✦Lineage
Character Creator
Who are you?
This is the root of everything to come. Your kind shapes your body, your homeland, and the life you are about to live.
This branch of the tree is still being carved. All three paths are now carved.
The Northern Coast · The great maritime state of Bovai
Aepiros occupies the northern shores of the Nihian Sea and is the great maritime state of Bovai. Its peoples include northern cattle, bison, yak, and other cold-adapted cattle lineages, many of them possessing thick coats and powerful bodies suited to the severe climate.
Aepiros is renowned above all for its ships. Its forests provide immense quantities of timber, while its coastal cities have raised generations of shipwrights, carpenters, sailmakers, ropemakers, and naval engineers. The greatest of these is Woodshore, whose enormous shipyards and docks are counted among the finest in the world. Aepiran vessels dominate the Nihian Sea and regularly venture far beyond it, well into the Eternity Ocean, carrying Bovai’s goods to distant occidental shores.
The Aepiran relationship with the sea is unusual among maritime peoples. Their bulls are sailors, merchants, and navalists first. The sea is a road and a frontier to them, not their principal source of food. Aepiros thrives instead upon shipping, trade, shipbuilding, salt, timber, and the movement of goods between distant lands.
Its great ports have made Aepiros one of the most cosmopolitan parts of Bovai. Foreign merchants are common along its coast, and Aepiran sailors are found throughout the northern seas.
The Highland State · Mines, passes, and high pastures
Dukra occupies the mountainous and elevated country of Bovai. Its peoples include gaur, highland cattle, bison, and other cattle lineages accustomed to steep country and colder uplands.
The state is a land of valleys, high pastures, forests, and mountain passes. Herding is widespread, but Dukra is equally famous for its mines and metalworking. Iron, copper, stone, and other minerals have supported a long tradition of smithing, engineering, and construction.
Dukran settlements are often concentrated in valleys beneath enormous grazing territories. Many communities keep strong local customs, having been separated from one another by mountains for generations. The result is one of the most regionally varied cultures within the Republic.
Dukra’s mountain passes are of enormous strategic importance. The roads and trade routes crossing the state connect the northern and central regions of Bovai, and it borders Sterilia and the rabbit lands of Hisravon, making its engineers and road-builders essential to the Republic. Its people are consequently regarded as practical, independent, and fiercely attached to the lands immediately around their communities.
The Central Heartland · Seat of Ubessar and the Cornua Congress
Bovos is the great agricultural heartland of the Republic and the traditional centre of the cattle peoples. Its inhabitants include numerous cattle lineages, aurochs, banteng, and other bovines adapted to settled agricultural country.
The broad plains and fertile river valleys of Bovos support enormous farms, pasturelands, and cities. Grain, dairy, livestock, leather, textiles, and manufactured goods flow from Bovos into every other part of the Republic.
Bovos is also the oldest political centre of Bovai. Many of the institutions that became republican institutions first developed among its cities and agricultural communities. Its wealth, population, and ancient political traditions have given Bovos considerable influence within the Cornua Congress. It is home to Ubessar, the federal capital, the seat of the Congress and the common government of all five states.
The southern part of Bovos reaches the shores of the Amanar Sea, giving it direct access to the maritime trade linking Bovai with Caprina, Hisravon, Xathri, Equastra, Pilosa, and the other nations surrounding the inner sea.
The Amanarian Coast · Bovai's southern gateway
Harhiv occupies much of the southern country surrounding the Amanar Sea. Its principal peoples are buffalo and water buffalo, alongside numerous cattle and other southern cattle lineages.
The rivers and fertile lowlands of Harhiv support extensive agriculture and dense settlement. Buffalo peoples have become particularly renowned for heavy construction, irrigation, and the management of waterways, while the state’s great southern ports have made Harhiv one of Bovai’s foremost commercial centres.
Harhiv looks southward more than any other Bovai state. Across the Amanar Sea lie Caprina, Hisravon, Xathri, Equastra, Pilosa, and many other nations, making Harhiv a natural meeting place between Bovai and the wider southern world. Its cities hold merchants, diplomats, travellers, and foreign communities from across the Amanarian basin, and Harhiv has a reputation for knowing foreign customs and languages better than the other states.
Where Aepiros is Bovai’s great northern maritime power, Harhiv is its great southern commercial gateway.
The Great Pastures · Where herds are wealth
Traginai occupies much of the great interior grazing country of Bovai. Its peoples include bison, aurochs, cattle, and other large grazing lineages.
The state is dominated by immense grasslands and open country, interspersed with forests and river valleys. Great herds move across its pastures, and the wealth of many communities is measured in livestock, grazing rights, and the quality of their breeding lines. Traginai has therefore developed the most sophisticated pastoral traditions in Bovai: breeding, veterinary practice, pasture management, and seasonal movement. Great herds are driven across enormous distances, while permanent settlements have grown around the markets, crossroads, and riverlands that serve them.
The state is less densely settled than Bovos, but far from undeveloped. Its wealth in livestock makes Traginai indispensable to the Republic, providing animals, leather, dairy, and other goods to the rest of Bovai.
Its enormous interior makes Traginai one of the great open spaces of the Republic: a land where the horizon can stay open for leagues, and where the movement of a herd can matter as much to a community as the movement of an army.
The Northern Timberwolf Fiefdom · House Gimuth · Capital: Zerazon
Proclaimed in 1132 AA and bounded by the Compromise of 1136, Zösremm is far older than its borders. Its people descend from the Zösremm tribe of timberwolves, who roamed the northern wildlands of Draufgrin for centuries until the expansion of the Wolvenreik drove them south. Some Reiken blood and custom came with that forced assimilation, but Zösremm’s heart stayed with the old timberwolf ways of the Walhaz. The warrior Thane Gimuth One-Eye founded the House Gimuth that still rules from Zerazon.
Zösremm lies on the fertile Sennenear Plain and in the dense Wolverweild, with Styrholm to the east and Elderkarn to the west. It has farmland and timber in plenty but almost no metal, and it has long sought what it lacks at its neighbours’ expense.
Its oldest feud is with Úlfrinn. Legend blames Hild of Skur, a she-wolf of famed beauty who married into one fiefdom or the other, depending on who tells it. Older rumour says the Frinnians sided with the Wolvenreik during the occupation. The living grievance is Úlfrinn’s tolls on Zösremm’s merchants.
