The eastern seat of the northern border, held by a Highlord.
Seat of a northern border county, toward the Pyth Sea.
Haima is a northern border city and the seat of the county around it, set inland of the Pyth Sea coast with forest at its back. It is held by a Highlord: noble blood, and so eligible in law for the King-Priest's chair.
It is a fine city. Colonnaded streets, domed halls, terraces and gardens, all in pale warm stone. Like Darmaine, it lives on a hard border without looking like it.
Forest to the west, the coast to the east, and the Burnt to the northwest.
Colonnades, domes, and terraces, built to be looked at.
Long covered walks of columns line Haima's main streets: shade in the gold half-year, shelter in the wet. Most of the city's life happens under them.
A palace of terraces and domes on the city's height. A Highlord in Seug is always being weighed for the throne, so the seat is built to be seen.
The paved road out of the north gate toward God's Home. It starts out as fine as any road in Seug, through farmland and forest. Nearly a hundred miles north it reaches the Burnt, and from there to the mountains it runs through ash and dead trees. Few travelers take it that far.
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.
Haima's Highlord is noble-born. Darmaine is held by an Overlord, common-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 noble seat, and so a watched one.
A Highlord holds Haima. Noble blood keeps the King-Priest's chair open to whoever sits here, and in Seug that makes the house a target: seers hired, rivals counting, bloodlines tracked. Haima's answer has always been Darmaine. A Highlord with Darmaine's Overlord at the shoulder is much harder to stand alone.
A scar from the Fire Rains that has never healed.
Northwest of Haima, 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 Haima in front of the players.