Innithel

The Principality of Innithel

Allegiance	Ensor (officially)
Capital	St. Loomis
Government	Prince Regent: Demetrius Estevarre Countess: Eoforwynn Greyleigh
Demonym	Innithaelian
Official Language	Ilexi, Ruvic
Official Religion	Kalentism
Currency	wafer/dusky/albie
Native Heritages	Ilexi, Yehani, Rhodish

The Principality of Innithel in southwestern Ruvera

Innithel is a small principality located in what was until recently the southwestern corner of Ensor. It was established in 798 ND when an unprecedented incursion of Mist from the nearby Misty Reaches cut it off from the rest of the kingdom, leaving it completely isolated and without effective governance. It is made up largely of lands that were once part of Ensor's County Innithel, though the boundaries are not exact.

People

The population of Innithel, thin and scattered as it mostly is, is chiefly made up of people of Ilexi heritage. Pragmatic and resourceful, they make up the brunt of the farmers, shepherds, hunters, miners, lumberjacks, and other hardy outdoorfolk who are the bedrock of the land. Those who live in town and village also engage in a variety of trades, from smithing and carpentry to fulling and weaving. Numerous Yehani live along the coast, the descendants of those who sailed across the Adelantean long ago to establish new city-states in southwestern Ruvera. Rhodish ancestry is also not uncommon, and can be discerned in the striking height and fairness of some of the land's inhabitants.

The largest concentration of people is in the principality's single large port town and de facto capital, St. Loomis, while most others reside in the small villages and hamlets that thinly dot the landscape. Few people live far distant from any one of these centers of civilization, as there is some safety from the Mist to be found within groups and defensible settlements. A few bands of Rovara have been known to roam the moors and forests, but it is said that they were becoming less frequently sighted and fewer in number even before Innithel was cut off from the rest of Ensor.

Although typically reserved around outsiders, the people of Innithel are often much more boisterous among themselves, with a reputation for rough good humor, puckish irreverence, and an eye for the potentially humorous in even the worst situations. They work just as hard as they need to, having as great a love for the leisure of saints' days as for the fruits of their labors. They do tend to have a somewhat fatalistic outlook which is perhaps natural to their difficult situation and surroundings, and while highly adaptable to change they do not tend to initiate it or to welcome it at first. They are rather skeptical of institutions and irreverent towards authority -- aside from the Mistwatch and the ancient noble line of the Greyleighs -- but their loyalty once earned runs deep, and their devotion to their homeland is boundless.

Economy

The vast majority of the people of Innithel belong to the peasantry who work the land, some of them as serfs laboring on holdings belonging to the noble Greyleigh family, others as free tenants with fewer obligations and correspondingly greater independence. In either case, their livelihood is sustained by a mixed agriculture growing grains such as barely and oats, root crops such as turnips and beets, and orchard fruits like lusks. Peasants supplement their cultivation with fishing and hunting, as a well as foraging for wild plants that supply both food and medicine. Besides working for their own subsistence, serfs produce food and goods for use by the Greyleighs and their various dependents, while free tenants often sell their surplus in their local village or at larger marketplaces and fairs.

In addition to farming, sheep raising is widespread throughout Innithel, in part because large areas of the principality are only poorly suited to cultivation. But the wild moorlands and verdant meadows are ideal for sheep, and this region has historically been second only to Courant itself in the production of fine wool and the prized couranty cloth into which it is made.

Innithel also has a long tradition of mining, with tin and lead the most common ores taken from veins scattered around the area. This has led to a small but thriving pewter industry, concentrated in Sterbith and St. Loomis, where a handful of master craftsmen turn out exquisite pewterware vessels, jewelry, fixtures, and more, while their journeymen produce dishware, utensils, and other day-to-day wares that are nevertheless finely crafted and quite beautiful. Local mines have also yielded up silver and copper of good quality. However, many of these mines have fallen into disuse and disrepair as a result of royal policy, which in recent years has favored the expansion of old mines and the opening of new ones closer to the capital.

In the capital of St. Loomis, fishing is a major occupation and source of food, while shipbuilding and a whole host of trades associated with the port town's once-thriving commerce are hoped to see at least some small revival with the start of the trans-Adelantean trade with Omrazir.

Towns & Hamlets

• St. Loomis, the capital of Innithel, a port town renowned for its shipyards and home to the Cathedral of the Blessed Wayfarer.
• Doe, a shepherding community where life revolves around the raising of the hardy Bentmoor Blackface sheep and the harvest of their wool.
• Lessaway Fair, site of several lively seasonal fairs and market days that draw visitors from across Innithel.
• Marshowl, a town formerly of the neighboring County Bent, whose quarriers and stonecutters are in as much demand as their bowyers and fletchers.
• Nytt, a bounteous farming and dairy village that produces the best milk and cream in the land.
• Plew-on-Sea, a stop for travelers along the Wayfare and home to the ferry that connects the Windhove Isles to the mainland.
• Redhen, a small village known for its brewery and signature mead the Redhen Rusty, and also ancient home to a line of oracular chickens.
• Sleithdale, a pleasant hamlet lying in the heart of the country's most fertile farmland.
• Sterbith, a sturdy little town well known for its mines and smeltery as well as for fine metalwork.
• Tebbit's Cross, a crossroads town where four roads meet, high on the lonely moors.
• Thynck, a tough little town on the border of the Mist, eking out a living from sheep raising and its famous fine clay known as thynckelmarge.