While recovering from a recent hard drive crash (everything was recovered) I was looking through my oldest D&D material and found an old article I written for myself on Sembia.

I originally wrote this while I was in college in the late 80s and adapted it to describe the land of Sembia to the south of the Dalelands.

This article caught my eye due to the RPGPundit's recent posts on his FR campaign. So I uploaded and and share it with him and anybody else who may find it useful.

http://www.batintheattic.com/downloads/SEMBIA%20Ver%202.doc

Note that it written when the only material that was out was the Greybox and few of the FR modules. So it reflects nothing of what was written about Sembia later.

The basic premise is that Rauthauyver the Raven, the legendary hero of Sembia, founded a mercenary group known as the  Silver Ravens. This is the one of the few institutions that spans all the Sembian City-States. At various points in time,  the Warlord of the company could have been easily crowned king but for various reasons did not. Preserving the independence of the various Sembian city-states.

The company hates slavers and will actively work against any outside force working to conquer sembia. The existence of the Silver Ravens was the main reason Sembia was never conquered by Cormyr.

Hope folks find this useful.

I do. Sembia is one of my favorite areas of the Realms.

Thanks, looks interesting.  I'll check it out for my 4e FR campaign.

Very interesting!  One of the things I loved about Sembia's treatment in the original box set (and for sometime thereafter) was that it was a major and central location which was intentionally left with very little detail so that GMs could make it into whatever they wanted (as opposed to being given only really peripheral areas of a campaign world and being told "see? you can put stuff over here, far away from where everything else is").

RPGPundit

For my current campaign, I've chosen to de-emphasize the whole merchants-land thing and made sembia a monarchy, albeit one less centralized and less powerful than Cormyr's monarchy. The Selkirks are the current ruling family there, with the current king being King Kendrick Selkirk.

Sembia as a land is in some ways more progressive than Cormyr; Cormyr being a bit more stuck in its medievalism while Sembia is quite "humanist" (in the 16th century sense). There are less "ancient noble lineages" and more New Men there, which makes tradition slightly less powerful.  
On the other hand, some could argue that Sembia is less moral than Cormyr.  Cormyr is more Lawful, Sembia more Neutral.

And yes, the two countries basically hate each other.  Cormyr is militarily the much stronger of the two, but has been seriously strained these last many years by the war with the northern humanoids.   King Azoun is now quite desperate to forge an alliance with Sembia by any means necessary, hoping to bypass all old grievances by possibly creating an alliance by marriage of his daughter with the King of Sembia's son.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;452191For my current campaign, I've chosen to de-emphasize the whole merchants-land thing and made sembia a monarchy, albeit one less centralized and less powerful than Cormyr's monarchy. The Selkirks are the current ruling family there, with the current king being King Kendrick Selkirk.

What's your inspiration for this? (if any)

Quote from: Cole;452195What's your inspiration for this? (if any)

None at all, really.  Its just that what I had in mind for the major events that are going to happen in the early stages of my campaign depended upon Sembia having a more traditional monarchy than what they're depicted as in the FR canon setting.

RPGPundit