Salan Helmarie

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Helmarie Province (#72)
Origin of Province name: Helmarie means "headwaters" in the language of the Trond people. The province includes the headwaters of the North River and the White River.
Provincial Capital: Kast Foramyva (named after the first Ulor of Helmarie)
Estimated Population: 150,000
Population at last census: (no census taken)
Year annexed to Empire: 9 Cledman V (46 years ago)

Ulor (governor): Esinie (appointed 1/1/40 Cledman VI)
Political Alignment of Ulor: Reformist Faction
Ethnic background of Ulor: Trond
Ulor's primary advisors: Gurok and Onasie
Ethnic background of advisor: Gurok is Slythian, Onasie is a Trond

Popular Support for Empire: very low

Economic Development: The main economic activity in the province is hunting, followed by subsistence farming. The economy is almost completely undeveloped.

Imperial Military Garrison: 5 phalanxes of infantry
Governor's Guards: 88
Civilian officials and their servants: 126

Estimated Average Annual Tax per Person: 2 baylo

Govt Finances: The provincial government is current on tax collections and remittances to Zekran as well as payments of its debts, but its budget is small. Taxes are lower than in the rest of the Empire. Previous governors suspended the normal tax on farms to encourage agriculture.

Land and Climate:
Helmarie Province is a vast amount of land between two mountain ranges, the Grey Mountains in the East and the Blue Mountains in the West. It stands at the headwaters of two major rivers. It is heavily forested with good rainfall, and the coldest climate in the Empire. The population is relatively sparse.

Description:
The province is one of the most recently annexed provinces in the Zekresh Empire. It is also one of the least civilized provinces.

Ethnic Groups:
Trond tribesmen make up more than three quarters of the population of the province with more in nearby provinces and North of the Imperial border. The second largest ethnic group in the province are the Glant Ogra or "Red Hand" tribe who are traditional enemies of the Trond and are the majority in neighboring Glantogran Province. There is virtually no ethnic Zekresh population in the province. Only a few soldiers and administrators. Even the Ulor (governor) is a Trond. This is because the last five Uloro (governors) who were not Tronds were assassinated by Trond separatists.

About 5% of the population is neither Trond nor Glant Ogra. A few are of mixed ancestry, some are members of small local ethnic groups, but most of them are Foerfen, Aat or Baaniferians. A few are people from more distant parts of the Empire, mostly from nearby provinces and Verronese who have come as merchants. A smaller number are people from outside the Empire who are not Tronds. Most of the people in this province who immigrated from outside the Empire are Tronds.

Recent actions by the provincial government:
Spying on separatists, opposing the dog tax, legalizing the public practice of unofficial religions, abolishing the requirement that provincial officials must speak the Zekresh language, and hiring 26 new bureaucrats at high salaries, most of them from outside the province.

Apparent consequences of provincial government policies:
Dog owners have renewed confidence in the Empire, separatists captured a government spy and the Ulor's advisor and held them for 25,000 baylo ransom, members of strange religions proselytize on the streets of the capital and much of the provincial government's affairs are conducted in the Slythian language which hardly anyone in the province or the rest of the Empire understands.

Situations which may or may not have resulted from government policies:
There is open hostility and occasional violence between the two main ethnic groups in the province: the Trond tribes and the Glant Ogra tribes.

Trond tribesmen live on both sides of the Imperial frontier and move back and forth across it as if it didn't exist. Many Trond chieftains are openly hostile to the Empire and their entire tribes refuse to pay any taxes and will attack any Imperial officials or Zekresh people who come to their territory. Separatists openly plot secession from the Empire and the establishment of an independent Trond kingdom and war against the Glant Ogra tribes. Secessionist plans have been delayed because the Tronds can't agree on who should be their king. There are conspiracy theories that even high Imperial officials in the province support secession and nearly all such officials, civilian and military, are Tronds.

There are many traders coming in and out of the province, mostly Verronese. High taxes are levied on goods brought into the province and furs exported from the province because this indirectly taxes the Tronds who buy the products and sell the furs even if they refuse to pay any direct taxes. Smuggling by Verronese merchants and Foerfen tribesmen from the South is common to avoid these taxes.

