Feldia is the realm on the northern continent: eight duchies, no one of which answers to another. König Aldric holds the title of High King and rules from Kronstadt, but the title is a courtesy the dukes extend and could in principle withdraw. He governs by leverage, precedent, and an exact knowledge of what every duke wants. It works. Feldians will tell you it works better than it has any right to, usually in the same breath as a complaint about the duchy next door.
The land
The eastern edge of Feldia is the Spine, a wall of mountains that separates the settled country from the Wastes beyond it. Nothing crosses it easily and few people try. The Spine is also where the Korn rises — the realm’s trunk river, running west across the farm country before turning south to empty into the Sea of Coin. More grain moves on the Korn than on every road in Feldia put together. It widens midway into the Kornmere, a shallow lake with fishing villages on both shores and a reputation for fog.
The other waters are borders as much as rivers. The Kron divides Kronstadt from Waldheim and runs out to the west coast. The Waldwater divides Waldheim from Kornfeld. The March Water divides Grenzmark from Eisenmark, and has been argued over, in writing, for two centuries. The Silt drains north out of the grain country, slow and shallow and brown, and carries barges only when the water is high. Waldheim keeps the Waldsee, a dark lake in the middle of the forest that appears on very few maps.
The climate is temperate and wet. Winters bite hardest in the eastern duchies and the highlands; the coast is milder and windier. Rain is frequent enough that Feldian roads would be a disgrace if the duchies did not spend real money on them. They do, because the alternative is a cart stuck in mud with somebody’s harvest on it.
The eight duchies
Kronstadt is the capital and the largest market in the north, with wine country running west of it toward the sea. Kornfeld is the breadbasket: flat, open, and the duchy the rest cannot do without. Waldheim is old forest and older custom. Seehaven holds the coast and the harbors. Kirchberg keeps Feldia’s oldest university and its most influential bishop, and has opinions about everything. Steinmark is highland stone, iron and coal. Grenzmark is the march, and has fought every neighbor it has at least once. Eisenmark is iron, cold, and — at present — closed.
Faith
The Feldish Faith arrived from the south several centuries ago, carried by Kretavian missionaries and, more effectively, by Kretavian merchants. It landed on a pagan country and took. Later a Christ-figure emerged in Feldia itself, and the Feldish reading of the faith went its own way from there. Feldish and Kretavic clergy still recognize each other as kin and regard each other the way cousins do when the inheritance was disputed.
The Feldish Church is not tidy. Doctrine varies by duchy, sometimes by parish, and bishops argue publicly about matters most laymen cannot follow. Alongside it, the Old Ways persist: river spirits, forest presences, rites at planting and harvest. A country priest will bless the fields in spring using words no synod ever approved, and his bishop will write it down as superstition, and the practice will continue exactly as before.
Rule and revenue
The dukes meet in council at Kronstadt three times a year. Decisions there are binding in theory; enforcement is a separate conversation. Between councils, power moves through the ducal courts, the Church, and the trading houses — the merchant network known as the Coin shifts goods and news across every border in the realm, generally faster than any duke’s couriers.
Feldia exports grain, wool, wine, iron, timber, salt fish and ships. What it sells to itself is peace between its own duchies, which is more valuable than any of them like to admit.
What travelers notice now
The bickering has sharpened. Trade agreements that ought to benefit everyone somehow benefit one party. In Grenzmark, border patrols have gone missing; the official word is desertion, and no soldier’s family accepts it. In Kornfeld, anonymous buyers have been paying too much for grain and storing it. And Eisenmark has shut its borders entirely — no trade, no travelers, no replies to letters — while its forges, by every account from the west-bound refugees, work through the night. Its Duke has held the seat longer than looks reasonable.
Nobody in Feldia can give you one explanation for all of that. You will be offered several, and they will contradict each other.