THE ORDER OF ANVILL
Location/Geography
The Order of Anvill is based out of the large island for which the Order was named: Anvill. It is a bleak place, the sort of environment that could break a weak man of his will to live. Anvill has long, excruciatingly cold winters, and the island's constant overcast, fogginess, and northerly latitude combine to make it dark and dreary; Anvill's skies are greyish even at midday in summer. Her coastlines consist mostly of rough, uneven cliffs, the entire north coast in particular nothing but a long expanse of crags, deathly to all ships. The western and eastern coasts are hospitable enough to accommodate small fishing boats, but only a single gulf, in the south, contains a harbour fit for large, ocean going vessels. Naturally, this harbour became home to Anvill's main port-city, and the Order's capital: Storstad.
An ancient city, constructed almost entirely of stone, Storstad far pre-dates the Order. Its founding marked the beginning of the first unified polity in Anvill, the Kingdom of Anvill. The city grew haphazardly, sprawling out to more or less its current boundaries during the kingdom era, and became home to almost a third of Anvill's entire population. After the Black War and the rise of the Order, the city was heavily redesigned. Most of the dwellings were torn down, their inhabitants relocated either to elsewhere in Anvill or, later, to the Order's newly acquired colonies and vassal-states. The city's new lay-out revolved around the newly constructed Hall of Masters, in the city's centre, located equidistant from the inner-most points of the newly constructed star fort surrounding the city, serving as its exterior wall. Storstads main roads are also built around this idea, with each of the seven inner edges of the star fortification—serving as the city's gates—corresponding to a road leading directly to the Hall of Masters.
Outside of Storstad, most of Anvill's rural population live in small, unwalled towns and villages in the countryside, patrolled by knights of the Order. Most of the island's towns correspond to nearby mines, collecting the plentiful mineral wealth of Anvill. The islands' villages, in contrast, are largely agricultural, their farms owned (like the mines) by the Order itself, providing that portion of the island's sustenance that isn't imported. And what the island can't produce for itself, it trades for: with its own colonies.
Although the Hall of Masters is the Order's headquarters, the organization's relentless, militaristic expansionism has led to Storstad, and Anvill as a whole, becoming only one of many territories owned and operated by the Order. These regions, beyond the island of Anvill, operate as somewhere between the range of colony and vassal-state, with varying levels of self-goverance according to their strategic importance and the level of trust that the Hall of Masters is willing to place in them. Some still operate as largely independent kingdoms, garrisoned by the Order only to prevent the expansion of foreign entities into their borders. Other regions, especially those formerly home to large non-human populations, are seen as mere extentions of the Order's homeland, rendered so demographically identical to Anvill through waves of migration that their local systems of governance have been abolished—not to oppress the inhabitants, but to better represent them as people indistinct from the citizens of Storstad. Then, there are the provinces whose pasts, and present state, reveal the most about the Order's brutality and strength of will.
The oldest of these conquered lands is the island chain of Merkelig, the Stor name for the fallen, ancient land of Ikkor. A kingdom of giants, some as large as twenty feet tall, Ikkor was the oldest standing of the many established kingdoms that fell to the might of the Order in its early years. Nowadays is it almost entirely uninhabited, every single one of its former giant settlements torn down and burnt to ash, along with their inhabitants, in a campaign of genocide waged long ago. There is only a single civilized place left in Merkelig: the village of Renhet, the Stor word for 'purity', a small port built on the largest of the islands' south coast, constructed by the successful knights of the Order to celebrate the death of Ikkor. Renhet is home to a small number of lumberers and their families, making a living harvesting the legendary massive trees of Merkelig, whose roots first grew into the Earth in an age when giants walked the land.
Another species wiped out by the Order, the Drisk, once lived in the province now called Stigendsol. They were a bipedal species resembling bears, whom had always been violently hostile to human travellers in their lands. Like the Ikkor, they were religiously devoted to nature, and would often sacrifice those portions of the men that they killed, but did not eat, by decorating the forests with their entrails. Needless to say, when the Order came to extinguish the Drisk, they were unimpressed by the Drisk's savagery and left no survivors in their wake. The forest which the Drisk had so passionately defended throughout their entire existence was completely cleared and burnt, its ashes fertilizing the soil for the Stor settlers that arrived soon after. These settlers gave the province its current name, Stigendsol, and founded its most populous settlement: the trading post of Stigend.
