bewildered masters in the faltering church
of Aroden. Nobles in Cheliax, Isger, and Andoran, fearing
growing domestic discontent and threatened by hordes of
mercenaries and freeswords roaming their countrysides,
joined with the Iomedaean church to sponsor the first
Mendevian Crusade in 4622. Thousands of pilgrims soon
made their way up the River Road from Cassomir to Chesed
and across the Lake of Mists and Veils to Mendev.
Before the crusades, most northerners knew nothing
of Mendev, a proud kingdom descended from Iobarian
exiles and ne’er-do-wells. As related in the tale that
still fuels new recruits to the crusade, Mendev’s last
prince died in the ruins of Sarkoris, near the rupture in
reality known as the Worldwound. Chaos on Mendev’s
western front has increased disastrously in the decades
since, with the total loss of Drezen in 4638 triggering
a Second Crusade that some scholars believe drew so
many righteous men and women from Cheliax that the
diabolical House Thrune wrested control of the empire
with relatively little opposition.
Foreigners engaged in the holy wars against the blight
of the Worldwound now outnumber the native people of
Mendev, who have been pushed aside and treated as an
underclass by the nation’s new inhabitants. In theory,
the crusaders follow the greatest of their number, the
righteous Queen Galfrey, Sword of Iomedae, a Mendevborn
Chelaxian duchess trained in the Aldorian battlearts.
In practice, mercenaries and professional soldiers
outnumber the pilgrims, and while Galfrey’s commanders
and armored guardians keep the populace reciting the Acts
of Iomedae and focused on rooting out demonic inf luence
in the Iobarian underclass, a real brutality and lawlessness
lurks just below the surface.
The uneasiness is worst in the border town of Kenabres,
where the charismatic old Iomedaen legate Hulmun has
led a zealous pogrom against demon-worshippers since
the launch of the Third Crusade in 4665. Hundreds of
indigenous Mendevians and pilgrims have burned at the
stake since those dark days, and the screaming f lames echo
the passion of Mendev’s most fervent zealots. Galfrey’s
government does little to halt the torture and extermination,
preferring to focus upon military matters in Sarkoris.
The Mendevian capital at Nerosyan was once an old Issian
pirate outpost, and depite the presence of paladins, priests,
and holy men, the frontier town retains some of its unruly
character. The length of the Sellen River from the capital west
to Storasta falls within the region warped by the Worldwound,
and the town’s harbor guard must keep careful watch for
unthinkable horrors emerging from the river depths.
Along the border of Sarkoris, a string of fortresses
named for generals lost in the Worldwound looks out over
the twisted geography across the river, housing battlehardened
warriors rotating between defending Mendev
from rapacious hellspawn emerging from the Worldwound
and suicide missions into the heart of the chaos in an
attempt to stem it at its source.
Slowly but surely, the reality-bending chaos of the
Worldwound consumes more and more of the world,
spreading its malign influence ever southward. A string
of rune-encrusted menhirs known as wardstones keeps the
worst of the demonland’s inhabitants and inf luence from
spreading, but the stones must be maintained with careful
prayer and ritual, and remain constant points of attack by
demons and their servants from within the wound.
Sooner or later, the wardstones will fail. The Iomedaens
are on their fourth crusade, and the goodly kingdoms of the
world are running out of heroes. Unless something changes
soon, the Worldwound will encompass all of Avistan.
Molthune
TERRITORIAL EXPANSIONISTS
Alignment: LN
Capital: Canorate (27,450)
Notable Settlements: Eranmas (11,970),
Fort Ramgate (2,200)
Ruler: Imperial Governor Markwin Teldas