THE OLD HOMES OF BALT

The Free States of Balt are informally divided into two groups: the Old Homes and the New Territories. The Old Homes trace their lineage to either the original satrapies of the south or the successor kingships. Poltavia, the Svantra Republic, the Flaxlands, Zwotepe, Three Waters, and Baltheim itself have complex histories full of revolution and politicking that brought them to the present day. These rich, populous states form the core of the modern Free States’ industrial might and manpower and are the engine propelling the nation forward and guiding it toward even greater prosperity.

Baltheim once stretched from the Keizai to beyond the Balt Meer and even today dominates the nation’s politics, setting the standard of what it means to live in the Free States. Bordered on the north by the hills strung between the Keizai and Mada ranges, the original prairies and scrub that rolled toward the southern steppes have been transformed by irrigation to green plains and long-tamed forests. The state is a patchwork of well-tended farmland bordered with windbreak trees and game preserves and dotted with busy towns. The finest roads outside of the jungle highways knit the state together and rail lines run a circuit to carry crops and cottage goods to market.

The semi-nomadic humans living in the area took to iaret civilization quickly and this enabled their outsize influence on the region. Baltheim was poised to dominate the coming era, and carried through with the amiable arrogance they had learned from the Suzerainty colonists. The entrepreneurial spirit behind the rise of the Baltine magnates originated here, and it still seems as if every village blacksmith fancies themselves an inventor. Well-known for their blithe confidence and big ideas, the average person living in Baltheim is as likely to be iaret as human and seems to combine the demeanor of both.

Brandech was set aside from the state to serve as the nation’s capital, but the surrounding settlements still in Baltheim are bustling cities in their own right. Among them, Sildech has become the state’s seat of government, where the humble native architecture of square fieldstone and timber mixes with older tapering iaret buildings and modern glass and steel towers. There the Diet of Baltheim is composed of delegates from the state’s regions and moderated by advisors elected by the population as a whole.

Poltavia was another early powerhouse of the south, once containing Keltokel within the purview of its Satrapy and benefiting from the trade routes north to the iaret homelands beyond the Sea of Riches. The years leading up to the formation of the Free States saw it whittled down to three cities on a narrow crescent of hilly territory. What it now lacked in resources, it still made up for in population. Cheap labor invited industry and the cities burgeoned in size and importance. The lands of Poltavia were never lovely, consisting of windy hills and prairie, and the new factories littered them with massive piles of mill tailings and cesspools of spoil. The brutal sieges of the Gate War left the area even more poisoned. Today, only vestiges of farming communities cling stubbornly along the roads between the Factory Cities.

Stung by the long-ago loss of their northern territories, Poltavians have a chip on their shoulder. This became an appetite for military adventurism that was only dulled by the horrors of the war against the soldati. Despite the power their state wields in the Diet and the fortunes made since the war ended, “things used to be better,” is a frequently-heard complaint. The people of the Factory Cities talk big, spend as ostentatiously as they can, and are quite sure that they’re held back only by circumstance and conspiracy. This can be seen in their government, where membership on the Burgomasters’ Council is secured through the payment of massive dues into the state treasury.

North of the Factory Cities stands an anomaly of the state, Parholt. This city marks the furthest extent of soldati occupation during the Gate War, and was once a testament to the shared culture between Poltavia and its lost territories of Polto. Lacking the confluence of caravan rails that makes Wittem the preeminent conurbation within the state, it was a quaint city, full of ancient architecture of unique style dating back to the earlier Baltine Alliance. The ruined grand cathedral to the pantheon of Geb is a grim reminder of the brutality of the invaders’ war. The rest of the city is battered and in disrepair, held together by the local garrison preventing incursions of the zombie plagues afflicting Polto.

Prosaically called “the second land” by the iaret, Zwotepe’s plains were distinguished only from Baltheim in how far south the settlements reached. Much like their northern neighbor, advanced irrigation turned steppe to farmland, here bordered by wild old-growth forest. These forests provided much of the state’s early industry: lumber and furs. Zwotepe thus always had more frontier spirit, where the civilization of iaret and human settlers rubbed against the native beastkin tribes beyond the horizon.

A council of magnates governs the state, with religiously-connected iaret and old-money logging and herding families reluctantly giving way to newly-minted industrialists. These semi-elected oligarchs send representatives to the national Diet on behalf of Zwotepe. In this way, a balance is kept between city and countryside. Unspoken-for, however, is the diminishing wilderness that once gave the state its unique flavor. Less and less tribal beastkin come from across the Winter Line in trade, and more and more are swallowed up by industries voracious for labor.

The state’s capital of Grawben reflects the changing eras of Zwotepe. It was once an outpost of the bloodthirsty Zeelite faith, and scattered pockets of that sect can still be found in the countryside. The Wars in the South saw this incarnation razed, and for a time it was a lumber town, a fur traders’ and farmers’ market, shipping those goods north. The soldati invasion brought its latest incarnation, with war industries riding the caravan rails in from the besieged cities of Poltavia. In contrast to the forests and farms, it’s a sprawling, sooty, hastily built city packed with new arrivals come to work in the factories.

