The lake city of the northern border, held by a common-born Overlord.
Seat of a northern border county, on the shore of the great lake.
Darmaine is a northern border city and the seat of the county around it: landlocked, set on the shore of a vast freshwater lake in the lake country. It is held by an Overlord. Common blood, as high as a commoner in Seug is able to climb, and whoever holds Darmaine has climbed all of it.
It is a handsome city, not a fortress town. Columned streets, pale and warm stone, wide paved squares, arched water-courses feeding fountains and bath-houses. The border made Darmaine hard. It did not make it ugly.
Lake to the south, forest to the east, and the Burnt to the north.
East-central Seug, in the lake country. The city stands on the northeastern shore of a great lake. Forest runs east toward Haima. West lies broken lake-and-river country, where the Hollow, also known as Akral, sits between the waters.
North of the city the land climbs toward the God's Home Mountains. Between Darmaine and those mountains lies the Burnt.
Columns, arches, and paved stone, laid out to face the water.
Darmaine faces its lake with colonnaded quays and a long stone promenade. Lake barges carry grain and timber along the shore, fishing boats work the shallows, and broad steps run down into the water.
At the heart of the city is an open paved square framed by columned porticoes, with market halls, law-courts, and the city's business done under the colonnades.
Arched water-courses carry clean water across the city to public fountains and bath-houses. They are the city's pride as much as its plumbing.
Two northern border cities that have always stood together.
Darmaine and Haima sit side by side on Seug's northern border, and they have always been friends. When war came from the north, it reached them first. They have bled on the same fields, buried their dead in the same seasons, and kept faith with each other through every reign since.
Darmaine's Overlord is common-born. Haima is held by a Highlord, noble-born. In most of Seug that difference is a ladder and a knife. Between these two cities it has never mattered.
They are not a people apart. They vote, trade, marry, and send their sons and daughters across Seug like the rest of the realm. Their bond with each other is simply older and deeper than their bond with anyone else.
A commoner's seat on a nobleman's border.
An Overlord holds Darmaine. Common blood means the King-Priest's chair is closed to whoever sits here, whatever else they achieve. Darmaine's weight in Seug comes from somewhere else: the lake trade, the northern road, and Haima at its shoulder.
A scar from the Fire Rains that has never healed.
North of Darmaine, between the city and the God's Home Mountains, lies the Burnt: a burn scar more than a hundred miles long, left by the Fire Rains in one of the most destructive battles of the old war with Voir. Nearly nine thousand years later it is still burnt and charred for as far as the eye can see, under a gray and unnatural cloud cover that never lifts. It sits across the main road between the northern border and the God's Home Mountains, and almost no one takes that road. The Burnt is said to be possessed, or haunted, and it is avoided whenever there is any other way.
Every child on the northern border grows up knowing it is there, and it is a constant reminder of what Voir was willing to do. More on the Burnt.
Ways to put Darmaine in front of the players.