Old Vailia

"Nothing endures forever. Even the foundations of Old Vailia eventually cracked and crumbled under the weight of two thousand years."

- Renengild

Old Vailia is the now-defunct Grand Empire of Vailia, located in the Southern hemisphere. Humans and dwarves are common.

Background
Founded circa 1300 AI, Grand Vailia was a sprawling and culturally rich empire with Vailian colonies settling far north and south of Eir Glanfath. However, problems with the empire's Aedyran expansion efforts, along with a steep economic decline, led the Vailian colonies to secede in 2641 AI, establishing themselves the Vailian Republics, a confederacy of allied city-states. The Grand Empire splintered as a result, due to the machinations of the great wealthy houses and the resulting internal pressure and competition. The central authority was powerless to stop the culture of bloody vendetta that turned the wealthy families on one another. For the next century, Grand Vailia collapsed into Old Vailia as more and more nobles and their retainers either turned on each other or fled the empire, many of them immigrating to the nascent Republics or Deadfire. In the archipelago, after initially trying to survive as merchant ships, these immigrants eventually descended into piracy as their trade networks decayed and were taken over by Vailian and Rauataian colonies, forming the Principi sen Patrena.

Once the crown jewel of the southern seas, Old Vailia is now the crumbled remnants of an empire of warring merchant nations. Counting many humans and dwarves among their ranks, the Old Vailian countries are still forces to be reckoned with and are proud of their rich cultural heritage. The nations that once made up the empire are engaged in a continuous war for dominance that has been going on (and off, and on again) for over two hundred years since the empire's collapse.

Technology

 * The Dyrwood calendar (Anni Iroccio) is based on earlier Vailia calendar. The Vailians pioneered cartography and theories of the world's shape.