Tiny Steps Southern Regions

Southern Regions (The Scholar’s Redoubt, Black Fields, Red Fields, Marauders’ Agreement, Sea-folk, The Magnates, Domains of Cooperation, Giants’ Forest):

The Scholar’s Redoubt:
The Scholar’s Redoubt is one of four current major powers in the known world, a status received due to a combination of careful military alliance and scholastic insight. It has a military council, composed of quite a few types of bugs but primarily composed of the well-organized and well-armed black ant and red ant countries in the area, who after years of fighting like their neighbors the Red and Black Fields, decided to sign a peace treaty and ultimately ally together. It also has a center of scholarship which hosts some of the brightest minds in the known world, scholars responsible for things such as mechanical engineering, advanced magic, and architecture – which has resulted in a stone fort in center of the region, paralleled only by the Walled Quarter, which is the Scholars’ Redoubt from which the region derives its name. This combination of militaristic alliance and technological superiority have allowed the Scholars’ Redoubt to remain remarkably secure, especially against the Marauder’s Agreement which forced the bugs here to come together in the first place.

However, the large population present in the Scholars’ Redoubt combined with the lack of agricultural knowledge means that food must be imported to maintain the region, primarily from the Bees’ Fields and Tin City regions. The eponymous scholars of the area failed to make a deal to learn the secrets of agriculture from the Noreast Villages or the hives of the Bees’ Fields, or a deal for better metallurgy with The Smiths, and so the scholars have taken a recent dip in prestige, but nonetheless the structures of the Scholars’ Redoubt remain in place, for they are credited by the leaders of the region with its prosperity.
This is the region where the player group starts.

Black Fields:
This is one of the two constantly-warring neighbors of the Scholars’ Redoubt, in a decades (and therefore generations) long war between black ants and red ants. The Black Fields, so named because they are the black ant battlefields, are the home to the secular, highly professional, military, and officer-based black ants, and though they are still winning due to larger numbers and stronger cities than their red ant adversaries, the constant war has taken a terrible toll. The Black Fields once extended far to the west and east, and to the north – but parts of the region broke off into other regions, such as the northern half of the Scholars’ Redoubt which signed peace and fused into the Scholars’ Redoubt. Though the black ants are highly organized and well-trained here, they have failed to gain the support of other bug countries in the area, and thus are rarely able to complete large projects.

Red Fields:
Naturally, the other side of this eternal war is the Red Fields, home of the red ants, whose method of internal structure is a careful internal religion, where the tenets of said religion focus on the internal structure of each red ant city as something sacred and necessary to red ant existence. This has tilted them towards studies of magic, especially light magic, and though it allows for internal structure that rivals that of the black ants, it has created an insularity between cities that, along with their lesser numbers, has been seeing them finally start to decisively lose the Ant War. Though the red ants don’t openly disdain the other bugs in the Red Fields, they have remained aloof, which hasn’t helped. Much like the Black Fields, the Red Fields used to be larger, portions of its territory being subsumed by the Scholars’ Redoubt and the Domains of Cooperation. Both the Red Fields and Black Fields keep a chilly but not violent attitude towards the Scholars’ Redoubt, seeing them as both traitors and kin.

Marauders’ Agreement:
The Marauders’ Agreement is an informal pact of raiders formed when the raider groups (primarily nomads like flies and mosquitos) in the region grew to dominance and agreed not to raid each other in lieu of softer targets. During the first decade and a half or so of the existence of the bug-people, they were one of the two most fearsome and powerful blocs in the known world, stretching down to the sea and east into ant territory, the many raiders putting out a constant pressure that could not be individually defended against. In recent years, though, their fate has thoroughly changed. Not only the formalized and military cooperation of the Scholars’ Redoubt and Domains of Cooperation has thoroughly stopped their conquest there, with the Domains of Cooperation driving into their territory, but the arrival of the Sea-folk from across the sea has seen their south rapidly conquered – even the mercantile Magnates have been taking land from them. They’re still a pest, but not much more, and perhaps not for long.

Sea-folk:
The Sea-folk are not native to the known world and seem to have managed to sail across the rapidly-flowing sea to the west with boats (a capability the Driftwood Coast is feverishly working to attempt to replicate). They don’t have regular traffic back and forth, the journey still being quite difficult, and instead came across in a large pirate fleet five years ago… which meant that they were a large military force, which promptly conquered a large portion of the Marauder’s Agreement. While not as rigid and formal as the Scholars’ Redoubt or Domains of Cooperation, the foreign members of the Sea-folk have tight bonds between crews and fight very effectively together. They bring strange naval technologies and trinkets… and because the ones they invaded are the Marauders’ Agreement, who everybody hated anyhow, the Sea-folk see little hostility with other neighboring regions, which led to several flourishing trade agreements, especially with the Magnates.

The Magnates:
The Magnates are a thoroughly mercantile region who conduct a large amount of trade with almost everyone around them – after all, that is their specialty. The Magnates don’t have quite a central governing body like the Scholars’ Redoubt, but instead their cities are mostly headed by wealthy patricians, who have collectively formed a trade league that operates together in manners of war and trade. The Magnates’ trade web allows them not only to trade their resources, but to facilitate trade between regions like the Scholars’ Redoubt and Driftwood Coast that might otherwise have difficulty making the journey, something that has made the Magnates very, very rich. Though their military is not the most overwhelmingly powerful one in the known world, it is powerful enough to take on the rump state of the Marauders’ Agreement, securing a trade route to the Scholars’ Redoubt through the Land of Plains and even taking some land from the Marauders.

The Domains of Cooperation:
The Domains of Cooperation are another one of the four great powers of the known world, with an origin similar to that of the Scholars’ Redoubt. In early years, what are the Domains of Cooperation were instead a set of smaller entities that did not fight but largely ignored each other – small termite nests, red ants in the north from what were once the Red Fields, mantises, mosquitoes, and other nomadic groups. However, constant predation and attack from the Marauders’ Agreement forced the group together over time – and without need for a peace treaty and fostering civilian cooperation, difficulties the Scholars’ Redoubt initially had, these communities got very, very close. Nowadays, the Domains of Cooperation are a purely militaristic organization, operating through a strict hierarchy of many different bug militaries, sometimes mixing and sometimes remaining separate, carefully and formally built to benefit all in it, leading to a strong discipline and strong camaraderie among the forces of the Domains of Cooperation, making them a force to be reckoned with. Ironically, they do not have a strong relationship with the Scholars’ Redoubt, as their internal cooperation does not translate to external friendliness and they fiercely guard their resources, leading to a constant cold standoff.

The Giant’s Forest
This area has no houses and is instead very heavily wooded – meaning the bug population here is not very urban and operates in a different way because of it. The people here (and there aren’t many of them relatively, the area is relatively sparsely populated) live among the trees, in what is a fairly idyllic if difficult lifestyle composed of large amounts of gathering… and climbing, as the trees are utterly giant for bug-people, hence the region’s name. There isn’t much organization here; groups of gathering and hunting groups here occasionally cooperate and occasionally fight, but there simply isn’t enough population and enough resources for robust organization. The Giants’ Forest is pretty much completely isolated from the world – The Mystics have no intention of bothering them, and the Domains of Cooperation find themselves unable to effectively operate in the thick woods of the area, and the groups of The Giant’s Forest are quite happy to be left alone to focus on their survival.