Factions

Every sip of clean water in every Imperial peak citadel runs through a Korran canal or a Korran rights-of-passage. Cold, patient, quietly rich — the Korrans do not speak loudly. They do not need to. A Korran agreement is binding. A Korran refusal is final.

Solmere built the conduits that feed the Godkiln. Solmere maintains them. If a Solmere strike on the conduit network ever occurred, the Godkiln would lose stable refinement within a week. This is not a threat the house has ever made. It is a fact the other houses cannot forget. Solmere foremen are also priests of the Order of the Forge.

Half the loans in the world are Veyra-underwritten. The Empire pays its Wall garrisons in coin that, somewhere upstream, was issued from a Veyra letter of credit. Cut Veyra off and the Empire's payment infrastructure dies in two weeks. Anaki — high elves — to the bone. Cosmopolitan. Calculating. Polite to the edge of menace.

Dravenn controls who farms what, who fights whom, and what gets paid for both. The fighting arenas are not merely entertainment — they are the Empire's primary social pressure valve. Loud, blunt, often blood-stained, frequently underestimated. The only house that physically lives among the people it governs.

Callith decides what is sacred, what is heresy, and what is permitted in the Godkiln rite. Without their blessing, no high-grade Essa moves through the supply chain. Ascetic in image, cosmopolitan in fact — Callith bishops dine with Veyra bankers and visit the Solmere forges. The most networked house in the Empire.

Twelve seats in the Citadel Core of Corvath. Five held by the Oligarch Houses. Four rotate among sworn kings on a ten-year cycle. Three are permanently empty — the banners of extinct kingdoms that still hang in the chamber. No member holds absolute individual power. They hold it collectively, and they enforce that collectively against any member who reaches for more.

The Wall-adjacent noble houses that meet annually at Ashgate. No formal Council authority — but effective veto authority over Wall policy. The Council cannot enforce a Wall directive the Compact refuses to support, because the Compact's lords supply the bodies, the grain, and the local cooperation the Wall requires.

The standing imperial paladin army, deployed in three tiers: Standard Aegis (mainline garrison forces), Hammer Aegis (the Office for Suppression of Unsanctioned Magic — counter-magic strike teams with kill-on-sight authority for unlicensed casters), and Black Aegis (deserters the Empire hunts for equipment recovery). Their oath of service is to the institution itself.

Technically separate from the Council. Functionally interlocked with Houses Solmere and Callith. The Order refines; the Flame Priests bless. The Hierophant in the core has not appeared in public for two decades. The priesthood is a power structure parallel to the Council, with its own loyalty oaths and its own secret theology. It is not a subordinate of the Council. The Council does not say this out loud.

A maritime code most independent sailors follow because the alternative is being preyed upon by the people who do. The Compact governs at sea and in port — no constitution, no formal charter, no legal apparatus, but a code that is enforced. A Compact tribunal settles disputes faster than any Empire court, with finality none of them can match. Current Speaker: Ila Sath-Korren (Reefkin), holding since AI 63.

Holds salvage rights to anything that surfaces from the water not contracted to a specific crew. Present in every major Shatterds port. One of the four power structures in Ragged Hook that cannot act unilaterally without the others's tacit cooperation — which has produced sixty years of careful, irritable, working coexistence.

A rotating arrangement between the five largest operating crews at The Throat. Decisions by majority. Disputes settled in a specific room behind the harbormaster's office that has no official name and a reputation that does not require one. Has been attempting to secure a permanent Council seat for four years. The Empire has been declining.

Charter-protected independent processing operation at Rendered Point — twice-monthly open auction, with no single buyer permitted to acquire more than 40% of any month's output. This provision was written specifically to prevent what happened to three other independent ports. The Charter classifies its pricing archives as a public resource. The Consortium has been trying to acquire those archives for a decade.

The operating arrangement at Gleam City, the only settlement in the Deep Waters with anything approaching neutral ground. Where powers that would not meet anywhere else find a table. Loosely formalized, heavily observed.

The informal network of processing guilds, hunting charters, and independent operators that constitutes the Shatterds's economic backbone. Not a single organization — a set of overlapping charter relationships and informal mutual obligations. The Empire calls it a cartel. The Shatterds calls it a constitution.