Thundain Thursday: Andar & the Northern Cities

There is a version of Andar that existed before the wars — a secular land, loosely influenced by the Church of Ultimus, governed by the kind of pragmatic arrangements that work well enough until something comes along to break them. That Andar is gone. What replaced it is harder, more certain of itself, and considerably more complicated to navigate if you don't understand what it has become.

Andar is now a theocracy. The Church of Ultimus does not merely influence its government — the Church is its government, administered through the Supreme Commander, Fist of Ultimus, whose authority flows downward through Lord Commanders appointed to lead each city. The Lord Commanders have ultimate authority within their jurisdictions, subject to a judicial process that exists more in theory than in practice for anyone who has seriously crossed the Church.

The people of Andar have absorbed this transformation with the particular resilience of a population that has been through enough that one more fundamental change to the order of things registers as survivable. They are tolerant of different religions and peoples — war teaches that lesson efficiently — weary of conflict, suspicious of Thraxis to the east, and perpetually exhausted by the Scornwood barbarians who press against their western borders. They are also, despite all of this, adventurous and bold. Andarians do not stay home. They go looking for things, which is either a cultural virtue or a cultural flaw depending on what they find.

Silver Falls

Silver Falls is Andar's most significant city and the hub around which the northern region organizes itself. Its name comes from the silver mines that once made it prosperous — mines that have since closed, leaving the city to reinvent itself around trade, the Church's administrative presence, and the particular economy that develops in any place that serves as the last comfortable stop before several directions of genuine danger.

Silver Falls is where roads converge. The road to Doonberg starts here. The trail to Sawtucket begins here. The routes south toward the Republic of Thrane and east toward the mountains all pass through. This makes it a city of travelers, which makes it a city of information, which makes it a city where the right conversation in the right tavern is worth more than most things you can buy with coin.

Doonberg

Three hundred and fifty miles from Silver Falls, through hilly forested country that takes ten days on horseback and fourteen on foot, lies Doonberg. The road between them is wide enough for wagons its entire length, which is the best thing that can be said about it. Campsites appear every twenty to twenty-five miles — cleared areas with fire pits, littered with the remnants of previous travelers. The midpoint campsites are watched by brigands. This is known. Travelers who are not prepared for it tend to become part of the reason the next group of travelers is more careful.

Doonberg itself is generally described as a den of criminals and disease, to be avoided if possible. This description is accurate. It is also, for certain kinds of business, exactly the point.

Mudtown

South of Silver Falls, in the forest and swamp where the roads thin out and the Church's administrative reach becomes theoretical, lies Mudtown — an encampment of bandits, cutthroats, and highway criminals that has existed long enough to develop something resembling permanent infrastructure. It is not on any official map. Lord Commanders in Silver Falls are aware of its existence in the way that administrators are aware of problems they have decided are not worth the cost of solving.

Mudtown is where people go when they need to be somewhere that asks no questions. It is also where people end up when they have run out of better options, which gives it a population that is simultaneously dangerous and desperate in roughly equal measure.

Redfern

West of the mountains, positioned to launch operations against the Scornwood barbarians who have been a persistent threat to western Andar for generations, sits Redfern — a military encampment that has grown into something more permanent than its original purpose suggested. Redfern trains soldiers. It develops what its commanders carefully describe as "specialized equipment" and what everyone else calls secret weapons. It is the sharp end of Andar's ongoing conflict with the Scornwood, and the people stationed there have the particular outlook of soldiers who have been fighting the same enemy for long enough that the war has stopped feeling like a war and started feeling like weather.

Redfern has history beyond its military function. Hogan Vandalay and Pelov the Mighty were both based here at different points — names that mean something to anyone who knows Andar's recent past, and stories worth asking about if you can find someone willing to tell them.

Sawtucket

Twenty-four miles into the mountains northeast of Silver Falls, accessible by an overgrown trail that is too rough for horses and takes three days on foot, sits Sawtucket — a logging community that has been slowly declining since the Silver Falls mines closed and the demand for timber dropped with them. The sawmill that is the valley's main source of income has fallen into disrepair. The logging camps upstream sit mostly empty.

What remains is a community that has turned inward in the way that isolated communities do when the outside world stops needing them. Sawtucket's people are clannish and self-sufficient, trading in lumber, furs, and grain alcohol rather than coin. The Sawtucket River runs down to merge with the Kringe River toward Silver Falls — a route that lumber has traveled for generations and that still works, when there is lumber worth sending.

There is a spring in Sawtucket that appears every year at the same location. The locals use it for their best liquor. Outsiders who try to find it on their own schedule tend to find that it isn't there yet.

What Andar Means

Andar is a nation that has been shaped by everything it has survived — the wars, the theocratic transformation, the ongoing pressure from the Scornwood, the slow economic decline of its northern communities. Its people carry all of that without being defined by it, which is either admirable or exhausting depending on how long you spend there.

For adventurers, Andar offers the particular richness of a place with genuine history, genuine conflict, and genuine stakes. The Church of Ultimus has opinions about everything and the authority to enforce them. The Scornwood barbarians are not a distant threat. The roads between cities are not safe. And somewhere in the mountains northeast of Silver Falls, a spring appears every year that nobody has ever fully explained.

Thundain is the personal campaign setting of John Reyst, creator of d20pfsrd.com — the world's most popular free Pathfinder 1e rules reference, used by millions of Pathfinder players worldwide. Support John's work and get exclusive early access to Thundain content on Patreon.