Valley of Six Barons
Source: Adapted from Teflonshugenja's Six Baronies on the unofficial Exalted wiki.
Geography
The Valley of Six Barons is located in the Eastern Threshold, bordered to the northwest by Redrock, to the north by Ardeleth, and to the northeast by Tolvin. It is a large, fertile region, well suited for agriculture, though the rocky hills whose cliffs encircle the valley are difficult to traverse and render it somewhat isolated. The hills lessen somewhat towards the valley’s northern end, but are nearly impassable elsewhere: while there is mining in the hills to the west, this has fallen to independent mining settlements (the largest of which is Vedegal) as the cliffs facing the Valley are too difficult to ascend. At the southern end of the Valley, a break in the cliffs leads to the smaller Valley of Shards, and beyond it to Valeria.
The Valley is divided into six baronies, each ruled by a feudal lordling controlling one of the six rivers flowing down the cliffs to supply the Valley with water. While wealth and population mean these do not raise mighty armies, these lords feud with each other to shift their borders and disrupt the flow of crops to the coffers of their rivals.
An ancient road, left from a long forgotten age, winds through the valley, crossing each of the six rivers in turn. The road itself has fallen into severe disrepair, the bulk of its length now merely a rough track scattered with glass pebbles… the surface of the road was once made of poured black rock reinforced with fist-sized beads of green Adamantine Glass, and while most has crumbled the surrounding villages tend to feature cottage foundations built of stacked road fragments and mortared glass to let in the light.
The capital of each barony is located on a bridge of imperishable metal, which once allowed the road to cross the Valley’s rivers. The bridges are wide, and each has a tower at its center, which serves as a fortified manor for the ruling baron. Because of the limited military capabilities present amongst the barons, no baron is capable of attacking and defeating another’s ‘bridge-castle’, ensuring their battles remain at the level of border skirmishes.
Economy
The Valley is self-sufficient in basic terms, with ample production of food and hemp textiles along with some wood (all deciduous trees). Food is exported to surrounding kingdoms and settlements, particularly the mining hamlets in the surrounding mountains, in exchange for metals... these in turn are traded to merchants coming from the north and south in exchange for luxury goods and items not available in the Valley.
Those independent traders trying to move between the Northeast and the Scavenger Lands by way of the Valorous River (a tributary of the Rock River) rather than along the Guild-dominated Silver River through Linowa, find that the Valley of Six Barons has fallen under sway of its own commercial cartel, the network of criminal gangs known as the Valley Syndicates.
The Valley Syndicates make their money through a functional monopoly on trade within the Valley of Six Barons. They are technically criminals, and have no legal hold on commerce… but the taxes and tariffs imposed by the barons on all commerce are massive. The Valley Syndicates, smuggling goods to market without paying those tariffs, often provide the only affordable goods to the local populations. The profits they gain are then invested in payoffs to the feudal lords and in hiring thugs to strong-arm any competition and extort protection payments (in a percentage of goods carried) from independent merchants travelling through the Valley.
Many across Creation have attempted such efforts, but these are almost always crushed by worried governments seeking to enforce their laws, or by The Guild seeking to destroy any organisation which might disrupt its own trade. But the Guild has made no effort to crush the Valley Syndicates, and has chosen not to involve itself in their territory… the Syndicates, after all, disrupt the independent merchants who attempt to reach the valuable goods of the Northeast outside Guild auspices and the Silver River trade route.
Recent Developments
The status quo in the Valley of Six Barons has persisted for many centuries without change, and few saw reason it would be different… until the Bull of the North came to the Northeast, and was met by the Imperial Legions in the War with the Bull.
While the Valley of Six Barons was not allied to either side, and remained outside of notice for the bulk of the war, as strategoi Tepet Arada faced an ever more desperate situation he formulated a plan to stage a breakout, evacuating troops towards the Valorous River, which would carry them to the Rock River and then the safety of Greyfalls. The Tepet Legions marched through the Valley of Six Barons unopposed but unsupported, and soon after were followed by a force of Icewalker and Haltan troops serving the Bull of the North, which passed through the Valley with similar ease. The two forces met after they had passed out of the Valley of Six Barons into the Valley of Shards, where the Tepet Legions were destroyed in the Battle of Futile Blood.
The victorious army of Yurgen Kaneko did not plant a banner in the Valley of Six Barons. His army moved troops and goods too and fro as the field of Futile Blood was looted of its valuables, paying no attention to the sovereignty of the local lords or crime bosses… and they did not dare contest him. Indeed, having seen the power of the armies marching through their lands has changed the outlook of the Valley’s barons: essence cannons and demonic formations would bat aside barony armsmen and smash the forts they had long thought invincible into dust. All fear that one amongst their number might gain the Bull’s patronage and thus the strength to crush the five others, so all mouth fealty to Kaneko and offer up a portion of their peasants’ bounty to feed his armies, competing to provide more than their peers. If the Bull of the North cares at all for the Valley or its rulers, he has as yet given no sign.
