The Trade Union

Absorbs the fallen Trinber Kingdom and partitions its fifteen counties into five provinces — Mavefling, Jerodanna, Charbuko, Quadero, and Riofiga. Later loses Charbuko, Jerodanna, and Aligomak to Grand Duke Peterson's rebel Kingdom of Peterson.

The Trade Union (the Forde Commercial Alliance) is a trans-continental merchant power, nearly two hundred years old, controlling most of the post-imperial economy. It was the cause of the Crissen Empire's fracture: to keep the rightful heir, the Third Prince, off the throne, the Union goaded the eldest and Second Princes into armed rebellion, then pressed the Third Prince until he held only three provinces with the former capital.

Salt and trade routes were its levers of power, and the principalities that joined it (such as Rulm Principality by the Mana Hill Plains) were its sphere of influence. Knowledge of the Union's dealings in the Northern Lands was prized so highly that Fatty Shi once paid handsomely for a member's expedition diary.

The Union is a confederation of trading houses and commercial guilds whose owners hold noble titles. Among them are the great trading houses of Fode and Livode, second- and third-tier guilds, and the Peterson trading house, whose secession broke the Union. Supreme executive power is embodied in Grand Duke Comberlet.

To counter the Norton threat the Union even lured a Sword Saint — the 'Storm Sword Saint' from the Kingdom of Kelia, able to protect an entire nation single-handed. Yet it was the Union's own merchant nature, having forsaken trade for plunder, that became its weakness.

The Union absorbed the fallen Trinber Kingdom and partitioned its fifteen counties into five provinces — Mavefling, Jerodanna, Charbuko, Quadero, and Riofiga. Morant, with its cheap salt and trading houses, long remained the jewel of its economy.

In the war with the Nortons the Union switched from trade to war, fielding hundreds of thousands by 'human-wave' tactics. But its soldiers lacked quality arms against the Nortons' steel crossbows, ballistae, and cannon — against fully armed knights they were like peasants with sticks. Its decisive undoing was a salt shortage, with stores enough for only three months.

From the behind-the-scenes puppet-master that split the empire, the Union becomes the open adversary of House Norton on the continental stage. A string of front-line defeats fails to sober its leadership, which, like a gambler, keeps hoping the next victory will win everything back — and the Nortons methodically tighten the noose, loop by loop.

The turning point comes when the Peterson trading house announces its secession and founds the Kingdom of Peterson, taking the provinces of Charbuko, Jerodanna, and Aligomak. Grand Duke Comberlet, realising that the salt blockade and arms shortage doom the Union, urges it to admit defeat, sue for peace, and return to its true trade as merchants, burying its thirst for revenge until better days.