Of all the king­doms of Nume­naria, Kyr­ishia is by far the most feared and loathed–and the most just and prosperous.

Per­haps the North­ern King­doms have good rea­son to hate Kyr­ishia. Astro­tolic, the mad sorcerer-king who nearly enslaved all of the realms of man, made his cap­i­tal there. In fact, he still does in a way; the heroes who defeated him in the Great Rebel­lion could not kill him. He lies trapped in the Five-Sided Tem­ple in Luka, the cap­i­tal. He is defeated and broods in undeath, plot­ting his return.

The Kyr­ishi­ans, unlike the peo­ple in the North­ern King­doms, did not drive out the non-human races and destroy the people’s abil­ity to use magic. To the north­ern­ers, Kyr­ishia is a land of sor­cer­ers and beast-men who hate Gob the One True God. There are also rumors of “deviant sex­ual per­ver­sions” and homo­sex­ual marriages.

Kyr­ishia is actu­ally a rel­a­tively lib­er­tar­ian, cos­mopoli­tan realm. Humans are the most numer­ous race, but all intel­li­gent races of Nume­naria are rep­re­sented and live mostly in har­mony.  The Kyr­ishi­ans reacted to Astrotolic’s atroc­i­ties by viciously attack­ing per­se­cu­tion and injus­tice with the same zeal that the north applied to its erad­i­ca­tion of magic and the “beast races.”

The king­dom has strict laws against prac­tic­ing destruc­tive magic, but it encour­ages the use and improve­ment of con­struc­tive magic. Dis­ease is almost unknown, and crops flour­ish in Kyr­ishia even when famine strikes elsewhere.

Monarch and Government

Kyr­ishia is ruled by a monarch who, once elected by del­e­gates from the cities, duchies and guilds, serves for life. Can­di­dates are usu­ally drawn from the noble houses, but in the­ory any­one who has demon­strated great wis­dom and lead­er­ship abil­ity can be a can­di­date. Once elected, the prospec­tive king or queen must pass a secret ordeal in the Five Sided Tem­ple that tests the candidate’s wis­dom and virtue. Those who pass the ordeal ascend to the throne; those who sur­vive but do not pass are changed for life and say noth­ing about the expe­ri­ence.  The cur­rent ruler is Queen Asheela, a human.

Rulers of Kyr­ishia com­mand the mil­i­tary forces, serve as as chief jus­tice over lesser courts, con­fer titles of nobil­ity and sign leg­is­la­tion into law. They also have the power to dis­solve the par­lia­ment and call for for new elections.

Cap­i­tal

Luka

Mil­i­tary Strength

Kyr­ishia has a small but capa­ble stand­ing army of pro­fes­sional sol­diers mod­eled on mankind’s impe­r­ial days under Astro­tolic. Indi­vid­ual nobles and cities also must train and equip mili­tia forces and be ready to call them to duty if the need arises to defend the realm.

Civil Life

Civil life in Kyr­ishia is marked by jus­tice, com­merce and peace–a legacy of the hor­rors of Astro­tolic and the xeno­pho­bic cru­sades of the North­ern Kingdoms.

The respon­si­ble use of magic and bur­geon­ing tech­nol­ogy make Kyr­ishia a par­adise com­pared to the North­ern King­doms; even the poor­est have access to clean water and the small­est vil­lages have at least one pub­lic bath house. Decent roads con­nect the duchies and cities, pro­mot­ing trade and rapid communication.

Kyr­ishia fos­ters a soci­ety that is open to many reli­gions, philoso­phies and ways to prac­tice sex­u­al­ity. The only car­di­nal sin is harm­ing another unnecessarily.

Such and open, “clas­si­cally lib­eral” soci­ety makes Kyr­ishia some­thing of a Utopia for its cit­i­zens and hob­bles the mil­i­tary jug­ger­naut it is capa­ble of sum­mon­ing and unleash­ing on the world.