The Realm of Aldermoor
Aldermoor is the sort of kingdom every harper sings about and every farmer takes for granted: a green human realm of hedge-bordered fields, market towns and waystone roads, governed from a great walled capital and the ancient royal citadel that broods above it. The land has known three centuries of mostly-peace under the House of Aldermere, long enough for ambitious nobles and a clannish merchant cabal to make scheming an art, and long enough for the free-folk of the wilds to grow tired of paying for it. Dwarves trade iron from the northern peaks, elves keep their old wood in the west, and halflings tend the river-shires, while half-orcs hold the frontier against whatever the dark forest sends. Nothing here is ending; everything is simply contested, slowly, in council halls and tavern back-rooms and the long grass of the moor.
Rules of Reality
The King's Peace
By ancient charter the Crown's law follows the waystone roads: travellers on a marked highway may not be lawfully waylaid, and a blade drawn within a market square is a hanging matter. The Peace is thin in the wilds and thinner in the dark forest, but a green-cloaked King's Warden may appear on any road, and the whole point of an honest robbery is to commit it well off the verge.
Blood and Charter
Rank in Aldermoor is written, not merely born. A noble house holds its lands by a sealed charter kept at the citadel, and a merchant company by a royal patent; both can be forged, bought, revoked, or quietly altered by a clever clerk. More feuds are won in the records room than on the field, and a missing page is worth more than a sword.
The Old Pacts
Long before the human kingdom, the elder folk drew borders in oath and stone: the elves keep their wood, the dwarves their deep halls, and mortals keep to the open land between. These pacts still hold, mostly out of habit, but every generation some lord tests them — felling an oak too near the Silverleaf, or sinking a shaft too deep beneath the peaks — and learns why the old folk are still feared.
Sanctioned Sorcery
Magic is neither rare nor wild in Aldermoor — it is licensed. To work the higher arts within the realm one must wear the grey of the Greywind College or buy a hedge-charter from a local lord, and an unlicensed spell drawn in a town will bring the College's grey wardens faster than the Crown's. Cunning-folk, herb-wives and hedge-charmers fill the gap in every village, just below the law's notice.
The Long Dark of the Grimmerholt
The kingdom's southern forest does not obey the King's Peace and never has. Paths within the Grimmerholt rearrange between visits, the sun seems to set early under its eaves, and the old families of the moor still bar their doors against what walks out of it on the longest nights. Charcoal-burners and outlaws live at its edge by a careful etiquette of leaving things alone.
Species & Powers
Humans
The folk of Aldermoor's farms, cities and courts — ambitious, short-lived and numerous, equally capable of high chivalry and low treachery. They hold the throne, work the fields and fill the taverns from the capital to the smallest fishing village.
Silverleaf Elves
The reserved elder-folk of the western wood, keepers of the Old Pacts and of grudges older than the human throne. They walk the realm's towns as merchants of fine work and rare lore, polite and unhurried, and let the short-lived forget how long an elf remembers a slight.
Dolmenheim Dwarves
The mountain-folk of the northern hold, who reckon their wealth in iron, oaths and ancestors. They supply the kingdom its steel and its best masons, drive a famously hard bargain, and regard the surface kingdom's politics as a passing weather they have outlasted before.
Rivershire Halflings
The small, settled folk of the river-shires and the moor's quieter corners, tenders of orchards, mills and the realm's most beloved inns. They keep out of grand affairs by long policy, which makes them perfect couriers of secrets and the only people half the kingdom truly trusts.
Frontier Half-Orcs
The mixed-blood border families who hold Thornwatch and the eastern marches against the wild things, scorned at court and indispensable in the field. Hardy, blunt and fiercely loyal to their own, they have bled for a realm that still checks their charters twice and bars them from its halls.
Hearthstead Gnomes
The tinkering townfolk of the trade-city's workshops and the College's lower halls, makers of clocks, locks, lenses and quiet trouble. Too curious for their own safety and too useful to be turned away, they keep the realm's mechanisms turning and its secrets badly kept.
