Derange

• Virtue: Autumn (Plenty) - Derange is a vibrant, healthy land, a veritable cornucopia of resources.
• Vice: Priestess Reversed (Impracticality) - Derange is full of people who fled over the Purple Mountains and searched for deeper meaning, or the Red Men who've been around all along. In both cases, the world has passed them by, and doesn't care about their insights.
• Fate: King (Authority vs. Tyranny) - Derange is being consumed by the Unity Covenant, and its conquest is simply a matter of when. But will the Covenant bring new authority and guidance to the land, or will it grind Derange under its boots?
• *Usurper: The Injun (Harmony vs. Savagery) - The Red Man has flourished in Derange for countless generations, living among the flora and fauna of Derange, taking only what they need, and wasting nothing they take. Upright, the Red Man card represents the triumph of cooperation between man and nature; reversed, the Red Man warns us of what happens if you spend too much time in the wilds.

  *Parts of Derange experience Usurper Turmoil. The Duchies that have become a part of the Unity Covenant, and are ruled by two Usurpers struggling for dominance - the Red Man and the Empty Throne (of the Pure Lands). Whenever a given Usurper comes up, if it's upright, it remains; if it's reversed, it is replaced by the other Usurper when the deck is shuffled.

  Geography

  Derange is a long, wide land, stretching from the Lofty Mountains in the west, to the foothills in the shadow of the Purple Mountains that form the western border of the Pure Lands, and from the Ice Flats in the north to the dusty Panhandle that marks the border between Derange and Santana. Most of Derange is flat, arable land. Deer and antelope are very common, and the buffalo migration takes them all the way across and through the Realm.

  Politics

  Parts of Derange have already been sectioned off, Duchies under the Unity Covenant. The most interesting of these Duchies is Red River, whose Duke is an actual, full-blooded Red Man named Sue (he was forced to marry a homely duchess named Patch in return for getting the Duchy of Red River - unifying the blood and all). Red River is the "Red Duchy", an attitude that not all Red People approve of (unsurprisingly) but which has still prompted a rather interesting migration of Red People in the year since it was announced. It's also not very popular with the Pale Folk who were living there when it was incorporated.

  • Highland - The first Duchy to be created after the Unity War, Highland is a part of Derange south of Twin Seas, with a coast on the Eerie Sea. It is also north of Iron Mountain. Highland borders Haven, New Dominion, and Bluegrass to the east. The seat of its government is Sparrowhawk, where the first guns were smithed.
  • Iron Mountain - The second Duchy to be created after the Unity War (created at the first Synod meeting at Highland, no less), Iron Mountain is in Derange directly west of Bluegrass, south of Highland, northeast of Yellow Hammer and directly north of the nearby realm of Santana. The seat of the Duchy is the burgeoning town of Gateway, at the nexus of the Big River and the Muddy River.
  • Twin Seas - Named after the two seas that it borders - Heron Sea and Eerie Sea - Twin Seas is the third Duchy created after the Unity War, Twin Seas shares a large border to the north with the Ice Flats and and to the east with the Duchy of Keystone. To the southeast, across the Eerie Sea is Highland. To the southwest is Cornucopia, and to the west is the Duchy of Red River. The seat of Twin Seas is the city of Superior, in the center of the largest lake of the Duchy.
  • Cornucopia - Cornucopia is west of Iron Mountain, southwest of Twin Seas, southeast of Red River, and north of the Realm of Santana - it was the first Duchy that shares no border with the original eleven members of the Unity Covenant. To the west of Cornucopia, the realm of Derange stretches off into the distance. The seat of Cornucopia is the city of Homestead.
  • Red River - Red River borders the Ice Flats to the north, having the largest contiguous border of all the Duchies with those icy wastes. It is north of Cornucopia, and west of Twin Seas. To the west and southwest of Red River, the untamed parts of Derange stretch off into the distance. Red River's Duke is a Red Man named Sue Isanti, who married a homely widow named Patch (Whitecrest) - instead of counts and boundaries, Red River divides its population into chiefdoms that are generally without borders. It is the newest of the Duchies, and is preparing for hosting the Synod next Beltane. The official seat of Red River is Deadwood.

  The parts of Derange that have yet to be formally brought into the Unity Covenant have their work cut out for them. The Red People are a transient people, and segregate themselves by tribe, each ruled over by a chieftain. Meanwhile, the settlements of the Pale Folk are ruled by former viscounts and baronets, now elevated to counts and barons. There's a lot of minor skirmishes between the different Pale Folk settlements (as borders between the new Counties and Baronies have not been formerly determined), between the various tribes of Red People, and between Pale Folk and Red People.

