Re-Estize Kingdom

Re-Estize Kingdom (リ・エスティーゼ王国) is a human nation of the New World with a population of nine million and one of the three major human nations neighboring Nazarick. The Kingdom is currently in a state of political disorder and civil unrest between the Royalty Faction and the Nobility Faction.

Background
Re-Estize Kingdom is located west of the Azerlisia Mountains, north-west of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, with its existence lasting over 200 years and is usually called "the Kingdom". Though it is one of the three main human nations appearing in Overlord, the Kingdom is suffering political disorder. The confrontation between the Patricians and the Loyalists is quite severe, virtually dividing the country into two.

The roots of all this corruption lie with the Kingdom's geological location. Protected by natural barriers and its neighboring countries, the Kingdom was able to enjoy a relatively large amount of peace. However, this peace caused many nobles to grow arrogant, believing their prosperity would continue forever and making sure no one could challenge their authority.

The peace which the Kingdom had enjoyed for so long came to an end when the Baharuth Empire declared war on it. Things did not escalate into an all-out war though and instead the two nations simply fought each other during annual wars. Lacking a proper army, the Kingdom was forced the draft peasants into the military. This removed them from their fields causing crop failures and resulting in famine. Despite the desperate situation, many nobles refused to accept reality and thus nothing was done about it.

Apart from all political issues, a large criminal group named "Eight Fingers" is undermining the Kingdom from within, and annual war against the Empire is slowly consuming the national strength. The Golden Princess is attempting structural reform of the Kingdom, yet most of her attempts were thwarted by the nobles. At least slavery was abolished, but still there are a lot of unofficial slaves in the underground.

The Undead King Arc
It was around this time that several villages within the borders of the Kingdom were being attacked by what was believed to be imperial knights of the Baharuth Empire. As a result, the King sent Gazef Stronoff and his group of warrior troops to investigate and eliminate them. However, it was in truth actually just a ploy planned out by the Slane Theocracy's Sunlight Scripture who pretended to be imperial knights with the mission to kill Gazef Stronoff and his men. It was around this time that Gazef came face to face with a mysterious magic caster who made his presence known by the name of Ainz Ooal Gown in Carne Village.

Upon confronting the Sunlight Scripture, Gazef had his troops battle against their men who easily overwhelmed them with magic. This was only until Gazef and his remaining soldiers were then teleported away from that area in place of Ainz Ooal Gown. As Gazef and his men were saved by Ainz, all of the Scripture's men were either killed or captured for experiments at Nazarick.

The Dark Warrior Arc
Within E-Rantel, a city near its borders, one of the kingdom's major import and trade areas, Ainz set up a base of operations there for his Adventurer persona Momon and established his group, Darkness. During his exploits there, he prevented a plot to turn E-Rantel into an undead city by Zuranon.

The Bloody Valkyrie Arc
In E-Rantel, the Adventurer's Guild called an emergency meeting to talk about a powerful vampire and Pluton Ainzach also invited Mayor Panasolei to discuss how to defend the city from the vampire. Two adventurers teams: Darkness and Kralgra, departed the city to confront the vampire.

The Men in the Kingdom Arc
It was around this time, the Royal Capital of the Kingdom came under attack by a demon known as Jaldabaoth and his army of demons, who came to the city to look for a powerful magic item. However, the truth is that it was Demiurge who orchestrated this scenario in order to increase Momon's reputation as a hero within the Kingdom. With Demiurge's plan at hand, he was also able to recover a large percentage of the Kingdom and Eight Finger's resources as well as kidnapping thousands of its citizens for experimental and other uses for Nazarick. A large coalition of the Kingdom's adventurers and soldiers were brought together by Princess Renner and Lakyus Alvein Dale Aindra while being aided by the King himself, Gazef and his warrior troops. In addition, Marquis Raeven brought his private troops in order to stop him.

In the end, they all succeeded in stopping Jaldabaoth's diabolical plan, but at the cost of countless lives of both adventurers and soldiers. Their sacrifice was made worse with a large percentage of the cities' populace of citizens being taken away by Demiurge's remaining demon army. Furthermore, during that time Aura and Mare also took part in taking control of all of the Eight Finger's operations underground.