One of the more recent conquests of the Order is the Kingdom of Iorica, a vassal-state that retains its own king, but which is garrisoned by a large accompaniment of the Order's knights. Iorica is largely left to its own devices as far as internal governance goes, with the sole exception that the King of Iorica must always agree never to tolerate non-humans in his kingdom. Despite the Order's permissiveness as far as the kingdom's law is concerned, Iorica is nonetheless one of the most strategically important of the Order's possessions. The kingdom is the southern-most and most inland area of the Order's dominion, and serves as an allied buffer-state to prevent the expansion of the Crown of Virith, to Iorica's south. Iorica was won by the Order in a war against Virith, started by the Order to prevent Virith's northern expansion after a succession dispute had almost resulted in the Crown's successful incorporation of the kingdom. The Iorican War ended with the Battle of Dalion, when the Order's Black Knights triumphantly routed the pro-Virith forces of Duke Roul after they attempted to break the siege on the kingdom's capital. The Order then negotiated peace with the King of Virith, and established a new, pro-Order King of Iorica, establishing the kingdom as a vassal-state.
In the far east is the large, volcanically active island of Rokeland, a former possession of the Kingdom of Anvill lost during the Black War, but regained during the Order's subsequent expansion. Rokeland was originally a fishing colony, settled by servants of the King of Anvill to expand the kingdom's agricultural capacity. The island's sole city, "Stadavsonskog", located on a small island just south of Rokeland proper, translates as "City of the Son of the Man of the Woods", a reference to its founder being the son of a lumberjack. The island's count announced Rokeland's independence from Anvill after the First High Master took Storstad, and it was not until the Third High Master reigned that Rokeland was retaken, surrendering without a fight after a fleet of ships was spotted approaching on the horizon. It is rumoured that after the Third High Master arrived in Stadavsonskog, he punished the Count of Rokeland for his father's crime of treason by hacking off the count's hands and feet and abandoning him in the forests of the island to die. The fishermen of Stadavsonskog say that the Count's soul came to inhabit the Rokeland volcano, and that, whenever the main island of Rokeland is disturbed, the count will become furious, and lash out in anger by causing the volcano to erupt. For this reason, the superstitious fishermen of Stadavsonskog never dwell too close to the main island.
Another tale of successful Order conquest is on the mainland, in an area known to the Stor simply as 'Middel'. The Middel is the largest of the Order's provinces, besides Anvill itslf, and is home to a great number of settlers from Anvill proper. It houses three main cities: Hammerbyen, Reinhold and Northport. Of these, Hammerbyen is the largest, an industrious city of iron workers built as the nexus for the large number of iron mines dotting Middel. Reinhold, though, is the best fortified, and acts as the capital, housing the Duke of Middel and a large contingent of the Order. Northport is the province's main coastal town, and an important centre of trade along the mainland's north coast, situated in a natural harbour and attracting trade from all across the far flung corners of the world. Back before the First Crusade, when Anvill was still a kingdom and the Order had yet to be created, Middel consisted of a number of disparate dukes and counts, endlessly bickering and fighting amongst each other. The strongest of these polities was the Duchy of Reinhold, and it was the Reinhold's traditional rivals, the House of Morrin, that were the first victims of the Order's conquest. Although Middel had always been a mostly human land, there existed a small minority of beastial, hairy people, something of a cross-breed between the giants of Ikkor and men, who dwelled along the northern coasts and occasionally raided smaller villages. There was also a slightly larger minority of Elven people, who primarily resided in Morrin lands, where they were most tolerated. The head of House Morrin, controversially and against his advisors wishes, bewed a daughter of one of the richer families of these northern Elves. The Duke of Reinhold, taking advantage of the beastial races' reputation for brutality, incited a popular revolt throughout the Middel against the beast-men, the Elves, and House Morrin, their supposed protectors. The knights of the Order arrived in the Middel shortly after the revolt had begun, and took the cause as their own, pledging to defeat House Morrin and clean the land of all rivals to men. The Sixth High Master laid siege to the seat of House Morrin, and, after their own men rebelled against them and opened the gates to the Order, allowed the unruly peasants to storm the keep and murder both the Head of House Morrin, his elven wife, and every other Morrin that lived. He then commandered the forces of House Reinhold, marching them against those counts and dukes in the Middel who refused to bend to the Order, whilst the Order's knights themselves slew the half-Ikkor raiders in the north. By the end of the conflict, the Order had successfully purged the Middel of all non-humans and their sympathizers, and the Duke of Reinhold was permitted goverance of the entire region, now unified as a single province, as reward for his loyalty.
