Perhaps the nation with the smallest borders with the Black Demesne, the Oxen Federation is a peasant’s republic, who came to be when the former kingdom of Dirander imposed heavy taxes and attempted to install serfdom and forced conscription to bolster their military might enough to consolidate the region to their south instead of fighting the invasion. The revolt occurred about 300 years ago, and the Oxen Federation has in fact gained ground against the Black Demesne that the former kingdom lost, specifically retaking the peninsula at Vanters flank, and some of the isthmus connecting the Federation to the north. They are on courteous terms with Vanters (Alexandra is fine with them so long as none of their ideas cross the border with them) and Icenia (past rulers, past wrongdoings), but Vascony and Kernowek are still borderline hostile when the news that Dirander were plotting conquest in the middle of a threat. Their lands range from hot coastal steppes to the north, and thick temperate forests in the south. They have a strong sense of nationality, a passion for Calvary, as a stubbornness that tend to steer some international opinion of them towards ‘barbarians playing at nobles’, in so far as to be the home of many fictional sentient monsters (think how Bram Stoker’s Dracula portrayed Hungary and Wallachia, that is the kind of inaccurate, fictional stories written with the Oxen Federation as the location). In truth, the people of the republic are very no nonsense and take care of their neighbors. Among the southern, reclaimed peninsula of the Oxen Federation is a formerly temperate forest that has changed. Trolls had inhabited the area extensively even before the invasion of the Black Demesne, and their numbers only exploded from there. When the Oxen Federation officially reconquered the land about 285 years ago, there were so many dead trolls that had been slain and buried under the boughs of the trees, the trees themselves became almost rubbery, bleed a sap that is uncomfortably close to looking like blood, and release gases when cut that sound disconcertingly like weak screams. This land is now called The Ichor-Hollow Expanse.

The country exists in the northwest of Derikes, and North of Kernowek, Vascony, Icenia