#abhari

History accelerates with each passing year, the weight of all that has come before propelling an unprepared humanity ever-further into the future. Demonic looms and horizon-piercing galleons have made the empires of the Inner World grander and more mighty than ever before, and they eagerly pour their undreamt-of riches into the greedy maws of ever-growing military machines. It is those endless armies that have, after all, let them grow fat and strong on the carrion of their ancient rivals instead of the reverse. 

Three empires now divide all the richest lands of the Inner World between them, though each rules and holds what they have in their own unique style. A true and total war between them would deafen the world with roaring cannonfire and the wailing of the damned, even if it did not drown their palaces and metropoli in blood. So - for now - they content themselves with schemes and stratagems, the occasional border skirmish and fait accompli. They incite the fury of neglected gods, steal the secrets of sacred guilds, offer patronage and asylum to all each others’ most reviled heretics. 

It is only upon the malformed and half-made worlds of the Outer Seas that the true bloody toll of warrior angels and perfect geometry can be counted. The riches and wonders of ever-growing colonial empires fill the markets of the Inner World, and it is in commanding the expeditionary forces sent out to them that the ambitious and glory-hungry dream of. 

In throne rooms and private salons, dynasts and magnates draw lines on maps and dream of eternal glory. In back alleys and colonial frontiers, adventurers of the worst kinds eagerly put every advance in war-making to their own benefit. A bloody and ill-fitting peace pins the whirring engines of history beneath it, and has for long enough that most take it for granted. Few appreciate how fragile this age of cabinet wars and colonial intrigue is, and fewer still have any intention of defending it.

Abhari is a ‘flintlock fantasy’ high fantasy setting, which is to say one ever-so-loosely based off of the later Early Modern Period instead of the High Medieval. Aside from the truly vast quantities of historical trivia floating around my brain at all times, it is inspired to varying degrees by the Tyrant Philosophers and Masquerade books, Black Sails, Pirates of the Caribbean, vague childhood memories of the Thief games, and whole libraries worth of ephemeral art, fiction and discussion on various online forums. 

Abhari is a world defined by growing and intensifying imperial power, as the rivalry between the three great powers of the Inner World pushes factions within each of them to reach further and dig deeper for safety against (or the chance at supremacy over) their peers. It’s also (and probably moreso) a world full of strange, contradictory, and just interesting ways of organizing a society or political system than variations on absolute or parliamentary monarchies. 

This is more of a sprawling worldbuilding exercise and place to set rpg campaigns than anything very focused, which explains most of what has and hasn’t been covered in detail here. There will probably be significantly more blank spaces filled in (or much older and less compatible stuff revised and rewritten) over time. With luck, also some actual fiction.

The Great Powers

The Holy Illyrin Empire

The largest, most ancient, and by most accounts greatest empire in all Creation. Ruled by the Queen-Empress in her cloistered palace-city of Alntyr. Ostensibly Viceregant of Heaven and Warden of Hell, and ruler by the grace of every God over every soul which walks the earth. In practice, she rules only with the advice and consent of the estate, parliaments, holy orders and leading houses of each of the many many crowns united in her person.

A Very Rough Political Timeline of the Holy Illyrin Empire, from the first union of the Illyrin Crown and the Grand Duchy of Belthaya to the world-empire it has grown into 7 centuries and several ruling dynasties later. 

An Atlas of the Holly Illyrin Empire: Reports, travelogues or essays on each of the major constituent principalities of the Empire in the Inner World. Including:

Illyrin Proper: The heart of the empire in both culture and politics, home to the majority of royal estates and (legally and technically, if nothing else) to almost every noble holding high office at court.

The Imperial Capital of Alntyr: The legendary luxurious (or decadent, depending on whose talking) palace-city, home to the imperial household and where everyone in the empire with an ounce of ambition wishes they could be.

The Grand Duchy of Belthaya: The oldest province in the empire, a hidebound and haunted land of dark forests and ancient bloodlines. Known mainly as the home of imperial necromancy, and the source of the Empire’s infamous revenant armies.

The Holy Principality of Imir: Heart and soul of the Orthodox Faith, and personal domain of its Hierarch. Not technically ruled by the Queen-Empress, though the distinction is largely academic - as hereditary ‘defender of the faith’ the Crown does a great deal of assisting in secular governments. Known for its many, richly-fed gods, its much-blessed and unfailing fields, and (recently) its simmering unrest and steady export of surplus young men as mercenaries. 

The Principality of Lusello: Ostensibly an elective monarchy whose nobility has by complete coincidence (and through regular and exorbitant ‘gifts’) elected every Imperial heir for the past several centuries. Notable for its numerous, powerful cities and monastic sects, and for the vicious intrigues of the Grand Electors who functionally rule the principality between them. 

The Wyrmpale: The nine counties which make up the Empire’s mountainous south-eastern border. Notable for each hosting the lair of a true dragon, once the god and sovereign of all it surveyed. In a masterpiece of polite fictions, each is now ostensibly a feudal count, their fief governed ‘in trust’ by agents of the throne. Generations of their presence has seeped into the valley soil, leading to strange and wondrous harvests. 

The Northern Reaches: The cold and rugged northern shires of Illyrin proper, long notable only for holding absolutely nothing of note. The discovery of routes from the Boreal Ocean beyond them to various profitably conquered Outer Seas changed that, and the wild and devil-haunted hills are now an inconvenient gauntlet every caravan to and from newly founded and rich arctic port cities must brave. 

The Southern Marches: Once the dread lands of Abhari, home of maggot-gods and reaper-queens, and now the Empire’s south-western frontier. The descendents of the Crusader knights who conquered it form a ruling class quite alien to the peasants that labor for them, though not quite so alien as the those of the previous ruling class who are hidden, slumbering or entombed with their treasures and their secrets, beneath the wasteland the crusade made of once-bustling cities and verdant farmland. 

Imperial Heresies: an excerpt from the Litany of Errors, describing the most dangerous and insidious cancers which grow within the Orthodox Faith.

Illyrin Knightly Orders: an introduction to the chivalry of the empire, and descriptions of the most widespread and influential orders. 

Imperial Linguistics: A discussion of the hodgepodge of different languages spoken across the empire and the total lack of any universally understood vernacular 

The Sublime Esheri Commonwealth

The Sublime Commonwealth is a rational, enlightened and thoroughly modern state, governed in theory by the Sovereign Virtues of Reason and Compassion and in practice by the technocrat-monks who staff the great Committees of State. These janissaries - orphans and slaves, educated and trained since childhood and freed from most human weaknesses through the latest advances in applied metaphysics - rule an empire of arsenals and canals, where great aetheric engines have fixed the climate and provided harvest just barely capable of meeting the state’s demands. 

A Very Rough Political Timeline of Esher, Before and During the Age Of Reason: From the beginnings of agriculture and civilization to the establishment and subsequent victories of the clockwork Republic over the past generation. 

The Metropolis: Velishahr, the grandest and most populous city in all creation, the central gear upon which the whole Commonwealth turns. 