Most westerly of the Order of Anvill's provinces are the two provinces of West Gullrike and East Gullrike, which occupy the far western tip of the continent and are relatively recent acquisitions. Gullrike was its own kingdom before the arrival of the Order, but was not permitted to retain its self-government, as the Kingdom of Iorica had. Instead, the Kingdom of Gullrike was abolished, and the region divided in two. East Gullrike continues on as a relatively autonomous region, 'The County of East Gullrike', ruled by a bastard line of the kingdom's former ruling family that sided with the Order during the conquest. East Gullrike's seat of power is Everk, which contains most of East Gullrike's population. West Gullrike, in contrast, is governed directly by the Order, and its main port and Gullrike's former capital, Bailemew, was renamed 'Ornfort' and converted into a mostly military site, preserving only a portion of the city's docks for civilian use (to prevent losing Bailemew's trade connections with the west). Ornfort's former inhabitants were all either settled in East Gullrike or given a dwelling in Dieden, West Gullrike's formerly second largest, and now largest, settlement. Both West and East Gullrike are known for their excellence in metallurgy, a talent they share with the Stor, which has assisted in their ongoing cultural conversion.
One of the more minor colonies of the Order is Koberoy, an island conquered and completely demographically reconstructed by the Order. Koberoy was settled by the Stor after its conquest, and is now largely indistinguishable from Anvill, but its original peoples—though human—were a far cry from the island's current settlers. The Order's history teacges that the original inhabitants of Koberoy were an extremely primitive people, far divorced from the traditional ways of Anvill, living in huts made of whalebone and wearing only ragged animal furs. They used fire for warmth, but did not cook their only forms of sustenance, fish and meat, which they ate raw. The Third High Master, after defeating those inhabitants of Koberoy who could fight, is said to have ordered the execution of the rest largely out of pity. After Koberoy was depopulated, it was then resettled by new arrivals from Anvill, and is today seen as just another of Anvill's surrounding islands, an integral part of the homeland of the Stor.
Bondeland is the most fertile province within the Order's sphere of control. A rural country, filled with farmers and livestock, Bondeland is unique in that it had been colonized by the Stor even before the fall of the Kingdom of Anvill and the rise of the Order. It remained under Order control, unlike Rokeland, over the course of the Black War, and became one of the first and most popular destinations for settlers from Stor after the Order's restructuring of Storstad. Today, Bondeland is the Order's most important agricultural zone, feeding much of the rest of the Order's lands, including Anvill itself, with its surplus produce. Bondeland's most important settlement is Mattvin, a port-city that is the destination point for Bondeland's agricultural goods before they are sent abroad by sea.
General Introduction
The people of Anvill are the Stor, whose society is incredibly stark and conservative. An individual's role within Stor society is rigid, and even something as simple as a son taking on a different profession than his father is rare enough to be noteworthy. The traditional values of the Stor—ascetism, dedication to family, valour in the face of danger and perseverance in the face of hardship—are something bred into the Order's sons and daughters. Compliance to these virtues is not only encouraged, but strictly and regimentally enforced, by both the state and the people themselves. Upon reaching his or her sixteenth birthday, each Stor child is given a choice: to remain in the household and comply with the teachings of the Stor, and swear to obey the culture's laws and practices, or, to leave. Those who have left the Stor are lowered in the Order's hierarchy to the same level as any other non-Stor humans, regardless of their purity of blood. They are disowned by their families, and, if they reside in Anvill, exiled; non-Stor are not permitted on the island.
