Brantôme

Arms
Vassal of	Mordeaux
Status	See (Barony)
Location	West-Central Mordeaux, South-east of Ormond
Area	approximately 1/12 of Mordeaux.
Geography	Fertile, low rolling hills.
Population	70ppm
Urbanisation	16% (High)
Major Towns	Lusignac (2,000) Allemans (2,500)
Languages –Lalange –Common –Eloran –Tuscanan –Elvish –Reichspiel –Literacy	98% 30% 25% 2% 5% 4% 14% (mostly clergy)
Exports	Grains, Wool, Scholars
Imports	Manufactured Goods, Metals

Overview

Apart from its academic reputation, Brantôme is a quiet backwater, with sheep grazing the hills, grains filling the valleys, and quiet wide rivers wending gently through the rich farmland. Large parts of Brantôme are quiet and almost deserted, apart from stray shepherds or local woodsmen.

Brantôme also is the home of many of the most famous scholars and theologians in Western Alusia. It has a large number of theological schools and a long tradition of free thought, dialectic and debate. Statements can be declaimed from a lectern in Brantôme, mere rumours of which would have people locked up in Montagrier or Savignac-les-Églises. This doesn't mean that Brantôme is full of heretics, but much of the more modern, enlightened theology of the western churches is born here.

Places of Interest

• Brantôme University. This University is perhaps the best place to gain theological training in Mordeaux. The town of Allemans is full of scholars attending the university, and this helps create a vibrant and intellectual community, full of robust discussions and the cut & thrust of debate. Unlike most university towns, there is very little carousing, debauchery, or hooliganism, but apart from that, Allemans is a wonderful place to sit outside a coffee house on a summer afternoon and admire the brilliant young minds passing by.
• Abbey Granges-d'Ans. This Abbey has been home to some of the greatest minds in the last five hundred years. Currently, Saint Vincent Jalmoutiers is the most famous of the scholars in residence.
• Lusignac. This Abbey and its surrounding town is the administrative hub of Brantôme .

People

• Reverend Canon Julienne de Bourdeilles, Abbess of Lusignac and current administrator of Brantôme. The Reverend Cannon is in her fifties, and although greying, is still physically and intellectually vigourous. She is a famous Gabrielite scholar, primarily concerned with ethics, epistemology and free will.
• Saint Vincent Jalmoutiers of Granges-d'Ans. The world is still coming to terms with his incisive "Body and Soul - Degrees of Possession", and the relationships between the five levels of soul he has revealed.
• Father Paul Lizonne, heretic. Although under a sentence of death from the Lugarian Council, Father Lizonne continues to publish works on the ineffiabilty of the divine, direct inspiration, and the existential meaninglessness of the liturgical rituals. He holds tenure at Brantôme University in Allemans, and the Council of Masters there continue to refuse to hand him over to the Lugarian Inquisition, possibly to a personal feud.