Blade Maidens: Closed Fist, Open Hand – 24

“Kilzia is an oddity among the nations of Telos. While regarded as a peer by all official means, if you asked any given Verdannian knight or Falder merchant-lord their opinion after a few cups, you are like to find a far more dismissive view.

The small coastal region was a point of conflict among various nations and petty lords and would-be sea kings until the last Malica-Marado border conflict in 764. Privateers for both sides, hired to prevent their counterparts across the border from gaining any sea-born advantage, conspired and under the banners of Captains Yonglu and Ironhand laid claim to the coastline as the two kingdoms fought over the Battle of Falten Fields over a day’s travel away.

Declaring it as the new confederacy of Kilzia, every captain under the united fleets’ banner would take an equal stake in their new fledgling land and hold equal status under the new ruling council. While many expected the upstart kingdom to fall under the sword of its far larger neighbors, thanks to the overwhelming naval supremacy of the united Kilzian fleet and tactics most nobility would describe as unscrupulous at best, the Captains of Kilzia have survived by ensuring any dedicated campaign to raze their lands would prove far more costly than simply accepting their newest neighbor’s continued existence.”

– an excerpt from Telos: An Account a text by Professor Helos Rivan