Carmathan

Carmathan was a duchy of the kingdom of Damara.

Description
Carmathan was sparsely populated save for the capital city of Ravensburg. The land was largely agricultural with rolling hills of farmland.

Geography
Carmathan was located in the southwest of Damara. It was bounded to the south by the border with Impiltur, to the north by the Beaumaris River, to the west by the Duchy of Arcata, and to the east by the Barony of Ostel. The Earthspur Mountains and Earthwood forest lay in the south of the province.

The duchy was bisected by the King's Road, which connected Ravensburg in the southeast to the Arcatan capital of Valls to the northwest.

Government
As a duchy of Damara, Carmathan was ruled by a hereditary duke from the house of Devlin, whose crest was a bloody scythe. The duke swore fealty to the king of Damara, although this relationship was fraught during both the rule of Zhengyi the Witch-King and the early days of the rule of Gareth Dragonsbane.

Trade
Carmathan was one of the so-called "supply provinces" of Damara, meaning it provided resources to support the rest of the kingdom. While there were some mining operations in the mountains to the south, Carmathan primarily served as the kingdom's breadbasket. In a good year, the duchy produced enough food to feed all of Damara. Much of this harvest was warehoused and transported through Ravensburg.

Carmathan was also known for breeding extraordinarily hardy horses, known as Carmathan Reds.

History
After the retreat of the Great Glacier began in the, Carmathan became the site of the first settlers who would become the Damarans. The settlement of Ravensburg was the original home of Feldrin Bloodfeathers, who would become the first King of Damara in the. The Devlin family came to rule the province as dukes, with twenty generations holding the title by the mid–14 century DR.

When Zhengyi the Witch-King conquered Damara in the, Carmathan was made into an unofficial puppet state. Following the death of the Damaran King Virdin Bloodfeathers at the Ford of Goliad, Zhengyi's agents struck against the ruling families of Damara, including the Devlins of Carmathan. In Kythorn of that year, fifty members of the house, including the then-duke Helmont the 13th, were assassinated. The only surviving claimant to the ducal throne was Zhengyi's preferred puppet, Dashard Devlin, who was quickly dubbed Duke Helmont the 14th. Under Dashard's rule, Carmathan maintained a façade of independence from the Witch-King's rule as the people were exploited for tribute. During this period of upheaval, Impiltur seriously considered trying to annex Carmathan to serve as a buffer state between themselves and Zhengi's forces, but the plan bore no fruit.

With Zhengyi's guidance, Dashard established a robust and highly successful network of propagandists to help him keep his people under control. In the, Dashard used this network to rally public sentiment against Gareth Dragonsbane, the new ruler of the Barony of Bloodstone, and plotted to invade the small barony in order to seize control of the hugely productive Bloodstone Mines. Learning of these plans, Gareth marched his army against Dashard before Carmathan had fully mobilized, but through his propaganda, Dashard convinced his people that Gareth was coming to conquer them. He managed to rally an army that clashed with the forces of Bloodstone in a days-long battle known as the Fight of Three Borders. In the end, Dashard was slain along with 1,800 of his soldiers, and the battle ended in a decisive victory for Bloodstone.

Following Dashard's death, Gareth declined to capture the duchy, and instead turned his army to face the combined forces of Zhengi's other puppets in the baronies of Morov, Ostel, and Polten. This left the duchy leaderless, but with both the Devlin-led court and Dashard's propaganda network fully intact. Almost immediately, the ducal seat was claimed by man named Theodorus, who proclaimed himself to be Dashard's long-lost brother. He was quickly named Duke Helmont the 15th, and made effective use of the propaganda network to rally the people to support him and to oppose Gareth. However, Theodorus made the mistake of trying to tie Carmathan closer to Morov, the seat of Zhengyi's puppet Dimian Ree, who had such a terrible reputation among Carmathans that the duke's own popularity was threatened. Compounding this, Gareth's sterling reputation after defeating Zhenyi that same year, and the good deeds of his Twilight Riders in the region, greatly increased the peoples' receptivity to his claim to the Damaran throne. Furthermore, doubts began to be cast on the legitimacy of Theodorus's claim to be Dashard's brother, or even a true member of the house of Devlin. His reputation took another hit when these rumors began being investigated by the highly respected monks of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose.

Ultimately, Gareth consolidated control over Carmathan when he was crowned King of Damara by the end of 1359 DR.

Notable Locations

 * Settlements
 * Ravensburg, the capital city.
 * Halfling Downs, a farming community in the southeast.
 * Forests
 * Earthwood, a forest in the south.

Inhabitants
The people of Carmathan were proud and independent, considering themselves to be "true Damarans." Prior to the mid-to-late 14 century DR, Carmathans were traditionally deeply loyal to the king of Damara, although after the end of the Bloodfeathers dynasty, this loyalty came into question. The people also had the capacity for a great deal of distrust, intrigue, and spite, especially toward those they saw as pretenders to the Damaran throne. They had a reputation for being tolerant but not welcoming to outsiders in general, although they also had deep ties to Impiltur.