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Azarya
Capital: Azariya-Amaranth
Ruling House: None
Azarya is a Kingdom located in the North. While its summers are tepid, it experiences one of the coldest winters of all the major kingdoms, rivaling only the Witherlands. Its capital, Amaranth, is located in the south, on the Caspian Sea. It is a major northern port. The economy does not allow for perishable goods to be sold, as the weather does not allow for such luxuries. Instead, they lead the market in alcohol, parchment, and textiles. People from this area are known as "Azaryans".
"When the fabled Mage King Azathrion carved the ice bridge and lead his flock from the sunken mires of Vedin, he came upon the land across the sea. The center of the world, cold and high, dark and magical. He called it their home. Those that live there call it His Land. We call it Azarya."
― Grand Wisdom Morganes
GEOGRAPHY
Sharing a high latitude with the Witherlands makes for a chilling climate, made all the worse by the constant gorges and deep ravines of the Amaranth peninsula's steep mountains. As a result of its rugged geography, much of Azarya's territory is abandoned to the forests that grow across the hidden valleys and labyrinthine pathways of it's landscape. Human presence in the region can be found in a string of mercantile cities scattered across the coastline, or further inland in the abodes of the Magocracy's great families. But to the average Marinese, it is in the cities where they are most likely to encounter Azaryan culture: the coastal burgs are the lifeblood of the nation from where its trade stems and where the vast majority of it's population lives. To the continent at large, Azarya as a landmass is as shrouded as the nation itself.
ECONOMY
Azarya is a mercantile economy: the kingdom is Marin's most develloped nation, and technological advancement isn't without its privileges. Over the centuries, Azarya has become a safe haven to the development of sciences that would normally be proscribed in the south, such as chirurgy and genetics (the latter of which is even encouraged). This priceless technical knowledge combined with their esoteric arcana has allowed the kingdom to produce valuable and exotic goods far beyond the rest of the continent's capabilities: silk, alchemical mixtures, navigational instruments, compendiums and treatises, etc... And yet, Ironically enough, the true pillar of the nation's prosperity isn't the Azaryans themselves. Azarya is a kingdom built on slave labor where creatures known as elves are hauled from their homeland of Vedin and across the Fettered Isles so they may toil and die working the Azaryan cities until their final breath, and sometimes even beyond...
CULTURE
Sorcery permeates the life of all Azaryans, but it's in the upper echelons of power where its influence is felt the most. In Azarya, magic equates to a divine right to to rule, and a person's standing as an individual is intrinsically dependent on their potential as a sorcerer. Even the lines of the blood caste are blurred and re-shifted by this inescapable truth to which the Amaranth aristocracy is no exception, creating a unique system of governance known as the Magocracy.
Unlike in the rest of Marin, the heir to the grand families of Azarya is not the eldest, but instead whoever possess the greatest magical talent. Because of the intense pressure to produce children, the grand houses are extremely patriarchal, with the core of their family structure being centered around polygamy. Different wives will rise and fall out of favor depending on the genetic fortune of their offspring, whereas the fate of said children will be set in stone at birth, awaiting to be discovered shortly before they reach full maturity.