On The Administration of the Clockwork Republic: A short overview of the Commonwealth’s government and divisions of authority. 

The League of Free Cities

Not technically a single state at all, the League is merely a fraternal alliance of rich and powerful city-states and their assorted colonial empires who by complete coincidence happen to share a plurality of their ruling elites with each other. Famous as merchants and artisans the world over, thought not quite so much as they are infamous as rabble-rousers and demonologists. 

A Very Rough Political Timeline of the League of Free Cities and its Antecedents: From the rise and apocalyptic fall of Dread Balam to the slow growth of its surviving colonies into the vibrant and tightly-allied metropoli of the modern day. 

A Traveller’s Guide to Rhaloke: Excerpts from the journals of one Sir Nathanial Gillray as he travelled through the continent of Rhaloke and all its greatest and most storied cities. 

Inara: An island-state sitting in the heart of the Inner Sea, erstwhile home of the great Free Companies which form the sharpest edge of the League’s armies. Also notable for the numerous marriage and commercial ties between its elite and the southern empire, and for the gods and spirits of the island forming a formal estate with political rights in the city’s government. 

Chirital: The workshop of the world, surrounded by an opaque, choking halo of smoke and ash magically pulled from its ten thousand forges and chimneys. Hidden within it is a hellish wonderland of spectacular artifice and awe-inspiring industry, as well as the drydocks and arsenals of the most feared fleet on the Inner Sea. 

Celmy: Preeminent among the Free Cities, home to all the Inner World’s richest and most ambitious merchant adventurers and financiers. More often known (and cursed) as the haunt of cultists and warlocks, a vibrant democracy which holds that the wisdom of the crowd is guided by their civic patron - the archdemon whose incarnation in a past age left the skein of reality tattered and filled with flaws that the whole city is now built around. 

Quepta: The great oasis in the desolate which fills central Rhaloke, and the great transhipment point for goods travelling across the continent by caravan and river barge. A plutocracy famed for the treasure hunters who regularly return from the Wake with some artifact or fortune which immediately catapults them to political relevance, and for the bound (if not tamed) goblin hives whose quickly-budded swarms fill work gangs and army ranks alike. 

Khasal: The city of skinthieves and fleshweavers, the menageries of its patricians full of monstrously grown and sculpted hobgoblins, legendary beasts imported from its sprawling colonial empire, or horrific amalgams of the two. Where the secret to navigating the Outer Seas was first discovered, and still the entrepot through which the riches of all the League’s many concerns returns to the metropole. 

Gods and Monsters

The Choirs of the Fallen: Excerpts from the Bestiary of the Enemies of Heaven, concerning the different vulgar and wicked existences a Fallen Angel might descend to, depending upon which aspect of secular reality corrupts their heart. 

The Ifrit and their Kin: Angels which are entranced by some raw aspect of creation itself - the fury of a storm, the rage of an inferno - consume and are consumed by it. The body of an Ifrit is a small and flickering thing, invisible amid the sublime apocalypse of the Mantle which surrounds them for miles in each direction. 

Titans the their Spawn: Angels who grow enamored with or envious of mortal life Fall with conscious thought and effort - discarding their purely numinous existence for a body of mortal (though mighty and ageless) flesh and blood that best expresses their vainglory. The Outer Seas abound with monsters and kingdoms sculpted by their hands, a shameless usurpation of Heaven’s rights.  

The Courtly Fae: Angels who grow too invested and fixated upon culture and art Fall most violently - shattering into a whole Court of masks and roles, power and persona helpless without a body to drape over and usurp. Worldly, clever, and addicted to games and wagers, they persist in the ordered and civilized places of the world simply by buying and winning the privileges needed to from those who do not appreciate what is asked of them. 

The Hells and their Denizens: An introductory discussion of the many Hells centuries of Illyrin royalty have Damned their rivals and enemies (and no small number of common criminals) to, and how each Damned soul is mutilated into a devil which can later be called up by those with the knowledge and the Right and bound to serve them. 

The Outer Seas

An Introduction to the Outer Seas: The official Imperial explanation of the various strange and alien seas which a properly equipped ocean-going ship can navigate to, and also why they have a divine right to conquer them all. 

The Diamond Sea: An anthropological survey of one of the largest and richest Seas, the bloody and lucrative jewel in the League’s colonial crown and the home to the widest variety of (depending on one’s politics) inhuman intelligent life of any yet charted. 

The Kayal States: The most densely populated region of the Diamond Sea, once a powerful empire but for the past generations the impossibly rich prize over which dozens of warlords and adventurers have fought for a piece of. 

On the Sanguine Sea: Still cursed and infested with all manner of monsters a century after the brutal war which ‘conquered’ it, the Sea hosts some small number of waystations and island plantations. Aside from the vengeful ghost and rabid spawn of a dead leviathan, its truest masters are without doubt the pirate clans who have found refugees and built fortresses amid its perils. 

Miscelania 

Discourses Upon the Soul: The most fundamental claims of Imiran theology and metaphysics, on what a soul is, who has one, and what must be done to keep it strong.

So I desperately needed a distraction today, and recently remembered what WorldAnvil is, so ended up doing my favorite kind of worldbuilding - drawing important metaphysical distinctions between folkloric terms that are all basically synonyms.

Of the three Choirs of Fallen Angels, the Ifrit (as well as their close relations which are instead called djinn, mariads, and other similar things) are the most wholly distant from humanity and its concerns. They have to their names more ruined lands and buried cities than either cousin Choir, but only on the rarest occasions did they spare a thought for the hundreds and thousands dying by their hands. Among the Fallen, they are the most rarely dealt with and the most often bound, and in this even the warlocks and pagans of the most savage lands show they are blessed with a modicum of sense. 

An Angel falls for the love of the world, fascination and obsession with some aspect or medium of the Gods’ creation growing until it wholly consumes them, their pure and numinous being becoming enmired in and inextricable from the object of their preoccupation. Thus the Titan who consumes a kingdom for the bulk required by the grand and awe-some body of mortal flesh and scale which best expresses her vanity. Thus the Faerie, shattering his Soul into masks which so perfectly suit each actor in the intrigues which so compelled him. Thus, though simpler and in a sense more virtuous, the Ifrit, so wholly struck by the beauty of the wildfire that it kindles his own Heart in turn. 

An Ifrit (meant in the broader sense) is the union of the Exalted and the Base, the numinous essence of the Angel taking the coarse stuff of which Creation was sculpted into himself, until rushing water and rough sand have worn away all that was transcendent in them. Each has their heart consumed with some Element in particular, and in turn takes it in its most apocalyptic guise as their Mantle. An Ifrit may be sandstorm or inferno, but never crackling hearth or nurturing sun; they are Sublime things, but not Beautiful ones. 

Within the wildfire, hurricane, blizzard, or other particular Mantle an Ifrit might wear there does hide something akin to a body, but it is both fragile and diffuse. Even should a mortal knight brave the Mantle and face an Ifrit directly, he would find lead and steel equally impotent without some Blessing or Enchantment to bolster them. That the Ifrit would be equally incapable of striking him is little consolation, when directing and focusing the fury of their Mantle is the Choir’s simplest and most trivial Miracle. 

