The dreaded Fort Cartmanjaro, the original seat of Blackbeard the Malevolent.
The Fiefdom of Cartland are the ancestral lands held by the Counts of Cartland, the descendants of Cartman the Great, and the enigmatic Queen Anne in the maternal line.
History[]
The term "Cartland" roughly applies to the civilised areas of an interdimensional realm consisting of a cluster of three neighbouring landmasses. Two of these, Cartmania and Annesland, are roughly temperate in climate. The land further to the North typically referred to as Cartland proper is largely frigid. Though legally and typically depicted in maps as being completely under the county's control, in actuality the national army has very little power over the vast swathes of untamed wilderness, which are typically dangerous and notorious for harboring goblin rebels.
The area was originally discovered through an effort by the Cartish Imperium to rediscover the lost nature of time travel in 34,786 AD, and a rift (originally a tiny tear in a lab environment) was unintentionally opened into the innocent-at-first glance world.
Upon closer study the area was found to harbour strange forms of fantastical life, such as highly animate blobs of slime, undead creatures of the night, animated snow, and goblins. Due to the fierce resistance, taming even relatively small areas of land was a huge feat, and it took several hundred years to carve out the strongholds of civilisation which currently exist on the planet with very few border changes since. The small size of the original rift was a particularly difficult obstacle, and it could only fit one human through at a time, making the transportation of men and equipment difficult, especially since the Bearspider Reserve couldn't be put into action. Since then entire stars in barren systems have been sacrificed to create wormholes large enough to fit a sizable fleet through.
Most information has remained within Imperium records, but stories of noteworthy individuals famed outside of the realm and within have spread far and wide.
The Great Frost Assault[]
The obelisk commemorating those who perished defending Annesland.
Conflict was not new in Cartland, as goblin marauders under Goblin King Dhilldom aib Hutthoel III had been attacking and attempting to seize control of county land almost since day one. However, on November 12th 35,799 a surprise attack was launched by an as of yet unknown enemy mobilised from the far Northern wilderness. The Frost Legion was upon Cartland, with a force of thousands of (snow)men advancing on the unprepared and relatively unguarded Annesland.
Battle was met on the open fields to the West of the infamous unfinished Castle of Annesland, and the army were forced to mobilise under Blackbeard the Lesser, Woolia "Afro Ninja" Jane, Chubby Checker, and the mysterious Quadruple P.
The resistance fought long and hard, but the Legion numbers seemed almost unstoppable. Battle raged on for several days, explosions and flashes of light from phasesaber and energy cannon alike being seen and heard for miles around. Hundreds upon hundreds of good Cartish men perished on those fields, crushed beneath tonnes of cursed snow.
The battle was eventually won, but at a huge price, and sadly all four of the commanders were killed in battle. As a memorial to the event, the field remains pockmarked and untouched out of respect to the fallen, with the exception of a central memorial structure. Shaped as an obelisk to signify the enormous phallus sizes of the men who died during the battle. The very bricks were carved from the cursed snow of the fallen enemy, with the main body of the structure being stuffed with the snow of the dead ice fiends as a final insult to their effort.
To this day, who sent the Frost Legion and the motives behind the attack remain as of yet unknown, and Imperium leadership anticipate future attacks.
Some of the trenches and tunnels of the battlefield, which were converted into foundations for the monument.
