The Pocket Principalities of the Three Rivers
At the South end of Cansma, where the famous rolling hills grow into precipitous peaks nestled between porcupine tree forests, one will find a most peculiar political arrangement. The region, once a small border province of the Null Empire, now houses no less than a thousand independent principalities. In the typical river town of Ochamire, every lane is under the domain of a separate prince. Even out in the mountainous backwoods, a single village often has more than one sovereign.
This situation came about when Timitubo the Just, the nineteenth son of the lecherous King Phrasgeri of the Three Rivers, raised an army of peasants and merchants fed up with the long, bloody war of succession between King Phrasgeri's first four sons. Timitubo's mob routed his brothers' forces across several consecutive decisive battles. Yet his brothers still held sway over the hill fortresses. Rather than suffer through years of prolonged sieges to reunify the kingdom, the wise Timitubo decreed that the kingdom should be divided up equally among all of King Phrasgeri's heirs, both male and female. A special court system, whose judges would be appointed jointly by the new principalities and the region's council of merchants, was established to handle disputes between the new principalities but had no power to govern any territory of their own. In addition, every eight years all of the judges would come together and hold an assembly where the entire region would be redistricted equally between all living and capable descendants of King Phrasgeri, thus avoiding any need at all for further wars of succession.
The system worked well enough for many decades, but eventually one of the judges managed to amass enough power to proclaim herself the High Judge of the Three Rivers. Her dictatorial Krytocracy saw the first expansion of the lands of the Three Rivers since the days of King Phrasgeri's grandfather, but it also saw widespread, punitive enforcement of every law on the books. Fifty-three persons were hanged for not properly trimming their hedges, one hundred and fifty-two had an ear cut off for exceeding the noise limits at night, and ninety persons were fined a year's wages for leaving unsightly wheelbarrows in front of their homes. Her reign of terror only ended when an all-star team of lawyers successfully sued for her to be impeached on some obscure legal technicality. After this unpleasant incident, changes were made to the system to further limit the power of the judges. But the concept of a high law that transcended the individual principalities remained, albeit in greatly limited ways.
Some time after the High Judge's downfall, the same all-star team of lawyers found a loophole in the high law that allowed–no, required–each of the principalities to be constantly at war with at least one other kingdom in order to assert their independence. A few ambitious pocket princes used this as an excuse to invade their neighbors across the street. The battles that followed were a thing of legend: Prince Arwin even managed to raise an army of seventy-eight men-at-arms! Houses were burned, taverns ransacked, and innocent civilians-turned-refugees forced to flee a dozen kingdoms away to the other side of town. However, these wars quickly fell out of favor when it was realized that the princes would always have to fight on the front lines and would lose any territorial gains once the assembly of judges met again. So the all-star team of lawyers was summoned to save the day yet again, this time by finding a ridiculously lax minimum set of actions that must be taken for a principality to be considered to be at war. Basically, challenging your rival prince to a daily drinking contest and reading a hurtful poem lambasting them for their perceived faults is enough to meet these requirements. But the occasional actual spat does still ensue.
Travelers to the Three Rivers are strongly advised to employ a lawyer-guide during their stay to avoid being immediately fined and/or imprisoned for some obscure violation of the law multiple times in one day across several dozen principalities.