THE EUTECTIC SEA
For the last four hundred years, the area around the Eutectic Sea has been dominated by the seven cities of the Endymion League: from the tropical islands of Sisserou to the north, to the fairy-ridden forests of the Zenith-Ostrograd Empire to the south. At the centre of it all, the beating heart of the League, is Endymion itself, serving as a melting pot of innovation and exploitation, vast new wealth and staggering poverty.
The year is 437, the new calendar of the Belle Epoque retroactively established from the moment when famed adventurer Nadezhde Grey sacrificed themself at the site of the aborted Stygian Rite. Their companions, the countess Edda of Narberth and alchemist Angelo Sagittarius, helped to arrange the signing of the Julian Entente and the founding of Endymion on that very site, and the guiding of the nascent League through the horror of the Yowling Plague, though it would eventually take them both. In the centuries since, a great many technological, magical, and societal advances have been made, though not without various regions having stagnated in one area or another.
THE SEVEN CITIES OF THE ENDYMION LEAGUE
After the Great War, and the plague that followed, seven states remained with any claim over the fishing and shipping waters of the Eutectic Sea. Some mostly coastal, some further inland, the leaders of the six signed the first cooperative agreements that would form the Endymion League, and founded Endymion itself as the seventh city, a strong knot to tie the new allies together.
QUADRATURA
Repubblica Quadratura
A twisted baroque monstrosity clinging to the underside of a floating cubic island. Governed by a cadre of mysterious masked sorcerers known as The Priori, with an affinity for pigment and perspective, chimera and chiaroscuro. The spoiled rococo elite float above a temperate agricultural landscape, processing the raw textiles, food and other materials produced by the region into fine garments and cuisine, art and architecture famous across the Sea. The towns that litter the land dread the shadow of the capital floating overhead, as hosting their leaders often brings a settlement to near bankruptcy.
The majority language spoken here is Sciocchezzaio, which is known across the League as a language of excess, art and fashion, though this is because only the elite can afford to travel abroad.
MYRCE
Kingdom of Myrce
A relative dead zone in the global magical field, Myrce and its capital Dudley survived the Great War only due to its primary resource: enormous mechanical megafauna, turned from farming and transport to artillery and siege engine during the crisis. Most famous for the town of Ruddock, home to the largest and wealthiest university in the League within a particularly magical valley, it exports Philosophers and tradesfolk back to their home nations by the hundred every year. By comparison the capital of the Kingdom is rather muddy and mundane, home to the royal family, with a Queen at its head.
The primary language spoken here is Poppycock. In recent years, there have been calls for Ruddock, an international institution, to cede from Myrce and join Endymion, which would deprive the Kingdom of its primary political weight.
ZENITH-OSTROGRAD
Ostrogradskiy Tsarstvo (Остроградский Цардом) / Kraljevina Zapadu (Краљевина Запад)
During the events which led to the end of the Great War, it was discovered that the contra-belligerent nations of the Ostrogradskiy Tsardom and the Zapadu Kingdom shared a common heir, leading to the formation of the Zenith-Ostrograd Empire, a dual monarchy with two capitals (Ostrograd and Zenit) on either side of the river Rascaille (the Baragouinized translation of Pаскол). This resulted in this hybrid nation having the largest land area in the League, though much of the unpopulated regions at the outskirts of the great southern forest claimed are more accurately described as being part of Fairy, which the ZOE borders.
It has the highest average elevation and the coldest climate in the League, providing exports of skins, hemp, grain and lumber. There are two languages here with roughly equal use, Jerunda (Eрунда) and Gluposti (Глупости). Due to their twin nature and the core position of the Empire in the founding of the League, each of Ostrograd and Zenith have an equal number of seats in Endymion’s Parliament to the others. This would be a point of contention with the other five if they ever agreed on anything, but at no point in the last 150 years have the two blocs voted the same way on a single important issue.
Due to the proximity to Fairy, there are an unusually high number of fae living within its borders, either in the open or in secret. This has resulted in a general reluctance to accept the new-fangled thaumaturgy coming out of Endymion and Ruddock in recent years, preferring to stick to the old ways.
VIRIDIENNE
Duché de Viridienne
A solarpunk attempt to bring some of the chaos of the southern forests to the arid savanna around it. Featuring some of the most modern glasswork and terraformation techniques in the League, maelstroms of experimental societies and ideologies spring up overnight, and die off just as quickly in the vast greenhouses that make up the city centre. Exports are primarily metallurgical, with heavy deposits of silver, copper, iron, and precious gems enabling the development of crossbred fruits and vegetables by the botanist nobility.
Viridienne has the greatest urbanised percentage of the seven, even beyond that of Endymion, due to the relatively low average agricultural value of the land outside the capital. Speaking mostly Baragouin, the Duc, the House of Dimonika, and the establishment supporting it are magically powerful, enabling them to spread their influence far beyond their borders.