In 1965 AA the alpha Kazarkaan Bloodfang of House Gimuth staged a false raid in Úlfrinn livery and, with the Tenth Legion away, launched the Days of Rage. Verwick fell in seven days, and Úlfrinn’s royal family was tortured and murdered. The young knight Nayr killed Kazarkaan, his sons Renzaar and Zozaar turned on each other, and the army broke. Zösremm is left fractured, House Gimuth divided, its coffers spent, and Úlfrinn sworn to vengeance.
The Timberwolf Kingdom · House Hakfang · Capital: Verwick
Proclaimed in 1136 AA, Úlfrinn descends from the Úlfrinn tribe of timberwolves, driven out of the northern wildlands by the expansion of the Wolvenreik. House Hakfang has ruled it for nearly eight hundred years from Verwick, a fortified castle city on a defensible hill.
It lies between the Mustermaar Mountains and the fertile Granddare Expanse, with the River Esk, running from the Gansor Hills to the Putram Coast, as its western border and Bjornheim to the east. Its closest ally is Kasargroth, a free city-state whose forges arm Draufgrin’s legions and are counted among the finest in the world. The Ottertrail, the coastal road running the length of Draufgrin, passes through Kasargroth and ties Úlfrinn to Bjornheim and the rest of the realm.
Its feud with Zösremm is centuries old. In 1965 AA, while the Tenth Legion was away, Zösremm invaded in the Days of Rage, took Võhsamaa, Torkola, and Ulpää, and besieged Verwick. The young knight Nayr lost his Barghest, Niylah, at the Battle of Prolst’s Light, and returned to find Verwick fallen and over ten thousand of its folk massacred. He moved through the enemy ranks like a wraith, freeing prisoners, until he faced Kazarkaan, who had murdered the queen and princesses and tortured King Orvar to death, and killed him.
Prince Bror now rebuilds a shattered kingdom. The Legion’s return keeps the two fiefdoms apart, but Úlfrinn has not forgotten, and would take its vengeance given the chance.
The Maritime Badger Fiefdom · House Grynnor · Capital: Greyhaven
Grynnor was founded in 15 BA by Lasa Grynnor, a descendant of Moginor Grynnor, one of the Pirate King Myrno’s captains. Her harbour city of Greyhaven grew into a centre of trade and shipbuilding, and Lasa’s Bridge across the Gardran River, joining Grynnor to the Ottertrail, still stands as a symbol of its engineering.
Grynnor keeps its distance from everyone, even its fellow mustelids and the other Seeverkehr houses. Shipyards, sea trade, and its wine, above all the prized Grynnor Red, make it self-reliant, and its rulers guard that independence fiercely.
It is ruled by Syleehi, the dowager badger, famous for her wit and her tirades: one speech to the Council of Anchors was so profane it was struck from the records entirely. She is House Sibir’s loudest enemy, has mocked the tigress Mhaera Sibir’s bid for the throne in words still repeated across Draufgrin, and once invited Mhaera to a gathering in honour of Ragna of House Ruthvenna, the white tigress who is Aragarin’s concubine, purely to humiliate her.
Syleehi has no known heir. As other houses bend toward the Sibir tigers, Grynnor’s independence may not outlast her, but while she lives it will go down fighting, cursing, and stubborn to the last.
The Pine Marten Fiefdom · House Der-Feek · Capital: Molkos
Baernholt was founded in 13 BA by Tamos, of whom little is known; like many of Draufgrin’s houses, his line is thought to descend from one of Myrno’s pirate captains. By 154 AA it had become one of the most populous and prosperous fiefdoms in the kingdom.
Its mild climate made it a land of beekeepers, and its honey and beeswax are sought across Draufgrin, as are the apples and pears of its orchards. Gold and iron have been mined and worked there for centuries, and its goldsmiths and weaponsmiths are highly regarded. The quarries around Molkos have supplied the stone for fortresses, walls, and monuments across the realm.
Molkos is among the most fortified cities in Draufgrin, and at its heart stands the ziggurat: a stone palace, the tallest structure in the kingdom, holding the rulers’ residence, council chambers, treasuries, and sanctuaries to Baernholt’s patron gods and spirits.
House Der-Feek rules with pragmatism rather than ambition, keeping the fiefdom stable, self-sufficient, and neutral. As House Sibir’s power grows, Baernholt may yet be forced to choose between standing alone and seeking an alliance.
The Industrious Otter Fiefdom · House Jasif · Capital: Herfuroa
Hraldir was founded in 12 BA by Vatan Hral, a descendant of Hral Keelbreaker, one of Myrno’s legendary captains. From its capital, Herfuroa, it grew into an economic power: Menorath, its largest city, became a hub of commerce, while Maerin and Geirsa, near the Mustermaar Mountains, grew rich on their mines.
Coal, iron, copper, and tin feed its forges, which turn out bronze and iron tools, trade goods, and weapons sought across Draufgrin and overseas. The forests of the interior supply its shipyards, whose vessels are among the kingdom’s finest, and fishing thrives along its coast. The Ottertrail puts it on Draufgrin’s main road of trade.
Hraldir has passed between many houses through alliance, marriage, and war. Today House Jasif rules it, but under the thumb of House Sibir, the rising tiger house. Jasif resents the arrangement and accepts it anyway as the surest road to wealth, while many of the Seeverkehr nobility quietly hope to see Hraldir free again.
Whether it reclaims its independence or becomes a lasting vassal of the Sibir tigers, Hraldir’s mines, forges, and shipyards keep it one of the most important fiefdoms in the realm.
Seat of Power of the Kingdom · House Anganir · Capital: Reinor
Dovarak is the ancestral seat of the Kingdom of Draufgrin, founded by the legendary Pirate King Myrno. House Anganir, who trace their line to Myrno’s captains, rule it from Reinor, the kingdom’s capital, set at the crossroads of its great land and sea routes. Merchants from across Aerodan fill its markets, and its theatres, guildhalls, and libraries make it the cultural heart of Draufgrin, never more than at the annual Festival of the Mast.
Above the harbour stands the Sea Wall, and beyond it the Ship Graves, where Draufgrin’s greatest heroes are entombed with their ships beneath the masts of the Snejja, Myrno’s own. At the city’s highest point rises the Dwell of Luscus, the royal bastion built under the Wolvenreik in 304 AA, which withstood a ten-year siege by the Eerizeran Confederation in the War of Unification. It holds the Coral Crown, and the Seeverkehr Council meets within its walls.
Much of Reinor’s grandeur is the work of Lusus the Shipwright, a sea otter architect who rebuilt and fortified the city and ruled it in all but name while the king was on campaign. He lies in the Ship Graves beneath a simple mound marked with a sextant and slide rule. His epitaph reads: Many paws make light work.