Rolling fields of wheat, corn, and rice speckled with blue blossoms make up the peaceful expanses of the Flaxlands. The protection from violence in the southern regions afforded by the Halmine river nurtured heavy iaret settlement and agriculture all the way east to Adybek. Nothing exciting happens in the Flaxlands, every year is much like the previous, and that’s just the way its inhabitants like it.

The regional stereotype is a disinterested iaret farmer who watches boats go by on the Halmine River. This country bumpkin caricature belies the reality that the Flaxlands are the bedrock of the Free States. It is almost as populous as Baltheim, and its untroubled history has left it free to feed the nation with bountiful harvests and tax revenues. What industry has developed is concentrated on the rivers, making use of the power the flowing waters provide.

The Flaxlands enjoyed relative peace during the kingships, and after the tumult of the First Mercantile War, they returned to the tradition of monarchy. A new royal family was elected from the old gentry to an advisory and ceremonial role. They work with the state parliament composed of town representatives and in practice the king is quite influential. Parliament is convened in Mysen, a town obstinately unconnected by caravan rail or river traffic. The town of Ellebik is the largest in the state and most of the grain and produce of the state travels through here to the rest of the nation. One other village of note is Walfold, reluctantly thrust into fame by sitting astride the easiest path through the Ludzia hills to Chime.

The predominantly human population of the Svantra Republic is distinct from much of the rest of the nation. The land was settled by Samrat refugees from somewhere beyond the western steppes before the Conflagration. They brought with them strange practices that were suppressed by the colonizing iaret, and this persecution would persist throughout Baltine history until the formation of the Free States. With self-determination finally within their grasp, the people of the region founded a republic around egalitarian ideals. Independent to a fault, their representatives in the Baltine Diet are frequently obstacles to national policy. The Republic has even gone so far as to conduct its own foreign policy, usually to its detriment, and is involved in land disputes with the new territory of Far Soneka.

Svantra is mostly populated by humans, even now, though they boast the largest concentration of yanta in the known world. They are disdainful of outsiders, particularly ones with opinions about the Republic and how it should be run. The ancient traditions of the Samrat are one of the ways they set themselves apart, and the poetry, dance and magical arts of their ancestors are seeing a renaissance throughout the state.

Mining has long been an industry in Svantra, such that the lower slopes of the northern Soneka Spur are despoiled by tailings and runoff. The ore wrested from the ground here fed the industries of the Free States, and ensured the Republic’s economic might and influence. The new city of Kaara is a point of pride for the Republic, built from quarried mountain stone in half-remembered Samrat architecture. Here, the first anima foundry brought the yanta into being to help fight the soldati and it is here that the Senate of the Republic governs the state.

The importance of the waterways in the state of Three Waters goes far beyond the name. The earliest settlements, on Sado Bay, Sace Bay, and Sibek lake, were onceseparate, each with a different genesis. The protected harbor at Sado Bay was a launching point for iaret exploration to the south, while Sace began as an anchorage for rogues and tramps unwelcome in Sado Bay. Meanwhile, the eastward expansion of inland iaret colonies founded the city of Adybek where the Halmine river empties into Sibek Lake. Slowly, ties grew along the rivers between the cities, fostered by traveling pods of riverine muruch.

Today Three Waters is a freewheeling state, much influenced by riverine lifestyle and traditions. Even the heavily militarized port at Sado is known for its daring and unruly sailors. Mixed human and muruch populations dominate the rural interior such that it’s rare to find a family without a few members of the other race in its number. The traditional liberties and slower lifestyle enjoyed by the state are jeopardized, however, with the rise of modern river and sea trade. The stability required to keep the money flowing has no time for older, easygoing attitudes.

The Triple Council governs the state from Sado, Sace, and Adybek on a rotating basis, and traditionally is composed of an iaret, a human, and a muruch member, with an apkallu monk moderating and keeping order. Sado is most closely tied to national Baltine interests owing to the naval base there and has been expanded over the past decades with modern fortifications. Adybek is the largest city in the state, full of ancient buildings in opulent iaret style. The southern city of Sace, however, has always been troubled. For much of its history, infiltrated pirates and smugglers from the Tide Kingdoms defiantly flouted Baltine law. Now the pernicious influence of Khalqist agitators runs rife through trade guilds and longshoreman unions and the city flirts with open rebellion.

The City of Measures is the capital of the Free States of Balt. It is the beating heart of the nation, pumping the commercial lifeblood throughout its borders and beyond. The old city center of stone architecture is giving way to new steel towers where the promise of money passes invisibly between wealthy magnates and powerful industries. This strange new form of business has come to dominate here, and the industrial outskirts are falling into disrepair. Unchanged, however, is the sprawling Diet. The center of Baltine government is an edifice of imposing grey stone, housing its namesake legislature. Nearby is the Residence of Silver, the home and offices of the head of state.