Thorneau is a medium-sized plane marked by class struggles and trade wars. It has a rich history of music, art, and magic, most of which gets torn down or buried away whenever a new regime rises to overthrow the last one.

==Terrain==

There are large spans of area in Thorneau that are untamed wilds, beyond which the people of the plane rarely go. The main, inhabited area of the world is mostly cultivated fields, rolling hills and rich, fertile lakelands. This heartland is the queendom of Foraine, the center of civilization on Thorneau. There are lands beyond the sea that have established tentative trade agreements with Foraine, and some even house permanent settlements that originally came from the mainland, but as far as the people of Foraine are concerned, there is no true civilization outside of themselves.


==Races==

While the Wilds house a number of strange creatures, including Satyrs, Giants, Dwarves, Fairies, unicorns, griffins and dragons, the populated areas, especially Foraine, is almost entirely human, though a few elves still live openly among them. Most of the other creatures were driven out or killed during the Nouvelle Cour Ascension. The elves were a surprising ally during that revolution, and so are still tolerated today, although they have been slowly falling out of favor from most of the aristocracy in the years since.


==History==

=== Prehistory===

The history of Thorneau is mostly defined by the history of Foraine, and the history of Foraine has been defined by occasional but violent political change. Prehistoric Thorneau was nothing but Wilds, populated by giant beasts and cave dwellers who ruled one another only by sheer force. But the humans and humanoid races always cowed before the might of the great beasts.

===The First Age: The Age of the Beasts===

But then rose the first Queen of Thorneau, who won the allegiance of several of the barbaric tribes and founded the city of Torche on the western coast. Her name was Fabienne, the Tamer, although the moniker is something of a misnomer. She consolidated the strongest of the humans into an extremely rudimentary court system, and by combining their strength, they were able to keep the beasts of Prehistory Thorneau at bay. The founding of Torche is recorded as day 1, year 1 of the Queen's calendar. It is unknown how long humans and their kind toiled before Torche was founded, but it is known that Fabienne reigned for 83 years before she passed.

For almost 1200 years after the death of Fabienne the Tamer, Queen of the Beasts, the humans in and around Torche lived in relative peace, but were unable to spread much beyond the area of the city. In the year 1293, Fabienne's last female heir died, and the court descended into in-fighting to name a new queen. Their internal struggles, however, led them to grow too lax in their defenses, and the beasts of Foraine resurged. The humans of Torche had kept them out for centuries, but had done nothing to restrict their numbers, and so the beasts' population finally grew too large, and they were forced to try to take back the lands around Torche.

===The Second Age: The Age of the Mages===

It seemed all was lost, but then hope arrived from the east. Within the wilds, new courts had sprung up, always warring with one another and with the beasts of central Foraine. But, in the years before the last of Fabienne's line died out, a queen arose in the east. Her name was Léone, the Seer. One by one, she united the tribes of Giants, Elves, Dwarfs and Fairies, and eventually she mobilized her magical army and marched on the beasts, cutting a path straight through Foraine. When she reached the walls of Torche, the primitive nobles greeted her as a savior and offered her the throne. Because it was what she wanted anyway, Léone accepted, and in 1295 was crowned, becoming known as the Queen of Mages.

Under the leadership of Léone the Seer, the people of Foraine united under one banner. Magic came to the forefront of the world, and the combined might of humans and the other creatures finally destroyed the prehistoric beasts, driving those few that survived into the wilds forever. Léone was a harsh and severe queen, and had a vision for the land of Foraine, and so with each victory, she pushed her people onward ever harder, forcing them to found new cities they could ill afford. Foraine was still a wild place, and while the cities exploded into existence, the population did not grow fast enough to keep up. Most of the new cities in Foraine were already dying and being abandoned by the time Léone the Seer died in 1339.

Léone was the matriarch of the second line of Foraine queens, most of whom were mages or supported the magical arts, and most of them inherited her hard-headedness and cruelty. The years rolled by, and the queens just kept making their demands, with little or no sense of what it cost the people of Foraine. The queendom remained untamed, barely able to distinguish itself from the Wilds beyond. The towns and cities of Foraine grew, but not by much, while the people struggled to fill the mage-queens' coffers, funding for the research they conducted on their whims.

