Black Desert/Serendia
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Serendia
once the Kingdom of Heidel
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 i
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Heidel, built against the rock From the Adventurer's Guide, Pearl Abyss
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| Ruled by | Republic of Calpheon |
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| Capital | Heidel |
| Lord | Crucio Domongatt |
| Terrain | Hills, farmland, quarries and swamp |
| Peoples | Fogans and Nagas in the southern wetlands |
| Known for | The black stone deposit that cost it its independence |
| Sealed here | Kzarka, in a southern shrine |
| Former state | Kingdom of Heidel, under the House of Domongatt |
| Borders | Balenos to the west, Calpheon to the north |
| Added | 2014, at launch |
Serendia is the region east and south of Balenos in Black Desert, a country of hills, farmland, quarries and swamp that was an independent kingdom until Calpheon took it by force.
It is the second country most adventurers see, and the first with a real city in it. Heidel, built against a rock face, is where the early game stops feeling like a tutorial.
The region's temper is what distinguishes it. Serendia lost a war it started for good reasons, and the resentment left behind runs through nearly every quest given here.
1 Geography✎
The country lies east and south of Balenos, with Calpheon beyond its northern border. Rolling farmland and low hills cover most of it, worked harder than the coast to the west.
Heidel sits in the center, cut into a rock face so that the castle stands above the town rather than beside it. Quarries lie in the hills around it. The south is different country altogether: a large wetland where the Fogans and the Nagas live, and where a shrine in the mountains holds something the region would rather forget.
2 The kingdom✎
Serendia was the Kingdom of Heidel, ruled by the House of Domongatt. King Dahad held it before his son Crucio took the throne at twenty-seven.
Crucio broke with his father in almost every respect. He put aside the devotion to Elion that Dahad had built his reign on, and he set out to free Serendia from the influence Calpheon had exercised over it for years.
Trade with Valencia reopened through Mediah, and the Heidel merchants learned what those two countries already knew about the properties of black stone. A deposit of high quality turned up in the southern swamps, noticed when someone realized the pebbles the young Nagas carried were black crystal.
Domongatt took the stone as his opportunity. He believed it was the thing that would buy Serendia its political independence and end years of living under Calpheon's terms.
3 The war✎
Calpheon learned about the deposit and did not negotiate. It declared war in the year 275, and King Guy Seric attacked Heidel Castle directly and forced Domongatt into a treaty written to humiliate him.
The cost was enormous on both sides, comparable to what the plague had taken from the western continent. Serendia kept its towns and its people but lost the thing it had gone to war to obtain.
Guy Seric died in suspicious circumstances some years later. Crucio, rather than take advantage of it, demoted himself to Lord in defeat, an admission that he had failed to protect the country.
4 After the defeat✎
The years since have not been kind. Chamberlain Jordine taxed the region heavily enough to provoke open peasant revolt, and the disturbances around the Tower of Will brought a supernatural problem on top of the political one.
Serendia today is weakened, poor and unsettled, and it answers to Calpheon in law regardless of who holds its nodes. Kzarka, the Lord of Corruption, remains sealed in the southern shrine where ancient people put him, which is the region's oldest problem and still the one with the most left in it.