The Sea Otter and Stoat Fiefdom · House Sabeek · Capital: Tritusor
Fjordhamn is one of the few coastal fiefdoms created in over a thousand years, founded in Draufgrin’s northern expansion on the border between Karanor and the Domar Strand. It holds the northern seas and the trade that flows through them.
Its capital, Tritusor, is a great naval base: headquarters of the Draufgrin fleet, home of the elite Tridenguard marines, and seat of House Sabeek in the Palace of Brockenhurst. Its harbour is a vital stop for merchants between Draufgrin and the north, and its sea otters and stoats live by fishing, seafaring, and shipbuilding.
House Sabeek, a rare house of sea otters and stoats, has ruled since the founding: the otters bring their seamanship, the stoats their cunning and diplomacy. Its head, Mashera Sabeek, is a sharp and calculating ruler who has made Fjordhamn a maritime hub linking the kingdom to the wider world.
Its position is never safe. Karanorian raiders test its border, the Scourge left its mark on its coast, and House Sabeek must balance its walls against the careful diplomacy that keeps its hostile neighbours at bay. To Draufgrin, Fjordhamn is both shield and gateway to the north.
The Throne of Masks · Capital of the Principality of Vulperi · Seat of the Trigon
Founded by Eingar Reynard in the aftermath of the Battle of Lorraine, Reyna was built as a triumph of cunning over conquest: a palace of whispers on seven interlocking islands along the Sylviara River. To visitors it is a paradise of tranquil bridges, candlelit balconies, and perfectly poised courtyards. Its towers lean by design, its cobblestones choreograph every step, and its canals curve to lead the gondolas exactly where they are meant to go. Even the shadows are curated.
The city lives by seduction and the Game. Saffron and cherrywood smoke drift from its cafés; lovers’ verses may be devotion or strategy; fox kits trade riddles instead of toys and learn posture and tone before arithmetic. At its heart stands Vulkheart, seat of the Trigon. The Mask Markets of Whisker Vale deal in secrets, where information is the highest currency, and Redwarren glows with theatres, salons, and scandal. The dark Sylviara divides it all like a theatre curtain, and every sunset reflects a Reyna more beautiful than truth.
Reyna runs not on charity but on drama. No fox there is truly destitute: even the poorest are fed, dressed, and groomed, so that they can play. The underclass is groomed to dazzle rather than revolt; the nobles are baited into exquisite rivalries that keep their teeth from the throne. The Trigon keeps that balance precarious and alive, for in Reyna stillness is death.
Beneath the Stellaris Rotunda lies the greatest Den of Silence in the Principality, where masks come off in ceremony rather than shame; it is said even the Crown has wept there. Wolves call Reyna a poisoned chalice, tigers an opera house with teeth, and rabbits weep in its cafés without knowing why. To foxes it is home, honest in its dishonesty. Whoever comes, skeptic, dreamer, or fool, will play, whether they wish to or not.
Romance · A city of water, gardens, and old money
Taremyr is built where several smaller rivers converge before joining the greater waterways of Vulperi. It is quieter than Reyna and far less theatrical, its beauty deliberate but restrained: long promenades beneath flowering trees, pale stone houses with coloured shutters, little bridges over narrow canals, and secluded courtyards hidden behind ordinary walls.
It is the city of romance and courtship. Young foxes travel there to marry, wealthy families keep summer residences there, and artists have long flocked to its riverfront. It has an unusual wealth of inns, cafés, theatres, and private gardens.
Yet Taremyr has its own Game, played through hospitality. A dinner invitation can be a political gesture; a seat at a particular table can signify an alliance; a casual holiday can become the beginning of a marriage arrangement. It is one of the most peaceful places in Vulperi, and a city where nothing is quite as innocent as it looks.
Commerce · The merchant city of Vulperi
Where Reyna is elegant, Sirissa is energetic. Its streets are crowded with caravans, warehouses, counting houses, markets, shipping offices, workshops, inns, and banks. Goods from across the Principality pass through its gates, and foreign merchants are a common sight.
Here Vulperian commercial culture is most visible. Sirissan foxes are famous for negotiating without ever appearing to negotiate, and a contract can take days to finalise because every clause, omission, courtesy, and concession is examined from several directions.
Its wealth has made for an unusual attitude toward status. A fox born poor can become extraordinarily rich through commerce, and an ancient noble house can lose a fortune on one disastrous investment. In Sirissa money is impressive, but making money is more impressive, and its merchants particularly enjoy reminding nobles of the difference.
Knowledge and Intelligence · A headquarters of the Mydria
Teumessa is perhaps the most unnerving city in Vulperi. It is beautiful but unusually quiet: broad, meticulously kept streets, government buildings almost excessively ordinary, gardens everywhere but few statues, and public squares spacious without feeling inviting.
It is one of the principal headquarters of the Mydria, yet there are no great fortresses or intimidating halls announcing it. Instead the city is filled with archives, schools, laboratories, communications offices, workshops, banks, courthouses, and administrative houses. A visitor might spend a week there without ever knowingly meeting a Mydrian agent. That is precisely the point.
Some foxes see it as a city of immense opportunity, above all for scholars and civil servants; others find it unsettling. The famous joke says Teumessa is the only city where a fox can be certain nobody is watching, provided they remember that someone probably is. It is not sinister by necessity. It is simply where Vulperi’s obsession with information becomes an institution.
Nobility and Tradition · The old aristocratic city
Vandria is where the foxes’ attachment to lineage runs deepest. Its oldest quarters are dominated by immense family estates, ancestral halls, private theatres, walled gardens, and houses whose histories stretch back centuries, among them some of the most prestigious noble residences outside Reyna.
Unlike Reyna, Vandria does not care whether you find it charming. It is proud. Its architecture is heavier and more monumental: enormous stone stairways, enclosed courtyards, carved family symbols, and old avenues of ancient trees. Many houses keep their own Dens, libraries, museums, chapels, and archives.
Its politics are intense; families keep relationships for generations, and grudges outlive governments. Yet it is no mere city of reactionaries, for many of its aristocrats are patrons of philosophy, theatre, architecture, scholarship, and the Sanctum. Its defining tension is tradition against ambition: every old family wants to stay powerful, and every old family knows that somewhere in Vulperi, a young fox is trying to replace them.
Frontier and Practicality · The frontier city
Arstafada lies far from the polished political heart of Vulperi, and its foxes are more practical, independent, and blunt than those of Reyna. It is surrounded by forests, farmland, and fortified roads; its markets are enormous, its workshops numerous, and its people far more mixed than in most inland cities.
Arstafadan foxes still understand the Game, but have little patience for court theatrics. A merchant may still outmanoeuvre a competitor, a noble may still scheme, and a lover may still hide their feelings, but here there is an appreciation for getting things done.
