Ahrensbach



The Duchy of Ahrensbach is a region on the southeastern edge of the kingdom of Yurgenschmidt, classified as a greater duchy.

The territory is bordered by the following other territories:
 * The duchy of Ehrenfest to the North
 * The duchy of Frenbeltag to the Northwest
 * The former territory of the duchy of Werkerstock to the West
 * The duchy of Dunkelfelge to the Southwest
 * The country gate leading to Lanzenave to the Southeast
 * an unnamed Ocean to the South

Ahrensbach's duchy colour is light-purple.

Ahrensbach borders a great ocean.

This also influenced their cuisine. Unlike in Ehrenfest, where they are very rare, fish dishes are quite common in Ahrensbach.

The country gate that allows the traders to pass through the border barrier between the two kingdoms is situated in the ocean and is big enough for the trade ships to pass through it, without the need to load the goods and passengers onto another ships within the borders of Yurgenschmidt.

Ahrensbach's border barries is set up in a way that every member of the archducal family who ever donated mana to the duchy's foundation can feel disturbances at the border barrier, not just the Aub.

Ahrensbach is considerably wamer than Ehrenfest, with them getting the first flurries of snow only well after most cities in their northern neighbor are already covered deeply in snow. Conversely, the summers are much hotter, to the point where nobles barely ever go outside between the third and fifth bell.

Unlike in Ehrenfest, in Ahrensbach, there is a tradition that once a new Aub is chosen, all other archduke candidates of the same generation lose their status and are demoted to regular archnobles. This was also the case for Gieselfried's own little brother, who was given a province and made into a Count when his brother took up the mantle of leadership, thus eliminating Gieselfried's nephews and nieces from succession of the title.

The recently deceased archduke of Ahrensbach was Gieselfried, married to his first wife Georgine, the elder sister of Aub Ehrenfest. Their daughter Detlinde is to become the transitional archduchess before Letizia reaches adulthood.

Among the nobility, there is a very long-lasting trend for females to wear veils in front of their faces, which has been in place since the times the brother of the fifth Aub Ehrenfest married Lady Gabriele and which has endured to this very day. Some noble women prefer sheer veils, while others opt for completely opaque, magical veils that are enchanted to not impede their vision. While they certainly are part of Ahrensbach fashion, this tradition is also rooted in practicality, protecting the faces of females from the intense sun in Ahrensbach's long and hot summers.

Among the nobles of the duchy, stories about knights fighting maritime feybeasts are quite popular.

Due to their long and fruitful trade relationship, Ahrensbach's cuisine has taken on quite a few traits of their neighbor. Cuisine from Lanzenave tends to be sour and intensely spicey, even compared to Rozemyne's recipes, much less the considerably blander traditional Yurgenschmidt dishes. As such Ahrensbach opted to avoid serving food seasoned with imported spices, in dishes served at the Interduchy Tournament and Archduke Conference, despite how common they have become in Ahensbach itself, expecting the nobles of other duchies to have a rather strongly averse reaction to the unusual taste.

With none of their few archduke candidates being at the age to attend, the rule to represent her duchy at the Royal Acadmey currently falls to the archnoble Martina.

Due to their position on the coast and being the duchy in which the country gate is positioned, Ahrensbach has a florishing maritime trade with the neighboring country of Lanzenave.

Each year, from spring to autumn, a congregation of Lanzenave envoys stays in Ahrensbach, in a mansion set aside for their use as a de-facto embassy, which the locals refer to as the Lanzenave Estate.

Inside this de-facto embassy, there is a room that can only be unlocked by the Aub personally. The room behind it contains a teleportation circle, leading directly into the Adalgisa Villa, on the grounds of the Royal Academy, for the newly chosen Lanzenave princess to use to get to her new home. The existence of this circle however, seems to be known to only very few people, with the general nobility apparently being under the impression, that the doors lead to a set of room for the princess to merely rest in, until she is cleared to travel on to the Sovereignty.

Sometimes even members of Lanzenave's royal family are part of this group. At their yearly arrival, the duchy holds a small feast to welcome them, when the delegation arrive on the first trade ship of the season. Later in the year, what is only the Starbind Ceremony in other duchies, has been expanded to a great feast, in which all the Giebes come to the capital to socialize with each other and the Lanzenave guests.

