Western Empire

According to tradition, the first Calradians entered the continent as exiles, coming from lands across the western ocean. But the Empire's center of gravity moved east and south, and their original heartland has, for the most part, been lost to the Vlandians. The west of the Empire today, a warm green land of oak forests and volcanic outcrops, was mostly conquered from the Palaic tribes. They have intermarried with Calradian colonists and today their old languages and customs are mostly forgotten. Service in the legions has traditionally been a path out of rural poverty and many an ambitious general has drawn his most loyal recruits from this region. The landowners here have naturally gravitated towards Garios, the partisan of soldiers and soldiers' interests, in the ongoing civil war.