The role of men and women in Stor society is as clearly delineated as would be expected. Men are responsible foremost for defending their homeland and spreading the ideology and dominion of the Order. They are also masters of their household, in charge of all family affairs. Women, though relegated to minor duties, are not necessarily disrespected—especially mothers. The ideal Stor woman is matronly, producing many sons and daughters and imbuing them in the Stor way of thinking, but also productive. The militarism of Stor society allows for women to have a great deal more freedom to pursue work in trades than they might in non-Stor societies, including those within the rest of the Order's imperium. Female metal workers, the largest trade in the Order, are relatively common, and women predominate in the fields of medicine and even worship.
The religious teachings of the Order are quite simple. There is one God, the Allfather, creator of all that has ever existed. He is benevolent, and the evils of the world exist to foster strength in his chosen people, the Stor, and their cousins, the rest of mankind. Worship of the Allfather is conducted primarily by a female clergy, the Valstre. Sisters of the Valstre live an ascetic life, even more so than other Stor, residing in modest monasteries, always located separate from major settlements. These monasteries are self-sufficient, either farming their own food or producing crafted goods to sell for produce. Valstre monasteries are marked with the symbol of the Allfather: three circles, horizontally intertwined, representing the cyclicality of life and the separations and similarities between the Allfather's different children.
History
The Order teaches that Anvill is the birthplace of humanity, the ultimate place of origin of all humans who have ever lived. In the days before the founding of Storstad, mankind consisted of bickering tribes, spread all throughout Anvill's rocky coasts, subsisting on fishing and hunting and gathering. Storstad was founded when one tribe, the Stor, Anvill's most powerful, who were famous for their abilities as smiths, conquered all of their competitors on the island. Those of the weaker tribes who refused to join the Stor were exiled from Anvill, and spread out all across the world, to become the descendants of the human societies now dispersed throughout the land. Storstad was founded as a monument to this great victory, and it was in its streets that the Order was fought for and created.
After the founding of Storstad and the emergence of the Stor as the sole occupants of Anvill, the island gradually developed into a unified, centralized state: the Kingdom of Anvill. The ruling dynasty, whose surname was simply 'Stor', held absolute authority, ruling over all facets of society and owning every patch of land and every bag of flesh on Anvill. Their harshness in the dispensation of justice, and the necessity of hard work to survive in the harsh climate of Anvill, birthed an extreme diligence in the island's people. Obedience to authority became the core of Anvill's culture, and among those who served in the direct employ of the king, the taking of life became a trivial matter. Executions, which were carried out for even moderate wrongdoings, were shared among soldiers and guardsmen, so that each of the king's men could be responsible for the end of at least one life. This bred a strong starkness and sense of militarism in the Stor soldiers, and set the stage for the 'Black War', some three hundred years ago.
The Black War was a civil war/coup in Anvill, fought between the Kingdom of Anvill on one side and the newly created Order of Anvill on the other. The Order was forged by a group of ten officers in the Kingdom of Anvill's Royal Guard, who referred to themselves as the 'Council of Masters'. They approached the man that would become known as the last fully recognized King of Anvill, Harold XVI, and demanded that he surrender to a constitution, signed by each of the Ten Masters. Harold refused, angrily, and ordered his guard to have the Masters apprehended for their insolence. Rather than obey their king, however, the palace guards obeyed the Masters, their military superiors, and instead apprehended Harold. Known proponents of the monarchy were captured and publicly executed, and the Masters employed propaganda advocating personal freedom and other republican ideals, which appealed to the long impoverished masses, and won the Masters widespread support in the streets of Storstad.