SISSEROU
Sisserou
Strictly speaking a federated demarchy made up of dozens of states, and none of its settlements are large enough by League standards to be called a “city”, but it is collectively referred to as such for purposes of membership. It is the furthest north of the member nations, giving it the warmest climate. The region used to be almost entirely colonised by the other members of the League, as well as several states which did not survive the War with their independence/populations intact. In the aftermath, a revolutionary group, funded in part by the trading company which would become Endymion, managed to wrest the vast majority of the area’s tropical islands from colonial control and founded Sisserou, which now stands at the table equally, though a great deal of cultural legacy remains, including architecture and language. The region speaks mostly Baragouin, though each region has added its own creole components based on their pre-colonial tongues.
A great deal of Sisserou’s last few centuries of mercantile power comes from its position at the very north of the Eutectic where it joins the waters of the much larger and more violent Swaforth Deep, giving it a unique trading position with the nations beyond.
ENDYMION
Free and League City of Endymion
As the most rapidly growing and youngest of the seven metropoles, Endymion has no common architectural style, its districts clashing together like silk against rough hemp. When the League was formed, one of the many votes undertaken was on what should become the lingua franca of the new federation. Each of course voted for their own national language, with the tie being broken by Sisserou’s representatives siding with Viridienne’s, despite the nations being vicious rivals during the war.
At the signing of the entente and the end of the war, land at the very northern point of the ZOE was voluntarily ceded, due to its convenient land position relative to both the ZOE and Myrce, and favourable easterly winds leading to and from similar peninsulas belonging to Quadratura and Viridienne.
Governing the League are forty nine representatives from each of the seven cities, with Endymion’s share being represented by the local guilds, elected from the lower house where all guilds with a League charter are owed a seat, and the Lord Mayor presides and governs the city with their guidance. All guilds have a guildhall of some kind, but the richest and most powerful have built vast towers which stretch into the sky around the city, surrounding parliament like a thistle.
There are nations and city-states further afield than the seven which border the Eutectic, some smaller, some larger, and the Endymion League trades with them all to some extent. Many are obscure and dangerous lands, which the powerful and influential Cartographer’s Guild seeks to tame and map. Some Free Cities acquired sovereignty solely due to their agreement to join the League.
THE ENDYMION LEAGUE
Within the vast marble halls of Parliament, there lies the ruins to the temple of a forgotten Goddess, a cracked altar surrounded by fallen pillars. It was here, over four hundred years ago, that the war was ended and the charter of the League was signed. These days, a high ceiling of finest Viridienne glass describing the history of Endymion shines glimmering rainbows across the ancient stone, and a heptagonal seating structure of finely carved wood from each of the member nations. Of the core six, each are allowed seven representatives, three on the front benches, four on the back. Endymion itself also provides seven: the Mayor, and six from the most powerful guilds in the city. These representatives meet in full infrequently outside of annual, matters of League democracy usually falling to the hundreds of legislators and sub-representatives who bicker and barter in the other buildings of parliament.
By far the more active body is the guild council, who meet several floors below in the raucous and smoky Council chambers, where the dozens of guild governors argue and occasionally come to blows across the stained mosaic floor. The chamber is notionally bicameral, with governors tending to fall into two categories: the Artists and the Artisans, though loyalties often switch from vote to vote. The Artisans are those who see themselves as the cogs in the well-oiled machine that is the League, whereas the Artists are the glue which hold culture and society together.
The names Artist & Artisan are a holdover from the early days of Endymion, when the greatest contribution from the Kingdom of Myrce was its economically strong guilds. These days, most of that power, as well as the official seat of those guilds, has transferred to Endymion, alongside the strong connection to the University of Ruddock.
The Guild of Cartographers is presently the most powerful in the city, led by the constantly busy Bleddyn Bladdergeist, Master Artisan and Cartographer Royal. Three other Artisan guilds complete their present control of the council, that of the Alchemists, Sailors, and Astronomers. Two Artist guilds, the Witches and the Priests, also sit at parliament, along with the ineffectual figurehead of a Mayor.
RELIGION AND MAGIC
Powerful beings exist outside of the world’s 3+1 dimensions. Depending on their flavour, they may exist entirely within the noosphere, or within another 3+1 brane just a few steps ana or kata from this one. In these places, the physical or magical laws of reality may be slightly, or wildly different, allowing for extreme forms of life. Some of this life, deliberately or not, can influence normal space, resulting in miracles or curses, deals and bargains, and sometimes travel between worlds.
The most well-known of these worlds is that of Fairy, which is generally thought of as being generally south of the ZOE. In reality, that is merely the place where Fairy intersects with this world the closest, and can theoretically be reached from anywhere. Places where this distance is far tend to form more stable and less creative societies, where the power of story and myth is less likely to influence behaviour.
Other parallel realms include analogues for Hell, Elysium, and Paradise, which the primary religions hold as related, though technically they are not, as well as a number of other places colonised by powerful beings in ages past.
