The Southern Shield
The Southern Shield
Overview
The Southern Shield is a human kingdom built for border duty, quarantine, and survival through force. It sits on the south and southeast edge of Oblivion Vale, close to the Nightfen approaches, the Grimwood Glade borderlands, and the Ashcrown Ramparts. The crown’s public claim is protection. Its main tools are control of movement, water, and punishment.
Territory and Strategic Role
The Shield is not a wide farm kingdom. It is a chain of fortress towns and road forts that lock down the southern routes. It uses roads as controlled lines with gates, papers, and inspections. Patrol lines are drawn around wells, depots, and pass gates. Large stretches of the south are marked as cordon zones where travel requires written permission and inspected casks.
The Shield exists to hold three constant pressures:
sickness and contaminated goods moving up from the south-central wild zones
raids from woodland warbands and road-camps
border friction with the dragonborn holds in Ashcrown
Government and Power Structure
The crown rules through offices that overlap on purpose, so no single institution can grow independent.
High Marshal of the Shield: controls forts, patrol schedules, and convoy escorts.
Cistern Court: audits reservoirs, issues ration orders, and prosecutes water crimes.
Cordon Prefects: declare quarantine boundaries, enforce relocations, and approve burn orders.
Roadwright Office: maintains markers, culverts, and locked waystations on approved routes.
Temple Oversight Boards: assigned to each major town to monitor heal houses and burial yards.
Local authority is usually a fort commander paired with a civil auditor. If they disagree, the crown sends inspectors rather than mediators.
Water Law and Ration Discipline
Water is treated as a strategic resource. The Shield relies on layered reservoirs inside fortified towns, deep wells guarded like armories, and emergency cisterns under temple floors. Every container is sealed, stamped, and inspected. Theft is prosecuted as a crown crime, not a property crime. Punishments are public, fast, and meant to deter.
The state fears sabotage more than theft. A cut pipe, poisoned bucket, or false cistern ledger is treated as an attack on the realm. Entire streets can be cut off until an audit is complete.
Military Doctrine and Border Forces
The Southern Shield fields more soldiers per person than any other human kingdom. Most are garrison troops, road escorts, and cordon units rather than battlefield armies. Training focuses on holding choke points, fast response to raids on wells and depots, convoy defense, and night patrol discipline in wetland terrain.
Fen Wardens are the most feared arm of the state. They patrol the Nightfen approaches and enforce cordons. They are authorized to burn camps, seize unsealed goods, and relocate families if a border town is judged compromised.
Quarantine Policy and the Ashline Decrees
The Shield’s quarantine system is defined by the Ashline Decrees. These laws set when a town is sealed, searched, or emptied; how goods are burned or isolated; how corpses are handled; and how refugees are screened, branded, or turned back.
The decrees are harsh by design. They assume panic spreads quickly and breaks order. They also give the crown legal cover for forced labor and forced resettlement during bad years.
Faith and Temple Authority
Death has the strongest influence in the Shield because burial, rot control, and boundary rites are daily needs. Death priests run corpse yards, ash pits, and last-rites stations on major roads. They also provide ritual legitimacy for cordon actions.
Life orders operate heal houses and triage yards, but they do so under military oversight. A heal house that disobeys a cordon order can be shut down, and its staff can be reassigned or exiled. Fate orders are used for oaths and witness marks, but they are not trusted with state control. Many commanders view Fate doctrine as a path to loopholes and inherited excuses.
Magic Policy
Magic is rare and treated as a high-risk asset. The Shield allows it when it supports defense, sealing work, or containment. It destroys it when it is tied to plague anomalies, unsanctioned rites, or private power outside the chain of command.
Common rules include mandatory registration in garrison towns, compelled service during cordon seasons, and temple auditing of any repeated miracle-like effect.
Plague-touched individuals are treated as dangerous even when useful. Many are forced into border service where losses are expected, or pushed into exile zones to reduce risk near water sites.
Justice, Social Order, and Daily Fear
The Shield is built on visible consequences. Curfews around wells are normal. Travel papers are checked at road locks. Food and water queues are guarded by soldiers, not clerks. Collective punishment is common when a settlement is suspected of hiding sickness or smuggling.
The realm’s deepest weakness is trust. Citizens accept cruelty when it keeps them alive. When the system fails, riots are swift and punished harder.
Economy and Trade Dependencies
The Shield exports fortified hardware, hardened steelwork, and reclaimed materials from old battle sites. It also produces controlled fungus goods from underground farms where the crown can guard water use.
It depends on outside supplies: timber shipments for repairs and cask work, salt and medicine in bulk, and eastern logistics for ration goods and storage craft.
Because of this dependence, the Shield maintains strict convoy treaties and is willing to pay in metal and service to keep routes open.
Relations with Neighbors
Ashcrown Dominion (dragonborn): friction over pass rights, convoy rules, and disputed mine claims. Open war is rare, but skirmishes and border killings are common.
Eastern Ledger-State: necessary partner for storage, ration notes, and convoy scheduling, but distrusted for corruption and contract traps.
Elven borders: limited contact, mostly to keep raids from spilling into forest corridors. The Shield prefers hard borders and clear rules.
Woodland warbands: treated as a constant security problem. The Shield answers raids with burn patrols, hostage policy, and relocation.
Symbols and Reputation
The Southern Shield’s mark is displayed on gates, casks, and cordon posts because legitimacy is part of control. Across Oblivion Vale, its reputation is simple: it keeps the south from collapsing, and it makes its people pay for that service in fear, obedience, and blood.