The Definitive Country Almanac: The Lesser Crowns — Part 1#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026 • Sections 1–4 (Sections 5–8 are in Part 2)

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval:

• Established in earlier files, and taken as given here (proposals there too, unless the spine's canon table covers them): the Lesser Crowns are seven small monarchies and republics west and north-west of the Caldren Crown, with 128 million people, all members of the Homeworld Assembly and bound to the Crown by the Stair Accord (AL 2032).
• Proposal: everything else, including the names of the seven states. It is built on the spine and agrees with the Caldren Crown almanac.

Reading note. The Lesser Crowns are not one country. They are seven sovereign states that trade as one market and speak with one voice in the Council of the Lesser Crowns. This almanac answers every section for the bloc, then gives each state its own profile. Every city, town, garrison and port named here is in the interactive Atlas, and the complete list is the generated Register of the Lesser Crowns.

Section 1: National Overview & Identity#

Official Name & Etymology#

• Formal name of the bloc: The Council of the Lesser Crowns under the Stair Accord
• Short name: the Lesser Crowns, or the Seven.
• Adjective: Crownish is avoided; people say "Stair-side", or name their own state. People: Arvennish, Cordalese, Pellmoorish, Hastholmer, Sallowman or Sallowwoman, Ormsbyan, Brightwicker.

Where the name comes from. After the Salt Wars, the Treaty of Hollowby (AL 1242) fixed the order in which monarchs would be seated at Crown ceremonies. The Crown's heralds wrote the western kings and princes into the rolls as the lesser crowns of the Stair. It was a ranking of precedence and it was meant to sting. For eight centuries the western states resented it.

In AL 2032, when the seven signed the Stair Accord, they took the name on purpose. Queen Liane IV of Arvenne said at the signing: "Lesser in size. Not in standing." The phrase is on the Council's seal.

What others call them:

Name check (principle 3). Ormsby is a real English place name, and sallow is an English word for a willow; both suit these states and neither is a prominent name in fiction or games. No prominent clashes were found for Arvenne, Cordale, Pellmoor, Hastholm or Brightwick. The choice stays Briana's.

National Symbols#

There is no single flag of a state, because there is no single state. The bloc flies the Stair Accord flag, and each member flies its own.

The seven flags#

The State Profile#

The seven states at a glance#

Working for the gardenland share. Each state's gardenland, in million km²: Arvenne 1.03, Cordale 0.65, Pellmoor 0.78, Ormsby 0.63, Hastholm 0.90, Sallow 0.43, Brightwick 0.04. They sum to 4.46; the other 0.14 is Accord land held in common along the borders (roads, the rail corridors and the Stair Accord Frame Company's ranges). Total 4.6. Calathe as a whole has 7.2 million km² of gardenland (Chapter I): the Crown's 2.6 plus the Lesser Crowns' 4.6.

Chronological Timeline#

Section 2: Geography & Environment#

Physical Geography#

The Lesser Crowns fill the north-west of Calathe, the northern heartland continent where Landfall happened.

Topography & Landforms#

Climate & Weather#

• Continental. Warmer and drier on the Stair coast; cold, wet and long-wintered in the north.
• Red nights. Northern winters are lit by Hyperion's red nights. In Ormsby, the winter nights are never fully dark. Old Ormsbyans say the red nights are brighter than in their youth, and they are right: Hyperion is approaching (see the spine).
• Ember storms come off the Girdle Sea in late summer. Cordale's harbour walls were built for them.
• Mere fog in Sallow is thick enough to close the rail line for days in autumn.

Flora & Fauna#

• Earthkin (Earth-descended) life fills the gardenland: wheat, barley, vines, apples, sheep, horses, cattle and bees.
• Native Wild covers the rest. Native life is mostly indigestible to humans and some of it is toxic (see Chapter I).
• Blackreed grows in the Sallow Meres as well as the Crown's Lowfen. It is the building reed of the north, used for the dark eaves in Crown architecture.
• Shalebacks, six-legged armoured grazers, cross the Hastholm and Ormsby uplands in herds. Railways stop for them.
• Gloamwings swarm on red nights. Their wing-dust causes rustlung in forest and reed workers.
• Protected Wild: the Whitefell Wild (Ormsby, 210,000 km²) and the Inner Meres (Sallow, 18,000 km²).

Natural Resources#

Section 3: History & Chronology#

The Kindling and the First Crowns#

When the Silence ended, the Stair coast west of the Thess was the Founders' outer edge. Families moved west in the Kindling (about AL 400–812), following the raised beaches and the rivers. They carried Earthkin sheep, vines and horses, and walled their farmsteads against the Wild.

• Arvenne was the first chiefdom to take a crown, in AL 861. It is still "the eldest".
• Pellmoor followed in 912, Sallow in 1015, Cordale in 1022, Hastholm in 1109, Ormsby in 1203.
• Brightwick was never a kingdom. It was Arvenne's wool market until its guilds bought the city's freedom in AL 1344.

