Olive Isles (Realm, Occupied Territory)

The Empire of the Stag & Sovna needed to have some recent conquests to illustrate their aggression. I thought it would be cool if their conquests also imposed their Usurper Force on Realms they dominated. With that in the mind, I wrote up this...

Olive Isles (Realm, Occupied Territory)
See Also: The Empire of the Stag & Sovna

10 years ago, the people of the Olive Islands were a proud, happy, ocean-going republic. Today, they are subjugated by the Empire of the Stag & Sovna. Where once there had been the Olive Branch, now there is The Shark.

Usurper Force: The Shark
Normal: Predatory Cunning
Inverted: Unable to Stop or Slow Down

People: The olive-skinned natives of this land have dark hair and green or black eyes. Their Economy has always been built upon the merchant marine vessels, and the crux of their society has been the oral tradition handed down by lyre-carrying poets. The last ten years they’ve been forced to take up onion-farming.

Economy & the Merchant Marines: The fleet of the Olive Islands continues to sail the Sphere of Haven, it’s just much smaller now. Perhaps a third of the ships survived the invasion from the Empire of the Stag and Sovna, and the Stagbrothers have made ship-building illegal. Every ship is required to take a Sovna-bearer officer with it when it leaves port. This officer keeps a ledger of all the business done by the merchants on the vessel, so that they might be properly taxed.
Since the Stagbrothers prefer the hunt to book-keeping, a wide variety of unusual situations have developed. Often the Sovnite hires or forces some other member of the crew to do the book-keeping. Sometimes the Stagbrother sabotages the ship to get out of this boring job. And it’s not unheard of for a Sovnabearer to pressure the crew into the occasional pirate raid on BrewerBarrow, CornDale or Pasture Days.
The merchant ships themselves are wide but shallow vessels with a single sail and lots of oars. Special seats or stages are built upon them for the poets to entertain and motivate the rowers. These days though, those seats are often commandeered by Sovnite overseers.

Economic Opportunity: If you’re looking to make money off an Olive Island merchant, offer to sell him onions. The Stagbrothers go through onions at an alarming rate, and these vegetables fetch big money in occupied territory.

Military: The Sovnites have an impressive force on the Olive Isles, and since amphibious warfare is their specialty, it would be very difficult to liberate or conquer this place. And if they Sovnabearers were ever to force all the remaining merchant vessels into military use, they’d have a terrifying invasion fleet.

Ecology: The Olive Islands were once covered with Olive Trees, their primary export. Now, much of those groves have been torn up for mandatory Onion-planting. This has had a negative impact on the ecology of the islands, as many small birds and animals depended on those trees for food and shelter.

Rose: The native rose was fairly typical, but also not common. It’s also quite possible that this rose is extinct, considering how much land has been torn up for onion-farming and swamp-rose farming.

Let this place be an example: In the year the Olive Islands were conquered, a single petal of the Life Rose in Moon’s Trial was badly damaged. This was reflected in a year of social unrest and bad storms in the Olive Islands, brought to a close by a lightning-fast invasion at year’s end.

Gates & Bordering Realms: It is a short sea voyage to Legs-Of-Ra or CornDale, a little longer to BrewerBarrow or Pasture Days, and a long and arduous trip to Pure Heart.
There is at least 1 Gate in the Olive Isles, leading no doubt to the Sphere of the Stag & Sovna.