However, the King's imprisonment, and the Order's execution of many high-ranking monarchist officers, outraged many Stor loyalists, especially those from the settlements outside of Storstad. The loyalist Royal Guard assembled from throughout the many small towns and villages of Anvill and laid siege to Storstad, demanding the release of the King and for justice to be inflicted upon the Ten Masters. Over time, as the situation in the city grew more and more dire, the Ten Masters were gradually beset upon by turncoats who had been among their supporters in the original coup. Nine of the ten were assassinated, but the tenth, the greatest personal warrior of the Masters, defeated his assailants in personal combat on the same night that his last two remaining contemporaries were murdered. The Tenth Master led a bloody campaign of vengeance against the Stor loyalists within Storstad, proclaiming himself Anvill's ultimate authority as High Master, and slaughtering any who would oppose him.
As famine and disease began to grip the still besieged Storstad, the High Master became determined to ride out to meet the royalist armies and break the siege. He sent word to the engineers and architects of Storstad, including those descendants of the original Stor families who had long ago mastered smithing and siege-craft, and led to the Stor peoples' pre-eminence. Before long, weapons were built, and a plan was devised. The High Master sent word to the royalists that he would surrender, and return King Harold to the throne, but on the condition that he himself be spared from retribution and permitted to return to his post. The Royalists, conspiring to enact a surrender and then betray and kill the High Master, accepted the terms, and greeted the High Master and King Harold at the wall atop the city's main gate. After the terms were agreed to, however, and the gate opened, the High Master was not behind it. Instead, the propped up corpse of King Harold XVI dropped from the city walls, and the royalist armies gazed upon an array of cannons.
The High Master won the battle. The royalists were routed, with heavy casualties, and the Order's soldiers inside Storstad suffered almost zero losses, having needed to leave the gates only to bayonet the wounded. With the Siege of Storstad finally broken, the High Master mustered his forces and led a campaign of vengeance against the royalist countryside. Towns were pillaged, villages wiped off the face of the Earth, and all of the food and wealth of Anvill stolen and brought back to Storstad. All those who resisted were apprehended and executed, and in a grand display of force, order was brought to Anvill.
After the Black War was won, the High Master, who would then be known as the First High Master, ruled for a short time. His reign would not be as long as it was hard to win, however, and he died of illness only two short years after his ascension, accomplising little except for disposing of the previous regime and earning the ire of the countryside. It was in the vacuum of his death, when the Second High Master was ordained, that the Order would come to adopt its current, supremacist character. The Second High Master, eager to unite the country behind a common cause and find an enemy to turn the destitute peasants of the countryside against, looked south, past Anvill. Assembling an army—mostly from among the countryside, to ensure the loyal soldiers of Storstad would remain to keep the island secure—the Second High Master led Anvill's First Crusade, against what would become its first conquered vassal-state: Stigendsol.
Stigendsol, not yet known by that name, was a savage land, populated by bear-like non-humans, the Drisk. Famous for their hostility to human traders and travellers, Drisk culture and faith was centred around the forests that constituted their homeland, and involved caring for and revering the trees and earth. It is said by the Order's chroniclers that the Drisk ate the flesh of those men that they killed, and use what remained of their corpses (after they had consumed what they deemed edible) to decorate the woods in which they dwelled. When the might of the First Crusade arrived in Drisk lands, they were greeted by monuments made of the bones of fallen men, protected from the elements by cloths of human skin, strung from the trees by the deceased's entrails. By the time that the Drisk had been soundly defeated, after a long series of bloody battles, less than a tenth of the original fighting force of the First Crusade remained. To free the souls of those men massacred by the Drisk, and forever erase their impact on the world's history, the Second High Master ordered, after the defeat of the Drisk tribes, that the entire woodland in which they dwelled be burnt and cleared. By the time of the First Crusade's end, and the return of the Second High Master and his remaining men to Anvill, the Drisk had ceased to exist, and their forested homeland had been reverted to a flat expanse of ash.