===The Third Age: The Age of the Builders===

For well over a millennium, the people suffered increasingly under Léone's line. Finally, in 2588, the people rebelled, and the first of Foraine's violent, bloody rebellions claimed the last of the second line of queens. The nobles split down racial lines. Since the time of Léone the Seer, Queen of Mages, the court had been increasingly dominated by the Giants, Dwarves and Elves. During the rebellion, the humans and elves sided with the peasants, and they overthrew the Giants and Dwarves, as well as the few human supporters, and seized power in what historians call the Nouvelle Cour Ascension. The Nouvelle Cour established an entirely new system of nobility, where the massive division of lands that had belonged to Giants and Dwarves were divided and sub-divided between the remaining nobles, and their extensive families, each of whom began supporting the countless tradeswoman guilds to help support their newfound power.

But Foraine always had a queen, and always would have a queen. For nearly two years after the Nouvelle Cour Ascension, the Court bickered, argued, and debated over who should be named Queen. But the newly empowered Court was still an entity of good intentions, and ultimately, the woman selected to ascend was the one noble who skipped out on all the argument and debate. The one woman who spent those two years among the people, trying to fix the problems caused by a thousand years of neglect. Her name was Danièle, the Cultivator, who became known as the Queen of Builders. Danièle was a popular choice for Queen, and her coronation, which took place on the last day of the year in 2589, has remained the most revered days of celebration in Foraine even to this day.

Unfortunately, Danièle ruled for only a dozen years before she succumbed to an illness in 2601. Her line continued in her tradition, heavily supporting the merchant, trade and laborer classes for the next eight centuries. It was a time of growth for Foraine. But after so long, the noble line began to stagnate and grow weak. The other noble houses of the Court were also gutted and weakened by centuries of taxes designed to pay for the public works the royal line forced on the people, always at the behest of the Guilds.

Around 3448, the great Traders Guilds were the true power in Foraine. Increasing discontent amongst the lesser nobles fed into the paranoia of the Queen and her line, and the Traders Guilds manipulated that paranoia, convincing the Queen to give more and more power to the guilds and levy higher and higher taxes, first on the nobles, and then on the people. The Traders began building more and more lavish and ludicrous projects that just served to put more money into one another's vaults.

The tyranny of the Traders Guilds finally pushed things too far in 3456, in what histories refer to as the Luxe Navire Event. The Shipwright's Guild was one of the most powerful of all the Guilds, possessing a virtual monopoly on the fishing, shipping, and exploration markets, and in their arrogance, they commissioned the construction of thirteen massive ships, each bedecked in jewels and precious metals, to show off their wealth and power, all largely at the expense of the people and the nobles. Less than a day out of port, all thirteen ships were caught in a storm and capsized, killing hundreds and losing an inconceivable amount of money. Finally, the people had had enough.

===The Fourth Age: The Age of the Scholars===

Unfortunately, neither the people nor the nobles were strong enough to oppose the vast resources of the Traders Guilds. There was, however, one group that could afford to provide leadership and hope. Academia. A consequence of the rise of skilled workers and their guilds was the need for a solid educational base, and because of that, the Great Universities had been largely exempt from the heavy taxation. They had also been intelligent, and they bided their time, pooling their resources and preparing for eventual revolution. After the Luxe Navire Event, the people of Foraine were seething, and the academics and creative forces of Thorneau were ready.

In what became known as the Troubadour's Rebellion, the Academics united the common people and the weakened nobles and overthrew the Queen in 3457. The Traders Guilds were largely dismantled, and while they attempted to consolidate and staged three separate attempts at further coups to reassert their power, they never managed to regain it. The Chancellor of Torche University was named the Queen by popular vote of the Council of Learned Elders, with full support of the nobles and the people. She became known as Mathilde the Composer, Queen of Scholars.

Already aging when she assumed the throne, Mathilde the Composer only ruled Foraine for six years before she died. Fortunately, she had a strong, willful, and intelligent daughter who inherited the crown, and Mathilde's line continued on unbroken for a millennia and a half. While the Age of the Builders had been marked by an era of physical expansion and growth, the Age of the Scholars proved to be an era of intellectual and creative growth. Learning and artistic endeavors were promoted vigorously, and while the Traders Guilds were kept under close watch and careful scrutiny, they were also given the opportunity to divorce themselves from their tyrannical past. The people were protected, the arts were encouraged, and the nobility flourished. It was a golden age for Foraine.

===The Fifth Age: The Age of the Courts===

But, as with all golden ages, things eventually come to tarnish. In this case, it all began with a tragic carriage accident. While riding along the coastal cliff road, on the way to tour the private Universities in the north of Foraine, The Queen's carriage was caught in a sudden rainstorm, which caused a minor mudslide, which was enough to cause the wheel to slip. The carriage careened off the cliff, killing the Queen and her two daughters. This began a long-standing battle of words for succession. The Queen had three sisters, each of whom had at least one daughter, all of whom were legitimate claimants to the throne. The nobles squared off and chose sides, as did the Universities, the Traders Guilds, and the people.