An Ifrit may gather themselves into a more coherent form, just as they may by expression of Will subdue and divert the fury of their Mantle, but only the rarest few can make themselves truly solid, or assume even the pretence of a mortal seeming. Will, for that matter, is a thing in short supply for any member of the Choir, for the violence of their Fall does great damage to it, leaving them creatures of sudden impulse and violent passion. 

It is little surprise, then, that in ancient days and savage lands they were reckoned as great and violent gods, with remote shrines maintained for great bribes and sacrifices to be left, should they then be satisfied and return the way they came. Such pagan rites persist even among Her Celestial Majesty’s subjects, in those wild places where Ifrit were oft-encountered within the span of memory. Most infamously, it is a truth acknowledged by even the most indulgent censor that every merchant crew, and no few of those ostensibly sworn to fight for Her Celestial Majesty’s glory, has at least one occasion filled a boat with food and treasure to push toward some especially storm-wracked horizon. Dark tales of crewmen picked by lot or passengers seized and bound to include among such offerings are denied most strenuously by Lord Admiral and merchant prince alike, and all inquiries into the matter most violently stymied. 

It is upon the Seas, most often the Boreal within the Inner World, and upon at least a half-dozen of the Outer Seas, that Imperial Subjects are most likely to encounter an Ifrit, for they tolerate the solid, the stable and the Sacred most poorly. The great exceptions are among the Southern Marches, where some number of the Angelic host once invoked in the Third Crusade to scour the Lich-Kings and Reapers of Old Abhari from Creation grew too fond as the wind and fire which were their blades. A scattered few have caused great upset on occasion in those haunted lands, and it is thought that at least one yet remains among its further wastelands. 

Wastelands are where an Ifrit might generally be found, whether sought out or simply forming around them. In the Piper’s Wake of Dread Balam, an Ifrit who retains a semblance of virtue scours the land as dancing pillars of endless flame, his violent curiosity spent naming all the ways goblins and demonspawn might burn. In the endless, glacial desolation beyond the Stedry, the Western Wind carves endless palaces of ice and stone, populated in turns by the dead preserved by driest air and those sealed within sculpted tombs of ice. In the endless and nigh-lifeless steppe between Soyai and Esheri, there is an eternal storm of choking dust which the pagans thereof say has the seeming of stampeding horses on the grandest scale, thunder their hoofbeats and lightning their breath. A past Hierarch, wishing to enumerate and name every Angel to descend from on High, had archives emptied and histories compared, and announced that one hundred and three Ifrit had Fallen unto the Inner World since the Creation. That number has grown by some number in the centuries since, but it has been reduced by far more. In these later days, at most a dozen remain. 

Some number of them have been slain, their Mantles usurped by demon or Wyrm or their heart shattered or pierced by mortal heroism and wiles. As many or more have simply followed their own whims beyond the Inner World, for they are ever flighty and beguiled by novelties. Some small fraction also, it must be said, remain free and present but simply choose to pass the present age in slumber. Yet the greatest part of the reduction, and by no small margin, lies in the number of Ifrit now bound, Damned, or otherwise entrapped and entombed. 

Ifrit are mighty, but crudely and blatantly so, the greater number of them by far raging across the land without subtlety or artifice. That their violent passions do no true damage to Creation itself, that in fact they are in a spiritual sense the least dangerous Choir of their kin, has never been a great comfort to those mortal souls forced to suffer their careless depredations. Thus, wherever shamans and wisewomen have made themselves kings and queens, and among every race who have learned or stolen the Binding arts, it was for the pacifying of an Ifrit that these sorceries were first used. This is done most often through trickery and guile, for the great and simple passions of the Ifrit leave them nigh-helpless matching wits against the clever and the brave. Grand temples and forgotten ruins alike dot the Inner World, within them a chest, urn or sarcophagus which has for centuries contained a, by now surely mad, Ifrit who once menaced its builders. Some are instead bound to some trial or task that leaves them so lessened to be harmless, as the scouring, flesh-stripping gale which has raced for years beyond counting between seven bronze bells in the Joyri’s wooded vales, capable of naught else until he causes all seven to ring as one. Some, those most skillfully and greedily bound, are instead forced into their binder’s service, or else compelled to labor in some particular manner for whoever holds the talisman which binds them. This might be a blunt and dangerous thing, as with the Everstorm trapped within a bag of woven unicorn fur, free to give voice to her fury for a day and a night whenever she is loosed, or the Glassblower of the Topaz Sea, whose vengeance against the heirs and kin of the shamans who bound him is forever delayed, so long as there never passes a single breath not spent crafting some new bauble or wonder for them. 

The cleverest and most puissant binders instead break the Ifrit’s weathered Will entirely, subjecting them instead to their own disciplines. This is so rare among pagans that their number might be counted on one hand, and the King of Joyri’s witch-consort, by whose will his mountain-palace was built in a moon and a day, is the only to now walk the Inner World. Four in five, or more, of the Ifrit to ever be so thoroughly bound suffered so by the decree of Her Celestial Majesty’s august ancestors, Damned for their defiance of the Heavens and their trespasses and depredations against the Throne and its subjects. It cannot be known without doubt, but among the College of Binders it is generally held that in fact more (once-)Ifrit now writhe within the Sundry Hells than rage freely altogether, across both Inner World and Outer Seas. 

Should such a Devil be the issue which requires the Inspectorate’s attention, then know it is naught but a grand and mighty sword in the hand of its caller, who, whatever their other crimes, has trespassed against Her Celestial Majesty’s privileges and usurped a quantum of her authority over the Damned to so use them. Should it instead be a wholly wild Ifrit, then it may well know agents of the Throne by sigil and livery, and react with rage of surpassing violence or the spite born of fear to their presence. Thankfully, without special effort no mortal is likely to draw such close attention, and so it is best to ensure that both you and your surrounds are prepared for the reaction before you provoke it. 

Of the Choirs of the Fallen Angels, those called Titans are oft-reckoned the most nearly human or, at least, the most readily comprehensible to flawed and mortal minds. This belief has the appearance of a certain sort of sense, for certainly a great many men have cracked and degraded their own souls pursuing temptations of the body, and imagine that a once-sublime soul that does the same is more akin to them than the endless deceptions of the Faerie or the alien passion of the Ifrit. This is a most dangerous species of folly, and persists only because past generations were so vigorous and diligent in hounding Titans and their spawn from all corners of the lands now under Her Celestial Majesty’s rule, and indeed so far as is presently known out of the Inner World entirely. Insofar as any pious and Orthodox soul is likely to encounter a Titan, it will either be as a missionary or pioneer on the frontier of some Outer Sea, or else under such dire circumstances that one of the Choir since bound and Damned has been called up to perform some service for Her Celestial Majesty and her subjects. In either case, the Titans will be of such antiquity as to be wholly novel to those encountering them; thus a thorough grounding in their Natures is a necessity to those sworn to the Silver Blade. 

