Northern Crown Territory

Northern Crown Territory

The Northern Crown Territory is the main upland belt of the Northern Crown kingdom. It lies between the Dreadhorn foothills and the outer edge of Gloamveil. The land is cold, dry, and exposed. Frost nights are common. The growing season is short. Since the Drying, the old rivers are only broad empty channels. Towns survive by deep aquifers, sealed cistern vaults, and guarded wells. Scarcity is treated as law, not as a temporary crisis.

Land and Water

The uplands are wind-scoured ridges, stony flats, and long cracked riverbeds. Soil is thin and breaks under overuse. Brush and thorn growth is common. Trees are scarce outside managed groves and protected farm strips. Near Gloamveil, cleared border strips run up to treaty stones and then stop. Forest access is not assumed.
Water points define settlement. Stable towns sit on mapped aquifers and build stone cistern vaults under fortified well courts. Each well court has a roofed windlass, bucket lanes, and armed oversight. Vault doors take keyed locks and seal plates. Witness posts stand nearby so officials can record draws and disputes. Public draw hours are posted and enforced. Private draws exist only by writ or hereditary claim.

Food and Storage

Farming is narrow and controlled. Walled plots and terrace strips grow hardy grains and roots. Fungus cellars and dried insect meal fill gaps. Grain stores are sealed. Tags, wax, and oath marks track every bag. Theft of grain is punished harshly. Theft of water is treated like a direct attack on the crown’s authority. In hard winters, the state will seize private stores through emergency writs, then settle it later in court.

Roads, Stations, and Travel

Travel follows raised roadbeds built over old flood paths. They sit above cracked channels and keep wagons from sinking into bad ground. The roads are the true borders of the territory, because they link wells, depots, and escort routes. A day’s march apart, guarded stations serve as ration posts and inspection points. Each station has a pump shed, a cask yard, and a quarantine corner. Gatehouses use chain bars, seal plates, and stamped orders to control passage. A single seal can close a route.
Travelers plan by ration stops. A crew that misses a station can die between ridges, because there is no open water to save them. This makes stations targets. Goblinoid road-camps often form in the lee of broken roadworks and ruined culverts, waiting for isolated wagons. Bandits and deserters also work the empty channels, because they offer cover from distant towers. For this reason, the crown keeps signal masts, call horns, and rotating patrol rings. Station clerks record movement, names, seal codes, and inspection results. These logs feed route law, fines, and border closures.

Rule and Institutions

The Northern Crown rules through courts, oaths, and inherited claims. Noble houses hold well rights that pass by lineage and contract. The crown keeps crown wells for state use and siege reserve. Temples of Fate shape public life through witness marks, oath tablets, record discipline, and prophecy review. Fate readers are used in water courts and border courts. They interpret omens tied to wells, births, and deaths. Some closures and seizures are justified by a Fate ruling, even when the material cause is simple theft or fear. Death orders hold authority over burial and quarantine declarations. Life orders run heal houses, but they operate under ration limits and inspection.
Magic is rare and tightly controlled. Crown adepts exist, but they are licensed and watched by temple auditors. Unregistered casting near wells, pumps, or storehouses is treated as sabotage until proven otherwise. Paper control is constant: seals on casks, travel stamps, and ledger checks at every gate. When food is low, courts become a weapon. A house can lose water rights through a proven fraud, or through a stamped accusation that it fails to disprove in time.

Border with Gloamveil

The forest edge is a legal boundary. Treaty stones mark where cutting ends and where escort rules begin. Timber and medicine imports from Gloamveil require permission and an agreed corridor. The Northern Crown trades metalwork, salt goods, and legal services in return. Relations are tense but stable because both sides need the exchange. Illegal cutting is punished by both patrols. Bodies often go unclaimed along the border strip, which worsens the local undead problem. Dead escorts and vanished cutters become legal disputes over fault and jurisdiction. That delay leaves remains exposed, which gives necromancy time to take hold.

The Necromancy Problem

The territory has a persistent necromancy crisis. It is not a rumor. It is a known part of the map.

• Death density: Upland forts held during Quarantine Wars and later road conflicts. Soldiers died near stations and along the old channels. Frost and dry soil preserve remains.

• Burial strain: Death orders enforce burial law, but fuel for burn pits is limited. Timber is controlled by treaty and ration. In bad years, bodies sit too long in cold sheds and shallow pits.

• Sealed spaces: Cistern vaults, fort basements, culverts, and abandoned inspection cells create enclosed death sites. When seals fail later, the dead are often still present.

• Criminal use: Outlaw mages and corrupt agents use necromancy as cheap labor and as a silent guard method. When handlers die or flee, the dead remain. Some nobles hide this behind private “vault security” claims, which makes prosecutions slow and political.

Undead in the Northern Crown

Undead outbreaks are treated as infrastructure failures. They cluster around roads, forts, and water sites because that is where people die and where the living must return.

Skeletons

Skeletons are common in old vaults and ruins. Many were raised to guard pumps, doors, or evidence rooms. When the controlling orders stop, they keep obeying the last command.

Zombies

Zombies rise where corpse handling breaks down. Outer towns, quarantine sheds, and failed travel stations are the usual sources. Some are linked to tainted well water after panic dumping.

Ghouls and Ghasts

Ghouls breed in grave pits along dry channels and in neglected burial yards outside walls. Ghasts form where rot and hunger concentrate, often near mass pits and burn lines. They lead packs and remove bodies before patrols can burn them.

Wights

Wights are the most damaging local undead. Many were officers who died under oath and returned with rank intact. They remember routes and command habits. They can raise other dead, turning a single site into a moving patrol threat.

Shadows

Shadows gather where people were murdered, sealed, or starved in darkness. They are found under cistern stairs, in abandoned courts, and in locked basements. They drain strength and leave victims unable to work or fight.

Wraiths

Wraiths form from deaths tied to false writs and slow confinement. Route closures, condemned houses, and sealed quarantine rooms can create them. They haunt the same gate tunnels and stairwells where those failures occurred.

Minotaur Skeletons

Minotaur skeletons appear in older fort labyrinths and complex cistern works. They are used as brute guardians on triggers such as noise, light, or a broken seal. When bindings fail, they make some tunnel grids unusable for years.

How the Crown Tries to Contain It

The Northern Crown uses layered control instead of open purges.

• Road discipline: scheduled patrols, sealed lantern stores, salt lines, and locked station doors at night.

• Grave law: tagged burials, witness marks, and Death-order inspection; unauthorized burials are a major crime.

• Quarantine authority: Death orders can close a site by declaration, but escorts and fuel are often short.

• License enforcement: suspected necromancy leads to raids, ledger seizures, and public trials, even when proof is thin.

• Controlled sealing: when a ruin cannot be cleared, it is sealed, posted, and written into route law so caravans must detour.

Life Under the Crown

Most people live inside walls, schedules, and documents. Families keep clean marks, witness names, and seal scraps as daily necessities. Doors have hooks for quarantine flags. Night lamps are set high and guarded because dark corners are treated as a security breach. Outer towns live harder and die faster, so they watch travelers closely and report anything that looks like plague or corpse-theft.
The territory exports refined metal goods, trained scribes, and court services. It depends on forest medicine and timber under treaty, and on stable northern routes for deep salt and ore exchange. This dependence makes the border strips, road stations, and well courts the true centers of power. When those systems fail, death does not stay buried.