All the while, the former Queen's son, Renaud, ruled as Regent, the first time in Foraine history that a male ruled the queendom. Renaud was forbidden by right of ascension to actually take the throne, but had he had a female child, that child would have been the legitimate heir. Therefore, Renaud suddenly found himself courted by all of the eligible noble women of court, and a few of the ineligible ones, as well. The scheming, conniving, and manipulating continued on for nearly three years while the people began to lose faith in the monarchy. Underhanded tactics were used, and several of the claimants wound up dead, but finally, Renaud took a young noble named Madeleine as his wife, making her the Regentess. Madeleine was a dedicated noble, and used her new position to revivify the Court, simultaneously strengthening the nobles and weakening the Universities. Her daughter was born a year later, in 4963, and was crowned Queen immediately, although she did not assume authority until she was sixteen.

Renaud and Madeleine's daughter was named Amandine, and she grew up watching her mother's machinations to strengthen their position and weaken everyone else's. But Amandine was clever, even at a young age. She could see the discontent in the eyes of the Academics, the Traders, and the people, and Amandine befriended them carefully before her ascension. On her sixteenth birthday, Foraine celebrated heartily, not just for her coronation, but because it also meant Madeleine's fall. Ultimately, though, Amandine's goals were the same as her mother's. It was only her methods that changed. History remembers her as Amandine, the Negotiator, Queen of Courts.

Amandine, the Negotiator ruled for nearly eighty years, and in that time, she effectively solidified the power of the throne and the nobility, though the effects of her actions weren't truly realized for years afterward. Amandine had become a master wordsmith, and had used her honeyed words to slip silk nooses around the necks of the Scholars, the Traders, and the people. Her line continued to dominate Foraine for centuries afterward, though few did so as subtly or as well as Amandine did. Eventually, the people started to realize how little power they actually had, but it was nearly eleven hundred years after Amandine's death that things finally grew so bad for the people that the only solution was revolt.

===The Sixth Age: The Age of the People===

In the year 6123, things were bleak for the people of Foraine. The nobles, with full support of the Queen, owned nearly everything, and the commoners and tradeswomen were all little better than servants or slaves. The peasants had only two advantages. One was their numbers, because they outnumbered the nobles by a ridiculous ratio. The second was they complacency of the nobles. After well over a thousand years of near-total control, the thought of revolution never even entered the nobles' minds.

The revolution was bloody and terrible, and far too many, both innocent and guilty, lost their lives, but eventually the people overthrew the nobles, although several of the nobles did manage to escape, including two of the Queen's daughters. The peasants disbanded the nobility, but kept the Queen, because it was a tradition that spread back to Fabienne and the original founding of Foraine. They chose as their new queen Rosalie, the Seamstress, who became known as the Queen of Peasants.

While Rosalie preached kindness and forgiveness, the position of Queen had been weakened severely by the revolution, and the people rarely listened to her pleas. The remaining nobles were either killed or horribly mistreated. Some were allowed to continue living in Foraine as menial labor, some were exiled, and some fled across the sea. The lands and wealth were redistributed, and the people had their vengeance. Rosalie ruled mostly in name only for forty years, and then her daughter took the throne, and her daughter after that, but, even though the people had chosen her family to lead, they kept a tight rein on them as they did.

Three hundred years after their ancestors had been driven off, the nobles returned, ready for war. With the descendants of Amandine at the lead, the nobles and their foreign soldiers took the peasants of Foraine completely unprepared, and slaughtered their way back into power in 6460. The nobility reasserted itself, even more brutally than before, and ruled again with an iron fist for twenty years, before a second peasant rebellion swept them out once again in 6482. Their victory would also be short-lived, as the nobles resurged again, casting down Rosalie's descendent again in 6489.

By now, the constant struggles were taking a heavy toll on Foraine as a whole. Everyone was miserable, both the conquerors and the conquered, with everyone fearing reprisal. Finally, knowing that the action could spell her doom, Rosalie's legitimate heir, Pierrette, surrendered herself to Amandine's heir, Amandine XVIII, in a plea for peace. Amandine XVIII was impressed by the gesture and, unlike many of her ancestors, wanted a peaceful and contented queendom. She spared Pierrette, and eventually, the two married, and mothered their children via a nobleman consort. Together, the two Queens worked to construct the aristocracy as it is known today, a systems of nobles who are, at least supposedly, dedicated to the protection of the commoners.

