Colara

Colara is a coastline with a government attached. Its harbors take any ship that pays the mooring fee and its captains fly whichever flag the current buyer prefers. Britannian grain contracts run through Colara. So do Almanian rifles and Frysian refugees, sometimes on the same ship.

Colara and Icara share a founding family. Two hundred years ago the family split over one decision, whether to feed the new occupier of Frysia or refuse. The branch that went inland grew the grain. The branch that went to the shore built the docks that carry it. Each side tells the story with itself as the one that stayed clean.

Colaran politics is a bidding war. Three harbor families, a customs office everyone bribes, and a mercenary guild that has fought for four different nations in ten years and been paid by all of them. When a foreign power wants something moved quietly along the eastern coast, it asks Colara for a price.

The last refugee ship from Vryehelm paid in full and never docked.