The Five Shires

The Beginning (1300 BC)
The Halflings themselves don't know their origins and although their Immortals love them, none claim to have made them. Their history starts in 1,300 BC when a group of halfling colonists arrive in the Shires by sea. When the Halflings arrived, the area was inhabited by elves - presumably some of those that travelled with Isundal and chose to settle here instead of moving on to the future Alfheim.

Those elves were complete pacifists refusing to fight back against even orc raids. Eventually they dwindled away to nothing (such extreme pacifism will do that to a race) and the last of the elves were apparently carried away by golden winged horses.

In around 1,000 BC there was a mass invasion of the Shire by orcs. This happened at the same time that the Gnolls invaded neighboring Karameikos, the orcs might have been driven out of the mountains by the Gnollish army.

The orcs soon enslaved the halflings (or 'hin' as they apparently call themselves) under the rule of their chieftain Orthrong. Unfortunately for the orcs, after Orthrong's death his son Raurgh (who was 20' tall apparently) was unable to keep control of the halflings and they rebelled in 965 BC.

The rebellion was successful, and the Shires became an independent nation ruled by a group of Elders. Unfortunately, the elders would spend all their time arguing and never actually get anything organized. Consequently the fledgling country managed to get some trade links going but was never properly defended.

This led to various invasions of humans, dwarves and orcs; and eventually the country collapsed into chaos in 938 BC with all factions fighting each other. After around a decade of fighting, the dwarves came out on top, and Loktal Ironshield becomes the king of the area. The dwarves promptly enslave the halflings just as the orcs before them had.

In 912 BC the halflings once more revolt - taking advantage of the fact that the dwarven army is fighting a gnoll invasion. The revolt is successful and the dwarves are kicked out, leading to the formation of a new halfling country. This time it was ruled by a council of lords who had been the generals of the rebellion rather than by the Elders.

The new country lasted longer than the previous one. The lords kept the armies strong against outside threats, but after a century or so rivalries between them (and their descendants) had got to the point where civil war broke out and they fought each other.

Of course, the orcs took advantage of this, and in 806 BC they invaded once more while the country was in no state to repel them. The halflings were enslaved once more under a number of generations of orcs, but it was in 746 BC - during an orcish civil war - that things turned around. The halflings (who were mostly hiding and letting the orcs kill each other) discovered Blackflame under their mountains. With this as a symbol to rally around, the halflings managed to defeat the orcs in 744 BC and by 610 BC they had purged the land of the humans, dwarves and gnolls that had seen the orc war as a sign of weakness and also invaded.

By this point, each of the halfling clans had established a territory of its own with its own stronghold in which Blackflame was tended. In 609 BC the clan elders met in the former orcish capital to discuss how to unite the clans into a single country without falling victim to the mistakes of the past that had allowed the country to be invaded repeatedly.

In the end, one charismatic halfling called Gunzuth came up with the idea that the clan elders would each rule their clans as they saw fit, but that they would elect a Sheriff to govern the country as a whole. The Sheriff would have a position for life and be part of no clan, but to prevent the Sheriff having too much power there would be two safeguards. Firstly the elders could vote to strip the Sheriff of their title and be replaced by a new one; and secondly the Sheriff would have no army or militia themselves - they would merely command the armies of the clans.

Gunzuth was made the first Sheriff and he maintained the position until his death in 572 BC. At this point he had five sons and to avoid civil war he proposed that the county be split into five Shires, each of which would have its own Sheriff. This too was accepted.

Things were then peaceful for another thousand years. By 575 AC the Five Shires had claimed most of Ierendi and used the islands as naval bases, but in 586 AC the Empire of Thyatis siezed the Ierendi islands - and the fleet. The halfling response was to begin a campaign of privateering against the Thyatian navy which still continues.

Recent History
is that the orcs have invaded a couple more times but have been handily seen off, and Baron von Hendriks has sent armies into the Shires a couple of times looking for refugees fleeing his rule, but the armies have been repelled each time.

The government of the Shires is still pretty much as it has been for the last thousand or more years. Each clan mostly administers its own lands, and there are five Sheriffs who roam the country. Unless stripped of their title by a meeting of clan leaders, Sheriffs still have the position for life - although given the amount of stress and travel involved many retire after a decade or two. The vacant Sheriff's position is filled by the rest of the Sheriffs deciding on a likely candidate and privately asking them if they want the job. Usually many candidates will be suggested to them by prominent halflings in the area, and they will secretly investigate each one before deciding who to approach.

The Sheriffs do meet four times per year

Shireton is a pretty wild place, and Shireton Port even more so with monsters on the loose. My players were shocked someone actually could keep wyverns in the city.

In addition to piracy, smuggling is also tolerated in the Shires by most halflings, wanting to circumvent the trade restrictions imposed by the Sheriffs. The Strikers are pirates of the land

If you're in Slagovich or Specularum or Thyatis or Trollhattan, what you see of Minrothad isn't a very restrictive set of islands. Instead you see ships that are better than anyone else has (although given the number of flying ships we've seen in other places I'm amazed that Minrothad doesn't have a whole fleet of them too) containing merchants who are happy to sell you exotic goods from far away places and are happy to buy your trade goods at a decent price (the local market may be saturated but they can sell them a long way away where they'll get a good profit from them).

So most people who deal with Minrothaddian traders have never visited Minrothad itself and are completely unaware of its attitude to outsiders.