Ket (Greyhawk) - The World of Greyhawk Folio Edition (1980)

The World of Greyhawk Folio Edition (1980)

In 1972, as part of the development of the game that would become Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax created the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk and the nearby city of Greyhawk. As his players began to venture further afield, Gygax created other regions and cities for them to explore. With play sessions happening seven days a week, and sometimes twice a day, Gygax didn't have the time to create the map for a whole new world; he simply drew his "world" over a map of North America, with the city of Greyhawk located near the real-world Chicago, then adding new cities and regions as his world slowly grew through on-going adventures.

In 1973, Gygax founded Tactical Studies Rules (later TSR, Inc) with his friend Don Kaye in order to publish the rules to D&D. By the late 1970s, Gygax sensed that D&D players were interested in learning more about his world of Oerth and decided to publish some of the details of his campaign world. However, rather than use his old map of "Oerth/North America", Gygax decided to create an entirely new planet from scratch and then publish several campaign settings that would eventually encompass every part of this new world. For the first campaign setting, he focused on one corner of one continent, an area he called the Flanaess. He divided the Flanaess into 50 states, regions and city-states. Some of them, such as the cities of Greyhawk and Dyvers, were taken from his old campaign world. Others, such as Ket, were new creations. Once the geography was finished, Gygax then created a thousand-year history for the Flanaess, complete with its own "Common Year" (CY) calendar, and set the date as the year 576 CY.

In 1980, Gygax published these details in the 32-page folio The World of Greyhawk. Due to space considerations, his thousand-year history was very condensed, and regional descriptions were extremely brief; Ket's single paragraph describing its people and history was a mere 154 words. In this edition, Gygax portrayed Ket as a belligerent nation often at odds with its neighbors. Its population was given as "50,000+", 23,400 of whom lived in the capital of Lopolla. (Although not mentioned in the descriptive text, a second Ketite city, Molvar, was shown on the map of the Flanaess that accompanied the folio.) This edition did not provide a name for each country's ruler, and Ket's leader was simply called "His Illustrious Glory, the Beygraf of Ket, Shield of the True Faith". (There was no indication of what god was served by "the True Faith". Gygax had originally planned to create a specific deity for the True Faith; however, other projects intervened, and it was one of the details that Gygax never finished.) Since Ket lay between Baklunish lands to the east and Oeridian lands to the west, it was considered a buffer state and a crossroads of trade and culture; its people were a mix of human races (although Baklunish culture predominated), and the court and military showed strong influences from both east and west. Other than trade, its resources were silver and gems. Militarily, Ket had been both the victim of invasion and an aggressor seeking new territory, although in 576 CY, its most pressing concern seemed to be raiders from the Plains of the Paynims.

Much of southern Ket was covered by the Bramblewood, a vast primeval forest that had one main road "and possibly some secondary tracks". Ket lay on a high plateau, and two major rivers, the Tuflik and the Fals, originated within Ket before flowing off the plateau to the north and south respectively.

The lack of space in the 1980 folio edition precluded an in-depth history of the Flanaess, but some of Ket's history can be pieced together from details contained in the descriptions of surrounding lands. Keoland's article mentions an invasion of Ket some 220 years before, a military adventure that ended in grief for Keoland at the battles of Molvar and Lopolla. If Ket was at one time the victim of an invasion by Keoland, it also had a reputation as an aggressor: neighbouring Bissel stands "as a bulwark between the Ket masses and the rest of the east", and Perrenland's description mentions "Attempts at expansion into Perrenland... by Ket were vigorously resisted by the inhabitants." Ket's aggressive character can also be seen in its frequent use of mercenaries from Perrenland (in disputes with Tusmit), tribesmen from the Plains of the Paynims (in disputes with Tusmit and Ekbir), and hillmen from the nearby Tusman Hills.

Coats-of-arms for all of the states were illustrated on the inside covers of the portfolio. Ket's was blazoned thus: Gules, a scimitar in pale argent, the point to the base.