I wrote this about two weeks back and then forgot all about it. I'll post it anyway if anyone wants to recycle ideas from it.
Name: Far Askan
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Quick description of your nation: The twin islands of Askan were the last Mycorian lands to become part of the Arkronian dominion. Separated from the mainland by thirty leagues of frigid sea, no one knew
The side your nation was on during the 3th rebellion: Either with the throne or with the rebels
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History: The twin islands of Askan were the last lands to become part of the Arkronian dominion. The Arkronian conquest was delayed not by the fierce independence of the native peoples, but rather by isolation. Separated from the mainland by thirty leagues of frigid sea, no one on the mainland knew that the Askan Isles even existed until just after the Second Rebellion. During the conflicts of the Rebellion, a conscripted peasant by the name of Lamon Surefoot saved the life of his Arkronian commander. After peace was won at Tallingan Forest, Surefoot was rewarded for his brave actions with a writ of enfeoffment: a deed to establish a manor of his own in the sparsely-populated wilderness on Mycoria's northeastern coast.
For two generations, Surefoot and his son eked out a rude existence at their coastal settlement. A short growing season and poor, rocky soil made farming unfruitful at the settlement came to be known as Surefoot's Folly. Lamon's son Dorik gave up on farming as he had marginally-better luck fishing and whaling the frigid seas north of Surefoot's Folly. On a whaling foray, an autumn storm cast Dorik's fishing boat far out to sea. Accustomed to short fishing voyages within sight of shore, neither Dorik nor his crew were proficient navigators, and so they meandered aimlessly across the sea for several days, hoping just to sight land. With water and provisions long since exhausted, Dorik and his crew nearly perished at sea. But after six days adrift, land was sighted not to the south, but to the north.
Dorik and his crew disembarked on a rocky peninsula. Shortly after satisfying their ravenous hunger on cockles and abalone harvested from rocky tidepools, they realized that the coastal contours of this headland matched no stretch of land on their maps. With their hunger and thirst sated and their curiosity piqued, Dorik and his crew sailed along the coast. A three-day long circumnavigation revealed that this landmass was not some peninsula, but a very large island far removed from the mainland. As soon as Dorik found his way back to Surefoot's Folly, he gathered as many boats and men as he could muster for a prolonged expedition to this newly-discovered land.
Dorik returned to the island the following spring with a crude flotilla of fishing boats, fifty men, and pack mules, establishing a camp near his initial beachhead that would later become Urchin Landing. Dorik's expedition went inland and discovered a barren, windswept country. Wind-stunted junipers and brushy tufts of willow bush were the only vegetation on the island save for the scraggly tufts of grass that grew upon the gravelly earth that fed herds of wooly yaks and reindeer.
And despite such an unforgiving land and clime, Dorik's expedition found that this country was already inhabited. A race of stout, hairy men living in hamlets of stone huts made this country their home. Clad in crude hide loincloths and speaking in a jabbering tongue that bore no resemblance to their Arkronian language, the native men of the island quailed at the sight of Dorik's expedition - poorly outfitted and armed as they were. The pitiful natives did naught but cower in the corners of their huts as Dorik's men helped themselves to whatever food and belongings they desired. These were the first of a great many crimes the Mycorians would commit against the people that would come to be known as the Seal-Eaters.
Upon returning from that expedition, Dorik discovered that the seal pelts and walrus tusks they had stolen from the Seal-Eaters fetched handsome sums in foreign bazaars. Dorik quickly realized that the island he had discovered was a veritable gold mine; a gold mine that old he had access to. He wasted little time in pawning off the writ of enfeoffment for Surefoot's Folly to some half-wit in the Capital and used the proceeds to procure a merchant's cog that he loaded with timbers, nails, mortar, goats, and a company of crossbow-toting mercenaries.
Dorik's third visit to the island of the Seal-Eaters was a conquest for lack of a better word. Conquest would imply that there was a struggle or resistance against the Mycorians. What little opposition Dorik and his mercenaries met was put down with ruthless one-sidedness. Loincloth-wearing savages armed with whalebone spears had no hope against Dorik's chainmail-clad crossbowmen. A handful of such massacres were more than sufficient to quell the remaining Seal-Eaters. In a single summer, the entire southern island was subdued, and the Seal-Eaters were put to work building a fortress for their foreign masters at Urchin Landing.
Eventually, the royal court in Arkron caught wind of the glut of rare seal pelts and ivory appearing in markets across Mycoria and traced their origin back to Dorik Surefoot - by now a fabulously-wealthy merchant with connections throughout the land. A fleet of Arkronian galleys was dispatched and eventually discovered Dorik's stronghold at Urchin Landing. The Arkronian captain was furious that these lands were kept a secret and not reported to the crown. In spite of the blockade, Dorik was able to request a favor from the descendants of that Arkronian commander his father had rescued during the Rebellion - now a prominent family with the ability to exert influence on the royal court. With pressure from Arkron relented, Dorik offered to pay royal duties in arrears on the pelts and ivory sold over the past decade and swear fealty to the Arkronian liege. The royal court accepted the offer, and Dorik Surefoot - naming the islands after the Arkronian commander that his father rescued - became the lord of Far Askan, a vassal of the Arkronian Kingdom.
Dorik and his heirs became fabulously wealthy hunting seals, walrus, and whales from their septentrional dominion. But the wealth of the Mycorian lords was jealously kept from the Seal-Eater peasantry. Naturally a timid and demure people, the serfs of Askan could only tolerate so many injustices until even they reached their breaking point. During the Third Rebellion, the Seal-Eaters saw their opportunity to avenge themselves against their Arkronian-aligned masters. On the Northern Island, the Seal-Eaters carried out a massacre against the Mycorian walrus hunters and burned the outposts of Borean Keep, Heatherstone, and Summer Harbor. Hundreds of Mycorian guardsmen were killed in the uprisings. Only the stone walls of Urchin Landing kept the Seal-Eaters from completely removing the Mycorians from their homeland once and for all. But with the Vulpin Treachery came a sudden end to the Third Rebellion, allowing Lord Surefoot's forces sent abroad to serve the crown to return in time to put down the Seal-Eater revolt and restore Mycorian rule to Askan.
Once the Seal-Eaters had been subdued, a series of vicious reprisals was carried out against the populace. The most infamous of these punishment was Lord Garik Surefoot's order to cut out the tongue of every Seal-Eater man old enough to have participated in the rebellion, so that the words of
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