  History

  Thirty-six generations ago, the first Red Men arrived on the Ice Flats from parts unknown. They quickly spread to cover all of Derange, Santana, the Lofty Mountains, and The Pure Lands. Some few managed to reach the Golden Coast, but the harrowing trek through the Lofty Mountains meant that few survived, and even fewer returned. They call themselves Indian.

  The Red People led a more-or-less idyllic, communal lifestyle among the flora and fauna of the Lands of Marak, cultivating their 'mojo.' The tribes that settled in Santana traded and commingled with the Jaguar People of the Mixed Lands before the first theandric rose and united the peoples.

  Nine generations ago, a plague swept through The Pure Lands - nine out of ten Red People died. The survivors fled the accursed place, heading westward across the Purple Mountains, carrying the plague with them. Soon after, the first of the Pale Folk arrived in The Pure Lands and gave that Realm its new name. Within a generation, some of them crossed the Purple Mountains, and gave Derange its name.

  They were accustomed to everyone being able to speak the Tongue, regardless of their origin; to find a savage people who spoke a splintered language, and who did not understand the Tongue, made them think they had wandered into a madhouse. Even now, those who are accustomed only to the Tongue think they're listening to the moon-touched when they first hear a Red Person speak. The Red People have been notoriously resistant to abandoning their own languages, which they believe they need for their 'mojo.'

  On the Red People's side of the coin, when they saw the strange Pale Folk cross the Purple Mountains, they were convinced that they were the harbingers of the plague, come to bring it to Derange. This led them to hide from them, and treat them with kid gloves, from a distance - the timidity just added to the Pale Folk's idea of derangement. The Pale Folk learned what the Red People called themselves - one of the few words they all share, 'Indian' - and eventually corrupted it to Injun.

  Of course, despite the "moon-touched savages," more came over the Purple Mountains from The Pure Lands. First it was the outcasts, those whose cultures or faiths were too different from that of the Pale Folk, or who were raised in Marak's faith and rejected it. Then there were the criminals and the dreamers, the former looking for a place to hide, the latter looking for greener grass, which Derange had in plenty. They built the first homesteads and ranches and farms - some even living among the Red People's tribes. The trickle of people grew larger as Marak himself grew more corrupt.

  Then, in the Duchy later known as Highland, a Red Man named Wesson and a member of the Pale Folk named Smith created the Sparrowhawk, the first gun. With this new weapon, the dissidents crossed back over to The Pure Lands and turned against Marak, exiling him and his corrupt Navigators to the Ice Flats to the north. And then western migration exploded, as the Dukes of the Unity Covenant turned their attention westward.

  The people of the Unity Covenant came and founded towns and swore fealty to the Dukes - each town with a different Lord. Some of the older settlers just lived among them, for the attitude was freer and more accepting in Derange. Others fled, heading for the Lofty Mountains or Santana. The gun became more popular on this side of the Purple Mountains - most of the improvements on that newfangled contraption happened among the gunsmiths of Derange. There were occasional spats with the Red People, who fervently held on to the land they considered theirs. And sometimes, towns under different Dukes fought with one another as well.

  The Dukes of the Pure Lands coveted Derange, but could not agree on how to bring it into the Unity Covenant. Of course, none of them considered treating the Red People as equals - they wouldn't even learn the Tongue. There were two factions - one wanted to expand the borders of current Duchies into the lands of Derange, the other wanted to create new Duchies in Derange and the other lands of Marak (mostly the land they call Santana).

  A generation ago, the Pure Lands exploded into war over Derange, the Unity Covenant broken as brother turned on brother. Naturally the war crossed the Purple Mountains to the Pale Folk that lived in Derange. Again men fled the war, this time leaving Derange, going either south to Santana or west towards the Lofty Mountains. For close to five years the war waged on, and then one day, it was over. Word spread into Derange slowly, however, and skirmishes kept on for another year.

  Since the Unity War, migration westward across the Purple Mountains has become more common than ever. In the first few years after the war, they added the Duchies of Twin Seas, Highland and Iron Mountain - the Duchies of Breadbasket and Red River were added later, in roughly that order. See the Unity Covenant for more on that. Still, most of Derange remains untamed, inhabited by a mix of Red People scattered by tribe, and Pale Folk whose vows of fealty to distant Dukes are little more than lip service.