The city keeps particularly close ties with the non-fox peoples of Vulperi: raccoon engineers, lynxes, bears, and arctic wolves are common sights around its workshops and military establishments. For many young foxes it is the place to escape Reyna without leaving Vulperi, and it has become a counterweight to the capital: less beautiful, perhaps, but more spacious, more practical, and far harder to impress.
Pleasure and Art · The city of appetite and sincerity
If Reyna is the Game, Venri is the foxes’ capacity to enjoy being alive. It lies in a fertile, beautiful country of vineyards, orchards, flower fields, and low wooded hills, and follows the landscape rather than imposing on it: terraces, gardens, balconies, theatres, bathhouses, restaurants, and pleasure houses spill down gentle slopes toward a broad river.
It is famous for its arts, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, dance, fashion, and theatre, and its patrons are notorious for turning obscure young artists into celebrities. It is also the culinary capital of Vulperi: foxes travel there simply to eat, and a meal is performance, conversation, courtship, and sometimes politics. Its courtesans are among the most accomplished in the Principality, their craft guarded across generations.
Its Dens of Silence are the most beautiful in Vulperi, set in gardens, beneath theatres, and beside the river, where a fox may pass hours in quiet after an evening of music. Publicly Venri celebrates sensation; privately it cherishes sincerity. It has more famous Bonding stories than any other city, and more gossip, but indulgence is acceptable there and cruelty is not. As foxes say: if Reyna teaches you how to play, Venri teaches you why you play.
The Feline Kingdom · King Aragarin II · Capital: Unguisca
Fellya is the great feline kingdom of the Middle Realms and the martial core of the League of Jaws. Its aged tiger king, Aragarin II of House Anhalta, rules from the palace of Sheregar in Unguisca, astride the Barassarian Strait, and every state answers to his crown, some more willingly than others.
It is eight states, each a world of its own: Sistrum, the tiger-ruled heart; Atrox, the lion throne of the Solar Court; Faeron, whose Silver Crown three houses contest; Sabaster of the jaguars and their bloodlines; Pardus of the racing cheetahs; Panthra, the leopards’ sea-facing dominion; Massenri, the proud and nearly sovereign wildcat state; and Mergron, the guild state of small cats and snow leopards. Tigers and lions contend for power across much of it, and every state keeps its own grudges.
The Heart of Fellya · House Anhalta · Capital: Unguisca
Sistrum is the martial and administrative core of Fellya. Its capital, Unguisca, sits astride the Barassarian Strait, and every ship passing between the Fanreal and Areil seas must pass beneath its gates. There the aged tiger King Aragarin II of House Anhalta rules all Fellya from the palace of Sheregar, on a throne carved from a single slab of black obsidian, steering the kingdom through the aftermath of the Second Scourge while his son, Prince Aragar, is groomed to succeed him.
Beyond the capital lie rolling fields of barley, wheat, and rye, the gold- and copper-rich Goldcap Hills, the ancient Wildwood of Tremorath, the brooding Ashenholt, and the misty western marshes. Northeast of Unguisca lies Hammerafall Lake, said to have been struck into the earth by the hammer of En-Barasar, the legendary Tiger King: fathomless, cold, and strangely luminous. On the Areil coast rises Castet, the Lion’s Girdle, seat of House Dammersmähne and the heart of leonine culture.
The king rules absolutely, advised by the High Council of Sheregar and served by Royal Judges, a vast bureaucracy, and discreet Royal Agents. Tigers are the true rulers of Sistrum: its lands, its army, and its Lord-Governors for centuries without a break. The lions are the rising tide, masters of Castet, the guilds, and the merchant fleets, pressing their claim a little further every year. River otters build its ships, wildcats and lynxes keep its forests, and cheetahs and servals run its couriers.
It is a deeply hierarchical land of masques, sumptuary laws, duels, and the Lion’s Academy, where every bow carries meaning and civility and savagery are hard to tell apart.
The Lion Throne · The Solar Court of Solenrois
Atrox is a heartland of fertile fields, vineyards, and market towns, fed by the Møn, the Raventhal, the Serein, and the Vardesse. Its Northern Marches are stony hills and stern fortresses; its Paneron Foothills are mines and castles carved into mountain faces; its Southern Marches are open plains of tournaments, bold deeds, and songs; and its Western Wilds are old woods where old bloodlines keep old rites.
Its sovereign, styled the Lion of the Mother, rules absolutely from the Palace of Solenrois: a summer palace raised by Emperor Wordermund after the conquest of Fellen, grown over centuries into a gilded labyrinth. Royal Intendants govern the provinces, and the court lives by the Day of the Lion, a rigid ritual from the Dawn Reverence to the Lion’s Repose, while its factions, the Solarists, the Prideborn, the Pragmatists, and the Western Lords, circle one another. The lions of Atrox, it is said, bow with their heads while sharpening their claws.
Lions hold every lever of power. Tigers far outnumber them, as soldiers, merchants, scholars, and farmers, yet are barred from the Solar Court, and their loyalty must be constantly fed. Leopards, panthers, cheetahs, cougars, bears, wildcats, and badgers fill out the realm, and a small wolf minority lives under wary watch.
Atrox prizes magnificence above all: to seem poor is worse than to be poor. Its cities of Verrath, Sonnenhold, and Ebrenthal are turning to manufactories and foundries, and its nobles duel under the Code of Radiance over honour, precedence, love, and even a slight to their carriage.
The Silver Crown · Capital: Ardos
North of Atrox and east of Bjornheim, Faeron is a land of endless green and shining water. Lake Raeniron, so vast travellers take it for a sea, bounds it to the east; the Kasper Downs rise through its middle, crowned by the granite spire of Ejer Yding; the golden Møn Valley below is its breadbasket; and the Vestmire bogs guard the north. Winters are long; summers are brief and bright.
Its Silver Crown is contested by three Great Houses: the severe lions of House Vardemere at Caer Dravaryn ("Strength Guides the Crown"); the diplomatic lions of House Caerwyn at lantern-lit Silvercourt ("Wisdom is the Steadier Sword"); and the tigers of House Solvarr at Blackstone Hold ("We Rise Through Struggle"). Counts rule the Grefdoms beneath them, and private wars flare when grievances run too deep. On the lakeshore, House Sabelmahn keeps Caer Leontis on the Promontory of Skarvnes, beneath a beacon older than the kingdoms.