An Angel is a numinous and sublime being, a pure and potent soul uncompromised by the foul stuff of Creation. A Titan was once the same, but grew fascinated by and covetous of the pleasures and trials of mortal life, of all the varieties of lives lived and all the sensations experienced by those who lived them. Some were vainglorious, wishing to shape and reign over kingdoms and races as the Gods Above did when they first ordered the Inner World. Others are purely decadent, clothing themselves in flesh to experience all the sins unique to it. Some fall between such extremes, and others fall for other reasons entirely. 

What defines and unites all Titans is the moment and manner of their Fall. Around and through their Angelic Soul, they weave and shape a body of carnal flesh. Thus embodied and incarnate, they become in a sense mortal, though only in a sense. They are not ageless and eternal like a god, but the mastery of life that is a Titan’s art and pride makes the rejuvenation and perfection of their own form a trivial effort. Born of that same fatal pride, and intended without subtlety or wisdom to house the sublime light of an Angelic soul, their forms are uniformly grandiose and tremendously powerful, intended to inspire the awe which they claim as their due. Beyond this, there is little to unite the Choir’s mortal forms; a Titan’s vanities and whims are as fickle as and more unique than any mortal man’s, and their body is the most perfect expression of them whose weight the skein of Creation will bear. 

One, the archetype for whom the Choir was named, appeared as a man built upon the scale of a mountain, with hair of woven serpents and the voice of a hecatomb. Another, which for centuries stalked the wasteland that divides the kingdoms of the Soyai from the Esheri Empire, was gargantuan, sable-furred and ivory-tusked beast, the fall of her dozen hooves so heavy as to shatter walls. A third, the great Kraken which held dominion over what is now the Sanguine Sea. A dozen more Titans have been identified and named, and their natures and lineages are compiled in accessories to this volume. Of the fifteen, five are dead, five Damned to sundry Hells, three unaccounted for (being known either only by their works or else having passed beyond the Atlas’ edge since the last recorded encounter), and two known to be among the living and laired in some particular locale (lest this incite panic, be assured that they are safely distant upon the Iron and Topaz Seas). 

The Nature of a Titan is fixed with their Fall, and with it the general plan of their mortal form. Yet they are vainglorious things, ever-unsatisfied with the grandeur they possess. Some few preserve themselves, undoing age or injury but otherwise mistaking their own stasis for perfection. Yet, in the main Titans are forever shedding, molting, maturing, regenerating and restitching themselves to best express their latest whims. A certain few of them make this their project entire, endlessly innovating upon the details of their own body, growing ever grander, ever more monstrous and, even measured against the rest of their Fallen kin, ever-closer to madness. 

No matter how vast a Titan’s form, mortal flesh is an ill-conceived vessel to contain an Angelic soul. Like the miasma of the dead, it flows out with every breath and from every pore. Those few mad Titans refuse this, and struggle endlessly to craft a container which can fully hold their essence. Most of the Choir is not so afflicted, and indeed most react to the discovery with great enthusiasm. From these come the most distinct and infamous mark any of the Choir leave upon the world.

The essence of a Titan’s fall is a usurpation of Life as the Celestial Divines intended it, and as soon as one of their number is momentarily content with their own body and begins to survey the world around them, the fires of their vanity and hubris will soon demand they fill the world with life more pleasing to and harmonious with their own Nature. The lesser and the most subtle, and woe betide whoever confuses the two, might shape a form pleasing to some variety of mortal eye as they Fall. These then bear or sire young in something like the natural way, though the Nature of children so born is writ entirely by the Titan’s whims. The most purely vain, and most often wholly malevolent, pull apart and shape their own miraculous flesh like clay. Whether plague vermin, band of warriors or monstrosities of a singular nature, the Titanspawn so crafted are inevitably set to the massacre of all other life wherever the Titan might claim as their own. The mightiest and most clever shape facsimiles of nectar and ambrosia from their own blood, then offer them to whatever race of man or beast by some whim earns their favor. Their blood thus imbibed, they usurp the flesh from within and might remake it entirely, or else lay down blessings and banes upon the bloodline to proclaim themselves in generations to come. In every case, the alterations mar and defile, and only the fragments of the Titan’s own soul which find a home in the body of their Spawn hold it in place and ward off the demonic corruption such blasphemy naturally invites. 

It is believed that it is from such Titanspawn that all legends and histories of monstrous kingdoms, of legions of iron-clad ogres and ziggurats raised by serpents in the guise of men, arise. It is known beyond doubt that the troglodytes who have so savagely stymied all exploration into the mainland of the Onyx Sea and the harpy tribes lately taken to piracy upon the Diamond are both Titans’ get, and it seems likely that the stone-skinned kings who forged an empire in the mountains of the Diamond Sea’s mainland were as well. 

In the latter cases, to be sure, there is no Titanic sire or dam to be found, and no sign of the miraculous power common to true Titanspawn. Perhaps the Titan in question grew bored and left for more exotic climes, or perhaps they were slain by a rival’s intrigues or some unforeseen catastrophe. Yet it is most likely that the sheer fecundity of their creations is responsible for their absence. A Titanic soul is unfathomably vast, but it is not infinite. The more, the more intricate, and the mightier Titanspawn it must ensoul as well, the greater the drain upon it. Some few Titans cultivate a nurtured retinue, precisely the number required to comfortably hold their soul entire; most are not so restrained, and as their children and pets found empires and raise cities in their name, they find their own miracles growing sluggish and incomplete, their own blood running thin. It has been known for one to go mad at this discovery, slaughtering and devouring their own lineage by the hundreds to reclaim their original might (on some occasions they succeed, on others they die by their own children’s hands). Others grow philosophical, dedicating themselves to securing a glorious legacy before they entirely fade away into the host of their own bloodline. Some, in fact most, are so consumed with vulgar pleasures and the rush of worship that they make no change at all, pretending at the might of past days and hoping they are never called upon to prove it. Whatever the course, the greater the host of Titanspawn, the lesser the share of Sublime might apportioned to each, the more steeply each generation will descend towards marred half-men or monstrous but purely animalistic beasts. 

Most dynasties and courts of Titanspawn begin at some point to marry and breed with true men and women, and in so doing provide for the possibility of their children’s salvation by dint of the whole and pure mortal soul that is then their birthright. Even such hybrids are more prone to corruption and sin than otherwise, as their bodies carry their Titanic ancestor’s taint in ways both subtle and gross and so their soul sits unsettled and easily bruised within their heart (it is well known that any passing interaction with one of the mentioned harpies will prove this). Those that fail to do so either learn to police their own numbers or else face some species of truest ruin, for when the Titanic soul is spread as thinly as can be sustained each new birth must be matched by an elder’s death. Clans surviving in this manner are the origin of superstitions of reincarnation common to many pagans. Those born in excess lack any facsimile of ensoulment and (if fortunate) become simple beasts, flesh without mind or essence, under the care of whichever local god minds nearby plants and animals. If not, they are born with body and mind but no soul and, inevitably, often quite quickly, become vessels for demonic corruption of a catastrophic degree. 

