The popular image of Taldor being a nation of inbred fops sipping tea as their empire burns isn’t entirely baseless, but reducing the entire nation to only that does a disservice to its citizens and influence. Much of Avistan’s culture and language stems from Taldor, and the empire influenced the history of three continents. But, overseen by rulers with more interest in luxury than the nation’s well-being, Grand Prince Stavian III being only the most recent, the nation now is a shadow of its former self.
Taldor is a nation of long histories and deep divisions. Following Earthfall and the Age of Darkness, it was the first settlement on Avistan to rebuild itself, allying disparate city-states into an empire. This mythic task, achieved by the legendary First Emperor Taldaris, gave birth not only to a nation but also to a nationalist fervor. Taldan patriotism praised hard work and discipline; the nascent empire channeled these values by mastering cavalry and building roads from Oppara to the Arcadian Ocean unmatched by the rest of the continent’s scattered Kellid city-states. Taldor’s military might created imperial economic power; Taldans saw their conquests as bringing enlightenment to “backwards” people and inferior states, seeing the empire itself as proof they deserved the great wealth that flowed from their mighty colonies.
Those days of dominion are long gone. Though Taldans still refer to them as “the colonies,” Andoran, Cheliax, Galt, Isger, and Lastwall are all independent nations, their populations and resources no longer subject to Taldan governance or Taldan use. While the nation remains a military and economic juggernaut, it has little to show for its past glories beyond an immense but ever-diminishing treasury, an out-of-touch aristocracy, and nationalist nostalgia. Taldan culture still prizes hard work and discipline, but the common folk are the ones practicing those virtues, for little recognition or reward; the nobility, like their imperial predecessors, profess national pride for its own sake, sure that their continued wealth shows they must be doing something right. All the while, Taldor’s once-legendary infrastructure of aqueducts, bridges, canals, and highways crumbles, leaving pockets of the population completely cut off from the nation and areas rendered uninhabitable as rural farming collapses. A corrupt, labyrinthine bureaucracy stymies those nobles who do want to improve the system—or even just maintain their lands.
Taldan people descend from the ancient Azlanti, though not as directly as they might claim. Their ancestors wandered slowly across the Inner Sea region following Earthfall, pushed progressively further east by orcs and aggressive Kellid tribes. Over time, as they incorporated blood and language from Kellids, Garundi, and Keleshites, Taldor’s ancestors grew into a distinct people. Most modern Taldans can trace their ancestry to at least two continents but share key features of their culture, including confidence, stubbornness, a strong sense of camaraderie, and a love of history and art.
Intense traditionalism means Taldan culture is still steeped in sexism and racism that many other nations have spent decades gradually shedding. While any Taldan can own property or hold a title via promotion, marriage, or appointment, the law of primogeniture dictates that only men can inherit, both demonstrating and perpetuating Taldor’s inequalities. While many reformers are trying to reverse these attitudes—the emperor’s own daughter, Princess Eutropia, included— Taldor as a whole resists change, even for the better, as a matter of principle. The old ways forged an empire and conquered a hostile world, after all. Why shouldn’t they work now?
Geography
Taldor stretches around the eastern coastline of the Inner Sea, extending from the temperate Verduran Forest in the north to the warm plains surrounding the Jalrune River in the south, and reaching east to the World’s Edge Mountains and the rolling savanna beyond. Its domain encompasses foothills, primeval forest, broad rocky plains, verdant fields, swamps, and desert, divvied up by an immense network of roads and canals. The bulk of Taldor’s population hugs the coastline of the Inner Sea and the banks of the mighty Porthmos River, but large settlements exist in the World’s Edge Mountains and the contested southlands as well.
Taldor is made up of 12 prefectures and several dozen small, largely uninhabited provinces, with each prefecture divided into smaller duchies, duchies divided into counties, and counties finally divided into baronies. The nation owes much of its continued prosperity to the sheer diversity of local products it can export: the World’s Edge Mountains produce rich, deep veins of iron, gold, silver, copper, and tin; the coastline offers a wealth of fish, shellfish, and strong winds to power local mills; the Verduran Forest produces abundant timber and a variety of valuable plants, including healing herbs, fruit, and unique spices. The abundance of volcanoes along the nation’s eastern and northern borders results in rich soil that produces a huge variety of apples, figs, grains, grapes, pears, pomegranates, rice, and olives, all of which find their way into Taldan cooking.
Thanks to centuries of neglect, civil engineering marvels that were once the envy of the world now slowly crumble, producing striking tableaus of abandonment: canals clogged with mud and reeds, tumbledown aqueducts creating beautiful waterfalls in the middle of fields, and roads that simply end for several miles before resuming. Despite this, Taldor still boasts one of the highest standards of living in Avistan for its rural community, and even in lean years, few farmers need worry where their next meal will come from.
Government
Taldor is a hereditary monarchy, with a large senate that shapes imperial decrees into functional law and votes on necessary matters that don’t attract the crown’s attention. A sprawling bureaucracy manages the day-today challenges of governance. Grand Prince Stavian III sits on the throne, but is an aging, indifferent emperor, enjoying the excesses of wealth and rarely appearing in public. The nation’s 222 senators have likewise taken a light-handed approach to governance, letting much of the nation’s government run on inertia. While the imperial bureaucracy remains functional—managing crops, news, and disaster relief, as well as collecting taxes and settling legal disputes—bureaucrats’ diligence and effort is set back by the millennia of cobbled-together offices that often leave departments underfunded, redundant, or entirely unstaffed and existing on paper only.
Much of the nation’s rule falls onto regional nobles, so quality of life varies widely depending on the local lord’s whim. While all Taldans have the legal right to move freely, in reality moving to a new domain is often too expensive to be feasible, and some nobles even hold their tenants hostage despite the law.
While Taldor holds tight to its traditions, enough senators, nobles, and regular citizens have grown sick of the status quo to form the beginning of a reform movement. They call themselves Loyalists, and declare their allegiance to the history, great deeds, and people of Taldor, rather than any individual—even the emperor. While she is not a Loyalist, Princess Eutropia also works to reform many of Taldor’s ancient customs and broken systems, with a particular focus toward poverty and gender inequality, and many within the Loyalist movement support her efforts to repeal primogeniture and allow any person to inherit family lands and titles.
In opposition to the Loyalists stand a growing movement of Imperialists, who consider the Primogen Crown the one true authority in Taldor, with the senate and nobility existing only to carry out the emperor’s will. This disparate group shares the firm belief that Taldor’s greatness was rooted in its oldest traditions—and that embracing new ideas was what cost Taldor its imperial might. Their most extreme members insist that no middle ground can exist: either Taldor must reconquer former colonies like Galt and Andoran, or else the empire is doomed to crumble away into nothing.
While not every Taldan belongs to a faction, the increasing polarization of Taldan society is raising tensions across the nation. Other conflicts—growing political instability in Thuvia, rumors that the Seven Houses are undermining Andoran’s government, the squashed rebellion in Cheliax, and the secession of Ravounel—serve only to intensify the turmoil. Secret societies and fraternities, a longtime staple of the Taldan aristocracy that until recently amounted to little more than private clubs, have begun maneuvering to gain power or hoard wealth now, with the expectation that Grand Prince Stavian III’s passing will lead to a painful and protracted succession conflict.
