Barony · Dissolved · The Mindens
Sire Koucey's idyllic high-mountain realm — the first domain consumed by the gurvani invasion and the tragedy that opens the series.
Boval Vale was a peaceful, prosperous cheese-and-cattle country tucked high in the western Mindens, remote from trade routes and effectively unthreatened by its noble neighbours. Its lord, Sire Koucey of House Brandmount, was a kindly, mature nobleman; his castellan Sir Cei, a sulking cousin from Gans, kept the estates in order. Its banner — a white cow on a green mountain — flew over a handful of villages including Minden's Hall, where the village spellmonger Minalan plied his trade.
In Spellmonger the Vale is overrun by the gurvani horde that had coalesced around the Dead God Sheruel at Boval Hill. Boval Castle fell after a brutal siege. Sire Koucey surrendered his mind to Sheruel and became the first and most tragic of the Dead God's human thralls. The surviving Bovali, led out by Minalan, became refugees whose diaspora seeded Sevendor, the Magelaw, and eventually Vanador. The Vale itself remains gurvani-held as part of the Umbra.