Half of Faeron is southern tigers, soldiers and country folk of stubborn independence; most of the rest are lions of the highlands and lowlands; leopards, cougars, wolves, foxes, otters, and badgers make up the last tenth. Four Legions and the Knights of the Silver Mane defend it, and war galleys hold the lake.
Its capital, Ardos, is a city of islands and bridges where the Møn meets Lake Raeniron, ringed by three walls around the Silver Crown Palace. Faeron’s ideal is to live between sword and song: knights are expected to recite poetry, and merit can still win a commoner lands and a title.
The Jaguar State · The Circle of Pillars · Capital: Caramun
Sabaster is rugged and resplendent: sheer highlands draped in pine, ice-cold rivers, long bitter winters, and brief blazing summers. The Lake Country on the Fanreal Sea holds the counties of Jarasca, Belladin, Sarath, and Nikba; the Soltharion Mountains wall it off from Panthra, crossed only by the guarded Whispering Pass; and two primeval forests, the Vukuu on the Cardan Plateau and the Hunonweald on the Soltharion slopes, are thick with legend.
Its jaguars were shaped by exile and the loss of their history. At the heart of their life is the Möwe, more than a family or clan: a bloodline of shared memory and obligation, Greater, Lesser, or Vassal, led by a Teyo, an Oharcán, or a Tlamani. To forget an ancestor is shameful; to be Severed from one’s Möwe is worse than death. Where blood cannot bind, the Bantula does: a pact between Möwe that it is death to betray. Every family keeps an Ohm, a sacred heirloom of the Exile, and to lose it is the worst of omens.
The king is first among equals, bound by the Circle of Pillars, the Teyo of the Greater Möwe, who sit among stone pillars around the throne in Caramun and must ratify every heir. Female elders, the hearth-judges, dispense justice. Kings are crowned beneath the Stone Tree with the Tear of Bethekk, the Jade Crown of Asbel, and the Obsidian Blade.
Some jaguars refuse the Möwe altogether: the Ashoka, wanderers who live by their own will. The old houses distrust them and restless youth sing of them; few live to old age.
The Cheetah State · The Arka · Capital: Livalyr
Pardus is a verdant land of towering redwoods, marshes, and lakes, split by the Kyr River: redwood and oak to the west, cooler misty forests to the east. The Gaarki Plateau and Mount Zerval, at the tail of the Paneon Range, are sacred to its cheetahs.
Its cheetahs are a curious spring wound far too tightly: restless, adventurous, and in love with stories, dance, music, games, and above all racing. There is no dispute, they say, that cannot be resolved with a race, and the Great Race of all Fellya began here. Yet they prize simple pleasures, and measure wealth in friendships, songs, and roads travelled.
The Arka rules absolutely from Livalyr, ringed by race tracks, leaving daily governance to the regional Datu. Every year the Deccan-Rau Festival fills the Great Dancing Ground for seven days and nights. Storytellers, the Vahrim, are honoured keepers of history and law; the Selvarim priesthood worships the Mother, the First Dancer, with songs, dances, and races, and sends the dead back to the Great Dance with celebration.
Pardus keeps no great standing army, but its Veykara, the Fleet Bands, strike and vanish. It trades spices, bright Feyla cloth, redwood timber, and healing herbs, and welcomes every traveller with a new story, or a race.
The Leopard's Dominion · Clan Jazaraat · Capital: Esha
Panthra alone among the states of Fellya faces the open sea: the cliffs of the Paraneau Coast on the Sea of Mulken, the fertile Neran Plains, the ore-rich Soltharion Mountains, the Riverlands of the Orisha, the Ner, and the Daw, and the Saarweald, where the hill clans still answer to their own councils.
Its rulers are the Jazaratti leopards, corsairs from Oraxca whose founder, Zaahir al-Jazaraat, pledged his fleet to Emperor Wordermund in exchange for land. Over centuries they broke the Kolash, the cougar hill folk who were there first, ending their resistance with the seven-year siege of Esha in 44 BA and a purge still remembered in whispers. The panthers, the Velkhar or Night Folk, came later, as exiles from southern jungles.
The Vivold rules with the Council of Clans; each clan is led by an Agah in peace and an Askar in war, and in war the clans rally as the Spotted Host, with the Mulkan Fleet at sea. The hierarchy is unspoken but rigid: leopards on top, panthers beneath, cougars at the bottom, bound to a period of service that can earn them their freedom.
Panthra prizes cunning over lineage and action over tradition: better a clever fishmonger than a dull prince. It dresses to meet death beautifully, duels and feasts freely, and every spring throws the Festival of the Emperor’s Grace. Beside the Order of Basilius, the Order of the Sacred Teat and its Milk-Mothers venerate Ishtar, Mother of Predators. Esha, its capital, is bright with colour over old scars, under the three towers of the Binnacle.
The Wildcat State · The Voivode · Capital: Vascovasi
Massenri is a land of craggy highlands, mistwood forests, and hidden valleys, home to lynxes, ocelots, caracals, bobcats, and wildcats. It answers to King Aragarin in name only: its clans, its pride, and its mountain passes give it a rare autonomy, and in Unguisca its nobles are treated as equals in all but title.
Its clans follow a Thane or Erste chosen by trial, merit, or sacred duel, and above them stands the Voivode, elected from the great houses. Its Ritters, knights trained in cliff warfare, are expected to be poets as much as warriors. The capital, Vascovasi, the Hanging City, clings to the Alkaran Cliffs, where wind-hollows carry every voice and justice is rendered in the Hall of Echoes. Its nobility is quietly refined, speaking in pauses and gestures. To be silent is not to be simple.
Its root-priests and songkeepers still keep the old gods of the hills and the clans’ histories in verse. Its scouts are the finest in the League, the Skyclaws of Sarasz ride great birds from its cliffs, and its agents serve Fellya’s embassies abroad. It is said a Massenrian can slit your throat with the same grace they use to pour your wine.
The Guild State · Capital: Weskre
Mergron lies at the southern end of Fellya, between Carna, Jastro, Massenri, Panthra, and the Fanreal Sea, its rivers rising in forested highlands. Weskre stands on the Kham Plateau in the colossal Weskwueald; the twin trade ports of Rikaze and Gyantse rise from the reclaimed Tarmigor Marsh beside the Seven Sisters, great granite outcrops once crowned with watchtowers; and the snow leopard city of Nanz is carved into the cliffs of Mount Yevon.
Two peoples share it. The small cats, wildcats, lynxes, bobcats, caracals, and servals, are ambitious, mercantile, and future-looking, and their guilds are the heart of the state, from apprentice to Grandmaster. The snow leopards, far fewer, keep knowledge, law, and tradition in Nanz and Songsten, studying one discipline for fifteen years at a time; a hundred of them may share a hall for days without a word. Each respects the other, if grudgingly, and on the Festival of Twin Faces they float crimson lanterns for ambition and silver ones for wisdom.