Similar crusades would follow. Successive High Masters, looking to build national unity and foster assurance in the strength of the realm's armies, launched conquest after conquest against the surrounding territories of Anvill. Kingdoms were submitted or destroyed and entire societies erased from existence by the end of an Order blade, as preexisting polities were either reforged or discarded by the crusaders. In the wake of these reavings, the ever fecund Stor would arrive to rebuild the land in the image of Anvill, of humanity's homeland. The rebirth of the supremacy of mankind, in its purest form, had begun in earnest.
Government
The Order of Anvill is governed by the Hall of Masters, a conclave consisting of some retired and some active military officials, who reside in their eponymous seat in the centre of Storstad. In charge of the Hall of Masters is the High Master, who is elected from within the Hall. The High Master can only be chosen from among those of the Masters still young enough to be in active military service, but only those Masters who are no longer old enough to serve are given voting power. This ensures that the High Master is always an experienced and capable military figure, relatively young, and has the support of the elders of the Hall. Once a High Master retires from active duty (upon reaching a certain age), he becomes one of those individuals who decide upon his replacement. Importantly, only those raised as Stor, and who pursue military careers, can become Masters. All non-Stor humans, and all Stor who are not experienced on the battlefield, are ineligible. Only the strong may rule the Order.
Economy & Industry
Most residents of the Order's territories work to produce food, either farming hardy crops in the empire's dry, cold soil, fishing in the northern seas, or hunting game in the dense woods. The northerly location of the Order means that even with a large population dedicated to providing food from multiple sources, the country is still only just barely agriculturally self-sufficient—in good years. In bad years, when crops fail and fish and game are sparse, the Order of Anvill must import foodstuffs from outside of its dominion, mostly from the human kingdoms of the west and the Crown of Virith. In especially grave times, when production and imports aren't enough, the Order's knights conduct rationing, limiting the transportation of food into the major cities of the Order's colonies, and redirecting surplus agricultural production in all provinces to first and foremost feed Anvill.
Almost all of those inhabitants of the Order's lands not involved in producing food are employed as craftsmen in various trades. Chief among these are the metal workers, a term that in Anvill includes everyone from those who mine the ores to those who smith (or apply) the final, finished goods. Metal workers are a highly respected lot in Anvill, revered below only the Order's warriors. Most prestigious of all metalworkers are smiths, those who turn the smelted ingots from the Order's mines into armour and weaponry. The Stor have a long and proud history of producing incredibly talented blacksmiths, and the name of the island of the Stor, Anvill, is a reference to its place as the anvil of humanity, the location where the hammer of war forged both the Stor and the other races of men.
Military Overview
The Order's military forces are numerous and diverse, possessing a great many soldiers of all types, from standard swordsmen to expert marksmen armed with crossbows, and all the way to the world infamous Black Knights. The intense militarism and patriotic and religious dedication of the Order's citizens ensures there are always a large body of men to draw ranks from, and all able-bodied men of the Order are expected to be able to defend themselves and their families from basic threats. The Order's continuous military expeditions ensure that their armies are both experienced and wisely proportioned; the Order's armies show no predisposition towards favouring any particular form of combat, employing whatever must be employed to defeat the enemy and purify the world for the greatness of mankind. The exception to this rule is Anvill's most well known military force: the Black Knights.
The Black Knights are the elite of the Order of Anvill. Named for their black armour and black horses, and legendary for their lethality, the Black Knights are heavy cavalry, the shock troops of the Order's armies. Their ranks draw exclusively from pure-blooded Stor, and those selected for training are the most physically fit young boys that Anvill has to offer. From their induction (usually around age 14) until their death, the Black Knights never leave military service, fighting for humanity until they die on the battlefield. Living unglamorous lives, like all Stor, the Black Knights are forcibly separated from their families once inducted and forbidden from making any new personal connections, except among their fellow brothers. They are also forbidden almost all of life's pleasures; they cannot consume alcohol and most importantly cannot become intimate with women. The penalty for a Black Knight who consorts with a woman is castration, and the penalty for consumption of alcohol or other illicit substances is even more severe: death by burning. The only joys permitted to Black Knights are the thrill of combat and the respect of the Allfather.
