Introduction[]
Cartusien is a human bastion in the southern Eastweald that guards the foothills between Darrowshire and Corin’s Crossing; opposite of the more famed and better contested Crown Guard tower, it has historically held a minor garrison to defend the royal highway.
Although many records have been lost to scholars since the Third War, some documents of note in Cartusien are a 250-year-old decree recognizing and praising the region’s populace for their defense against a great Amani warband. The oldest mention of the region can be found in the Ironforge Book of Grudges, which mentions an unresolved offense on the Greatmason Ogden Steelbelly by a Lord Isbern of Caer Dusien—specifically, the tome mentions an unresolved matter of Late Pay for the reconstruction of the human’s castle after a black dragon attack.
Local folklore, though, often embellishes a halcyon age before orcs roamed Azeroth, when Eastweald heroes fought Dire Gnolls and Forest Trolls worshipping dragons in the mountains. The stories often feature heroes trained by gryphons and rulers given advice by strange forces such as innocuous Darrowmere Lake Witches or Winter Tree Dwarves to defend their homeland.
RECENT HISTORY[]
In Year 22 of the Lotharian Calendar, Lord Aldous Wyrmgarde declared his support for the newly-named Scarlet Crusade and granted its ecclesiastic knights and clerics the authority to issue decrees over his vassals. The most egregious of these was the Year 25 Tenancy Edicts which in-effect reinstitutionalized serfdom, restricting the movement of farming commoners and punishing foreign merchants from conducting trade in Scarlet markets.
Cartusien remained adherent to Abbendite* doctrine until Year 34, when the Argent Crusade invaded and besieged its seat to consolidate their control over the passes into the Hinterlands. While the Scarlet Commander Archandor was opposed to surrender, his authority collapsed and gave Baroness Matilda Wyrmgarde (whose rule followed the death of her husband) the opportunity to take control and negotiate favorable terms for the barony as an Argent territory.
A spur of propaganda and public investitures followed the barony’s capitulation in an attempt to shift perceptions of authority back onto the Baroness and House Wyrmgarde while representing the region’s poor welfare and misrule on the influences of Tyr’s Hand; these top-down efforts failed to curry favor from the lowest citizens who first saw the Argent forces as an occupation force rather than a liberation from Scarlet Authoritarianism, but a spree of institutional reforms has since softened the dispositions of most of Cartusien’s population towards their hosts.
Most effective for public opinion was a mandate restoring the status of peasants as free citizens, though the open market and settlement invitations to southern speculators have rejuvenated the barony’s economy and quickly grown its population past 4,000 residents; in 40 LC the city’s public servants estimated that Cartusien may reach a population of 5,000 within the decade if they can retain enough skilled builders.
Stormwind speculators, though, believe that Cartusien’s recent fortunes are just a testament to the Argent Crusade’s logistic systems and expect it to follow similar demographic patterns for the region post-consolidation; a brief spike of growth followed by much slower development.
Feudal Regressions[]
Militarily, the siege of Cartusien was supposed to occur as part of a broader campaign to secure the Eastweald region for the Argent Crusade before Alliance and Horde agents might prospect potential assets and supplant Hearthglen’s hegemony, but that campaign was forced to halt when Demonic Invasions of the Burning Legion and political divisions incited by the Fourth War resulted in the loss of many high-profile officials—most notably Highlord Tirion Fordring.
With fewer respected figures unifying the recently-constituted territories, Cartusien was left with a structural independence not seen in generations; as have many other fiefs north of Thoradin’s Wall, causing southern strategists to call the situation a ‘feudal fragmentation.’ In this environment, Cartusien has found as many diplomatic benefits in keeping the reforms established by its new Argent regime as it has by retaining the ecclesiastic and bureaucratic officials that replaced those positioned in the city by the Scarlet Crusade.
Cartusien has also found an ironic advantage in its distance from bastions of Argent Authority and often leverages its dominant position over the royal highway to collect tolls and encroach upon neighboring territories under terms of defending the realm from the undead scourge until representatives from Light’s Hope Chapel and Mardenholde Keep arrive to appease and conciliate the baroness into recalling her forces in favor of the Crusade’s own garrisons.
While a lack of reprimand has invoked grumbles from weaker lords, it has also inspired other strongly-situated fiefs to act out in similar patterns; in Year 40, levies were mustered against other Argent-aligned forces 18 separate times across the Eastweald and were responded to by Argent Companies a mere 5 times—and following foul remarks by an Alliance Dignitary on the matter during the same year’s Winter Veil banquet, 23 individual duels were fought between knights outside the gates of Hearthglen and resulted in 4 deaths.
After the Night of Grievances, as it was later called, Bishop Astara Waybright of Mardenholde published a scathing lament on the turbulent relationship between argent territories and called it a regressive nightmare for the Argent Crusade’s cause, citing how not only were agents from the Alliance and Horde building new outposts in the plaguelands but also there were fiefs sending their own dignitaries to prospect what benefits they might gain by changing banners—often at the expense of their rivals; several knights’ names were bemoaned by Bishop Waybright, though most fervently she chose to scandalize the Knight Captain of Cartusien’s southern enterprises.
In irony, Dame Adelaide Stormlace, the Knight-Captain of Cartusien, was invited to her position by officials of the Argent Crusade hoping to help ingratiate their new regime to the city and ease its transition from a bastion of Scarlet Faith. She was the Baroness’ daughter, first eschewed as a half-elven bastard but later acclaimed for her own heroism as a fresh-faced paladin during the Year 27 Battles of Stratholme and the First Siege of Naxxramas, and a regional heroine with as many esteemed friendships in rival fiefs as enemies in the Cult of the Damned.
When a plethora of letters replied to Bishop Waybright, decrying her lament as little more than an outlet for petty personal grievances under a guise of nobler causes, she stepped down from her position to aid the newly-restored Kingdom of Stromgarde’s clergy—further depriving Lordaeron of a voice for peaceful unity while emboldening Cartusien’s right to aggress.