Black Desert/Mediah
|
Mediah
the Republic of Mediah · once the Kingdom of Mediah
| |
 i
| |
Altinova, the trading capital From the Adventurer's Guide, Pearl Abyss
| |
| Ruled by | Republic of Mediah, through its merchant guilds |
|---|---|
| Capital | Altinova |
| Leader | Neruda Shen, of the Shen Merchant Guild |
| Terrain | Arid highland, canyon and red rock |
| Settlements | Altinova, Tarif, Kusha |
| Landmarks | Helms Post, Sausan Islands, Omar Lava Cave |
| Former state | Kingdom of Mediah, under the House of Bareeds |
| Borders | Calpheon to the west, Valencia to the east |
| Added | 2015, as the first expansion |
Mediah is the arid highland region that sits between the western republics and the deserts of Valencia, and it is the merchant state that grew rich on the traffic between them.
The country is rough: red rock, canyon, worked-out mines and lava caves, with the walled city of Altinova at its center. It is the natural next country for adventurers who have outgrown Calpheon, and the last settled ground before the sand.
Mediah is no longer a kingdom: the royal house died in a single catastrophe, and the merchant guilds that had been running the economy for decades simply carried on running the country.
1 Geography✎
Mediah lies northeast of Calpheon, reached through a long mountain pass, and its eastern border opens into the Great Valencian Desert. The southwest, beyond the Junaid River, runs up against Drieghan.
The ground is dry without being desert. Bare red rock and deep canyons carry what little farming exists onto terraces and river banks, and the region's real wealth has always come out of the earth rather than off it. The Omar Lava Cave and the abandoned iron mines are the places that mattered.
Altinova stands in a bowl of rock in the center, walled and dense, and it is the largest market in the game outside Calpheon. Tarif lies north, Kusha sits in the hills, and the coast to the northeast is watched from the fortified Helms Post, with the Sausan Islands offshore in pirate hands.
2 History✎
Two barbarian peoples, the Sausans and the Helms, moved into Mediah from the desert generations ago to escape a typhoon and never left. They lived alongside the kingdom rather than under it, and the arrangement held for a long time. Attacks around the iron mine and the Omar Lava Cave eventually drove ordinary Mediahns out of both.
The House of Bareeds ruled from Mediah Castle and later from Altinova. Bareeds II, remembered as the least capable king the country ever had, refused to take a side when Calpheon went to war with Valencia. He let Calpheonite armies cross his territory and left the details to Neruda Shen, who headed the merchant guilds.
Shen turned the war into a business. Mediah's smiths forged weapons from black crystal that Calpheon supplied and the Omar Lava Cave processed, while Valencia quietly paid for protection of its own merchants and took a share of the profit. The kingdom stayed neutral in name and sold to both sides.
3 The Three Days of Darkness✎
Illezra, who led Tarif, broke sacred law by unsealing the Book of Cartian and taking the power of the sorceress bound inside it, an act that nearly killed her. She survived, allied herself with the followers of the Elric Shrine, whose study of necromancy had turned into worship of Kzarka, and raised a tower in the north of the region.
What followed is remembered as the Three Days of Darkness. Mediah Castle burst into flame, the explosion tore through the country around it, and darkness covered the whole region for three days. Bareeds II died in it, and only his youngest heir survived.
Illezra then led the barbarians on Altinova, and the guilds bought coexistence rather than winning a war. The monarchy was never restored. Mediah became a republic run by its merchants, and Neruda Shen, who had been making its decisions for forty years, now made them openly.
4 Settlements✎
| Place | What is there |
|---|---|
| Altinova | The walled capital and the great market of the east, with the game's densest concentration of workshops and the seat of the merchant republic. |
| Tarif | A northern town, and the place Illezra ruled before she unsealed the book that ended the kingdom. |
| Kusha | A small hill settlement in the highlands, on the road toward the northern border. |
| Helms Post | A fortified position on the northeastern coast, named for the barbarian people who hold the ground around it. |
| Sausan Islands | Islands off the coast, held by pirates, and for years one of the most heavily used hunting grounds in the game. |
5 Hunting grounds✎
Mediah is where the game's difficulty turns: the country holds the first grounds that expect real gear rather than merely a high level. The step up from Calpheon is steep enough that many players mark it as the point where the game stops being generous.
The Sausan Islands were the standard destination for years, and the shrine ruins and abandoned mines inland fill out the range. Helms Post and the ground around it belong to the barbarians who never left.
6 Role in the game✎
Mediah arrived in 2015 as the game's first expansion, and it set the pattern every later region followed. Each was a free addition, with a new tier of hunting grounds and a story line of its own running alongside the main one.
Its lasting contribution is commercial rather than martial. Trade between the west and the desert passes through Altinova, and the systems built around nodes, workers and long-distance trading are most visible here, in the country that exists because of them.