If encountering a Titan in the Outer Seas, search for its spawn and determine its Nature, do not be such a fool as to confront it directly without a great deal of preparation and support. If encountering a Devil who was once one before their Damnation, learn all you can regarding how they have been crippled and the details of their binding. Regardless, accept neither food nor water nor care from them, and put anything of themselves they might leave behind upon the earth to the pyre. On the Outer Seas in particular, trust neither meat nor fruit that is not well-attested to and proven to be natural. The lotus fruit of the Topaz Sea were discovered well before any sign of a Titan was discerned, and feasted upon without restraint by weak and foolish sailors. The Bright-Eyed horrors that yet crew their ships harass Her Celestial Majesty’s interests in the Sea to this day, skin and ship alike slick with red-gold honey. Failing to prevent such lapses is a disgrace our Order can only cleanse with blood. 

The Faerie (or Fae) are one of the three choirs a Fallen Angel might descend into, as distinct from Titans and Djinn (or Ifrit). Like their fellows, they can be found most often among the pagans and beastmen of the Outer Seas, where whole tribes and nations can easily be enthralled and entrapped within their Glamour. Unlike those other Choirs, they can also be found in some number in the civilized and godly lands of the Inner World, either wholly free or else only lightly and imperfectly bound. 

For while a Titan Falls for the love of flesh, to shape or to hold, and the Djinn for the elements themselves, forgetting the drowned for the glory of the flood, the Fae fell for sophistry and for Art. They are creatures of culture and of fancy, and so it is hardly shocking that some few among their number are by Nature well-equipped to seduce and beguile, to dwell within and between the lands of Man and win through fraud and wile what privileges and protections they might desire. Most are not so subtle, as any bestiary of the wilder Outer Seas with their hungry dreams and plagues of song can attest, but those clever few who have dwelled within the borders of the Empire since time immemorial have not done so by being the lesser examples of their Choir. 

We shall presently speak of those subtle and courtly Fae, and return to the matter of their wilder and more primal kind, found among the pagans of the Soyai Principalities as well as across a certain number of the more distant Outer Seas, in a later entry. While they share an origin and a Nature, the tools and practices required to deal with one type of the Choir is quite distinct from that required to bind or break the other. 

The Courtly Fae are so named on several accounts. Firstly, to distinguish them from their wild cousins for, whatever might be said of them, they are spirits of courtesy and grace, attentive to the honor and station of others and expecting all who deal with them to acknowledge and respect every title and honor they have invented for themselves or won from the Mortal world through finesse or fraud. 

Secondly, to note the structures and hierarchies through which they express themselves. A once-Angelic soul is a vast and porous thing, never more than loosely contained within a single form, and in any case the Fae are poorly suited to sculpting a vessel worthy of themselves. Courtly Fae are in a sense illusion layered upon illusion, anchored at their core to whatever body they might acquire. A Court might consist of a noble lord, his lady wife, a dozen knights in his retinue, and whatever other household roles might have seemed amusing masks to wear. That the lord was the day before a fox, his confessor a crow, and the knights a pack of starving wolves is but a trifle; it is the privilege and the sin of the Fae to lie so well as to steal the name of truth, and if a fae lord should think it right to ride a destrier and wield a lance in vulpine skin, the world will obligingly avert its eyes from the mechanics of joints and paws. 

These Faeries can be divided into their Courts as naturally as bees into hives, or wolves into packs. An Angelic Soul is a vast and potent thing, the same sins and vices which cause its Fall make it unable to contain and define itself; an Angel shatters as it Falls, and each piece is a Faerie, a mask which then begins to search for a head to wear it. Each Court has a common livery and bearing, no matter the guise its members might wear (though it can be as damnably subtle as any of their games). Each also has a Crown or a Heart, on occasion both and in rare and dire cases any number of Noble shards. These hold a sovereign grace over their Court and - like the lordly fox - rarely deign to hide their power.

The fox is not here named by chance, as one infamous Fae ‘gentleman’ has set his heart within a particular red fox for at least a century and raised no end of trouble wherever he might settle for a time. Yet Sir Reynard is unique, or at least near enough to, among his kin. Most Courtly Faerie find laying their heart and crown over a beast barely more palatable than living entirely within the constructs of snapped twigs and morning dew they use to anchor a glamor when no finer vessel presents itself. They instead prefer above all else to take the untainted bodies of mortal men and women for their own. Children and the Mad are preferred, for their dreams and fancies are rich delicacies, their souls unsettled and easily drowned by the Fae’s own. Away from hearth and altar and without vigilant protection, they can simply be whisked away and overwhelmed; for every antlered queen of stars and terrible lord of the hunt upon his wolf-mouthed stag there exists a changeling child, or else the artfully arranged illusion of fatal accident. 

Few such prizes wander blindly into the Fae’s grasp, and few Fae so brazen as to scour and hunt for them persist in Orthodox and rightly-governed lands. By their Nature superficial and flighty, their Glamor is far less potent when faced with strong and well-rooted souls, families, temples and towns. Thus, the final quality for which they are called Courtly: they court. They beguile, trick, gamble, offer and trade. By anchoring a Glamour in the soul of one whose behalf they weave it a Faerie can conjure any miracle or fortune desired of them, as real and enduring as the pact which birthed it. And by the same token, any so foolish as to invite a Faerie into their home or life, to trade or offer some property or quality of theirs, sets aside all wards and protections that might prevent it from taking what is given. Thus, apples of youth and vaults of faerie gold, paid for with the promise of one’s first- and seventhborn. Thus, the iron rods found in temples throughout the eastern Crownlands, which every young couple must hold and affirm their name and Nature before they are wed. Thus, most famously, the goblin markets of Lussello and Imir, where beneath the Flower and Hunter’s Moon the decadent and the desperate trade away all they are for the illusion of what they wish to be. 

Vain and shallow beings, stability and routine is anathema to the Fae, true stasis akin to death. Though a whole court or company hail from a single soul, each Faerie within it has a name and legend invented for and draped over them, and, without some greater cause to distract them, most will amuse themselves for years and decades with internal dramas that are by turn operatic and cannibalistic. It is for the same cause that Fae without exception hunger for any piece of mortal life, for mortal passions and memories are far richer soil in which to plant their fantasies than whatever they might conjure on their own. 

The greatest weakness of any Fae is, then, their addiction to such spectacle and drama. The particularities of their obsession may vary, but for every one there is some sort of wager, game or contest they are helpless to resist. They take heedless risks for the joy of it, and give those rightly helpless before them a true chance of escape purely so that they might indulge in hunting them. They are utterly incapable of breaking their word or the agreed-upon terms of such games, but should they triumph there is little upon the earth that might prevent them from taking what they are owed, be it time, love, life, legacy or even whatever patrimony one can freely dispose of. There exist scattered throughout the Empire, and to a far greater extent among the Soyai, households, estates and whole forests and dales that have passed into the hands of the Fae by pact or wager. May the Gods take pity upon those who trespass upon them without cause or right, for there are few under Heaven who can help them. 

