Name/Player Name: Bangor Holds
Kingdom Biography:The Bangor Holds are the result of bad land, bad weather, bad people, bad history and worse luck (for everyone involved).
I'll start with geography, since it's important to the background of what the Holds are. The Bangor Mountains serve as a massive windbreak for the Northern Kingdoms, blocking the fierce storms that come out of the Spotted Sea north of Langro and instead creating a low-pressure area past the mountain chain which sucks up milder air from the Bay area further south. That's great for the other kingdoms; for the poor sots who "live" on the Mountains, it's awful. The Bangor Mountains are what we would call "new" mountains, extremely tall and rough and with few passes through them. The western side of the chain comes directly down to the ocean, with a coastline consisting mostly of impassable (but beautiful!) cliffs and jagged fjords, with no real location for a port city. The length of the typical stormy season combined with their severity forces the treeline very low, and there is very little potential for logging. The eastern ridgeline is only somewhat better; while the storms lose their teeth from crossing the mountains the eastern side has even fewer valleys and the mountains there are even steeper, which results in very little farmable land.
Historically, this geography dictated that the Bangor Mountain area was completely undesireable. Even in mineral wealth, the Bangors were lacking, for while there might be riches there the difficulty in accessing them combined with the much easier access to the minerals in the Hellas Mountains left very little drive to make an attempt. There was no pressure to habitate the Bangors, and the few that did live there were some poor villages in the eastern valleys and some even poorer and vastly more insane herders and hunters wandering the highlands.
This changed during the Telaaran expansion, as fleeing refugees moved south and west. The first groups were gladly welcomed to settle the valleys; the second wave was met more grudgingly as a strain to feed during the long, long winters; the third wave was met with spears along with the fourth, fifth, and sixth. Eventually the natives were forced through previously-undiscovered and nigh-impassable passes to the previously uninhabited western coast, while on the eastern ridge refugees continued to pile up, eventually, the Telaarans bothered to conquer the area. They would leave less than a generation later, upon realizing the Bangors provided them nothing and that the remaining population was too busy starving to a more sustainable level to be a threat.
The retreat of the Telaarans was nearly as traumatic as their advance. The former refugees, now without even the doubtful support of an invasive army yet boxed into an imprisoning mountain chain by that same army, learned to survive in a brutal and rapid fashion. Unsupportable or indesirable people were promptly expunged from villages, fortifications went up while raiding parties went out, and a general return to barbarism occured for a couple hundred years. The handful of highland herders and hunters slowly swelled into parties, then clans, then tribes - growing from the castoff dregs and criminals of the east. Unsurprisingly, many turned to banditry to supplement their meagre lifestyles and preyed not just on their brethren, but increasingly further into the shrinking Telaaran-occupied areas. Meanwhile, the new population of the west was exploring their new lands and realizing that while their were no real ports along the coast, there were plenty of inlets just the right size for one or two "fishing" boats and a previously-unbothered major trade route from Langro and the Bay in the south to Illirio in the north.
This status quo continued for a few hundred years, but about forty years ago a handful of particularly farsighted chiefs (and, not coincidentally, some dire threats towards a continual annoyance from the last truly effective Emperor) came together to unite the region now known as the Holds. It took thirteen years of continual meetings, seven minor wars, nine sanctioned murders, three probable assassinations, a brutal and complete purge of a town, the conquest of the entire Jaari River basin, two mildly incestuous marriages and five Commandments from five different gods, but eventually a system approaching that of the other Kingdoms (if you squint really hard and don't think about it too much) was arranged and a High King appointed over the Holds. Miraculously, the death of that effective Emperor didn't cause the system to completely disintegrate, and two generations later it is still holding together.
Ruler/Family: High King Armen Haadrade (the Haadrade dynasty), 26. Two sons, Jaarl (heir, 10) and Arik (6). Four daughters. Married to two junior wives - the "tradition" since the Holds united is for the ruling dynast to marry multiple times to solidify alliances and ensure succession, but it's possible to declare a senior wife which also due to recent tradition (and a story I'll have to come up with) is actually a position of some real power - Armen hasn't married a senior wife yet, and the current junior wives are less "solidify alliances" and more "ensure succession" (and also "not entirely voluntary", the Bangor are still quite behind the times to even reach 'middle ages' status).