Key Locations
The Kingsvale
The broad river-country at the realm's heart, where the Branhollow winds down from the citadel hill past the capital, the shire orchards and the reedy Mere. It is the King's Peace made into farmland: tithe barns, toll-bridges, ferry-houses and a road to everywhere, all of it watched from Caer Branloch and most of it owned by someone in Highholt.
The Northmarch Fells
The high bare uplands of the north and east, all peat, scree and wind, rising to the dwarven peaks and running out along the marches to Thornwatch. Sheep, iron and half-orc border families are what it produces; what it keeps out is nobody's business but the keep's.
The Silver Coast
The realm's short western shore, a run of grey cliffs, shingle coves and tarred fishing villages under the Silverleaf's shadow, where the brandy-runners land by night and the Crown's excise-men do not go by day. The sea gives fish, wrack, and every so often a ship nobody claims.
Aldermoor City
The great walled capital astride the River Branhollow, a sprawl of guildhalls, cathedrals and crooked timber streets crowned by the king's lower palace. Banners of a hundred noble houses hang over its markets, the Wickwire Brotherhood works its cellars, and every charter, feud and fortune in the realm passes through its gates sooner or later.
Caer Branloch
The ancient royal citadel on the dolmen-crowned hill above the capital, raised by Aldemar the Steward on a fort older than the kingdom itself. Within its grey walls sit the Stag Throne, the records room where every charter is sealed, and a court that schemes more freely the further the king's hearing fails.
Highholt
The realm's second great city, a temple-and-trade metropolis of white spires and crowded wharves where the old faith and the new money keep an uneasy peace. The Order of the Silver Stag keeps its chapterhouse here, the merchant companies their counting-halls, and the cathedral bells compete with the auctioneers all day long.
Saltmarrow
A weather-beaten fishing village clinging to the realm's western sea-cliffs, all tarred cottages, drying nets and the smell of the morning's catch. Its folk read the tides better than the law, run a quiet trade in untaxed brandy up the coast, and bury more sons to the sea each year than the kingdom ever notices.
Karak Dolmenheim
The dwarven mountain hold beneath the northern peaks, a city of pillared halls and ringing forges that has supplied Aldermoor its iron and its masons since before there was a crown to sell it to. The dwarf-lords keep the Old Pacts, drive a brutal bargain, and watch the surface kingdom's intrigues with the patience of stone.
The Silverleaf Wood
The ancient elven forest-realm along the realm's western border, a cathedral of silver-barked trees where the Old Pacts are still law and human axes are not welcome past the boundary stones. The elves trade fine work and rarer lore from its eaves, keep their grudges in the long shade, and let the kingdom forget how easily the wood could close its paths.
The Grimmerholt
The kingdom's southern dark forest, where the King's Peace has never reached and the paths rearrange themselves between visits. Charcoal-burners and outlaws live at its edge by a careful etiquette of leaving things alone, and the moor's oldest families still bar their doors on the longest nights against whatever lately stirs beneath its eaves.
Thornwatch Keep
The grim frontier fortress on the eastern marches, held by the half-orc border families against whatever the wilds and the Grimmerholt send their way. Under-paid and over-checked by a distant court, its garrison keeps the realm safe behind a wall it suspects the kingdom would rather not look at too closely.
Greywind Tower
The lonely tower and academy of the licensed mages, rising from the open moor where no town would have it. From here the Greywind College guards its monopoly on the higher arts, schools its grey wardens, and serves whichever throne best keeps it independent — which is to say, none of them entirely.
Ravensward Ruin
A toppled hilltop abbey south-east of the capital, its broken cloisters now a den for a bold Moorfolk free company turned road-agents. They hold the southern waystone road from these stones, ambush the Concord's tax-wains, and shelter travellers who can prove they are no friend of Goldengarth.
