Politics & Powerful Organizations · Major Powers

Rowlem

Government

The Faith, its state religion, which governs in practice as well as in name

Capital

The Northern Climb

Cities

The Northern Climb, which is the seat, and the Southern Post — the Climb and the Post in common speech

Neighbours

Curath and Caliharah by land; Garshalla across the northern water

Border

Congruence-imbued towers along the southern line, emitting a fog nobody passes unnoticed

Economy

Crippled. All produce is held to be the property of the Faith

Foreign Policy

Total isolation. All diplomacy severed

Population

About 4.5 million

Rowlem holds what Curath does not of the north-western continent. It is insular and war-mongering, and the border between the two nations is riddled with violence.

It is also, by the account of everyone who has written about it, a poor country. The Faith is not merely Rowlem's religion but its government, and its doctrine — that humans are the only true species and all others are false constructs — is the organising principle of the state.

How it is governed

There is no civil authority separate from the Faith. Its four ranks are the country's social order: High Laudites who preach and live on what is collected, Soldier Zealots who enforce, human labourers, and slaves.

All crops, minerals and manufactured goods are held to be Faith property, gathered by its enforcers and handed back out by its planners. Non-humans who are taken are put to slave labour rather than killed, which the Faith offers as proof of their inferiority. Human labourers are not much better placed.

The Faith's grip is firm in the Northern Climb and the Southern Post, and in the land around each, and loosens with distance. Further out the laudites and their soldiers lack the numbers to compel anyone; they still come to collect, but the countryside has warning enough to hide part of what it grows.

Before the Faith

Rowlem was not always this. For several hundred years the country was ruled by Kalweldin, a synthoid, and over that long reign the nation prospered.

Kalweldin was older than the reign by a wide margin: old enough to have been awake before the Empire of Iron fell, and to have carried the continent's year-count across the Purge that destroyed every written record of it. Every date in use anywhere on Aropria rests on Kalweldin's testimony. See Dating and Records — and note that Rowlem does not care to have this pointed out.

A small faction grew hungry for power and worked toward revolution through subversion and propaganda. It gained enough support from its own lies to stage a successful and bloody coup, and Kalweldin was executed. The leaders installed themselves as the first High Laudites and named a Divinity, Row, as the symbol of the Faith. A purge of non-humans followed the revolution.

Those who question the arrangement today are branded synthoid sympathisers. The zealots point back to the fabrications of the revolution as evidence that life under the non-human was unfair, and that power now rests with the common man.

The border

Rowlem's southern border is defended by a line of congruence-imbued towers that emit a fog filling the land between them. Nothing enters or leaves the country without passing through it, and it makes invasion in force impossible, or near enough. This alone has kept Rowlem intact — without it Curath would very likely have crushed the nation long ago.

The towers are also why so little reliable intelligence about the interior exists.

Military and its reach

Rowlem is militarily crippled, and its neighbours know it. The Faith mounts periodic "cleansing" forays into Curath and Caliharah; both meet stiff resistance, and both are treated as a nuisance rather than a threat.

Its own northern shore is raided by Garshallan ships. That has an unintended consequence its neighbours are entirely content with: Rowlem absorbs raids that would otherwise fall on them, and Curath is satisfied to leave it there as a buffer.

Over recent years the high priests have turned to subterfuge and, at times, outright terrorism. It has won the Faith no converts, but there is now almost always at least one cell of Rowlem agents in any major city.

Congruence

The state runs its own academy, the Hall of the Chosen, where students are heavily indoctrinated and kept to a strict regimen. Its main business is training the soldiers who hold the fog border. It also turns out a good number of Hex Adepts.

It is rumoured that the very best students are trained as renamers. Reports are hard to come by, and witnesses have a habit of changing their stories for no apparent reason.

Who deals with Rowlem

Almost nobody, officially. Rowlem has broken off all diplomacy, disavows the trade that continues regardless, and will openly attack anyone who violates its borders. Nashriam has denounced the nation and its faith outright.

In practice the Clerks and the Slaver's Syndicate both do business there, the Syndicate at full operations. The Ion'cavar keeps a minimal presence; members generally have to be ordered to take a posting.

Misku'un

Misku'un is a remote nation-tribe in the northern valleys and glaciers of the Casc Mountains — wilder cousins to the people below, and as prevalent slavers as the rest of Rowlem. A chosen few are permitted down to the lowlands to gather supplies and, it is thought, to pledge allegiance to the Faith's rulers. No slave has ever escaped their mountains.

What Rowlem says about the past

The priests hold a document claiming their Divinity swept the continent and stripped its nations of knowledge, as punishment for co-mingling with lesser species. It is offered as an explanation for the Great Literary Purge. It has been thoroughly debunked.