Viscounty of Salinmoor
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The current year for our World of Greyhawk campaign is set during 579CY.
Inspired By Gary Gygax
The Viscounty of Salinmoor is located in the extreme southwestern portion of the Kingdom of Keoland bounded by the Azure Sea, the Javan River and the Dreadwood. Some 317 years since its establishment, Salinmoor has never featured prominently in the history of Keoland. It is a poor, backwater province that has seen history largely pass it by. It is ruled by "Viscount Cronin Secunforth III".
If there is a fame attached to the Viscounty, it is that fame attributable to the number of adventure seeking individuals who have been drawn there. In many ways, the Viscounty of Salinmoor is still a frontier province. The social structure is remarkably fluid and there is much opportunity for advancement and to make one’s mark, and perhaps fortune.
A study in contrasts, the Viscounty of Salinmoor is very egalitarian, judging individuals on their individual merit, while at the same time respecting tradition to the point of being hidebound by it. With a very diverse population for such a remote area, the Viscounty has different faces it turns to the world as it suits the inhabitants. To an outsider, Salinmoor is almost sure to appear dullish, more than a bit drab and of little interest. While all this is surely true, it is true by degrees. With greater experience, there can be found pockets of amazing vitality and vibrancy amidst the general languor.
The Viscounty of Salinmoor is largely flat. Close to the shores of the Azure Sea the ground becomes notably marshy. Inland, the soil tends to be rocky. While there are the occasional stretches of sea cliffs, at no point does the land rise much above sea level. As a result, seasonal hurricanes blowing in from the Azure Sea in the late summer often cause wide spread flooding. This makes agriculture difficult as an entire year's crops may be lost.
To the west and southwest, the Hool Marshes are without doubt the worst land in the Viscounty. The Marshes spread out in a vast delta from the main channel of the mighty Javan River. Home to innumerable insects, snakes, deadly plant species and hostile sentients, the Hool Marshes are of little to no economic value. At the same time, the population of lizard folk and less well mannered creatures are a constant concern. The only redeeming feature of the Hool Marshes, if it can be called that, are the treasures that fortune seekers can sometimes pry from its mired grasp.
Altogether more hospitable, although as hostile to intruders, is the Dreadwood that broods heavily to the north and east of the Viscounty. Home to a sovereign and isolationist nation of wood elves, very little is known to a certainty of the other inhabitants of wood for the elves are aggressive in the defense of their forested domain. Within the bounds of the Dreadwood, the elves are the supreme masters of the land. While Keoland has named the Dreadwood a protectorate, this status has never been acknowledged by the elves themselves. Wisely, Keoland has never sought to push its claim or to enter forcibly into the precincts of the elves. The elves have been similarly reasonable.
The wood elves tolerate logging within the Dreadwood, albeit only on the fringes. All logging operations are overseen by the Great Druid of the Sheldomar Valley and his circle, who are allied with the wood elves and likewise call the Dreadwood home. A single track open to commerce and travel is allowed to pass entirely through the Dreadwood. Aptly named the Dreadwood Road, it has as its northern terminus the mixed human and elven town of Silglen. The southern terminus is at the town of Burle that lies within the Viscounty of Salinmoor.
More than any other province of the Kingdom of Keoland, the Viscounty of Salinmoor is defined by water and the sea. The Azure Sea that bounds the Viscounty to the south dominates and defines life within the Viscounty. While much the same might be said for the Duchy of Gradsul, which boasts Keoland’s only significant port on the Azure Sea, Gradsul is as much a river town at the mouth of the Sheldomar as a seaport, and the Duchy enjoys a much larger land area not immediately open to the vicissitudes of waves and storms blowing in from open water.
The Viscounty of Salinmoor is almost always windy and that wind, except at the verge of the Dreadwood, is tinged with salt and spray. Dampness is endemic in all seasons and in the months of summer humidity makes the heat something to be feared, particularly when the winds die down. If there is a pleasant season, it is spring and low summer, when the air is warm but not yet hot and the sea breezes are cool and gentle before the onset of the storm season. From high summer through the depths of winter, storms are always a possibility. Hurricane season extends from late in the high summer through fall.
Settlements
• Saltmarsh
Geographical Features
• Hool Marshes
• Azure Sea
• Dreadwood
• Angler Island
• Redshore Island
• Drowned Forest
• Dunwater River
The majority of the population of the Viscounty of Salinmoor is human. This population is divided almost equally between those of Suel extraction and those of Oeridian ancestry. As in much of Keoland, however, the Suel population has been politically dominant at the highest levels of authority. In all but the family of the Viscounts, however, intermarriage without regard to ethnicity is common. Salinmoor is among the most egalitarian of Keoland’s constituent provinces.
Minority populations of Flan exist in the Viscounty along with even smaller populations that can trace their lineage to the rightly feared Yaheetes. A people tainted by a history of foul deeds traceable to the lost Isles of Woe of the Nyr Dyv, the Yaheetes are universally despised and for good reason. Most are throughly intermarried and wisely keep well to themselves. The Flan have a hatred of the Yaheetes that is pathological and genocidal. Even the worst of the Suel might blanche in the face of the Flan’s feelings toward the Yaheetes. Contrary to a popular misconception, the Yaheetes are not a Flan people and it is best not to evidence any such confusion before a anyone of Flannish descent.
Interestingly, there is surprising evidence of the Olman in the Viscounty of Salinmoor. While there are those of obvious Olman extraction living there, in almost all cases, these Olman are late arrivals. There is evidence, however, of a much earlier and significant Olman habitation. In 282 CY, during the reign of Gillum I, an Olman burial site was discovered in the Viscounty of Salinmoor. The so-called Olman Ship Burial was a buried catamaran used as a bier that contained the remains and grave goods of an Olman warrior that some have speculated may have been a noble or even king. While no similar finds have come to light, no one has been actively searching for any either.
Adventure Locations
• Tower of Zenopus
The peasants of Salinmoor are, like most Keolandish peasants, ignorant and superstitious in the extreme. They are also noticeably furtive. When speaking with strangers, they often appear over anxious, as if they wished the conversation would end or feared that it might be overheard. One frequently comes away with the impression that these peasants have something to hide or are attempting to conceal something. What, in their circumstances, is anyone’s guess. The one thing that can be said for the peasants of the Viscounty is that they are altogether harder working than the usual peasant of Keoland. Doubtless, this may be accounted for in the positive example set by the Viscounty’s active demi-human populations.
Among the aristocracy, one hesitates to say nobility, of the Viscounty of Salinmoor, there is a pronounced sense of fatalism combined with a prudish, even puritanical, mentality. While not universally so, a number of the aristocracy seem to view themselves as cursed or doomed, solely on account of inhabiting Salinmoor, if nothing else. At the same time they sigh, shrug and bemoan their lot in life, however, they are pretentiously defensive about their status and prerogatives, such as they are. The aristocracy are sticklers for protocol and tradition, even when these have long grown outdated or impractical and have been elsewhere in Keoland abandoned.
The chief exception to these attitudes are among the younger members of the aristocracy, many of whom have only lately been ennobled, at least by Keoland’s standards. Coming, as it were, from humble origins, these newly minted nobles are often outsiders to Salinmoor and bring with them an energy that is too often lacking among the natives. This energy is often noticeable in the communities these upstarts found or come to rule over. The example cannot be but a positive one. However, if one is caught unawares, the change in attitude and demeanor can seem improbably startling.