Several years ago, there was some kind of incident involving a shipment of feystone between Yurgenschmidt and Lanzenave, which caused Zent Trauerqual to considerably reduce the amount of wares traded between the two countries and which, due to how importent this trade is for their economy, also ended up hurting Ahrensbach to some degree.

Ahrensbach was fully involved in the most recent civil war. After the death of the first and third princes, Ahrensbach supported the fifth prince Trauerqual, who eventually won the war. This victory brought them much acclaim by the current ruler and increased their influence.

Despite siding with the new king during the war, the royalty and Klassenberg still forced the duchy to be subjected to the wide-spread purge that happened all over the country. This also claimed the life of Aub Ahrensbach's own second wife, who while innocent herself had the misfortune to be the little sister of Aub Werkerstock, who had supported the first and fourth princes. Thankfully, the Aub was able to successfully negotiate for the lives of her children, at the cost of having them demoted to archnobles and thus removed from the archducal family and thus unable to provide their mana to the Foundation or become successors for the archduke's title.

The losses incurred during the war and the subsequent purge left the duchy as a whole, but the archducal family in particular, greatly diminished in mana capacity and started a steady decline of Ahrensbach. Despite being part of the victorious faction, Ahrensbach's prestige and position in the duchy rankings kept falling.

After the war, the territory of the Duchy of Werkerstock - located to Ahrensbach's West - was split, with Ahrensbach being chosen to manage the northern half, while Dunkelfelger was put in charge of the southern half.

This turned out to be a detriment to Ahrensbach, since now their already thinly-stretched mana had to take care of even more territory.

Shortly after the purge had ended, Gieselfried's only remaining archduke candidate son Wolfram died in an accident, leaving the incompetent Detlinde as the only remaining candidate with the rights to succeed the Aub position. However, he managed to successfully negotiate with Drewanchel for the adoption of his and his first wife's granddaughter Letizia, whom he designated as the heir to the title of Aub Ahrensbach.

A short time ago, Aub Ahrensbach's first wife died, and his former third wife Georgine was chosen as the new first wife. While the exact dates are not known to the people of Ehrenfest, the first time Georgine accompanied the Aub to the Archduke Conference was the year following Rozemyne's baptism and adoption.

In recent years, Ahrenbach fell even further in the duchy rankings, according to Hartmut due to some kind of internal dispute, about which he couldn't find out any more detail, dropping them back to rank 6, the lowest of any of the greater duchies and thus just one spot above the middle duchies.

Later, Hartmut finds out more about Ahrensbach's internal mess, in no small part thanks to the children of nobles of the former Veronica faction. While not knowing whether it is the cause or the effect of the internal crisis, he learns that the archducal family is in crisis due to their mana capacity declining, leaving them with only two archduke candidates that have enough mana to be eligible as successors, one of which is Detlinde. It isn't clear whether this means that all the other children have too low a capacity or that there are more tragic circumstances for this lack of suitable candidates.

The Aub and his wife are looking for a suitable husband for Detlinde, their youngest and last unmarried daughter. Since the successor has already been decided and they want to avoid strife within their duchy, they are looking for someone who lacks the ambition or standing to push Detlinde to try to take the title of successor away from Letizia. With his tarnished reputation and family ties to Ahrensbach, Wilfried of Ehrenfest appears to be a perfect candidate, but unfortunately, he has recently been announced to be betrothed to his adopted sister Lady Rozemyne, and the king already gave them his blessings, dashing their hopes of arranging a marriage between the cousins.

After the end of the first term of Rozemyne's Royal Academy education, Aub Ehrenfest finally agrees to allow the marriages of Aub Ahrensbach's niece Aurelia with Lamprecht and of the mednobles Bettina and Freuden. That Aub Ahrensbach not only allows, but actively pushes for marriages that would remove two nobles from his duchy during the severe mana shortage is quite puzzling to many people. Due to the political situation remaining highly strained, the weddings are not held like usual on the day of the Starbind Ceremony, but in a seperate ceremony held at the duchy boder gate in early summer, with both archducal families in attendance. Despite the frayed tempers, the dual ceremony finishes without incident.

At the border between Ehrenfest and Ahrensbach, the current poor state of the greater duchy compared to its smaller northern neighbor is apparently visible, showing how bad the situation in Ahrensbach is. While the Ehrenfest side of the border remains a lush forest, the Ahrensbach side has decayed into a empty plains covered only in grass. It isn't clear whether this is limited to just the province of Bindewald as a result of the Count Bindewald's incarceration or if it is a symptom of the situation of the entire duchy.