Hunting Fae is delicate and exacting work, for any to have long dwelt within Her Celestial Majesty’s empire has doubtless done so by buying or winning whatever privileges they require to do so from whatever lords and spirits could be made to grant it, pacts that have almost always passed beyond all record or memory by the present day. They can, if required, be fought with cold iron and sacred fire, warred upon like any overmighty god or haughty prince. But this is a costly affair, and even victory exposes those involved to all the banes and curses a wronged and vengeful Faerie might devise. It is better, and far less of an expense, to learn all one can of the Faerie and the pacts and patterns which bind it, and then confront it upon its own terms and compel it live up to the strictures of its own word. 

Above all, mind your words and its both, and neither offer nor swear upon anything you cannot afford to lose. On the wilder and more desolate roads of the eastern Crownlands there rides to this day a vision of Ruin in the livery and wielding the silver sabre of a Knight-Inspector, the only legacy of a proud man who swore carelessly upon his own chivalry and honor. The Empire does not suffer for his uniqueness. 

A Soul is a piece of the Divine Substance, imbued from the Heavens unto the Earth to grant whatever is so Ensouled Continuity, Stability and Meaning. Without the Divine Gift of Meaning, the world trends inexorably into Division and Strife, until it gives rise to one of the mad horrors most know as Demons. Some say it is a Soul that grants its bearer the capability for Virtue and Grace, but this is confused and perhaps heresy - better to say that it is Body and Mind which grant a Soul the ability to understand and act upon the Earth. 

There are several strange and exotic Varieties of Soul across the Outer Seas but, with some exceptions such as the Holy Wyrms, within the Inner World there are but two to be found in Nature. These can be crudely called Terrestrial Gods and (the true subject of this Discourse) Mortal Souls. Both serve a vital Role in the Great Chain by providing certain Fragments of the World with divinely-imbued stability and meaning. Terrestrial Gods Ensoul some area of the natural world, and all of the Animals and Plants within it. Mortal Souls, self-evidently, do the same for a specific Ensouled human being. 

Just as Terrestrial Gods vary in Strength and Splendor, so too do Mortal Souls. Incogruency, where Soul is not fit to fully Master its Body or Mind, is the ultimate cause of Lapses of character and Vice. In extreme cases, a damaged, extremely weak, or Malformed Soul is swiftly reflected in Body or Mind as well. Hence comes Madness, Idiocy and the gruesome sight of infants born with disfigured or Unholy forms. Nor is this constant over time and so, should a man Indulge in bodily passions of Wrath and Lust consistently, he will wound and stunt his soul even as he evokes the Demonic potential inchoate within his Flesh. Such failures spiral from one Den of Sin to another, and into a life amounting to little but petty thuggery in the best case and to monstrosity (as with the infamous lycanthorpes of the Eidewilde) in the worst. 

Souls can also, through Piety and Diligence, be strengthened. This, along with instruction in the Virtues, is what the Education Temples and Monasteries offer seeks to achieve with the Commonborn and Indigent Youth they take as pupils. Just as a Soul insufficient to Rightly Ordering its Body and Mind leads to Madness and Degeneracy, so too does one Greater than it is required to be manifest in Ascetic self-discipline, willpower and a Heroic Bearing. The greater part of the Healing Touch said to be possessed by so many Holy Men and Women is best understood as the use of their Soul as an Aegis (however temporary) to cover up the inadequacies of those they grant this Succor to. 

Barring Necromancy, Damnation or a similar Art, a Mortal Soul will perish with its body. This is Natural and Just, allowing the Fragment of the Divine which made it up to return to the Heavens. The matter of what, precisely, occurs once they have done so is a deeply controversial and unsettled one, which the modern Hierarch’s court is careful to not discuss too deeply for fear of branding whole duchies and kingdoms Heretics at a stroke. The vagaries and silence which results is neither honorable nor replete with dignity and, much like poor habits in an individual, have caused much damage to the Character and Virtue of the Church as a whole. Yet it is precisely such unbecoming spectacle which preserves the Church and the blessed peace which even now Imir luxuriates in. 

It is by just such unwieldy compromises that the greatest and most blessed empire that has ever been is preserved, though the very same acts see it grow lesser and more profane by the day.  This is the first and most fatal symptom of Decadence, a topic which later Discourses shall return to in far more exacting detail 

When the Celestial Host cast down and butchered the Arch-Demons of the lower depths and from them made Creation, they did not do so with a single mind, or in a single effort. The Inner World upon which you and I walk is perfectly formed, and aligned with every principle of True and Beauty - it is for this reason that the Great Gods of Heaven believed it a suitable home for the sublime Order of man and spirit we know as civilization. Make no mistake, I am no Godsemeren pollyanna - the Inner World is replete with heresy and witchcraft, with demons and apostates and every other horror. But it is full, too, of honor and beauty, of loyalty and piety, and of all the countless Glories which obedience to the Chain of Being and true Religion allow. 

But the Inner - or, as I have elsewhere argued it should be more rightly called, the Higher - World was the Celestial Divines’ masterwork, not their first attempt. In ages past, the learned and pious believed that it was built upon the ruins of these previous efforts, and it was from this imperfection that the taint of demology and witchcraft first seeped into the world. I am loathe to contradict such august and ancient sources, but in our modern age this has been proven false - the prototypes and failed attempts at the creation of the World were not destroyed or built over, they were instead cast down and hidden away, or put by the Heavens to some lesser purpose suitable to their failings and what virtues they had. 

There is a great diversity among the nations and the peoples of the Higher World and so the first service provided by a study of the Outer Seas is a contrast by which their similarities might be seen. They are all, for example, human, born imbued with a mortal soul and an honoured place in the Chain of Being. Thus, it is only through sin or tragedy that their form becomes misshapen or corrupted - this is not the case for the greater part of the creatures whose crude facsimiles of government and culture populate most Outer Seas. Not all, of course - some come close to the perfection of the Higher World, their peoples only barely distinguishable from our own. Others are earlier and less finished prototypes, or else abandoned due to some fundamental corruption or flaw, and their natives the same. Yet others were the prisons of great Titans or other fallen Angels, and even if they were once filled with true humanity, ages of capricious interference and corruption have left their descendents weakened or deformed in some manner, either in body or soul. They are not demons, or even goblins, but obvious signs of this inhumanity in visage or bearing, and hereditary tendencies to some particular corruption, abound. It is for these reasons and more that no Outer Sea has produced true Civilization or true Religion on its own, and none have proved capable of equalling the achievements or resisting the arms of the Higher World without the open support of another fully human power (however corrupt it might be). 

It was through just that corruption that the Outer Seas were first discovered - for who but warlocks and apostates would ever cut their way through the skein of the world into the abyss beyond, without any surety that there was a solitary thing to be found? Yet the piety and virtue of the Hierarch then ruling in Imir was soon rewarded with a method of invoking the grace and power of Heaven and its Sublime Will which opened the way for the World-Empire’s own ships. The methods and engines are closely guarded trade secrets of the relevant guilds and orders, but in any case require great ocean-going vessels and occulted prayers and rites that are in every case beyond the means of any lacking the genius of true humanity. 

