Major Changes to Ierendi

 Generally speaking I like Mystara a lot. It has a huge variety of cultures, landscape and species. There is inevitably some hit-and-miss here - I don't like everything, and Ierendi is something of a miss for me. Tourist resorts are neither medieval nor are they heroic fantasy. The whole concept of Ierendi just doesn't really work for me. Tourism is really a 20th century thing when mechanised transport (trains, cars, steam liners and eventually airliners) became widespread. Before then it was much more of an elite thing, such as the Grand Tour of Europe that the noble and the wealthy would sometimes do during the Enlightenment.  Not enough to sustain an entire nation.

However, I believe Ierendi can be made interesting.

For the sake of those who want and expect Ierendi to stay as an over-sized Disney World, I will leave Ierendi City and Ierendi Island alone. They stay the vacation getaways approximately as advertised. The other islands, however, are far less welcoming. 

Ierendi was founded first by condemed castaways, then as a prison colony and now the government offers Letters of Marque to legitimize piracy. This is the direction I'm going to take. 

In Gaz4, Ierendi City is the only settlement larger than a village in the whole kingdom. This sounds very odd to me. Let's change things up a bit. 

• Elegy Island's village of Nula is upped from 600 residents to a city of 12,000
• Fletcher Island's  village of Vlaad is upped from 1,100 to 20,000 and is now a major city. It has now become a location I have focused on and added detail to on this blog. 
• Aloysius Island's village of Jortan is upped from 800 to a city of 17,000

And they are NOT tourist destinations. I am basing them on Port Royal in Jamaica and Tortuga off Haiti in the heyday of piracy. 

This is really an opportunity to have dangerous and wild cities. My inspiration for them includes

• Thieves' World and the city of Sanctuary by Robert Asprin et al. 
• Lankhmar, from the stories of Fritz Lieber
• The less reputable cities of Hyboria, where R.E. Howard's Conan would carouse and spend his plunder
• Mos Eisley, Tatooine, from Star Wars, "a wretched hive of scum and villainy". 
• Steve Jackson's Kharé, cityport of traps and Ian Livingstone's "City of Thieves", Port Blacksand
• Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld

These three port cities are brutal, chaotic (both in the mundane sense and the alignment) and a haven for ne'er-do-wells from across the Known world. Pirates, mercenaries, pariahs, bandits, rebels, exiles and the dispossessed all find themselves here. Nobody is judged, but everybody should be on their guard. 

The happy tour guides, nice hotels and fun adventures and hunting described in the gazetteer do happen on Ierendi island and this is the face of Ierendi the kingdom wants to present to the world. If anyone hasn't actually been to the other islands of Ierendi, they may well only have heard of this vacation-resort kingdom of sunny beaches and smiling hosts. The three pirate ports of Nula, Vlad and Jortan are something of an embarrassing secret, something not discussed in polite company, especially not when trying to encourage visitors. 

Although there is legitimate trade in these pirate ports, they run alongside far less savoury enterprises. There is a trade in fruit (particularly raisins, bananas, grapefruit and pineapple), baskets, fish and crystals from volcanic activity, but there is also a vigorous trade in fencing pirated goods, illicit substances, cheap rum, ladies of pleasure and even slavery. Self-respecting and decent merchants of Darokin and Minrothrad would not do business here, but not all are so uptight and strict. 

Chaos cults are not openly tolerated, and even the people of these corrupt, crime-ridden and violent cities frown on the open worship of Chaos. However, the people and authorities of these cities are far more likely to turn a blind eye, and if cultists maintain even a thin veneer, they can generally get away with far more than in other, more lawful cities. The cellars, abandoned warehouses and sewers of these cities are littered with hideouts of the followers of Chaos.  

It is not, however, the worshipers of Chaos who hold the balance of power here, but crime lords, including pirate kings, mercenary generals, thieves' guild masters and gangster bosses. Despite their lack of morality, they often provide just enough authority and stability to stop the cities from imploding into total anarchy. These crime lords may not care for mercy, justice or peace, but even they know that rioting and slaughter is bad for business. And if there is one thing they do care about, it is business. 

The pirate ports view Ierendi City with a mixture of contempt and convenience. They consider the folks of Ierendi city to be soft, effete fops, foolishly naive and image-conscious. But at the same time the kingdom of Ierendi gives these cities a level of protection and even legitimacy. Minrothrad, Karameikos, Darokin, the Five Shires and even Thyatis, hesitate from launching punitive attacks on these pirate ports, because to do so would declare war on the Kingdom of Ierendi and its powerful navy. In return, the senior crime lords do not deliberately act against the kingdom or ships flying its flag, though the less-established pirate captains may be less observant of this agreement.