Pentapolis

The Pentapolis (Hendalarskisch: Bund der Fünf Freistädte, Pentapolitan Argot: Fönfaranstadtsbunt) is an autonomous federation of five city-states located in eastern Hendalarsk, encompassing both the extreme east of the Hendalarskara mainland and the western half of the Kestrel Isles. The Pentapolis is the direct successor of the Vandarch League, a confederation of the region's city-states and their merchants. Having submitted to Hendalarskara overlordship through the Treaty of Hukenen during the Maximilianic Unification, the federation was able to extract a wide array of concessions from the Hendalarskara government during the Hendalarskara Civil War, which it has retained down to the present day. As a consequence of these origins and concessions, the Pentapolis is by far the most economically liberalised region of Hendalarsk, with correspondingly disproportionate rates of both wealth and inequality when set against the national average.

Migration from all over Hendalarsk (and, indeed, further afield) has made the Pentapolis one of the country's great melting-pots, comparable only to - and arguably surpassing - the western metropolises of Frehmenwerth and Zalgisbeck. A wide array of both ethnic and religious diversity can be found among the cities' inhabitants, almost all of whom nevertheless share an understanding of the distinctive regional creole known as the Pentapolitan Argot. Standard Hendalarskisch is, by contrast, spoken natively by only a small minority of the cities' inhabitants, and holds no official status within the bounds of the Pentapolis. Hukenen is home to perhaps the largest Protestant community in Levantia, the descendants of refugees from the Great Confessional War, while other cities boast faith communities from all over the world.

In accordance with ancient Pentapolitan custom the Grand Council of the Five Free Cities, the region's legislative body, moves between the five cities on a five-yearly basis, and is currently located in Wrzeczsz-Kokoszki. Despite not being the region's largest city and only hosting the Grand Council as frequently as the other cities, Hukenen is nevertheless widely recognised as the region's unofficial capital. Many Pentapolitan institutions are devolved from their mainland Hendalarskara equivalents, to the extent that the Pentapolis maintains its own diplomatic corps - with consulates and trade missions in friendly cities across Levantia - and its own armed forces, notionally subordinate to the Hendalarskara monarchy and executive but operationally separate from all other Hendalarskara branches.