A pub, somewhere in the Sumarkian borderlands...
"Please, a traveller's story is practically tradition! Wouldn't be a good drinking game without a story or two!" Gynno casually placed down a foamy beer stein in front of old man Buri to hide a smirk in the dim lights of the tavern. To her left, Vedir responds with an entirely too inebriated mumble of affirmation.

Cleocaldra leaned backward against the counter "Back home, I heard the story of the greatest pirate to sail the Eastern Seas." Gynno might have deemed it a smooth move, were it not for her towering size. Someone less acquainted with inebriated tavern-goers could have assumed that a 3-on-1 drinking contest might leave even a person-and-three-quarters at least a little smashed - but with Gynno's 8 years bartending she knew better.

"It's a strange tale," the tall woman admitted, swirling her whiskey slowly, "one minute the Eastern Seas are locked in a low-intensity free-for-all between three large land powers and two middling naval powers, then some bozo faces a mutiny led by a deckswabber. Next thing you know that swabbie is commanding three dozen ships and negotiating a ceasefire on the Tagavan islands".

Gynno grabbed a rag and started wiping down the counter. "That sounds like a strange story indeed. I'm no admiral, but surely a ragtag group like that would be forced to repair their ships eventually? Wouldn't a big fleet just swoop in and capture them?"

"So you'd think," Cleocaldra snorted, "but when every party in the conflict is unwilling to commit to clearing them out, they got the time to get their ducks in a row and set up shop all proper-like". She paused and took a sip of her whiskey, before she gently pushed Yver's passed-out head off her arm and onto his own.

"Anywho, the point is that the major players dismiss 'em, and that doesn't go over well with the clans of Tagava. At a rate of knots, this former swabbie gets clan head after clan head to sign up and invest in a project I can only describe as the petty revenge approach to naval strategy."

"Must have been quite the character to pull that off!" old man Buri chimed in. "Why, sounds a lot like Good King Char, it does! Tired of being dismissed as second rate, so they go do something about it!"

Just as Buri finished speaking, the thud of Vedir's forehead on wood punctuated his sentence. "Aye, speakin' of second rate!" Buri tapped Vedir's stein, tipping its contents over his head. Vedir grumbled at the impromptu shower, but didn't wake. The other two conscious occupants of the tavern chuckled, even as the old man muttered about the hubris of young folks.

"Aye indeed," Cleocaldra said, struggling to keep laughter out of her voice, "that is the core of it. The Tagavans had been a trading people for a long time, so when their collective toes got stepped on and they all pooled their money into proper naval warfare? Some back-of-napkin maths put them at a 2:1 advantage against the entire combined naval budget of the other warring powers, and being a previously divided region with friends in other places, well, suddenly a lot of ports and wharfs that used to be aligned in all manner of constellations ended up under one swabbie."

"I can't imagine that was looked upon fondly," Gynno remarked while she grabbed a pair of empty steins from the counter to clean.

"Oh, that's the best part, the regional powers are barely made aware that this happens when they get word that they've crowned a monarch with the most ostentatious title you could imagine! Eternal Panthalassocrat!"

"Ha!" Buri slapped the counter in glee. "I bet that stirred the pot real well!"

Cleocaldra took a sip of her whiskey, eyes gleaming like a lighthouse over her tumbler. "Like you wouldn't believe, a real cat among the pigeons!"

"Oh, aye, and I'll bet my socks a real cat among the ermines too!" Buri's reply made Gynno wheeze by the wash basin, "I'd have paid to see that! 'Oh, yes, your royal highness, you must negotiate with the swabbie!', whoever delivered that message had to have been flogged!"

"Hey now, that's Eternal Panthalassocrat Swabbie to you!" Cleocaldra shot back.

"Oh, all hoity-toity, your swabbieness? Forget yer roots mighty quick, ya did!" Buri joined in, laughing into his beer. A moment's cheerfulness carried before Gynno asked, "so how did it all shake out in the end? I know Tagava is a place now, but this sounds like an awful long time ago."

"Oh, absolutely, some 600 years ago or so. Last I heard they're on their thirty-fifth Vice Panthalassocrat. That's the title now, by the way, the Eternal Panthalassocrat still holds the office as an honour. Means they're technically a necrocracy since they're ruled by a corpse."

"Necrocracy! And I thought the Allyrians were bad at this whole monarchy thing!" Buri's mirth remained uncontained, and Gynno chuckled too.

"Oh, the Allyrian systems are a whole other mess for certain. You know it's so common for their nonsense to mess everything up that I had to take a guild exam on that before I could hold office in a neighbouring country?"

"Don't you have neighbours like that back home, traveller?" Buri asked, waggling his stein.

"In Kaumar? More neighbours than you can shake a stick at, but not so much influencing the local regulations. Sumark is a lot smaller than Kaumar, so even Allyrian influence isn't felt as keenly back home."

"Oh, did you grow up near Allyria?" Gynno asked.

"No, I'm from the South West, nearer to Ueneti and Zeneize." Cleocaldra pointed at a stein and a pitcher with a bread stick to show the relative positions. "They're a lot more similar to each other, and I'd say even to Allyria and Sumark, than to Kaumar."

"In what way?" Gynno leaned over the counter to get a better view.

"They're nowhere near as officially messy as Allyria, but the backroom dealings in those countries are much more influential, and far more cut-throat than the bureaucratic rigidity favoured by Allyria and, to a lesser extent, Sumark."

"And Kaumar, where does that fit into things?"

"Ah, regional discretion and a lot of wiggle room. A result of a widely spread nation with a fairly diverse set of environments and people means that your experience will be largely determined by the regional governor, the Kabun. They decide how strictly the nation-wide laws should be interpreted, and each region also has its own laws."

Cleocaldra paused to swirl her whiskey and watched as Buri stuck his finger in someone's stein, before sliding along the fireside to collect ash. A sip later, and Buri was halfway through the drawing of an ash penis on Vedir's forehead.

"In my case the local Kabun is, and has been for some time, a member of the Julika family. They're shipwrights and sailors by trade so our island, Mokunept, has been ruled by them since before Kaumar even formed as a nation."

"Really? No revolts or revolutions in all those centuries?" Buri said, leaning back to admire his now complete painting of a dick. He frowned and dipped his finger back in the stein.

"Revolts, some, but closer to riots than anything seriously threatening. It got close during the Conflagration, but I think that's true of most places."

"That's true, even this region was heavily affected during those years and we are much further away than you were." Gynno chimed in as she closed a window.

"The old Shunzhou saying of interesting times comes to mind, and I for one am well-pleased to be living in relatively boring days." Cleocaldra waved her glass emphatically and continued, "I thank the stars every day Kanoetta was behind a mountain range and across a sea from Mokunept, and I wasn't even born yet!"

"Oh no doubts there, I'd rather spend my days as a goat in Absalok than be in the blast radius for that kind of disaster!" The old man gave a wry chuckle before squinting seriously. The testicles painted around the eyes were really needed to make it come together.

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AN: Hey folks, we know it's not a mechanical update but we wanted to give you something to chew on while we were working on stuff. Angus is at present surrounded by cog pieces and oil, trying to stick our mechanical rules back together. Please discuss and give some feedback on how this reads - if y'all like this we'll try to stick some in when a mechanical update is taking some time, especially since we're often writing all this lore down anyway.

Angus wants me to note that I am allergic to exclamation points, which is basically true!