The hereditary Voivode is the state’s ceremonial head, but real power lies with the Council of Stewards, nobles and merchant houses who elect a First Speaker every seven years. Its politics are ruthless, its civil service quietly efficient, and its mystics, the Myrans, still travel the roads.
The Political Heart · Capital: Urdren
Werborn is the heartland of Bjornheim, surrounding the royal capital and holding the oldest concentrations of bear civilization. It is the most politically important of the states, where the authority of the Björn dynasty is felt most directly, and where the great roads, royal estates, ancient halls, and gathering places of the major houses converge.
Yet Werborn is not simply settled country. The ancient forest runs through all of it, and its settlements are built into clearings and existing woodland rather than in place of them. Its bears regard themselves as the custodians of Bjornheim’s institutions and traditions. If Bjarnar remembers Urseorn, Werborn remembers Björn.
The Sacred Heart · Capital: Ursuk
Bjarnar is perhaps the most sacred of Bjornheim’s states. It lies closest to the capital and holds Urseorn’s Slash and the lakes called the Three Claws, landscapes marked by the Bearfather’s passage, where his presence is believed to have been strongest.
Its country is full of old shrines, ancestral groves, pilgrimage paths, and places where bears are expected to behave with particular restraint. Its great houses hold enormous prestige, for their ancestors were entrusted with lands that belonged to Urseorn himself; they are guardians of the most important remnants of the old age.
Bjarnar’s bears are among the most conservative in Bjornheim, but not backward. Their conservatism is about continuity: a new practice is not rejected for being new, but its champions must show that it does not violate what the ancestors were entrusted to preserve.
The Maritime Frontier · Capital: Skorovil
Byrndon is Bjornheim’s maritime state, stretching toward the Sea of Mulken and facing Draufgrin. Its bears are forest guardians equally at home on ships, along beaches, and in great coastal ports.
Its immense forests supply timber for ships, building, and trade, which makes Byrndon the place where Bjornheim’s philosophy of preservation faces its most practical test. Its people keep elaborate traditions on which forests may be harvested, how much may be taken, and how woodland must be allowed to recover. To them, using the forest is no breach of the Vigil. Wasting it is.
Its coastal houses are wealthy and influential, and merchants, shipwrights, sailors, foresters, and warriors all hold unusual standing there. Byrndon is also where Bjornheim meets the most foreigners, and its bears are far more used to outsiders than their inland cousins.
The Military Frontier · Capital: Vidkinn
Whitewald is the northern frontier of the forest kingdom, bordering Hibernus and the polar bear realm of Ursaimr. Its land grows colder and harsher as it goes: great coniferous forests, frozen rivers, mountains, and ever longer winters.
Its people are frontier wardens in the truest sense. Their houses keep the roads and passes, watch the borders, protect settlements from northern dangers, and preserve the forests where nature itself can be hostile. They are known for endurance and practicality, and their idea of Bjornheim’s ancient duty is far less ceremonial than Bjarnar’s. For Whitewald, protection is something you do every morning, not something you discuss in a sacred hall.
The polar bears of Ursaimr are not simply the people beyond the border. Centuries of trade, diplomacy, intermarriage, disputes, and mutual respect bind the two bear civilizations together.
The Northern Wilderness · Capital: Uryon
Hibernus is the deep northern country, bordering Ursanga and standing beside the political heart of Ursaimr. It is colder, more remote, and more thinly settled than the southern states, a land where winter is not an interruption to life but one of its conditions. Its settlements have enormous communal halls, deep storehouses, and sheltered roads built to outlast the longest winters.
Its bears hold hibernation, patience, and endurance close; their stories praise the virtue of waiting over acting, and their proverb says that not every danger must be met today. A pawful of very old houses dominate it: distance from the capital gives them great autonomy, and their place beside Ursaimr gives them diplomatic weight far beyond their numbers.
The Productive Interior · Capital: Renthor
Kesrin is Bjornheim’s productive interior: fertile valleys, broad rivers, extensive managed forests, and far more farmland than anywhere else in the kingdom. Its bears worry less about surviving the wilderness than about a harder question: how civilization can grow without consuming the thing that sustains it.
Its houses are the most commercially minded of the great bear houses, yet deeply committed to Bjornheim’s founding principle. A protected forest, they argue, is not a forest from which everyone must stay away.
The Llama Capital · A city-state of the Lapidarian Mountains
Llamaram is the capital city-state of the llamas, high in the Lapidarian Mountains of eastern Equastra, north of Eregron. It fills a vast natural basin ringed by steep ridges and snow-capped peaks, its pale stone streets and terraces climbing the slopes layer upon layer, so that from afar it seems to grow out of the mountains rather than stand on them. On many mornings clouds fill the valleys below while the upper terraces stand in sunlight, and the city seems to float above an endless white sea; the sight is a symbol of all llama culture.
Ancient mountain routes converge there, and wool, textiles, dyes, salt, grain, metals, and timber from as far as Xathri pass through its markets. Its weavers keep elaborate traditions of spinning, dyeing, knotting, and weaving, and a practised merchant can name a cloth’s valley from its weave alone. Its greatest market, the High Market, sprawls across interconnected terraces and is as much a meeting place as a market; important agreements are often made there over the buying and selling of ordinary goods.
Caravans climb its broad roads and switchbacks, while terraces, stairways, and bridges link the higher quarters, and enormous retaining walls hold whole districts to the mountain. Temples, estates, and monuments crown the highest ridges. Its llamas are known for endurance, craftsmanship, and commercial skill, and the lower city, full of foreign merchants, shepherds, miners, pilgrims, and diplomats, has made Llamaram far more cosmopolitan than the settlements around it.
The Second City of Thebia · Where things become possible
Fifty miles south of Thebia stands Ember, the second great city of the Thebian domain. Where Thebia is celebrated for art, pleasure, and spectacle, Ember is known for what all of that depends on: furnaces, workshops, warehouses, harvests, and practical invention. Its name is disputed; some say it comes from the kilns that once lit the southern horizon, others that when Thebia burned, refugees and records fled south, and Ember kept the flame.
It stands where the southern roads meet, the great market between Thebia and the ports of Zergun and Drispas, and its prosperity rests on its guilds: smiths, potters, glassmakers, millers, builders, and dozens more. Its smiths make the tools and fittings that vanish into Thebian life, its brickmakers build the south, and a better mill or harvest is celebrated there as a new school of painting is in Thebia. Thebians ask what a person has created; Emberites ask what a person has made possible. It also supplies the Roseward.