Products from the Empire are often taken North, out of the Empire, by Tronds for resale in the wildlands to other Trond tribes there. This trade is supposed to be taxed, but isn't because of lack of cooperation by the Tronds and lack of control of the Northern frontier by the Empire despite the presence of three Imperial forts on the Northern Frontier and three phalanxes of Imperial troops normally stationed on the frontier.


History:
According to legends of the Trond people, these lands were given to them by a great chieftain of the Wolf People shortly after the beginning of the world. According to the legends of the Red Hand tribes, the Southern portion of these lands once belonged to their kinsmen, the Yellow Hand tribes. This same legend says that in ancient times, an alliance called the tribes of the five hands fought and lost a war against a horde of animals from the north including snakes, bears, moose and wolves. This alliance included the tribes of the Red Hand, the Yellow Hand, the White Hand, the Black Hand and the Green Hand. It is said that the tribes of the Black Hand and the White Hand went to live in the mountains of the West while the tribes of the Green Hand fled South and the few survivors of the tribes of the Yellow Hand were scattered. Some of the Yellow Hand survivors are said to have come to live with the Red Hand tribes. To this day members of the Red Hand tribes live in the province, especially in the Southeast. Further in that direction lies Glantogran Province in which the Red Hand tribes are the majority of the population. Glantogran province is also named after the Red Hand tribes. In the language of the Red Hand tribes, "glant ogra" means "red hand". There is an ancient enmity between the Red Hand tribe and the Foerfen people, modern day descendants of the ancient Wolf People of legend. The Trond tribes are related to the Foerfen and there is a more recent animosity between the Red Hand tribes and the Trond tribes. This animosity led to several wars before the Zekresh even came to this region.

In the last century of the Larinyva Dynasty of Zekresh Emperors, over two hundred years ago, Zekresh armies began to advance up the North River as far as the lands of the Foerfen people. Trond tribesmen came down from the North to join the Foerfen and attacked the Zekresh Imperial Army. This was not forgotten by the Zekresh, nor forgiven. After the conquest of the Foerfen lands led to the creation of Foerfen Province, there was a pause in the advance of Imperial forces for about 200 years due to the end of the Larinyva Dynasty and other priorities for the empire. During this time, intermittent warfare continued between Tronds and their enemies, the Red Hand tribes. The Red Hand tribes were sometimes aided by the Mountain Goat People of the Blue Mountains in the West. Eventually, the Empire was ready to march North again and in the ninth year of the reign of Emperor Cledman V, a general named Falimuk was placed in command of an army of conquest and sent up the North River to bring the Trond people and the other tribes there under the dominion of the Empire. Falimuk readily enlisted the assistance of the Red Hand tribes and the Mountain Goat People for a war against the Trond. While the Mountain Goat People attacked from the West, Falimuk's Imperial soldiers marched with Red Hand tribesmen from the South and met the main force of Trond tribesmen in battle beside the great North River. The battle was called the Battle of Riverside and in that battle, Imperial forces and their allies were victorious and crushed the Trond horde.

Falimuk advanced far to the North, but bad weather, continuing Trond resistance and the vast extent of Trond lands prevented him from annexing all the Trond lands. Today, some Trond tribes live North of the Imperial frontier. Helmarie province consists of only the portion of the Trond lands that Falimuk conquered and it is still one of the largest provinces in the Empire in land area. With the Tronds conquered, the Red Hand tribes had no hope of remaining outside the Empire and willingly submitted to Imperial rule on the condition that they not be part of the same province as the Trond people. The Mountain Goat People refused to agree to be annexed and Falimuk invaded their lands and annexed them easily except for some holdouts in the mountains who continued to resist for decades to come.

The foundations of permanent Imperial rule were laid by Ulor Foramyva, the first Ulor of Helmarie. Because of continuing rebelliousness by Trond tribes, he built the fort that bears his name (Kast Foramyva) and serves as the provincial capital. A town has grown up around the fort now and it is the main place where immigrants from distant provinces live. Under the leadership of Ulor Foramyva and his successors, efforts have been made to encourage the introduction of farming, previously unknown to the local tribes, and immigration from more loyal areas of the Empire. The provincial government in previous years gave away farm land to immigrants from other provinces, notably Slythia, Frayethay and the Kajakan provinces. Nearly all of these immigrants gave up farming and went home after their first Helmarie Winter. A few remain.