Due to general bullheadedness, the Bangor Holds are full of Kings that "rule" "kingdoms" that have a population in the double digits. Thus, "High King". The Haadrade dynasty has no great line or history; the first High King of the Holds (Jaarl I) was originally content to call himself a chief unlike many of his kingly brethren. He led a moderately large and moderately successful highland tribe, and as the negotiations for establishing overall rule began he wasn't even invited. However, the traditional emnity between the eastern and western valley holdings meant that the best compromise for an overall ruler lay with the highlanders (who were merely hated, not loathed), and combined with a brilliant decision to invade and conquer the Jaari River midway through the proceedings left him in charge. That same backwater cunning has been maintained by the Haardrade despite two generations of time and internal and eternal pressure to add a veneer of nobility to the proceedings. Similarly, the resolute backing of the dynasty by the highlanders has never really wavered, and while as a group the highlanders are a small-to-tiny majority their aptitude for individual combat and impervious homeland has kept the Haadrade firmly in power.
The Haadrade rule from the North Pass Hold, a castle made impressive not for it's construction, but rather it's ludicrously impractical location high in the Bangor Mountains. Is sits astride the most accessible (although "accessible" may be too strong of a term" pass through the Bangors, and so long as the North Pass does not fall the western half of the kingdom is nigh impregnable to invasion.
Vassals: House Naarwae a' Naarwae (in this context, a' equals "of")- the largest of the western valley kingdoms, Naarwae and it's ruling House are the nominal representatives of the interests of the original Bangor Hold settlers. The westerners are much less willing to unite than the highlanders, though; while the highlanders tend to fight today and ally tomorrow in order to protect their interests, the westerners are much more inclined to hold grudges and generational feuds. There is also a split between the seaside "fishermen" and those who live in the valleys further up the mountains.
House Weden - King Aaden of Weden controls several large fiefs and valleys in the east, and often serves as the counterpoint to House Naarwae a' Naarwae. While the westerners are united in background but split by purpose, the easterners are almost polar opposites: their interests are all basically the same but their polyglot backgrounds and external pressures keep them from agreement. The Wedens, for instance, are an old settler family that were the de facto nobles of the only valley settlement that wasn't forced west; this causes several of the refugee descendant families to view them with the same distrust they grant all the original settler descendants.
House Iraen - the Iraen are one of the greatest beneficiaries of the ascension of the Haadrade. Originally a minor eastern family of no great accord, the Iraen first became notable when their dynasty was initially proposed by House Weden to become the High Kings of the Holds. The expectation was that after establishing the Iraen, they would become puppets of the Weden. This expectation was swiftly crushed when, after the proposal was made and a significant minority of the Holds' aristocracy supported it, the Iraen reneged on an upcoming betrothal to the Weden. They followed this astonishing act by raising an army and laying an undeclared siege on the larger House's primary holding. Support for the Iraen immediately skyrocketed, with even some western Holds backing the claim. However, a year and several hard-fought battles later, the tables had turned and the Iraen found themselves on the run, with their old holdings burned and most of their army dead or deserted. In a bid to survive, the remainder of the House sought protection from the Haadrade, and in the following decade the orphan Iraen were at the forefront of many of the Haadrade conquests. Their service was rewarded, and today they number a half-dozen minor kingdoms that collectively control the lower half of the Jaari River and the vital port of New Illirio.
Religion: The Holds have a mix of religions, although nearly the entire population has at least some adherance to the Old Religion (since it's less of a religion and more of a generic belief system in a continental polytheism; as an aside, most of the other created religions seem to easily fix in the Old Religion framework as local area variants dedicated to a single potential god within the Old Religion base, and in my humble opinion the canon should treat these as such - the obvious-to-me exception being the Worship of The One and, potentially, the Reach of Arot). There is also a significant fraction of the Ridge variant to Worship of the One from past incursions/influence from the old Telaaran kingdom. Overall, the net effect is that the "baseline" worship is very similar to what has emerged in Rallus. There are extremes in either direction (towards universal polytheism or total monotheism) from this norm, however.