Seug. Miranda

Nations

The Realm of Seug

A southern realm of forested highlands and winding rivers.

Seug is a cross-shaped realm bordered to the north by the Gods Home Mountain Range, and its politics make Voir's civil war look tidy by comparison. This is a land of scheming, betrayal, and assassination dressed up in noble manners, sharpened further by how deeply divination is woven into the game. Witches and seers sell their sight to local lords, and more than one High Lord has quietly hired a knife for a low-born stranger, or a rival noble in some other state entirely, on nothing more than a seer's word that their paths were fated to cross. Roughly one citizen in three carries noble blood, which in Seug is less a privilege than a target, bloodline-hunting factions comb the lower quarters for exactly this reason.

Seug is ruled by a King-Priest, a divine office rather than a hereditary one, elected by the realm's Overlords and High Lords every fifteen years, or sooner if the throne falls empty. A King-Priest must carry noble blood and stand as at least a 1st-level divine spellcaster, though in practice the office has gone to 10th-level clerics and higher for generations; whoever holds it carries ceremonial divine status only for as long as they sit the throne, ruling alongside a spouse who takes the matching Queen- or King-Priest title. Beneath the throne, Dukes govern whole Dukedoms, and serving as Duke is the mandatory last step before anyone becomes eligible to sit the throne themselves. Beneath the Dukes, High Lords and Overlords administer the same counties at the same rank, the only difference between them is blood: High Lords are noble and can run for King-Priest; Overlords are commoners who've climbed as high as a commoner in Seug is able to climb. The current throne belongs to King-Priest Sondarianus Sambor and Queen Raquel, who succeeded King-Priest Mobius Shcherbatsky and Queen Robin.

Long before any of that, during an era of open warfare against Voir, Seug was home to a mortal warrior king remembered for his brilliance as a tactician and for the darker bargain he struck at the end of his natural life rather than let it end at all. That king is now known across the pantheon as King Horkos, the Odium, proof, if Seug's nobles ever needed it, that ambition here has never known where to stop.

Map of Seug

Khome on the western headland, Salthread in the south, Darmaine and Haima on the northern border, and the Burnt above them. Double-click the map to enlarge it.

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A temple of Noia set into an autumn forest in Seug, its stone rings winding among the trees — A Temple of Noiaset into the autumn highlands

In the forested highlands south of the Voir Sea, one of Noia's sanctuaries sits woven into the tree line so completely that most travelers walk past it without noticing. The forest around it never quite finishes turning, its leaves hold the same burnished autumn color through every season, as if the temple itself is keeping that one afternoon, always.

A Living Temple of Caro Vanta

Where Voir's shrine to her fell to ruin, this one still stands, and its gate is still gold.

An intact marble temple of Caro Vanta in Seug, its golden gate lit beneath a burning sigil, approached by a black marble path flanked by a river — The Gilded Sanctuaryher faith, kept alive by those who fled south

When the Monitors put Voir's shrines to the torch, it wasn't only her worshippers who fled south, whole processions carried what relics and gold-leaf they could save across the border into Seug, and rebuilt. This sanctuary is the result: a temple that still burns bright rather than moldering in a forgotten wood, its sigil lit above a gate that has never once needed to be forced open, because no one who reaches it has ever wanted to turn back.

The Gods Mountains. What Seug Remembers

Voir calls it a border. Seug calls it the road their grandparents walked to get here.

A ruined sanctuary half-buried in snow high in the Gods Mountains — The Gods MountainsSeug's side of the line

Seug doesn't garrison its side of the Gods Mountains the way Voir does. There's no unified crown to send soldiers, and precious little appetite for it anyway. What Seug keeps instead are pilgrim paths. Families whose grandparents or great-grandparents carried their gods south on their backs still make the climb, once a generation or so, to leave something at whichever ruined sanctuary their line claims as its own. No one polices it. No one needs to.