The Magic Caster of Destroy Arc
It was around this time of the year again that the Kingdom began their annual war with the Baharuth Empire in the Katze Plains. However, the Empire this time had decided to form an alliance with Nazarick in order to acquire the surrounding territory of E-Rantel. With the war looming closer as one month passes by, the Kingdom then sent an army of 260,000 to the Katze Plains while an additional 5,000 troops led by the crown prince to head to Carne Village for information about this mysterious magic caster surrounding Ainz Ooal Gown. When the war was about to start, the battle was almost over before it even began when most of their army were devastatingly wiped out by Ainz and his five Dark Youngs.

As the war was concluded, the fortress city of E-Rantel is now under the rule of Nazarick. The Kingdom has now been reduced to a mere shadow of their former power and is in danger of total collapse.

The Ruler of Conspiracy Arc
After E-Rantel was ceded over to the Sorcerer Kingdom, the Re-Estize Kingdom received a huge influx refugees whom fled the city, believing the Sorcerer King Ainz Ooal Gown to be a monster and a tyrant.

The Kingdom was also left with a massive amount of orphans and widows as a result of the massive casualties of the battle at the Katze Plains and many of the survivors suffering extreme mental distress. In response to this, the Golden Princess Renner invested a large sum of money into making orphanages to provide homes for the orphans and jobs for the widows. There are, however, darker reasons for these orphanages, such as locating and drafting children who could become powerful individuals in the future.

Additionally, many fathers and firstborn sons of the noble families were killed during the massacre forcing the second and third born sons to take over their family's territory. Most of these "spares" were never properly taught how to conduct themselves in high society and thus lack class and etiquette. This also greatly shook the balance of power within the nobility, with many noble factions were effectively dissolving and new ones taking their place.

As the current government struggled to rebuild its power and re-strengthen its government on both sides, the first official envoy from the Sorcerer Kingdom represented by Albedo came to form the first official relations with the Kingdom after the war. Many lower-class nobles sought to use this as an opportunity to establish a relationship with the new nation to increase their own influence, resulting in the creation of a new noble faction that supports the Sorcerer Kingdom.

Culture
The Re-Estize Kingdom is a feudal society. At the top of the hierarchical structure stands the king and the royal family. Next comes the nobility who possess major landholdings in the kingdom. And at the bottom are the serfs.

Titles and even professions are all hereditary. Social advancement in the kingdom seems to be very unlikely as any progress made is always hindered by the nobles, who fear that such changes might endanger their power and stations. In fact, it is not uncommon for small wars to break out between the nobles themselves, should one act against the interests of another.

Unlike the Slane Theocracy and the Baharuth Empire, the Kingdom lacks any kind of centralized magic academy, usually a person would have to hire a magic caster to teach them.

The Kingdom follows a Guild-Based system which means that each city has its own guild and has its own rules. One tradesman that is a master in one city would be considered a junior in another.

Religion
The Kingdom's citizens adheres to the worship of the Four Great Gods, along with a compilation of minor gods.

Politics
The Re-Estize Kingdom is a feudal monarchy traditionally ruled by the king and his nobles. The king and great nobles own 30% of the territory for each while 40% left are domains of lesser nobles. Policies are decided at conferences between the King and the nobles. Due to Lanposa III's advanced age, he is unable to exercise his leadership as he once could and thus the nobles have more say in matters. The only reason that the kingdom did not split is Marquis Raeven, the opportunist who owns highest authority among the Six Great Nobles. Also many nobles regardless of faction are in league with other countries, like Baharuth Empire or Slane Theocracy.

As for administration in the Kingdom, there are different entry rules and regulations for each region controlled by a noble. For denizens of each region, travel between areas is mostly prohibited. For transit, the villages under royal control are issued permits. These permits allow one to bypass the toll tax issued at the city gates.

Military Strength
Re-Estize Kingdom's military is mostly composed of militia. Its soldiers are mostly just drafted peasants, they receive a government-issued weapon, no armor and extremely sparse training. The Kingdom usually levies two-hundred thousand men to fight the Empire, but it can levy more if need be.

