Daric

Daric

 * Farming/Savage People Nation
 * Population: ~1 million
 * Capital: Daric City (population 90,000)
 * Main industries: agriculture, mercenary services, shipbuilding, trade
 * Alignment: LE
 * Language: Darian
 * Ruler: Marton Stromgald – half orc mercenary captain

On the rich lands of Tribold Cape, Daric is a major agricultural state. While once also a significant mercantile power much of this position has been lost to Venac over the centuries, a slight many of Daric’s inhabitants take personally, even if they don’t actually remember things any differently.

Daric has the most significant military of any of the City-States, with a program of universal military conscription and an assertive marketing of it’s military services to any other states and organizations that can pay for them. This makes the nation the place most watched over by the dragons within the continent and along with the largest humanoid city it also hosts Kathranka, the largest kobold city on the continent. The presence of this walled metropolis, some 400 miles east of Daric City on the shores of Trigon Bay, is a source of constant simmering tension for Daric’s residents.

The capital is the largest and oldest city in Xian-Tau, having existed longer than recorded history can determine. It has been destroyed and rebuilt countless times as a result of natural disasters and wars, both amongst humanoids and with dragons. It is built across many hills on the mouth of the Dirravi River, with buildings and narrow winding cobbled streets densely packed in.

Beyond the city itself the nation consists of much fertile farmland with large towns dotting the southern parts of the nation, swelling out it's overall population. To the north, in the foothills of the Dargallan range, the land is more rugged and savage.

Physical power is valued above all else by the Darian people. Their rulers are always powerful warriors who fight their way into commanding positions, gladiatorial combat is hugely popular spectacle and legal disputes are most often resolved through duelling. As a result, the stronger savage races, mainly orcs and hobgoblins, play a more prominent role in the society than they do in other farming people nations.

Daric deliberately maintains poor relations with it's three neighbouring nations in order to show off its strength. As a nation of undisciplined ruffians and pirates, Trigon Bay (the nation on the south of the water body shares its name) is the subject of much naval harassment by the Darian forces. River Keep, to the east, is thought of as weak due to their compassionate nature, and their reputation as a place where exiles and criminal from other nations can abandon their past and start a new life leads to many Darians viewing the place as lawless. Venac is treated as a usurper of of Daric's once great trade empire, though as the border between the nations is somewhere deep in the Dargallan ranges military conflict is rare and their animosity is mostly limited trying to convince other nations not to trade with Venac, though Venac is an important trading partner of Daric itself so this is mostly meaningless bluster.