Recent History
The Shires are an odd entity. Every single one of the many small villages and towns in the Shires acts essentially as its own micronation. Nestled within the dense forests of The Sea of Green and flanked by the Grand Duchy of Tir on one side and Manzil on the other, this tiny collection of settlements is a much-needed bubble of peace within the turbulence that is the south of the continent, which has resulted in there being an influx of Expansion Lesser Catfolk in recent years as well as expatriates wishing to settle down for an existence where they know they'll be allowed to live in peace. Recently there was trouble when someone shot the sheriff, but they didn’t shoot the deputy.
General Description
The Shires are entirely forested bar for the occasional farmer’s field and their farmhouses which give way to small hamlets. Inside the forests, many farmers grow large mushrooms which they export to both the Imperial Troll Empire and Manzil, in return for alcohol, fireworks and minor magical tuition. The most common danger is plagues of Unknown threating second breakfast.
The Troll Empire
The Halflings are generally a contented bunch, but occasionally they will get tired of the same scenery their entire life and go roaming to pastures new. As a result, the nearby nations, particularly the Imperial Duchies of Tír and Mor’koc, have a notable Halfling population. As such, the Troll Empire and the Shires maintain a friendly relationship and the Trolls have agreed to not interfere with them. This neutrality is a recurring theme in the Shires’ international relations, where they very much carry an air of “we want no trouble and we’re not worth causing trouble with so please just leave us alone”.
The Accidental Invasion
The Halfling Shires’ neutrality to most external political affairs is for the most part extremely successful, although one of their villages was briefly captured by Imperial forces during one famous incident in 2A 998 as part of the Tíran theatre of the Imperial Wars; this was not caused by any malicious intent towards the Halflings but instead by a simple mistake of organisation - the 3rd Legion's cartographer had made an error in drawing the borders on the map of their patrol area and accidentally included a Halfling village into Tír on their map. This was quickly amended once they entered the village of Hazelgrove and found it full of terrified Halfling civilians rather than Tíran soldiers. The Imperial soldiers apologised to the townsfolk and quickly corrected the situation, as well as promptly getting the cartographer to correct the map. The Trolls donated a few days rations and the Halflings threw a town party to celebrate the event. This thankfully didn't affect the relationship between the two and today the Accidental Invasion is remembered with humour by both sides, an interesting pocket of amusing circumstance in what was otherwise a very dark time for Oerth, shows that even in wartime, people are people and errors can happen. This perfectly exemplifies the Halfling mentality of always trying to see the funny side in everything.