The methods by which Outer Seas are charted are occulted, but their organization is obvious and clear, arranged in harmonious alignment such that their cosmic distance to the Higher World and the ease with which they can be reached mirrors the severity of their flaws and corruption. Thus the Pearl Sea, one of the nearest and first-charted, is almost indistinguishable from the heartlands of the Empire, and its populace - once winnowed in the Crusade that won it - so close to full humanity to be as worthy of the name as a great many peasants along the Empire’s other marches and borderlands. Thus also, though less happily, the Onyx Sea where the Celmean League’s colonies and daughter-cities have recruited from and interbred with the existing populace so eagerly with no loss of skill or vigor - and where under the Lord Regent’s Tyranny the Empire’s own holdings were lost entirely in one disastrous war after another.

Most Seas are not so blessed of course. Arrayed in an astral orrery, they spiral out, descending from the Higher World and growing more unfinished and flawed in perfect sequence. The remainder that are so close to true reality that a layman would not notice the difference are so small and marginal as to not be worth contesting the claims other principalities have made on them. The next great prizes are middling seas, obviously unfinished and dangerous to both body and soul to sail, yet full of riches and opportunity for glory that explain why the Gods Above allowed mortal eyes to chart the course to them. Here are the great prisons and blasphemous ateliers of Titan and Fae, the kingdoms of oxen walking on two hooves and birds conversing wholly through the fractured words of their long-dead trainers. This, then, is the land where legends and fortunes are made, and where treasure fleets and privateer squadrons sail for under every flag. They are also, as a whole, the theaters within which civilized powers now compete to outdo each other in colonial glory, and where each struggles to put the native creatures encountered to their most beneficial purpose. The rare examples where the creatures have not yet been brought to heel by one power or another - the cavern-dwelling clans of the Iron Sea, mostly famously - remain so by the combination of unusually belligerent and untrusting natives and a lack of treasures to justify the cost. 

At an even further remove are the Seas so primitive and distant from the Divine Plan that the dangers yet outweigh the riches and revelations they offer. Thus, the Starlit Sea, where there is neither dawn nor moon nor horizon, and the stars above are reflected by the glittering heralds of ruin beneath the waves. Thus the Whispering Depths, where any wind can be bought only with the sacrifice of a mortal soul whose breath might move it - and whose voice and secrets then taunt any who hear them for a year and a day. Thus, most of all, the Abyss itself, as dark and depthless as any entrance to Perdition, whose waters swallow ship and swimmer alike.

In the remainder of this treatise, then, I shall focus my efforts on those middling seas, and most specifically on the demi- and in-humans creatures which call them home and which must be truly brought to heel for the Empire’s banner to settle itself in their lands…

The Kymaric Expanse (called the Well of Dreams by the League, and the Diamond Sea in Illyric atlases) is a major hub on the Grand Line and one of the largest and most populous World-Shards charted by any power. Despite the anarchic and incomplete nature of their dominion, and the partial end to their trading monopoly after the Commonwealth’s victory in the latest Armada War, it remains the heart of the Khasli colonial empire. Its blood and treasure, in fact, constitutes a large part of the League of Rhaloke’s fortunes as a whole. This essay shall describe the metaphysics and geography which define the Expanse, identify the colonies, principalities and tribes that populate it, and specify the Commonwealth’s guiding interests in the Shard.

The Illyric name for the shard refers to its near-transparent waters, referred to by many travellers as so clear and glass-like that on calm days the ocean floor seems near enough to dive down and reach - a sublime experience for those with little experience of other seas, and a deeply uncanny one for seasoned sailors or marines. The waters are defined by warm, tropical trade winds that provide safe, predictable sailing from any given port for seven months of the year while bludgeoning them with storms the remaining three. 

Aside from general metaphysical stability and ease of navigation, the most salient fact to  

captains charting a course through the Expanse is its sheer size - more than twice that of any single other shard on the Grand Line. Its central landmass is the size of a small continent, with two reasonably sized archipelagos that would be enough to stabilize smaller shards in their own right. The climate of the coasts and lowlands is tropical and humid, with life governed by the predictable violence of the annual storms. 

The Khasali refer to the central landmass as Kayal, after the empire which once dominated it. It is dominated by two great mountain ranges - larger than any in Esher - which dramatically divide it into regions with their own wildlife, peoples, and methods of subsistence. The first runs very close to parallel with the southern coast, while the second juts out along one arm of the great semicircle of Kayal’s north, eventually becoming one of the Expanse’s two great island chains. Quite uniquely, it was among the mountains and hills of the interior, rather than the river valleys and coastal plains of the north, that native civilization began to develop. This can be credited both to the north being too verdant - so fecund that its tribes were never disciplined by hunger or scarce hunting grounds and forced to adapt some manner of civilized agriculture - and to the peculiar metaphysics of the shard, and how they have affected the native life thereof.

The pre-conquest Kayal Empire was purported to be ruled by the eternally recurring souls of the Kayal tribe’s progenitors (a triadic partnership of two kings and one queen - tentatively associated with the shard’s suns and moon). Myths contradict each other about specifics but the three legendary figures either: gave birth to, sculpted from stone and blood, or raised up from the beasts of the mountains, the first generation of the Kayal tribe. When their deaths approached, they each chose a successor from among the tribe and bid them to wed each other and, at the climax of the ceremony, feast upon the flesh of their parent-god to assume their role and station. Illyric theologians famously name these figures as the titans (fallen angels corrupted by demons of flesh and life) from their bestiaries and consider the diversity of forms the natives peoples exhibit as proof they are in fact the descendents of the monsters’ soulless pets and servitors. This seems roughly as likely as ancient monarchs  actually devouring their parents whole and being possessed by them (as opposed to a mythical exaggeration of the innocent native tradition where an orphan imbibes a small amount of an adult’s blood before witnesses as a rite of adoption), but it must be admitted that there is something which requires explanation. 

It is a basic law of nature that the peoples of different world shards are far more diverse in form and appearance than those native to the Centre. This is true regardless of whether those peoples are barbaric, tribal or civilized, and has only a tangential relationship with the success of efforts educating and Enlightening them. But the Kymaric Expanse is near-unique for the sheer breadth of variation present. What became the ruling peoples and aristocracy of the Kayal Empire are half again as tall (and far more powerfully built) as any explorer or merchant who has written of them, with pebble-grey skin tough enough to turn aside any edge the shard’s natives were capable of honing - and the mythology of the interior abounds with lamentation at how lessened and declined they are from the power they once held. The hardiness and powerful build common to their former subjects in the mountains and valleys of the interior might plausibly stem from the same cause, but the amphibious fishers and pearl-divers of the great central basin, the avian tribes of the northern mountain range and the myriad of different barbarian clans attested to peopling the untamed reaches of jungle and hill all seem entirely distinct. 

Despite certain fantasies popular among foreign scholars, the natives are all human both in body (the need for careful analysis can be avoided by pointing to the number of Khasali adventurers who have taken native consorts and filled their colonies with their offspring) and mind (given appropriate education, the children of every tribe remain capable of learning the arts of civilization and the tenets of Enlightened philosophy). What makes the Kymaric Expanse in particular so fecund in its diversity is unknown, but its natives in any event represent rich veins of study for those scholars deriving the laws of development and civilization. 

