Ottilia von Trosberg

Ottilia von und zu Trosberg, heir to the herzogin seat of Trosberg. The Hochbern Estates have never known a finer lady, but leave your rudeness at the door; they say she's been known to feed the 'socially unpleasant' to her wyrmlings.

Traits

Polite, pleasant, particular; occasionally smug and imperious; openly gregarious and generous, quietly cruel; at least until she's not; until she doesn't have to be 'quiet' or careful about it; bit of a Mean Girl and a bully; comes from a lineage of sorcerers; they say it's the dragon-blood, if you believe that kind of thing; also plays tennis apparently; rarely allows herself to be drawn into 'peasant debates' about class stratification; from a collection of bickering fiefdoms, and so brutal politicking is second nature; spends most of her time with other noblewomen and handmaidens; bit of a bigot; wouldn’t even piss on an Ishgardian if they were on fire; why ruin the entertainment?; yes, she has a handful of 'pet' wyrmlings back home; but she would never refer to them as such within the ear-shot of a dragon; clutch-wardens; “brutes and thugs” like the Scions are not welcome in her manor.

The Marches

The Marches - referred to in official documents as the Marches of East Dravania and the Hochbern Estates - are less a single nation, and more a confederation of fiefdoms - a shifting mosaic of elector-princes and prince-bishops, matriarchal duchies and borderland baronies - stitched together by a complex web of oaths, treaties, customs, ceremonies, and handshake-agreements. Each province - from the witch-proud marshlands of Schattenmark to the haunted valleys of Niederwiesen - enjoys near-total autonomy, answering only to the Grand Duke (chosen by their own Electoral Diet), and only in matters of war.

Trosberg

Once a grand ducal seat famed for its excellent statesmen and martial processions, Trosberg is now a land of rotting glory. Ringed by fens and draped in blackwood swamps, the province is a patchwork of crumbling moated keeps, fortified monasteries, and bitter baronial estates, each ruled by houses more loyal to ancestral grudges than the duchy — and more isolated, too, with roads becoming more overgrown and consumed by forest year after year. The city of Trosberg itself - ancient, perched atop a weathered acropolis, rising from a land wreathed in fog and Spanish moss - remains nominally sovereign, though its decrees must often be bartered in the form of public pilgrimages and politicking.