Ask someone in Seug what the Gods Mountains are, and you likely won't hear that name at all. Locally it's God's Home Mountains, or just God's Home, spoken the way people speak about a grave they still visit. The ruins up there aren't cleared sites to be logged and forgotten. They're the last address the old faith had before it had to run, and Seug has never quite finished being the place it ran to.

The Burnt

A scar from the Fire Rains that has never healed.

Charred land to the horizon under low gray clouds, half-burnt trees standing in ash and a dry riverbed winding through — The Burntcharred land for as far as the eye can see

North of Darmaine and Haima, across the main road between those two cities and the God's Home Mountains, lies the Burnt: a burn scar more than a hundred miles long. It dates from the Fire Rains, one of the most destructive battles of the old war with Voir, nearly nine thousand years ago. The fires were magical, and the land they touched has never healed.

The Fire Rains were one wizard's work. During the great war, a wizard of immense power worked an epic spell that raised a vast cloud and set it raining fire. It rained for weeks. The cloud was never steered; the winds pushed it where they would, and everything beneath its path burned. What the wizard did not know was that fire born of magic leaves magic behind. It bled into the ground as it burned, and that residue cursed the entire scar.

Those who have seen it describe it the same way every time: burnt and charred land for as far as the eye can see. Half-burnt trees still standing. Dry lakes and empty riverbeds. Gray and dark clouds cover all of it in an unnatural pall that never lifts, so the whole scar sits in a gloom of its own. Only now, after almost nine thousand years, have a few of the old rivers begun to run again, and only as a trickle.

A thin trickle of water running down the middle of a wide cracked riverbed between charred banks and dead trees, under gray cloud — The First Tricklea river finding its bed again, after nine thousand years

Gaunt wolves on an ash road between blackened trees under a dark gray sky — Bound to the Scarwhat lived through the Fire Rains never left

Almost no one crosses it. The Burnt is known to be possessed, or haunted, and it is avoided whenever there is any other way. Not much is known about what lies inside.

For the people who live near it, the Burnt is a constant reminder of how horrible the people of Voir can be. Every generation on the northern border grows up knowing it is there, nearly a hundred miles north, and it feeds a distrust of the neighbors to the north that has never faded.

World lore, not common knowledge The curse was never intended. Anything that was in the Burnt when the Fire Rains fell and was not killed is magically bound to it. Not immortal: they live and die. But they and their offspring cannot travel beyond the borders of the Burnt. With so little left alive to feed on, the creatures there are almost always starving, and far more feral than their kind should be: weaker than they were, but more savage. A wolf pack that survived the Fire Rains is still there in its descendants, bound to the scar forever.

Views of the Burnt

As travelers describe it, every time.

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. Dry Riverbed — Dry Riverbedrunning down toward an empty lake

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. The Dead Forest — The Dead Foresthalf-burnt trees for as far as the eye can see

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. A Dried Lake — A Dried Lakeold shorelines under the gray

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. The Pall — The Pallclouds that never lift

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. Toward God's Home — Toward God's Homethe mountains faint beyond the scar

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. Cracked Earth — Cracked Eartha riverbed nine thousand years dry

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. A Thread of Water — A Thread of Wateronly now beginning to run

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. The Far Reaches — The Far Reachescharred land to the horizon

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. The Old Road North — The Old Road Norththe main path toward God's Home

The Burnt: charred land, half-burnt trees and low gray clouds. The Road Few Take — The Road Few Takeavoided whenever there is another way

Cities of Seug

The capital on the western headland, the gorge town of the south road, and the two cities of the northern border.

Khome Capital of Seug, King's Home A crowned hill and a working harbor, joined by four miles of doubled wall. Salthread The Salt Ford, southeastern Seug One river, one road, a city barely a street wide. Darmaine Lake city of the northern border On the shore of a great freshwater lake, held by a common-born Overlord. Haima Eastern seat of the northern border Colonnades and domes toward the Pyth Sea, held by a Highlord.

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