Oakhollow
A prosperous halfling river-shire village a half-day from the capital, all orchard-walks, water-mills and an inn that travellers cross the realm to reach. Its folk keep out of grand affairs by long policy, which makes them the only couriers half the kingdom truly trusts and the worst place in Aldermoor to keep a secret.
Wend-on-Mere
A sleepy moorland village around a reed-fringed lake, midway between the capital and the dark forest, where the old longest-night customs are still kept in earnest. Its folk farm, fish the mere, and watch the southern tree-line a little too carefully for outsiders' comfort.
Brackenhold
A turf-roofed moorland village on the Grimmerholt's northern edge, the Moorfolk Free Companies' nearest thing to a capital: a moot barn, a drove-stable, a green where riders muster and a reeve who answers to no lord and lately to no one at all. The King's surveyors were burned out of a camp here last spring; the village says it was the wolves.
The King's Bridge
The old stone bridge over the Branhollow between the capital and the citadel hill, five arches wide and worn hollow by three centuries of coaches, with a toll-house at either end and the House of Aldermere's stag cut into the keystone. Whatever passes between city and throne passes here, and is counted.
The Ferry at Mere-End
A flat-bottomed chain-ferry on the Mere's north shore, worked by a windlass and a boy, that carries carts across to Wend-on-Mere when the moor road floods. The ferryman keeps a lantern on the post and a second tally of what crosses after dark.
The Waystone of the Old Pacts
A leaning granite waystone on the track between the Mere and the dark forest, cut with the clauses of the pacts the first kings swore with the Grimmerholt and with the Moorfolk before them. Half the clauses are mossed over. The ones that show are the ones somebody has been reading.
History
The Age of the Old Pacts
The Elder Days
The Drawing of the Borders — Before any human crown, the elf-lords of the Silverleaf and the dwarf-kings of the peaks met at the standing stones of the moor and swore the Old Pacts: the wood to the elves, the deep to the dwarves, and the open land between left for the latecomers. The treaty was cut into the dolmens and is recited, in part, at every royal coronation to this day.
The Elder Days
The First Hearths on the Moor — The first human settlers came up the river in flat-bottomed boats and built their hearths where the dolmens stood, asking neither elf nor dwarf for leave. The elder folk watched, and decided the short-lived were not worth a war, a judgement the elves are said to revisit privately every few centuries.
The Founding of the Realm
Three centuries past
The Crowning of Aldemar the Steward — When the squabbling river-lords nearly burned their own towns to the waterline, a minor steward named Aldemar bought, married and bullied them into one banner and was crowned beneath the dolmens with a stag's-antler circlet. He raised the citadel of Caer Branloch on the old hillfort and bound the lords to him with sealed charters — the same system his descendants now struggle to keep honest.
Two centuries past
The Chartering of the College — After a hedge-wizard's feud levelled half a market town, King Aldemar's grandson granted the grey mages a tower, a monopoly and a leash all at once, founding the Greywind College. Magic in Aldermoor has been licensed, taxed and quietly resented ever since, and the College has outlived four kings by never quite taking a side.
The Long Comfortable Peace
A generation past
The Grain Years — Three fat harvests in a row made the river-lords rich and taught the merchant houses how to hoard. The Goldengarth Concord was born in those granaries, buying up land deeds and magistrates while the Crown looked the other way, and the first Moorfolk companies took to the wilds when the prices turned and the bread did not come.
The last decade
The Thornwatch Levy — When something began driving creatures out of the Grimmerholt and across the eastern frontier, the Crown raised the half-orc border families into a standing levy at Thornwatch Keep — then promptly under-paid and over-checked them. The marches have held, barely, and the frontier's loyalty grows thinner with every charter the court 'misplaces'.
This present season
The Sealed-Charter Affair — A clerk of the citadel records room was found drowned in the moat, and three noble charters have gone missing from the vaults since. The court whispers of forgery, the Concord protests too much, and the Order of the Silver Stag has begun asking pointed questions that the wrong people would very much like unasked.