Ember answers to Thebia and the Colored Curators, but governs its own daily life through guildmasters, merchants, and ward authorities, and argues often about how much Thebia may tell it what to do. It has produced a surprising number of Curators, for its people never accepted that beauty is the only excellence. Thebians say Ember exists to make everything Thebia requires; Emberites reply that Thebia exists to spend everything Ember produces. Thebia is where things become magnificent. Ember is where things become possible.
Zergun · The great commercial port
The greatest commercial port of Zergun and one of the principal ports of the Anvil Peninsula, its harbour crowded with ships between Zergun, its colonies, and the wider world. Here the wealth of the colonies becomes domestic commerce. Ernessa trades freely with the League and the Federation alike, and has grown used to both offering ever more extravagant incentives for its favour.
Zergun · The great naval port
Home of Zergun’s warships, arsenals, fortified docks, and the shipyards that build its navy and colonial fleets; generations of sailors and naval craftsfolk give it a martial character. Foreign powers watch its yards and court its craftsfolk, but Knez cares more for Zergun’s naval independence than for any patron: Zergun needs its fleet, and so Knez needs Zergun.
Zergun · The great shipbuilding city
A waterfront of yards, dry docks, timber depots, ropewalks, and sailmakers producing nearly every part a seagoing ship requires. Kendrian ships sail throughout the colonial empire and foreign merchants seek its expertise. Less glamorous than Ernessa and less martial than Knez, it is just as vital: no fleet sails without Kendri.
Zergun · The great provisioning port
Set among rich farmland, Nostros supplies Zergun’s fleets with grain, preserved food, water, timber, rope, canvas, and oil, and ships bound for distant colonies often provision here first. Its merchants care about prices, contracts, and reliable ships rather than grand causes; League and Federation traders are both welcome, so long as they pay.
Zergun · The most cosmopolitan port
Foreign merchants have kept communities here for generations, giving Saravanti the most diverse population of any Zergunese port and markets full of luxuries from places most Zergunese will never see. It is a centre of diplomacy, but its merchants let neither the League nor the Federation dominate: Saravanti prospers because everyone can do business there.
Zergun · The great manufacturing port
A harbour joined to a vast industrial district of metalworkers, potters, weavers, coopers, ropemakers, and carpenters, whose goods ship throughout Zergun and its colonies. Much of what Zergun sends overseas is made or finished here. Wealthy, busy, and intensely productive, it is a city whose harbour never seems to stop working.
Zergun · The only great port on the Mulken Sea
Unlike Zergun’s other ports, which face the open ocean and the colonies, Savisca faces into the Mulken, drawing merchants from the League, the Federation, Drispas, Eirden, and beyond. Both great powers court it with investment and agreements; Savisca takes the benefits and avoids the commitments. Everyone wants Savisca, so Savisca has learned to want everyone’s money.
Drispas · The principal commercial port
The heart of Drispas’s maritime economy, where goods from the interior gather before shipping across the Anvil Peninsula. Merchant houses dominate its politics and are the strongest supporters of Drispasian neutrality: League and Federation traders are both common, and neither may turn commercial access into political ownership. Zarna is welcoming without being submissive.
Drispas · The only great port on the Mulken Sea
Drispas’s gateway into the Mulken, with shipyards, naval facilities, and permanent foreign trading houses, grown rich because Mulken goods can reach Drispas without passing through another country’s ports. The League courts it for trade, the Federation for a foothold near League waters, and Drispas has become very good at saying "not yet" to everyone.
Eirden · The oldest port
Old merchant houses, counting houses, and institutions generations deep surround its harbour, bound to Eirden’s great banking families, the foxes and pigs of its financial houses. Money landing here soon becomes loans, insurance, and credit. Cloistin is conservative: it prefers stability, predictable trade, and governments that honour their debts, and lets neither League nor Federation dictate Eirden’s finances.
Eirden · The only great port on the Mulken Sea
Where Cloistin is old Eirden, Sarsa is Eirden facing the world, its waterfront crowded with foreign merchants, bankers, and diplomats. League merchants are especially prominent, making Sarsa perhaps the most League-friendly city on the Anvil Peninsula without making it a League city: its friendliness is financial, not ideological. Its banks will finance a League merchant in the morning, a Federation one in the afternoon, and a Zergunese colonial venture before dinner.
A Free City-State of Draufgrin · Allied to Úlfrinn
Kasargroth is a free city-state on the Ottertrail, the coastal road that runs the length of Draufgrin, and the closest ally of Úlfrinn. It answers to no fiefdom, but its fortunes have long been bound to House Hakfang’s, and in the Days of Rage Zösremm’s armies marched on it too.
It is a city of forges. Kasargroth steel arms Draufgrin’s legions, and its smiths make some of the finest weapons in the world; its armourers, steel-makers, and quartermasters are its aristocracy as much as any house. The Ottertrail brings traders from Bjornheim and every fiefdom through its markets, and makes it a hub of commerce well beyond its walls.
Zergun · The mountain city
Udumont clings to the slopes of the Zoron Mountains, near the source of the River Muro, which runs down through Zergun’s farmland to meet the sea at the port of Nostros. It is Zergun’s one great city of the heights, far from the harbours that define the rest of the country.
Its wealth comes down the mountain: ore and stone from its mines and quarries, timber floated down the Muro, and wool from the high pastures. Much of what Nostros sells to the fleets began its journey in Udumont. Its people are highlanders, hardier and plainer-spoken than the port cities, and a fort above the town keeps watch on the mountain roads.
The Lion’s Rock · Founded 1,182 BA · 700,000 mammals · Democratic Republic
The sovereign capital, founded under Wordermund’s own name of Wordermar after he returned from his pilgrimage at Mount Gwared at the age of twenty-seven. It was settled at the foot of enormous mammal statues whose faces were chiselled away long ago — the Faceless Kings, believed to represent rulers now wholly forgotten. Of all the cities it has the greatest diversity of population, and it is the seat of the Sovereign Council and its Consul, commonly a lion, where representatives of every city meet to set the laws that stand above local ones.
The name has drifted a long way from its meaning. Worda is “Universal Place” in Word, and Wordermar “Universal City”; this shifted to Wordustrum, “Our Place”, and at last to Vornstrom, “Our Home”. The humility is entirely apparent. Vornstrom has a well-earned reputation for arrogant and boastful excess, and jokes told in the other cities of the Circle turn on Vornstrom citizens one-upping and looking down on one another in comically exaggerated ways. At its height during the Age of Attainment the city held two million mammals; the collapse of the Empire has since seen it surpassed.
