Paten Isle
Lying of the west coast of Shardar and situated about 25 miles due south from
The Twins, Paten Isle is made up of small, rolling hills, deep lush valleys and
fertile grasslands. Despite being
regularly assaulted by salt water since the beginning of time, the dark soils of
Paten Isle are very good for growing crops and they produce the finest wines in
Shardar. The waters around the Isle
are strangely warm and help to heat the grounds and make it even more suitable
for the growing of the grapes that produce the best wines in the land.
Baron
Carmichael is the absolute ruler of Paten Isle and he has a particular fondness
for the wines that his people produce. He
is a tall, thin man with receding grey hair and a small, neat moustache and
beard that he keeps meticulously groomed. His
wife and two young children take a very poor second place to the care of his
wines, as does everything else in his life and Baron Carmichael is not a very
popular man with the inhabitants of the Isle.
The Baron
has a long running feud with virtually every merchant family or company of
Shardar for the very low prices they are willing to pay him and the high prices
that they charge for the wine that they buy.
Many times, he has tried to ship his wines to Camber himself, to sell for
a lower price than they are currently reaching and still have a greater profit
margin, but each time he attempts this there has been some mysterious accident
that affects the wagons or the barges that he uses and the entire crop has been
lost.
Baron
Carmichael is absolutely certain that the merchants of Camber are arranging
these ‘accidents’ but at the moment he is powerless to do anything
about it. His small standing army
has been sent to aid High Lord Calloway in the war in Dargoth and the forces
that he can afford to employ in addition to his regular militia are not large
enough to guard over the wagons and barges that he uses to shift the barrels of
wine and to protect his family and lands at the same time.
The Baron does not make enough money from the wines to be able to afford
to hire large numbers of mercenaries to protect his crops and because of this he
is losing even more money.
Normally he
would ask the High Lord for help in a situation like this, but with Calloway
being caught up in his wars, there is no one that Carmichael can turn to for
help. He is trapped into using the
merchants for the moment and as long as this continues, he will have to carry on
accepting their low prices for his wine and watch it being sold for very high
prices in the best taverns and inns in Camber and Gladsheim.
There are rumours that the Baron is looking to employ a loyal Mage to aid
him in his problems, but there have been no set or definite reports of this as
yet.
The
population of Paten Isle live in small villages around the vineyards and they
are almost entirely employed in the care of these fields.
A few of them work as normal farmers or in the other everyday tasks that
need to be done, but the vast majority of them work in connection, in some
fashion or other, with the wines. This
can be the growing of the grapes, harvesting, fermenting or any one of a dozen
other ways, but it is certain that without the wines, Paten Isle would suffer a
major disaster to its economy.
In other
ways, the Isle is quite unremarkable. There
are no Mages dwelling on it, there are no strange or unique animals, there are
no unexplained mysteries and there are no dangers to any traveller.
Many people find the Isle to be incredibly boring, but to a wine
connoisseur, a trip to the vineyards of Baron Carmichael can be an extremely
thrilling experience. The Baron
guards his crops jealously and he is paranoid that someone may be able to steal
cuttings from his vines and grow the grapes somewhere else.
In all honesty, there have been some attempts from other wine growers to
do just this, so perhaps the Baron’s paranoia is less ridiculous that it first
appears.