The Expanse’s other rich veins are less metaphorical. Silver, emeralds and several other precious materials (though not, ironically enough, diamonds) are more abundant in the southern and interior mountains than any other shard. This, more than any other single fact, clarifies and explains the politics and commerce of the shard. 

Kayal itself is of course dominated by what are called the ‘Kayal Principalities’ or ‘Successor States’ - two polite euphemisms for one of the more brutally anarchic species of subjugation humanity has yet devised. Dozens of warlords and petty kings have fought over the corpse of the Great Kayal ever since its conquest - by now those descended from Khasali conquerors are quite indistinguishable from those claiming to restore the glory of the empire, and both are wholly dependent on the Rhaloke colonies on the southern coast exchanging jewels, silver, reagents and slaves for weapons, tools and mercenaries (as well as novelties and intricate artifice of all kinds) from the Centre and other shards. The increased autonomy of those colonial ports after the end of the last Armada War has done little or nothing to improve the lot of the interior - if anything the flow of mercenaries and adventurers seeking to carve off their own cut of lucrative carrion has only grown.  

The Principalities are of far more interest to most than the remainder of the continent, and so already the subject of a great many valuable studies. The remainder of the continent has been comparatively neglected for its lack of civilized states and precious metals. 

The first exception to that neglect are the ferociously xenophobic barbarian clans native to the imposing eastern edge of the southern mountain range. Short in stature but hardy and resilient, it’s theorized that they are the remnants of some ancient empire in their own right - for the mountains they call home are riddled through with cyclopean tomb-complexes of a kind the Kayal show no interest in, and which are far beyond their current ability to even dream of creating. Living within the graves and temples of their ancestors, they have proven violently adept at hunting down and massacring explorers of all kinds despite their evident lack of social development. Their success is explained in large part by the remoteness and inhospitality of their mountains, and the remainder by their pretenatural understanding of the region’s unstable geology and odd faculty with primitive elemental theurgery. It has been theorized that some slumbering dragon acts as a patron god and benefactor, though all evidence for this remains circumstantial. 

Less-studied are the whole assortment of barbaric clans which fill the jungles and river deltas of the northern interior, which combine remoteness and inhospitality with lack of anything so enticing as ancient tombs and lost treasures of a forgotten empire. Fascinating objects of future study, but - given the difficulties that have been encountered shaking them free of their idyll and introducing them to honest work aboard ships or on plantations - there has been limited interest in sponsoring true engagement beyond that. The untracked wilderness they call home does little to encourage this - full of poisonous plants and venomous beasts, as well as deceptively unnavigable rivers and dangerously wild spirits. 

The great semicircular bay of the continent’s north offers a richer area of study, with several different tribal groups (and a nascent civilization) who engage in both commerce and war with each other running across the coastline. The most infamous of these are the tribes which dominate the north-western mountains and barrier islands - able by some combination of heritage and craft to fly with the wings of great birds (crows, bats and eagles, depending on the particular tribe), they have menaced and extracted tribute from the great bay’s other peoples for ages beyond memory. Still parochial and socially primitive, they have otherwise adopted well to changing circumstances - which is to say that they now wield stolen or scavenged pistols and steel, and ally with corsairs they offer safe harbor to, that their raids range ever-further, and that their ‘windlords’ have accumulated riches and retinues beyond the wildest dreams of any in past centuries. Despite punitive expeditions expelling them from several islands and destabilizing more than one nascent confederacy, they remain the greatest threat to civilization and commerce in general and the Commonwealth’s interests in particular in the northern Expanse. 

Turning East, the grand, gentle sweep of the coastline is dotted with villages and ritual sites belonging to any of a hundred different clans and nominal confederacies. Having for centuries filled their days with fishing, pearl-diving and simple games, they are as a rule quite naive and peaceable, with little understanding of the wider world, or curiosity to explore it beyond whatever might wash up on their beach. Fortunately, that occurs with enough frequency that they are neither terrified of novelty nor unfamiliar with commerce (either through barter or, in the more advanced cases, through simple currencies such as pearls or certain species of shell). 

That familiarity with commerce is due less to any virtues inherent to their own cultures and more due to the influence of one of the most fascinating peoples in the entire shard - whom the gutter press seems absolutely insistent on calling ‘sirens’. In many ways a quite primitive tribal culture, scattered across hundreds of small islets, atolls, and sheltered coves in the great northern bay, they provide little evidence of material or social sophistication. This is an environment they are extremely well-suited to, the typical adult capable of swimming for tens of kilometers with a pack or child bound to them - it is unknown whether they are truly amphibious or merely capable of holding their breath for hours, but in either case deaths by drowning seem wholly unheard of. Far more interesting, however, is their social role - aquatic nomads, they act as merchants, couriers and mediators between different coastal tribes across the whole great bay, with richly developed (and quite effective) traditions of barter and arbitrage. That a people with barely any access to (or ability to work) wood should possess the most numerous and grandest canoes on the water at the date of contact should be all the evidence required of their success in this role. The disruptions brought by contact with Central civilization were inevitable, of course, but the short-sightedness of certain officials in failing to integrate them into the new order is a mistake that will hopefully soon be revisited by the Committee for Colonial Affairs.

The only native civilization north of the barrier jungles is far to the east (and thus relatively insulated from corsair raids). Despite the paradoxically thin and easily exhausted soil that curses much of Kayal, the natives had developed a crude form of ‘slash and burn’ farming even before contact. While characteristically warlike and honour-obsessed for their level of development, a few of the larger villages proved willing and able to accept the Commonwealth’s aid - and with it now form the leading forces of a united principality. The Committee for General Enlightenment has already opened several schools dedicated to instructing their most promising children on modern agriculture, statecraft and military theory (along with, of course, the generalities of Enlightened philosophy), and a permanent embassy has created a healthy trade in all the supplies and foodsuffs needed for both Commonwealth ships and more focused plantations on their part and metal tools, weaponry, and assistance in securing more and more resilient farming land further inland on the Commonwealth’s. 

The vast majority of those plantations and colonies are found in the second archipelago, larger and more widely spread than the fairly tight line of barbarian-filled barrier isles on the north-east. Scattered to the south of Kayal proper, there are over fifty islands large enough to note (and many more small atolls). Possessing far richer soil and no native populations of note, they were the first lands discovered when the sea was charted and have since been the site of several wars between colonial expeditions from every power worth noting. Between the lucrative plantations that dot many of them and the great Khasali treasure fleets that still sail south from Sethennai and Kalmeta each year, it is hardly a surprise that the archipelago is a natural breeding ground for pirates of every type - and with the end of the Armada War and the recent intrigues in the Illyric court, the infestation is worse now than at any point in living memory. 

Kymeric soil has few of the unusual properties which make agriculture in other shards so unusually lucrative, but the climate and soil of those islands is still very well-suited to profitable plantation economies. The specific crops…