The current year by the Queen's Calendar is 6791.

===Calandar Controversy===

There is much debate in academic circles about the nature of the sixth Age, and there is no consensus. The scholars of Foraine whose sympathies or loyalties lie with the courts hold that there is no sixth age, and that Thorneau is still within the Age of the Courts. They argue that while the aristocracy has a different philosophy now than it did three hundred years ago, it is still the same nobility, with both the Queen's line and those of the major baronies all still intact. Other scholars claim the Age of the Courts ended at the revolution of 6123 when the nobles were sent fleeing overseas. Still others maintain the Age of the People didn't begin until 6489 when Pierrette surrendered to Amandine XVIII. It remains an issue hotly debated in academic realms, though rarely mentioned elsewhere.


==Foraine Locations==

===Torche===
Torche is the largest, oldest, and greatest city in Foraine, and likely in all of Thorneau. It serves as the capital, the location of the Queen's Court, and the center of activity from merchants, tradeswomen and craftswomen. Torche is the main city in the Trone barony, which is ruled by the Queen herself.

===Rouleau===
Rouleau is the barony in the northeast corner of Foraine. In the modern aristocracy, the Baroness of Rouleau also serves as the Minister of Scholars, and while the University of Torche is the oldest in Foraine, the Universities in Rouleau are the most renowned.

===Corneille===
The heartland of Foraine. The Baroness of Corneille serves as the Minister of Beasts, which encompasses all manner of livestock, game, and even extends into agricultural concerns.

===Fleche===
South of Trone, Fleche has the most coastline of any of the Baronies, and houses a number of trading ports and tradeswomen houses. Thus, the Baroness of Fleche serves as the Minister of Duties, who oversees the needs of the Traders, Merchants, and Working classes.

===Ombres===
Ombres occupies the bulk of the eastern borders of Foraine, and serves as a buffer for the Wilds that encroach from beyond. It is by a wide margin the most rugged and treacherous land in all of Foraine. The Baroness of Ombres is also the Minister of Defense.

===Vigne===
Vigne is the southern-most barony, and houses most of the manufacturing and craftswomen shops in the queendom. The Baroness of Vigne serves as the Minister of Builders.

=== Port Manteau and the Revelrevolt===
Located on the western coast of Fleche, Port Manteau is the largest port city in Foraine after Torche. However, because Torche is more diversified in its focus, housing the nobles, the University of Torche, and various traders, Port Manteau serves as the center of trade and shipping in Foraine, and is the headquarters of most of the Trader and Merchant guilds in the queendom. Despite being the largest city in the region of Fleche, the Baroness does not reside there, instead ruling from a private manor much further inland.

Port Manteau was nearly the scene of the beginning of another revolution, one that nearly sparked another queendom-wide insurrection. It was known as the Revelrevolt. The Revelrevolt began in 6635, early in the reign of Tiphaine VIII. It began on the night of the Revelry, the celebration of the remembrance of the coronation of Danièle, the Cultivator, largely considered the greatest of the Foraine queens. Danièle was the Queen of Builders, and was particularly deified in Fleche in general and Port Manteau specifically. The Revelry was always a much anticipated event.

However, the Traders guilds and Merchant guilds in Port Manteau had been exerting their authority over the others in the port city, particularly the scholars. On the night of the Revelry, the University of Port Manteau was burnt to the ground in the throes of the celebration. The Guilds swore it was an accident, but the Scholars, feeling the sting of constant repression from the Traders who ran the city, suspected otherwise. The few nobles located in the port city were quick to agree, also feeling their own power wane in the face of the wealthy Guilds.

The revolt began that very night, and the fighting lasted for three days, and the rest of the queendom was beginning to grow nervous that the discontent would spread. Rumor had it that Queen Tiphaine VIII was preparing to send troops south to the Port to support the nobles, while the manufactures and craftswomen of Vigne in the south were hiring private soldiers to march north and support the Guilds. The possibility of Foraine-wide revolution was a very real one in the opening days of 6636.

On the fourth day, however, the leaders of the Guilds in Port Manteau, desperate to avoid a costly revolt and to maintain peace, offered themselves up to the leaders of the Revelrevolt, to negotiate peace on the grounds of the scholars and the nobles. It was a tense negotiation, but by the fourth night, an agreement was reached. The Traders agreed to rebuild the University, and the town was reorganized, split into four quarters, the Trader’s Quarter, the Noble’s Court, the Scholar’s Quarter, and the Peasant’s square. Rulership of the town stayed with the Traders, but a Triumvirate council was created, with one representative each from the Nobles, the Scholars, and the Peasants, to serve as a balancing force.

