Milosia

A rising power in eastern Aurea and rival of Narbonne, Milosia was a client province of the Great Empire. The nation is still nominally under the control of a Proconsul, though the position is appointed by the powerful Legate of the Sixth Legion in the name of the Emperor, despite there having been no clear Emperor for a century. Despite the chaos and dissolution in Aescalapea, the Milosians still bear an ancient hatred towards Aescalapeans, for reasons long since lost to time.

Milosia

The Prefecture of Milosia

Geographic Info

Continent: Aurea

Location: Eastern Central Aurea on the northwestern shore of the Aurean Sea

Society

Population: About 2.2 million (93% Human; 3% Dwarves; 2% Half-Elves; 2% Other).

Languages: Aurean, Zetian

Government

Capital: Berugia

Geography

The Prefecture of Milosia lies in east central Aurea, on the eastern flank of the Antasian Mountains and the northwestern shore of the Aurean Sea. Mountains and rivers draw its bounds: the Antasian foothills wall it off to the west; the Garanon River runs along its northern edge, dividing it from the Grand Duchy of Campois and, toward the coast, from Narbonne beyond the Bay of Calvenna. The Taddo River marks its southern border with the Principality of Treva. Within these limits the land falls away from mountain and foothill into broad, rocky plains with thin topsoil towards the coast of the Sea. While there is some agriculture, particularly vineyards, the loose and rocky topsoil is not particularly fertile, so Milosia remains rich in men and stone and poor in bread and food. The imperial road, the Via Augustus, threads the realm from north to south, through the capital city of Berugia, crossing the Garanon to bind it to Campois above, running on past the bay toward rival Narbonne, and fording the Taddo southward into the grain-fields of Treva.

Terrain

The realm falls in three steps from west to east. Highest is the Antasian frontier: bare peaks and deep, ill-famed valleys where the writ of the Sixth Legion fails and the giants and their goblin slaves keep their own counsel, with the dwarves of the Unterreich far beneath. The lands of Cordosia and Dracia lie beyond the divide with no roads or known navigable passes. Below the peaks runs a band of rugged, wooded foothills, broken country that serves as the realm's natural rampart and the seat of its frontier garrisons and hill-monasteries. East of the foothills lies the greater part of Milosia: open, rocky plains carrying the high roads, the river-trade and the bulk of the people, with the capital at Berugia set mid-way between the piedmont and the coast of the Aurean Sea.

Waterways

The River Garanon bounds Milosia to the north and the Taddo to the south; inland, the rivers Morela and Piavo flow. All four rise in the Antasian foothills and run east across the plains to the sea, watering the few grainlands and vineyards, carrying the barge-trade of the inland villages and towns down to the coast. Both have served as battle-lines as often as borders since antiquity. Between them, two interior rivers, the Morela and the Piavo, gather the runoff of the foothills and thread the plains down to the bay; the Morela flows through the capital at Berugia, whose bridges and quays it has shaped, while the Piavo waters the southern vineyards. These rivers all empty into the realm's seafront on the Bay of Calvenna, in the northwestern reaches of the Aurean Sea. Warm and shallow, the bay carries Milosia's shipping and ties its ports to Narbonne, Treva and the merchants of Aescalapea; it carries trouble as well, for the corsairs of the Ganesian shore and even Valtaani raiders range these waters and fall on the coast when the season favors them.

Society & Culture

The Milosians are an Aurean people, heirs of the fallen Empire in blood, in tongue and in temper, and they have never let themselves forget it. Theirs is a martial, prideful folk, quick to quarrel and slow to forgive, raised to the conviction that to bear arms for the realm is the first duty of a free man; for a thousand years their sons marched in the Imperial Legions, and the habit of service has outlived the master it was sworn to. They keep the old forms with a stubbornness their neighbors find by turns admirable and absurd: the ancient rites, the legionary calendar, and the magistracies of a state whose Emperor is a century dead.

Beneath this Aurean overlay runs an older stock. Before the double-headed dragon came, the foothills belonged to a hill-people known as the Sabamelii and the plains were dominated by the Milgians around their ancient capital of Tasca Obodos. Their blood, their stubborn dialect-words and their half-buried customs still surface among the herders and vine-dressers of the interior, the further one travels from the Via Augustus and the coast. Daily life is hard and plain: terraced vineyards and olive groves on the better slopes, sheep and goats on the rocky uplands, fishing-boats and merchantmen out of the coastal ports, and everywhere the sense of a proud people scraping a living from grudging ground.

Milosia is a land of cities, each a jealous commune governed by its own civic aristocracy of old families, magistrates and guild-masters, and each convinced of its precedence over the rest; the realm's politics are in large part the endless feud of these towns, held in uneasy check only by the Legion set above them. Wealth divides as sharply as pride, for the merchant houses of the coast grow fat on the sea-trade while the interior stays land-rich and coin-poor. Humans make up the great bulk of the people, but a notable dwarven minority, exiles and traders out of the Unterreich, keep forges and serve in the ranks, prized as smiths and as steady soldiers; half-elves and a scattering of other folk fill out the cities and the ports.

Two tongues serve the realm. Aurean, the vulgar descendant of the imperial speech, is the language of the street, the field and the market; Zetian, the older classical form, is kept for law, for rite and for the commands of the Legion, and a man's command of it marks his station. To speak Zetian well is to lay claim to the Empire as one's own.

Notable Locations

• Berugia, the capital, set on the Via Augustus midway between the foothills and the sea: seat of the Proconsul's palace and the Legate's praetorium, and the most faction-ridden of the communes. The Morela River flows through Berugia.
• Calvenna, the realm's great harbor on the Bay of Calvenna and the seat of its shipping magnates: founded in antiquity as a foreign merchant colony, and a seed of Milosia's long quarrel with Aescalapea.
• Castravelo, the frontier garrison-city of the Sixth Legion among the Antasian foothills, watching the giant-haunted passes.
• Spelora, the foothill monastery-town and mother-abbey of Milosian hill-monasticism, its great house dedicated to Lord Ptharos, famed for its scriptoria and its terraced vineyards and olive groves.
• Tasca Obodos, the half-ruined ancient royal capital of the Milgian kings before the Empire, now a pilgrimage city gathered about the Temple of the Triumphant, which was raised from the stones of the last king's palace.

Important Persons

• Braccio Forteguerra, the celebrated condottiero whose mercenary companies hold the Antasian passes against the giant-host, and whose loyalty lasts exactly as long as Berugia's coin.
• Eligio da Varano, Pontifex of Galea the Triumphant and keeper of her great temple at Tasca Obodos, foremost voice of the imperial faith in the realm.
• Gnaeus Aurelius of House Gradivius, Lord-Legate of the Sixth Legion and the true ruler of Milosia, who governs in the name of an Emperor a century dead.
• Lucrezia di Casa Sannazaro, the foremost shipping magnate of Calvenna and Milosia's seat on the Aureliad Consortium, whose fleets and credit reach every port of the Aurean Sea.
• Ottavio Berengaire, Proconsul of Milosia and elected civic head of Berugia, a ceremonial first magistrate who reigns at the Legion's sufferance.
• Severino of Spelora, Father-Abbot of the mother-abbey of Lord Ptharos, whose monks kept faith and letters alive through the Dark Times, and conscience of the realm's hill-monasticism.

History

A former client state of the Empire. Ancient hatred for Aescalapea.

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This article is part of the Player's Guide to Aurea

Introduction ·  Economics and Trade ·  Legends and History ·  Religion ·  Regions and Realms

Regions and Realms on Aurea

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