The Duchy of San d’Louves (SAHN-de-LOOV) is a war-hardened region, lying on the northeastern coast of the Kingdom and home to the mouth of the great Rothlin River. The Duchy’s territory is dominated by a flat and fertile plain around the River, slowly rising up to the east into a series of hills that eventually transition into the Scarthwall and the Tomarran Plateau. A handful of rocky islands sit off the coast, heavily fortified and manned year-round by soldiers and Ponters skilled at handling the many siege weapons that stand ready upon the fortress walls.
Victims of Skalding raids from the sea and Tomarran raids from down the Skarthwall for millennia, the d’Louvians have been forced to learn the art of war through long, repeated practice. No village in the Duchy is without a defensive wall that would make a fortress proud, and the ports along the Rothlin have been built, rebuilt, and reinforced until they have become masterpieces of defensive architecture and enchantments. The Duchy gained its name from the blood soaking the lands and seeping into the rivers after a particularly bloody assault by a Skalding warband — it was said that the Rothlin resembled a river of blood seeping from the heart of the Kingdom, and so the Duchy was renamed the San d’Louves, or the Blood of Wolves in honor of the dead.
The d’Louvians are a stoic and war-like people, having born the brunt of invasion from the sea for all of the Kingdom’s history. However, they are also keenly focused on what can be done to raise themselves up when war is not upon their doorstep. Theirs were the ships that were first to venture to far-off lands after the Skaldings ceased their raiding, to seek new goods and trade routes. Theirs are the hands and minds which built the great fortresses upon the banks of the Rothlin, and which have devised and maintained many of the ingenious pumps and irrigation systems that the Kingdom is known for. They tend to the land with just as much care and love as they tend to their weapons and armor, bringing forth its bounty year after year. They will always seek to grow and prosper as much as possible, in preparation for the inevitable day when the hounds of war howl once again.