The Compact of Nations

An alliance of nations made up of the former client states of the fallen Vencari Empire. These five nations make up the vast majority of humankind’s “known world”.

Venar

Once a mighty empire whose borders defined the known world, Vencar is now merely a powerful nation controlling everything north of the Naam, east of the Venn, and south of the Wolfwood. Their easternmost border is not set by the Compact, but by the indulgence of the monstrous daimones who rule the grasslands on the far side.

Vencar still styles itself as an empire, and organizes itself as a collection of culturally distinct but economically interdependant principalities, all answering to the Emperor in Vencar City.

Georg

A nation of artisans, crafters, and traders, honoring blacksmiths and masons in particular, Georg considers itself the true heir of the ancient and long-lost empire of Illustria. A noble and boistrous people, they are proud elf-friends and close allies with their neighbors Handar and Namora, as well as more distant Mashandosaar. As a culture, they fear two things: the men and monsters of the Shadow Realm who brought down Illustria and linger despite the millenium since the end of that great war, and ill-used wizardry, which they believe calls to the shadow men.

Namora

A vast territory of various terrains and biomes, the territories of the Namoran clans stretch across the center of the known world, from the River Venn in the east to the coast of the Sea of Dalaan in the west. The King of Namora is largely a scapegoat for politics of the Compact, and exerts little control outside the treaty-established capitol of Kingseat, once a much greater city. Other Namoran cities are fundamentally independant, ruled by local governors and a wealthy class of nobles whose tyrany is constrained by the perpendicular power structures of the traditional clans and the mystical Shan Khul warriors.

Handar

The north- and western-most nation of the Compact, isolated by distance and vast mountains from the more wealthy and powerful nations of Naal and Vencar, Handar is often seen as a cultural backwater. Like Namora, the Kingdoms of Handar are less consolidated than the other nations of the compact, with power and territory divided between six kings, all blood-kin to the magical and saintly Citrine Knights who have protected Handar since the Plague of Revenants, when they were still a Vencari colony. The High King in Handar City is first among equals, and bears the burden of dealing with the politics of the Compact as a whole.

Naal

The Divine Republic of Naal is ruled from the ancient and mighty city of Arthago, on the southern coast of the Great Crystal Lake. Though the Great Council exerts functionally little control more than a few day’s walk from the lake coast or banks of the Naam and Dead Rivers, they claim the whole southern border of the known world, between the River Naam and the Sacred Desert that was once the ancient empire of a’Rasyr. Ruled by wizards trained in the arts of philosophy and the natural sciences, wealthy from the many mines in their rocky deserts and plains, they feature relatively little in this novel.

Beyond the Compact

Tanirinaal

Home to the elven peoples, with its capitol in the foothills of the mountains below dwarven Mashandosaar, and stretching from the southernmost tip of Holy Mount Kashrin in the east to the Alsan Mountains in the west. Tanirinaal is ruled by a Queen who can trace her lineage back to the prophets of Es and the scions of the mountain-god Senvarus, and by an “advising” Council of sorceresses.

Mashandosaar

Home to the dwarven peoples, concentrated around but not limited to the mountains at the headwaters of the River Venn.

The Wolfwood

A primordial forest north of Vencar and east of Georg and Tanirinaal, the Wolfwood is home to countless nymphs and satyrs, beasts and monsters. Its only known mortal denizens are the Children of Enhyl, known to Vencari as wolf people and to elves as the uurnigath.

The Gyyr Wilderness

Where once lay the heartland of ancient Illustria, now a haunted and impenetrable woodland.

The Serpent Grasses

East of Vencar lay a vast and unexplored stretch of grasslands populated by mortal peoples made in the image of serpents and lizards. At the height of the empire, these serpent peoples fought the Vencari legions to a standstil, and the towers raised to mark the borders and truce that came of that war

The Sacred Desert and Rasyri Plains

South of modern Naal lie the great deserts and plains where once the gods, themselves, ruled over vast nations of daevas and djinn, and where the mortal descendants of those gods strove to rule as well and as wisely. Now those plains and deserts are home to countless tribes of desert nomads, sand trolls, and strange creatures who all claim to be the true heirs of great a’Rasyr.