In recent times, a number of extra dimensional agents from what humans have in this epoch been calling “Heaven” have brushed against this world, engaging with the minds and relics of a great many civilisations. The cultural consequences of this around the Eutectic have been severe, there is currently a major religion, coalesced from a dozen others in Antiquity, for whom the primary prophet is Saint Edda, due to her actions which ended the Howling Plague. Known as the Fait Ubique, its primary tenets require its leaders to absorb all existing faiths into its own, thus increasing their own verisimilitude . Each nation has adopted its own version of the Faith Ubique, and the various bishops argue constantly about how various traditions and events may be best homogenised. The most popular and well-known priests are usually those who can deliver sermons relevant to as many of the individual faiths as possible, and therefore collect the most diverse flock.
Magic is strange. There is no underlying mathematics describing its behaviour, and as such the study of magical theory is more akin to poetry than arithmetic. A philosopher specialising in the arcane may discover that the graph of the law determining the output of a spell relative to the level of energy input to it is not linear, or exponential, but instead resembles a butterfly’s wings. This has not prevented the last century of Ruddock thaumaturgists from establishing a tripartite system of magic, though they are often interchangeable, and vary wildly internally: Morphology, Doggerel, and Benediction, describing the method through which reality is influenced.
Morphology refers to shape and form, ranging from written glyphs to the gyration of dancers to the movement of butterflies evolved to take advantage of such energies.
Doggerel is mainly speech based, poetry, song or other spoken spellcraft, though it technically can include things like the call of certain beasts or the sounds made by the grinding of certain crystals together.
Benediction takes place entirely within the mind, and is primarily thought of as the kind of magic called forth by prayer, and is the hardest to pin down.
There are plenty of magical effects which do not fit into any of these three, but the main proponents of the theory tend to either ignore that, insist there must be a fourth cause, or that they somehow are caused by one of the three in some hidden way.
Modern magic is rooted in efficiency, blending together the most effective of methods and equipment from various doctrines in order to produce the greatest output with the least input.
FOLK AND CREATURES OF CIRCUM-EUTECTIC
By far in the majority in the lands of the seven cities is humanity. Coming in many shapes, sizes, colours and creeds, there is certainly no such thing as the average human, though in the majority of the seven a common ethnicity is often shared. The outliers here are Sisserou and Endymion, their trading hub nature provoking a higher level of diversity. As an approximate rule, human skin involves more melanin the further north one is born, though the Belle Epoque has introduced a level of rapid globalisation which serves to broadly negate the circumstances of birthplace, and one can never be sure of where someone calls home from their appearance.
Connected as they are to the realm of Fairy, the regions which border the great forests to the south (primarily Zenith-Ostrograd and Myrce) contain a much greater than average proportion of fey. Naiads, dryads, domovoi, goblins, gremlins, bogies, lubbers, rusalki, and others can be found in these lands, preferring the cold and the wet. Some have joined modern society, and yet fewer have interbred with humans, resulting in children with pointed ears and a predisposition for certain types of magic. The least sapient of these folk are sometimes treated as pets, sometimes as harmless vermin, and sometimes as sinister omens to be exterminated.
In recent decades there has been an explosion in artificial life, spirits constructed from pure elemental lifeforce and funnelled into bodies. Depending on the hardiness and complexity of these bodies, these creations can occasionally be said to be truly alive, and indeed in Endymion a few of the most intelligent have earned their right to self-ownership, though the majority are still considered property. There are generally considered to be four types of grotesque, or elemental handiworks by the majority of philosophers. Three of the four have existed in one form or another for centuries, though only the most powerful of witches were capable of their summoning. The first to be scientifically formalised, and thereafter mass produced, are Gnomes. These beings can range from tiny clay golems to imposing stone gargoyles, and are used for any purpose where observation or force might be required, and a human substitute too expensive. The next are Salamanders, creatures of fire with skin of asbestos, content to live within the bellies of great furnaces, increasing their efficiency. Being the longest lived, the oldest at least three centuries old, occasionally one will become wise enough to seek anything other than the heat of fire. The Undine, visually appearing as a long eel made from water, are barely sentient, can be consumed in their infancy, growing up within the humours of the body, aiding in their balance, providing good health. They can also be used to purify water, though both uses are expensive. The final grotesque, that of elemental air, was long thought to be impossible, but was finally proven to exist by a research team at Ruddock. Organised puffs of air, with barely as much processing power as a cabbage plant, last seconds at sea level and barely longer at their optimised atmosphere in the depths of storm clouds. These Slyphs have no functional use other than as a proof of concept, and as evidence for academic perseverance. Some eccentric philosophers believe in a fifth type, representing void, aether or quintessence, but are not taken seriously by the majority.
Nesuferit, or Undead, are a form of human whose soul clings to their body long after most would have faded away. This ranges from those with Vampir’s blood down to the merest thrall with the barest wisps of mind remaining. Most are loosely associated with Hell, but all have some sort of influence from Other Places. The most famous of these was Morchard, Bishop of Belstone, a necromancer responsible for orchestrating the early stages of the Great War, and for attempting the Stygian Rite. Communicating with the dead has tentatively come back in fashion within some academic circles.