Kingdom of the Isles
The Kingdom of the Isles, later the Kingdom of the Isles and Seas, was a kingdom founded in Ingbara by Maigh the Champion, the first mink to be crowned King of the Isles by a local tribe. The kingdom made a name for itself in piracy, prospering and spreading from Embertree to the rest of the islands.
History
Eventually, under Maigh III Maigher and his ambitious brothers, it carved out a piece of the mainland when it staked its claim to the Dancing Coast. Alliances were made with rivals of the House of Pyre, and the Coast became fully and truly under the kingdom's claw.
After Maigh's death, the independent eastern sea isles in Ingbara became a part of the kingdom, following the marriage of King Grymus Maigher and Selinna Parra Aram, Queen of Eleven Seas. At that point, the kingdom became known officially as the Kingdom of the Isles and Seas.
After the union of all Ingbara, the kingdom increased in exceeding wealthy and moral bankruptcy, and its cities overflowed with wine, gambling, and slavery, the vices of its jolly inhabitants. Thieves, cutthroats, turncoats, and outcasts flocked like so many vultures to carrion, many of whom gained titles and booty under the Maigher pirate kings and queens in exchange for easily-muttered swears and bloody services rendered.
The foul monster of the Isles quickly arose from the sea as a dangerous thorn in the Crown of Summering's side. Merchants, travellers, lords and paupers- none were spared the lash and shackles of slavery or a merciful blade of murder.
So it was that in the days of Tarmian Maigher, a feud arose between him and his First Captain Arren a Tair, who came boldly to Embertree, the kingdom's very heart, to challenge the raucous rogue King of the Isles.
Of all their cruelties, the Maighers did not lie nor cheat, and even honor could be found among thieves. Of all his vices, gambling was closest to King Tarmian's heart, and thus in a game of Odd Noddy the First Captain tricked Tarmian into playing him and beat him fully to the final coup de grace. But the Captain restrained his paw at the last, for the Maigher had wagered all, and all he had lost, but for one thing more precious than all the rest, and that which Arren had come to claim before all other Captains of the Isles: the jet-studded crown of the Kingdom of the Isles.
Had Fate been fickle, and changed her current mood, Tarmian might have won the day, but so fiercely she cursed him in that black day that crown and kingdom both were his no more.
Ever since that day, the Isles pledged their loyalty to the House a Tair. Many hundredfolds hence, when the bad blood seemed long forgotten and the A Tair family moved court to Summerly following their successful defeat of the hedgehog House of Oake, the Isles were placed under the charge of Armyn Maigher, who soon began calling himself king again in their absence.