Thus, Port Manteau became an example of peace for the rest of the queendom, and became known as the city that tore itself apart to bring people together.


==Locations Outside of Foraine==

Little is truly known about Thorneau beyond the bounds of Foraine. The Wilds that encircle the queendom on the north, east, and south are dangerous places, and no civilized person from Foraine has ventured there in thousands of years and ever returned.

Beyond the sea, however, there are havens of something that approaches civilization, and some of them have entered into uneasy alliance and trade agreements with Foraine. The most notable of these is Laugrandy, a large island nation just beginning to claw its way out of barbarism. It was in Laugrandy that the Queen and nobles of Amandine's line fled, and it was by promising lucrative trade and advanced technology that they procured the mercenary army with which they reclaimed the throne of Foraine from the people.

Little is known of Laugrandy and its people. The southern coast of the island is a rocky, desolate landscape that seems ill-suited to life, and most of the people there live further inland. The people of Laugrandy have only recently gained knowledge or expertise in seafaring, undoubtedly obtained from the noble Foraine refugees.

There are also several settlements on various coastlines that have been settled by various Foraine settlers over the past 6000 years, most of whom have earned their independence by simply waiting it out and being largely forgotten about. The most successful of these is Algreau, to the south, which was settled during the rule of Danièle, the Cultivator's line and became self-sufficient almost immediately.


==Culture==

===Matriarchy===

Thorneau in general and Foraine specifically is a highly matriarchal place. Foraine has been ruled by a succession of queens since the queendom was first founded by Fabienne, the Tamer, Queen of Beasts, and that rule was broken only once, almost 5000 years later, when a man served briefly as regent. Men were not even permitted to own property until the Age of the Builders under Danièle, the Cultivator, Queen of the Builders, and even so, it did not become in any way commonplace until the Age of the Scholars. Most things (again, with rare exceptions) are gendered feminine in their neutral state, with "he" or "him" being the specific exception.

===Carnival Culture===

During the Age of the Scholars, travelling carnivals began and quickly gained popularity. Ever since the earliest days of expansion in Foraine, academics had travelled from one place to another to learn and to teach, and so it was a natural progression once they were in power to promote travelling entertainment, as well. Ironically, it was the development of these carnivals that started prompting the change that gave men the right to own. With women occupied with politics, academics, and trade and crafts work, it was mostly left to men to run and even own the travelling carnivals. The tradition of the travelling carnival persists even to this day.

===Aubedore===

The Church, which was an order of all-male priests dedicated to the Worship of Goddess, had always looked down on the use of magic, although at no point in their history was it outright forbidden. Still, during the reign of Léone the Seer's line, a sect of priests from the Church broke away and accepted the use of certain practices of divination that Léone and her allies from the Wilds had brought to Foraine. Working together with the most talented mages and seers of the time, these former priests of the Church created a form of divination using cards. They refined the process over centuries, becoming known as the Aubedore Order, or usually just the Aubedore.

When Danièle, the Cultivator took control at the dawning of the Age of the Builders, mages became highly distrusted by the humans and elves of Foraine, and most were driven out or killed. The Aubedore Order, owning to its relatively non-threatening magic and distant ties to the Church, was not slaughtered, but their practice of card reading was disallowed in towns or temples, and sometimes discouraged by the Baronesses as witchcraft. Because of this, as the centuries wore on, the practice nearly died out completely.

However, when the practice of travelling carnivals began to grow during the Age of the Scholars, the practice of Aubedore readings saw a small resurgence. The carnivals always set up just outside of town, and were therefore exempt from the ban on readings, and curious people began to take an interest in the practice. The readings gained popularity, and served as a draw to the travelling shows, and most good carnivals typically had at least two or three Aubedore Readers under their employ.

An Aubedore deck consists of 78 cards, each one a unique picture card with its own set of meanings and associations. The cards are grouped into six "realms" each with thirteen cards in it. The cards are ranked 1 to 13 within their "realm," for purposes of a traditional card game, although Aubedore is rarely if ever used for that purpose. Ironically, even though the deck was developed during the second Age, the six "realms" reflect the six Ages of Foraine. They are "The Academy," "The Bestiary," "The Court," "The Duties," "The Ethereal," and "The Fixtures."

The average length of a Queen's reign in Foraine is 38.6 years.