The Northern Lands

Larger in area than three or four Drelmuk provinces yet under a million inhabitants. Reached by two fords across the Mitoburo, the southern fief of Grand Duke Lukins being the richest and most cultivated part. After Lorist consolidates his grip the four-family alliance turns the region into a near-autonomous bloc.

Illustration: ESA / Copernicus Sentinel data (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO). Real-world photograph chosen for atmosphere — the novel itself has no canonical illustrations.

The Northern Lands (also called the Northern Plateau in common speech) are a vast but thinly settled tableland: larger in area than three or four Drelmuk provinces yet home to fewer than a million people. Despite the name the region lies nearer the centre of the continent than its northern rim; in Galentean common tongue 'plateau' denotes backwardness rather than terrain — the land rises only about a hundred metres above the surrounding plains. It is cut off to the south by the Mitoburo River and to the north by the Demon Dragon Ridge, beyond which an impassable wilderness has lain untrodden for a thousand years.

The climate is harsh: winter brings deep snow and bitter frost, and each year a magical-beast tide rolls down from the Dragon Ridge against the walled holdings. The land yields a single harvest a year. On the west of the Norton domain the region meets the sea at the Blade Ridge, an unbroken wall of sheer cliffs and black reefs, with only three passes down to the water.

The richest, most developed stretch is Grand Duke Lukins's southern holding, nicknamed the 'pearl of the Northern Lands'; even there the population is only thirty to forty thousand. Contact with the outside world rests on just two crossings of the Mitoburo, which is the chief reason the region was never opened up.

The Northern Lands form the north-eastern marches of the fallen Krissen Empire and nominally belong to the Second Prince's Iberia Kingdom as part of its five provinces. House Norton held the eastern edge here for over two centuries, fending off the mountain barbarians and shielding its neighbours' rear.

When the Iberia Kingdom was founded the Second Prince, to win Grand Duke Lukins's support, placed all the plateau's landed nobles under him — but at the same time granted titles to more than forty new lords across the local wastes in one stroke. This deliberately set the old and new nobility at each other's throats: territorial wars broke out and several houses were wiped out with their families. Rather than smother the feuds, Lukins secretly fanned them, weakening the nobles and bending them to his planned 'Duchy of Lukins'.

It is here that Lorist returns to claim the Norton inheritance. At the family knights' council Fatty Shi makes the correct diagnosis: the region's whole affliction is vast land with too few people; solve that and nothing can stop the family's revival. Lorist leads the northern convoy and a hundred thousand refugees onto the plateau, betting not on conquering the whole North but on developing his own domain.

After the 'Southern Disaster' (ch 163–164) — the Norton punitive campaign with its 'three destructions' policy (loot all, burn all, relocate all) — Lukins's southern 'pearl' is reduced to ash, while the Norton bloc seizes the eastern trade routes and the snow-salt monopoly, turning the region into a near-autonomous enclave amid the chaos.

Lorist dreams of one day getting the refugees and convoy folk to take pride not in being 'Northerners' but in belonging to House Norton — to call themselves 'Nortonians'.