During the investigation into the ternisbefallen attack on Ehrenfest's gathering spot, the Sovereignty found indications that the teleportation circle in the old Werkerstock dormitory had been used. In the attack on the Interduchy Tournament a few weeks later, the same kind of feybeast was utilized. Since the majority of identified rebels hailed from Werkerstock, whose old territory is now under Ahrensbach and Dunkelfelger management, ternisbefallen only naturally occurring in the same two duchies and the other end of the teleportation connection of Werkerstock terminating in the areas now under Ahrensbach management, the Sovereignty repeatedly sent teams of knights to Ahrensbach in the course of their investigations. While Aub Ahrensbach guaranteed his duchy's full cooperation, many nobles see these repeated searches as a sign of distrust or even open insults against the greater duchy and ally of the king during the civil war.

In the summer following these occurrences, Aub Ahrensbach collapses due to poor health. His daughter Detlinde suspects that the stress of the constant investigations is partially responsible for her fathers health problems.

At her graduation Detlinde manages to blunder and pass out on stage at the Dedicaiton Whirl, but in so doing a magic circle briefly came into visibility beneath her. Misunderstanding incomplete transcriptions of a discontinued ritual to determine nobles suited to enter a competition to become the next king, the Sovereign High Bishop declares Detlinde an actual zent candidate. Upon learning of this and not knowing any better than the priests, Zent Trauerqual states that should Detlinde be able to acquire the Grutrissheit he would turn the throne over to her willingly.

Following this Detlinde puts all her efforts into building alliances and finding the Grutrissheit and thus her dying of the Foundation Magic of Ahrensbach is put off for the time being. Georgine is at least able to talk her daughter into the compromise of limiting her efforts to a single year. Should Detlinde be unable to find the original transcription of Mestionora's bible, she will abandon her efforts for the crown and settle on a life in her home duchy.

In reaction to the discoveries presented by Dunkelfelger and Ehrenfest at the Interduchy Tournament, Georgine makes many of the nobles of her duchy - including the archduke candidate Letizia - provide their mana to their spring prayer, led by Ferdinand, their current guest and future husband of Detlinde. She also puts her full support behind the Sovereign Temple's attempts to have Lady Rozemyne installed as the Sovereign High Bishop.

It is unclear whether this is a long-standing issue, or something that happened only recently, but by the time Ferdinand arrived in Ahrensbach, they completely abonsoned the stationing of any guards at the country gate. Knights only move to the gate, if one of the members of the archducal family alerts them of an unexpected entry. When Ferdinand is brought to the first arrival of a Lanzenave ship in spring after coming to the duchy, he loses no time in instructing the Knight's Commander to station a contingent at the gate at all times. Detlinde considers this a waste of time and effort, since the only people who ever come through the gate are their allies from Lanzenave, but she limits herself to pouting, while letting Ferdinand's orders stand, apparently not really caring either way. Ferdinand meanwhile is worried that without any guards, people from other countries might slip in alongside the expected traders and wishes to keep an eye on the expected traders as well, just in case.

One of the people making up the Lanzenave delegation is Leonzio, a prince and grand-son of the current Lanzenave king. He comes hoping he can convince Ahrensbach to help him convince Zent Trauerqual to accept their princess in honour of the Adalgisa arrangement and maybe ease up on the trade restrictions. Ferdinand, not being able to find any argument that might sway the royal family and not seeing any benefit for Yurgenschmidt in even trying, tries to reject Leonzio, but Detlinde overrules him and completely falls to the prince's manipulation, as well as his charms.

Following the incident at the funeral, Detlinde becomes ever more unhinged. She spends considerable time in the Lanzenave Estate, in the company of Lord Leonzio and dismisses all of her retainers, who point out how unseemly this is for an engaged woman, leading to her getting rid of every single one of her retainers that Ferdinand estimates to be sensible. She also completely distances her actual fiancé, not allowing him or any of his retainers to get near her, stating her believes of his intense jealousy as the reason. She furthermore believes that should Ferdinand ever meet face-to-face with Leonzio, the two would duel over her hand in marriage.

In her infatuation, she also often "invites" Letizia to the Lanzenave estate, likely in a manner more akin to a command, where the girl receives gifts of sweets and toys from Leonzio.


 * Cambridge Online Dictionary