Hadla

A quiet, uneventful, and unremarkable nation, Hadla can be the perfect place for retired heroes to spend the remainder of their years in undisturbed peace.

With steamy, rainy summers and damp, rainy winters, Hadla’s fertile soil can produce crops virtually year-round. The jungles that occupy its southwest can be dangerous, so younger would-be adventurers looking to make a name for themselves often head into the jungle looking for trouble. The rest of the nation, where most of its population resides, is quite peaceful and little ever seems to happen.

Academic.

Bundimor has a large library, and most of the major cities and towns in Hadla have some form of library or school center. There are no major universities or academies in Hadla, so most scholarly information is passed down orally or ignored as unimportant.

Aristocratic and Political.

Hadla operates on a traditional feudal model. The monarch delegates certain regions to the dukes and duchesses, who divide their regions into vassal states run by counts and settlements overseen by barons. Hadla’s current monarch is Queen Magya VI, who commands respect from the other nobles and of whom the common folk hold almost no opinion, positive or negative.

Mercantile and Trade.

There are few natural resources of much worth in the nation aside from some pigment dyes that can be extracted from plants in the jungle. Capable of sustaining itself on its own food supply, Hadla’s economy primarily functions from inter-settlement trade, but some merchant caravans will occasionally journey north across a small mountain range to trade with Nalathesh. Others will descend into the Great Chasm to trade with Vadan and Unjaarn. Trade with Tafunga is very rare due to the undeveloped nature of the Hadlan jungle. There are no well-maintained roads and only a few outpost towns in this region.

Militant.

As is traditionally the case of feudal nations, there is not a nationalized military. Instead, each noble ha a small private militia that they can levy on their own behalf to quell bandits, or on behalf of their superiors when the dukes or monarchs fear that a neighboring nation might take interest in invading Hadla. All of the combined levied soldiers of Hadla would be unlikely to stave off an invasion, but none of Hadla’s neighboring nations have much interest in conquering them as they have little in the way of valuable resources.

Religious.

Hadlans commonly worship the Celestial Council and the Stravon Conclave of the Archfae. Many Hadlans hold the belief that it can’t hurt to try to appease every deity, so many households have whittled likenesses of dozens of deities scattered throughout their houses and on their mantles.

Social.

Hadlan society usually has some minor holiday coming up. With a focus on cycles of emotion, cycles of the seasons, and the cycle of life and death, every few weeks there will be a festival of one kind or another celebrating these states of existence.

Underworld.

Many of the nobles in the feudal model want to expand their own importance and influence, and most are willing to employ underhanded means to achieve this. Hiring scoundrels to plant incriminating evidence on a rival noble is all too commonplace.

Bundimor

The capital of Hadla overlooks the second-largest of the nation’s lakes. The monarch’s palace is a traditional stone castle with a large enough public park inside its courtyard that all of the capital city’s residents could live there in times siege. Other than this impressive castle, Bundimor is just a larger version of any other Hadlan town: wooden homes, shingled or thatched rooftops, livestock and humanoids traversing the same muddy streets and working the same damp fields.

Points of Interest

The Great Chasm. Hadla’s entire southeast border overlooks the Great Chasm. See Bridgemoor for more information.

Kozia Jungle. The Kozia Jungle is home to two full nations along with part of two other nations, including part of Hadla. The Kozia Jungle is vast and supports huge biodiversity, offering plenty of lethal challenges to young adventurers.

Quest Ideas

• The heroes might be young upstart adventurers looking to test their mettle in the jungle.
• The heroes are tasked with guiding a merchant caravan to Nalathesh, Unjaarn, or even Tafunga or Valstrom.
• The king of sixty years has died without leaving an heir. Various nobles throughout the nation vie for the throne.