Sallow and the Captain. The Kingdom of Sallow takes its name from Ingrid Sallow, captain of the Lodestar, one of the Three Captains who brought the ships down (Chapter IV). House Meresby claimed her descent. Whether it is true no one can prove; the claim is the reason Sallow's queens sit first at Landfall Day in Aletheia, ahead of monarchs of larger states. (Proposal.)

Founding & Sovereignty#

The seven are old states with separate histories. They became a bloc only in the modern era.

• The Treaty of Hollowby (1242) ranked them as "lesser crowns" in Crown ceremony.
• The War of the Seven (1466–1471) taught them what fighting each other costs. The Peace of Tarn Cross created a standing Conference of the Stair that met every seven years.
• The Pellmoor Revolution (1788) made one of them a republic. The other monarchs feared it would spread; it did not, but every monarchy in the bloc has had a written constitution since the 1800s.
• The Stair Accord (2032) turned the Conference into the Council of the Lesser Crowns, and made a customs union with the Crown.

Modern Era#

The Iron Winter (2141–2146). The Lesser Crowns had no frame industry. Their volunteers crewed borrowed Crown and mixed-nation frames against the Sentinels. The lesson produced the Stair Accord Frame Company in 2152.

The Corridor War (2279–2291). The Seven were not attacked on land, but they paid:

• Cordale sent its frame company and convoy escorts. Imperial raiders sank most of the Serell convoys in 2283–2284.
• The Lean Years (2285–2290). The Imperium's phosphate cut starved the Lesser Crowns' thin northern soils. About 1.1 million excess deaths across the Seven, more in proportion than in the Crown.
• The Seven learned that "safety behind the Crown" also means being the land an army would cross first.

The present (2314). A new generation of rulers took office after the war. The Council faces two Crown proposals:

• The Shield Clause: Crown garrisons on Stair-side soil, paid for by the Crown. Arvenne and Cordale favour it; Pellmoor and Sallow oppose it; Hastholm wants its own army strengthened instead.
• The Seeding Limits Bill: now before the Crown's Hall of Voices, it would cap new gardenland. It does not bind the Seven, but the Crown wants the Accord to follow. The Seven's farmers want to keep seeding.

Historical Rulers & Leaders#

Complete rosters for every state. Regnal numbers count each name separately within each state. A name in bold is the ruler in AL 2314. (All proposal. The rosters were generated from a fixed seed with mixed name pools, so that no single Earth culture owns any state; see the naming principles.)

Kings and Queens of Arvenne (complete)#

Houses: Arven (861), Ellery (1240), Dunmore (1702), Carrow (2066).

Princes and Princesses of Cordale (complete)#

Houses: Serell (1022), Amberline (1618).

Kings and Queens of Pellmoor, 912–1788 (complete)#

House Pell, until the Revolution.

Presidents of the Pellmoor Republic, 1788– (complete)#

106 terms of five years. A name that appears twice in a row is a president who was re-elected.

Dukes and Duchesses of Hastholm (complete)#

Houses: Hast (1109), Wychwood (1561).

Kings and Queens of Sallow (complete)#

Houses: Meresby (1015), Callow (1490).

Kings and Queens of Ormsby (complete)#

Houses: Orm (1203), Whitlock (1644).

First Burgesses of Brightwick, 1344– (complete)#

97 terms of ten years. First Burgesses take their guild's name as a surname in office, which is why so many are called Glazier, Vintner or Weaver. The current term ends in AL 2314.

Figures every Stair-side child knows#

Section 4: Demographics & Society#

Population Metrics#

Working for urbanisation. Calathe as a whole is 68% urban (Chapter I) and the Crown is 72%. (0.68 × 342 − 0.72 × 214.3) ÷ 128 = 61%.

Language & Descent#

• Landspeech everywhere, with regional forms:
  • Stair burr in Arvenne, Cordale and Brightwick: soft, and close to the capital's speech;
  • Moor-talk in Pellmoor: fast, clipped, full of mining words;
  • Mere-speech in Sallow: slow, with old words the capital has lost;
  • Northern in Ormsby and Hastholm: the frontier's names for the stars (Sól, Surtr, Máni, Hati) are common here, though these are not frontier people.
• Songed descent. The Great Charter abolished the Songed and Unsonged distinction in the Crown in 1733. Arvenne followed in 1741, Cordale not until 1820. Old Cordalese families still keep their song-lines.

Religion & Belief Systems#

• Sallow's Mere Choirs sing the Canon from boats on Song-Night: the most famous sight in the Seven.
• The Literalist north sees the Seeding as a duty, which is why the Seeding Limits Bill is a religious question here as well as a farming one.

Public Health#

• Each state runs its own health service. All seven accept Hearth Care cards from the Crown under the Accord.
• Rustlung is the worst occupational disease, in the Ormsby forests and the Sallow Meres.
• The Lean Years left a generation shorter than its parents. Doctors call people born 2284–2290 "the lean-born".

Education#

Great institutions:

• The College of Arvenne (founded AL 1102), the oldest west of the Thess
• The Cordale School of Navigation and Finance
• The Pellmoor Miners' Institute, founded by the unions, now a university
• The Ormsby Observatory, which listens and never transmits. It studies the sky under the long red winters.