Kallavesa
Overview
This is the ancestral home of the Kallavesi, a land of cold stagnant bogs. The land changes through the seasons, but always has a feeling of brooding stillness. In the warmer months it is a boggy marsh cut through with streams and fjords. In the winter the waterways freeze over and the whole land is covered with frost and snow. The marsh serves as the national graveyard and this is a place of ancient secrets and mysticism. The stories of the mystics say that in ancient times a flight of crows flew over the marshes scattering feathers into the waters below. Where each feather landed, a Kallavesi emerged from the marshes.
Thanes' halls are traditionally constructed entirely from wood here and those built in marshy areas are raised up on stilts. Many halls in Kallavesa are built around sacred places or places with a magical reputation.
Major Settlements
Rundhal
Once the capital of Kallevesa, where mystics sent dreams to the Steinr, and where the wise met to choose the monarch of Wintermark before the Empire. It is still a place of utmost importance to those who follow the Kallavesi traditions, and is where many of the oldest traditions are passed on. Scops come to the round hall to learn the stories and songs that tell their nation who they are and inspire heroes across all of Empire.
Minor Settlements
Fisk
A comparatively recent settlement, primarily now a fishing village. Before the Empire, the threat from the orcs of what is now Mitwold was too great to consider a civilian settlement this far south, or this far outside the marshes. Indeed, it started as a purely military outpost. When the warriors left, the traders that had made their home around the small port stayed on.
Ishal
Lies across the Sovevann from Rundhal and Masi, furthest of the three settlements round the lake at the heart of Kallevesa. It’s where the wise go to read the future in the flight of birds, as the scops learn at Rundhal and the dead heroes rest in the marshes near Masi. It’s a place for the old, for learning and for clear thought. Threes, and threes and threes the seers say, those who foretold the coming of the Steinr.
Masi
Home to the dead and those who guard them. Funerals are held here, the marshes the resting-places for the greatest dead of Wintermark, although occasionally fierce disputes arise between the Keepers of Masi and the Stewards of the Dead in Highguard’s Necropolis as to where great Winterfolk should lie. When the Feni break out of their woodlands to the south, it is the warriors of Masi who force them back.
Westerhal
Once the second settlement of Kallavesa, home to the small fleet of boats that tried to keep the coast safe from barbarian raiders. Now its importance has dwindled, in part due to the rise of Meade in the Marches, which has much better access to wood and stores.
Wittal
A place of learning, of study of herbs and plants for their medicinal and magical properties. Many Grimnir have spent a season or more studying here, as have healers from further afield, even a few from far Urizen. Some never return from foraging expeditions into the deep-woods.
Places of Interest
The Sovevann
The weed-choked waters at the heart of Kallavesa, boundaries and waterways shifting and reform all the time, as small islands of floating reeds drift on unpredictable currents.
The Tree of Swords
A lone elm tree in a glade hung with the swords of dead Wintermark warriors, maintained by the Kallavesi at Wittal. Weapons are hung there of warriors who died with their quests uncompleted. It’d said that if the tree ever flowers, the warriors will return.