Occupying most of the territory from the delta of the Rhine in the north to Lake Constance and the Alps in the south, and from the edge of Transylvania in the east to the vinyards of Burgundy in the west, the Rhine is the birthplace of the Order of Hermes and the oldest of its thirteen Tribunals.
When the Order was young, the Rhine was wild and mostly unsettled, and many covenants were founded in the wilderness... including three Houses' Domus Magnae. Unfortunatley for these covenants and their magi, civilization has grown to full force in the Germanic woods and valleys over the last five hundred years, and they now find themselves in the middle of the Holy Roman Empire. The faerie forests that carpeted the hills in Bonisagus' day have shrunken dramatically, once plentiful sources of vis have fallen to the woodsman's ax or the farmer's plough, and even the edges of the mighty Black Forest no longer daunt would-be settlers as they once did. The deepest reaches of the forest still provide some refuge for magi and their allies, but much of the old magic of the Rhine is slowly giving way to the influence of the Dominion. Well into its Winter, even proud Durenmar is beginning to show the signs of an inevitable decline.
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