Introducing The Guild of Vharata

[The Governor]

The world is getting smaller

For millennia, the continents of Corvannor and Vharata were as two separate worlds.

The first was home to the great empires of Men, Elves, Dwarves and more. The second was older and, to the people of Corvannor, far more mysterious: a vast continent of ancient kingdoms, strange magicks, unfamiliar peoples and civilizations whose histories stretch back beyond anything most Corvannori have ever imagined.

For thousands of years, the Narrows were the barrier between these worlds.

Now, thanks to new advances both magical and technological, they are a highway.

Ships from Corvannor arrive daily in the ports of Vharata. They carry iron, machinery, weapons, books, missionaries, merchants and adventurers.

They return carrying spices, gold, dyes, precious stones, medicines and treasures older than belief.

And the traffic is only increasing.

Arising from this nexus of trade is The Guild of Vharata, a growing alliance of merchant republics, market towns and trade companies on both sides of the strait. The Guild exists to keep the trade moving: to settle disputes, maintain routes, standardize contracts, and make sure merchants can do business without having to ask a king's permission every time they cross a border.

It is allowed to exist because the great powers have discovered that governing merchants is considerably more trouble than taxing them.

Everyone agrees that trade is changing Vharata.

Almost nobody agrees on whether that change is good.

Some see prosperity. Some see opportunity. Some see intrusion. Some see the beginning of something that nobody yet knows how to name.

You don't need to pick a side.

You can be a merchant republic. A Vharatan kingdom. A Guild city. An adventurer camp. A religious mission. A mining colony. A mountain confederation.

You can be old or new, powerful or obscure, deeply traditional or eager to embrace the wider world.

If you have an idea, there is probably a place for it.

Come carve out your fortune.

Come make your legend.

Come save a soul or two.

Or come tear the whole rotten system down.

Just come.



TL;DR: New fantasy-themed region with a Hanseatic-League-meets-East-India-Company feel to it. Colonialism ahoy!

Make a puppet and come hang out!

[Ink and Iron]

From the private journal of Rainer Wolz, legendary adventurer-playwright, on his tenth day into the Vharatan Mountains

The mountains have not yet decided to kill us. I choose to take this as an endorsement.

We are eleven now, not counting the mules, which I never count, miserable creatures. Two Dom-pa walk ahead of the column, Kelsang and his nephew, whose name I do not recall. They move through this country the way a man moves through his own house in the dark, without hesitation, without wonder, which strikes me as rather a waste of wilderness this magnificent. I intend to feel the wonder for all of us. Someone must.

The Mayura translators, Anjali and her young companion, keep their own counsel in the evenings, murmuring over the fire in that ornamented, chirping cadence of theirs, and though I cannot follow the words I flatter myself I catch the shape of the poetry beneath them, verse recognizes verse, even across tongues. Anjali watched me writing this very page last night with an expression I took, on reflection, for admiration poorly concealed. She asked what I expected to find up here that was not already here before I arrived. I told her: myself, magnified. She did not respond, which I take to mean I had answered the question rather more completely than she had anticipated.

The peaks ahead of us are vast and full of misery, and, I suspect, waiting for someone worthy to give them a name that will actually be remembered. I have not decided yet whether I will be generous with them, or whether I will let them wait a little longer.

OOC: I'm basing this character on Werner Herzog if he were a late-renaissance adventurer/playwright. It'll be fun to try and mirror his grim and grandiose way of speaking!