Farinnel, a History

In 642 PD, now famed farmer Evelyn Farinnel set out from the city of Kymal to find a place to call her own. She found that the Dividing Plains was a rich and vibrant soil, good for farming, due to the Foramere Basin’s plentiful fresh water supply after the fall of Errevon the Ice Elemental hundreds of years ago. She built a farmhouse and laid the first waystone of the settlement now known as Farinnel. History attributes Farinnel’s survival, both as a farmer and a settlement, to her skill with people. An alliance with the elves of the surrounding Bramblewood provided skilled farming tricks and natural aid, while continued outreach and kindness to travelers made them neighbors and friends. Now, Farinnel stands as a beacon of outlander society, providing homes, farms, and comfortable inns to those seeking new life or in need of a stop along the Silvercut Road that cuts through the Dividing Plains.

With a population of about 3,200 people, Farinnel survives from their agricultural trade of corn, grain, and wheat. Farmland stretches out from the settlements primary structures to the surrounding forest and lakeside huts and shops along the coast of Foramere’s Basin. Silos to store the bountiful harvests sit on the southern edge of the village, with walls around them and their own guard after too many attempts by marauder bands to steal the crops for themselves. In addition to the grain and corn crop, Farinell is known for its delectable pears, which bloom twice a year. Said to be a gift of friendship from the elves, the pear orchard fills the remaining lands of Evelyn Farinell’s original farm, where her farmhouse still stands to this day, behind the newer mayoral estate.

The Farinnel family has mostly remained in the settlement their matriarch founded over the last couple hundred years and running the settlement has become the family business. This has not always sat well with the additional families that made Farinnel the true settlement that it is, and political squabbles flare up from time to time. However, the balance of power rarely changes, due to the settlement’s security force, the Farmer’s Fist, or, colloquially, the Cutter’s. While paid for by city taxes, these security officers are overseen and directed by the mayoral office, giving the Farinnel family plenty of backing in a fight.

While most of these political tensions fade to a simmer after a time, recent years have seen a change in Farinnel’s political stage. The previous mayor, Poltax Regor Farinnel, sought to expand the settlement beyond it’s borders, wanting to grow into a great city like Kymal or Zephrah. Working discretely at the start of his inherited term, he began to have farmers settle deeper and deeper into The Brambleood, using common folk looking for a better life when he could, or paying mercenaries to set up shop when common folk were scarce. The elves of the Wood grew wise to his plans and cut off their alliance with the village when Poltax refused to stop expansion, and retreated into the Bramblewood, which they call Alasse for the last 50 years.

It wasn’t long before the townsfolk became irritated with higher taxes and political pressure to stay in their homes coming from the mayor office, and discovered that Poltax had been emptying the government accounts to establish new farms and keep his expansion scheme in motion. This resulted in higher taxes and questions about the families stewardship of the village itself. In response, a new political movement rose up, calling themselves the Fair Farinnel Group.

The Fair Farinnel Group first sought to install an electoral process for the role of mayor, but lost steam in their movement when Poltax’s plan proved to be beneficial. The villagers found that a larger harvest from more farms provided more money and the influx of travelers, villagers, and new farmers looking to benefit, were a boon to business. Over the next few years, however, investigations by the Fair Farinnel group found that most of the money that was brought in did not go to the government coffers to reduce taxes significantly, but instead went to the family’s own personal funds. This caused another outrage among the citizens, though it was once again cut off when Poltax lowered taxes enough to assuage most of the citizens.

It was then that the Fair Farinnel Group rebranded to the Lawful Taxation League and began to work toward installing a council of financial advisors and overseers to manage the city’s funds and taxation laws through transparent and voted upon laws. The party made little movement in the settlement before Poltax’s death last year, after which his niece, Pallabra Farinnel, arrived from Kymal to take over the Mayoral office. The outrage of an outsider taking over, and one from the cesspool that is Kymal on top of it, breathed new life into the Lawful Taxation League’s efforts and they’re beginning to make headway with their plans, though, with this much political capital at their disposal, who knows how those plans have changed.

For her part, Pallabra is a bit of an unknown entity in Farinnel, having only occasionally ventured into the village to treat with citizens in the last year, though her trips back to Kymal have been frequent enough to cause plenty of rumors to fly about what exactly her business there is.