Free State of Athelarden
Southern farmers who won a republic and inherited a failing source of warmth.
Land earned twice
The wooded southern peninsula has more dependable soil than the central highlands. Athelarden's orchard terraces and barley strips support hungry markets far beyond its small borders. The country became free when farm cooperatives refused to supply the old grain barons during the Breadless Siege. Its elected First Speaker, Mara Tern, is descended from the barons' ferrymen, not their victims alone.
Whose summer?
Warmth arriving through River Mistlereach is treated as common property. Irrigation turns it into political power: an upstream gate opened an hour too long can ruin a downstream orchard. Elmyard keeps gate schedules in public; Bluebellbarrow keeps the graves of those who tried to make the schedules fair. The Assembly has discovered its soil now needs more borrowed heat each year. Admitting that would give the exiled landlords their best argument for returning.
Mara still brings a ferry stool to the Assembly, making the office appear humbler than the influence behind it.
A republican capital whose public irrigation clocks can topple a government.
A southern orchard town built around the burial mound of the republic’s first victims.
House Tern is a family, not a legal dynasty: Mara holds an elected office and her children inherit no seat.
A republic whose irrigation districts send recallable representatives to Elmyard.
An eastern river confederacy held together by pilots, signal towers and a disputed promise of rescue.