Only Gazef's Warrior Troop, Marquis Raeven's private guards, the King's royal knights, and the other elite forces of other nobles can match the Imperial Knights. The Royal Army of the Re-Estize Kingdom is really just a ragtag bunch of individual armies put together whenever the call of banners was issued in the face of a common, or at least mutual cause. Although the King is in overall command, the nobles don't have to listen to him.

Foreign Relations
The Re-Estize Kingdom was the most geographically secure country of all and faced almost no territorial encroachment from aggressive demi-human nations that plagued its neighbors. It was by far the most peaceful nation, aside from the annual territorial dispute with the Baharuth Empire, it possessed the largest concentration of human effort. However, its seclusion from the reality left it weak to corruption and stagnation from within, and eventually its sickness was spreading to other nations.

Baharuth Empire
The Kingdom and the Empire was in a state of war. Though the losses on both sides are minimal, the conflict between the two nations has only prolonged due to the fact that the Empire has never fully committed the entirety of their forces to the war, merely engaging in a war of attrition so as to take the weakening Kingdom with minimal losses. One factor of antagonism is the Kingdom's negligence over the continuous production of the addictive drug, Black Dust, which is already influencing the empire's populace.

After the battle at the Katze Plains, the Kingdom's relationship with the Empire seems to have taken a back seat to the one with the newly founded Sorcerer Kingdom.

Slane Theocracy
Official relations between the Kingdom and the Theocracy are more or less in a neutral position. However, some of the nobility were even willing to conspire with the Theocracy to kill off Gazef Stronoff and had no problems in killing the Kingdom's citizens while doing so under covert operations.

Furthermore, there are also people within the Kingdom that detest their treatment of non-human races. Despite this, the Kingdom's human civilization would have been wiped out long ago if it was not there, so they view the Theocracy as a necessary evil. According to the officials from the Theocracy, the territory around E-Rantel originally belongs to the Theocracy.

Most of the official leaders of Theocracy view that nation as a disgrace as their relative sheltered isolation had caused the people to become to greedy, selfish, corrupted and incompetent. With the only real significant benefits it had brought is that it helped with increasing the human population and producing a few talented individuals such as Lakyus and Gazef.

Sorcerer Kingdom
Until the official declaration of war against the Kingdom in alliance with the Empire, both the Kingdom and Nazarick had no official relations with one another. Afterwords, they became enemy states and fought against each other in the annual war which resulted in devastating losses for the Kingdom's Army including losing one of its major cities to be under Nazarick's rule and reducing its governance into near total collapse.

After the war, the two kingdoms opened formal relations and tried to form a peaceful and productive co-operative relationship with one another. Some of the nobles within the noble faction are even conspiring to sell out the Kingdom with the new country in exchange for more power and control. In truth the preparations are being made in secret on both sides so the complete annexation of the Kingdom by the Sorcerer Kingdom will be accomplished soon.

Trivia

 * The Kingdom's former territories, Carne Village and E-Rantel are ceded to the Sorcerer Kingdom.
 * The Kingdom is incurring food problems due to the strain of the war with the empire.
 * Two-hundred-fifty thousand men is around three percent of the Kingdoms population.
 * The roads of the Kingdom, excluding the King's and Marquis Raeven's territories, are dirt roads with poor public order.
 * The Kingdom keeps records of its citizens. However, such documents are almost always full of mistakes and aren't supposed to be taken all too seriously.
 * The poor and unlucky commoners get drafted while the lucky ones join the City Guards which provides them with an excuse to evade the front lines. The patriotic commoners usually join Gazef's Troops.
 * Many frontier villages suffer from monster attacks due to being unable to hire adventurers and in part because of the Kingdom's inability to deploy soldiers. Moreover, the nobles who rule much of the Kingdom are generally apathetic to the well-being of their serfs.
 * Frontier villages are usually avoided by people, only those who have nothing to lose, like third sons, would go to them. The exception is of course those who already live or used to live in a frontier village.
 * Often times, when the head of a noble family changes, unless they are one of the great nobles, these family heads have to gain the approval of the Great Noble they are under.