It is theoretically an Empire still, for the city maintains Wordermund’s vacant chair, the Solemn Throne, suspended upon a great pillar that cannot be reached. In practice the Consul rules in his absence, elected by the fifty representatives of the seven cities, and on election appoints a fifty-first member, the Proconsul, who presides in the Consul’s absence and breaks ties but does not otherwise vote. Vornstrom is the heart of the Basilean cirice and its ecclesiastical capital, yet Wordermund ensured his religion could never practise in the city government by appointing himself sole Supreme Pontiff with no possible successor — so the Basilians have been confined to secular means ever since.
Its districts are Vwarestrin, the walls, barracks and armoury; Vondothlimbar, the largest part of the city and home to the lower classes; Var Ainion, the city square guarded by the Faceless Kings; Lothengriol, which holds the great gardens; the Citadel, or Wondobar, the ancient palace of Wordermund where the Sovereign Council meets, built facing a ring of statues eight thousand years old; and Var Thurion, its chancel, which houses Wordermund’s stela. Its sigil is a roaring lion’s head framed by a seven-pointed mane, close kin to the sigil of the Order of Basileus, and its motto Avi Vornstrom — “Her Our Home”. Its great houses are the Kirgons, the White Lions; the Utherions, the Golden; the Maedrers, the Black; the Rorschers, the Red; and the Fuchers, the Magenta.
The Soaring City · Founded 2,099 BA · 200,000 mammals · Linrathrous Legalism
The oldest city in the Circle, founded by Ulmior the Wise on the Island of Minri in Lake Linra as an attempt to establish a permanent repository of knowledge. The Library of Ulmior is less a library than a vault, built so that everything within it is protected from any assault or disaster for ever. The city was renamed from its ancient root of Linrathrous — “Soaring City”, for the illusion by which the clear water seems to suspend it in the sky — after the Terraces of Gorin were completed. It is famed for its libraries and universities above every other city.
Terregor is also sinking. The lake has expanded since the founding, and the city has gone down into it by degrees, which is why it is known for canals and drowned quarters, and why a significant part of its population is semiaquatic: beavers and otters above all. Its architecture is sorted, for simplicity, into Minrina, the original construction dating from the founding, and Resemar, the far more distinct and expressive styles of the artificial extensions that let the city keep growing. Its government is theoretically meritocratic, with a well-developed bureaucracy and a civil service examination that must be passed to enter it. Its sigil is a quill pen crossing a broken sword.
Foundry of the People · Founded 1,182 BA · 400,000 mammals · Absolute Monarchy
Renowned for the quality of its metalwork, refining and smelting the raw ore that comes out of Adlivun. Torugost is Word for “Mighty Foundry”, and the city grew out of the foundry Wordermund built to supply his armies. It was added to constantly over the long years of his life as more forges and furnaces were needed, until the barracks raised for its workers became the oldest residential district of a city in its own right. Torugost no longer exists as such — the foundry was refurbished into Titus Castle — but it was never demolished or lost; it simply grew until it was a city.
The monarchs trace their line to those foundry days: when the Empire collapsed, the leader of the foundry declared herself queen, and the dynasty has been unbroken since. Their power is absolute and they have historically been wise enough not to interfere with the city’s industry. Tormurghast is divided into five administrative zones, each overseen by an appointee of the reigning monarch; the selection is rigorous and open to anyone in the city to apply, and the best kings and queens have stayed mindful of what their citizens want. The administrators keep offices in Castle Titus, each in one of the towers at its tips. Its sigil is a hammer striking an anvil.
The city where the river bends · Founded 1,720 BA · 75,000 mammals · Constitutional Monarchy
Widely known for a national dress that covers virtually the entire body, worn in remembrance of Wordermund. Horned mammals may technically expose their horns, though it is thought boastful and impolite to do so. The tradition is traced to the Day of Dwindling, the Era of Remembrance, but how it began is unclear: it is said to have come from the royal family’s concern for Aberrants, since masking every distinguishing feature lets them appear no different from anyone else. A popular alternative, spread by rumour, holds instead that the royal family suffered a disfiguring disease and out of vanity forced their subjects to hide their own unblemished bodies.
The name means literally “city where the river bends” in Old Tope, the ancient language of the antelope. The modern city contains Wordermund’s Mausoleum, though the far smaller settlement it grew from did not. Its nobility is an unbroken line of antelope descended from those who surrendered to Wordermund during his conquest rather than fight, so that the city was taken without loss of life on either side; their descendants rule now as ceremonial Tomb Keepers, the Wardens of Wordermund. Between strict laws, high taxes and harsh weather it is the smallest of the Seven Sovereigns. Its sigil is a horned mask, recalling both Wordermund’s elite warriors in their fearsome horned helmets and the covering tradition of the present day.
Founded 1,423 BA · 375,000 mammals · Demarchy
A mostly subterranean city-state, home to the largest mines in the Circle, producing high-quality iron ore, precious metals and gems that once fed the furnaces of Torugost. Though it exports mostly raw material, the jewellery made here is prized well beyond the Circle. Its population runs to badgers, rabbits, skunks and moles, with a scattering of foxes and coyotes; so many rabbits come from Adlivun that Eni is frequently assumed to be one of them. Alone among the Sovereign Cities, Adlivun pays directly for the armour of every member of its military, which is accordingly acknowledged the most glamorous anywhere.
Its council is chosen at random from a pool of candidates who put themselves forward; to enter, a mammal must be of age, own property, and submit their own name of their own will. The citizens hold the result of that random draw to be the Mother’s will. Its sigil is the night sky over a mountain, with diamonds set for the stars.
Founded 1,585 BA · 125,000 mammals · Cyclic Aristocracy
Larger only than Ghabarahata, and significant far beyond its size for its massive farmlands. Renaica grows the majority of the fruit and vegetables eaten in the Circle, produces wool from its high population of sheep and dairy from its cattle, and is famous for its gardens, which draw on the same vast irrigation system that waters the crops to make parks and green places within the city itself. Though it is the second-smallest of the Seven Sovereigns, the district it governs holds a large population spread across the farming settlements around it.
Its major noble families take the rule of the city in turn, alternating on a set schedule; whichever family holds power, the others choose the city’s representatives to the Circle’s council. Its sigil is a sheaf of wheat and a sickle.
Founded 1,305 BA · 175,000 mammals · Kraterocracy
The lone predator-majority city in the Circle, though its population is mixed as every city’s is. Outside the Circle it is sometimes feared as the most dangerous of the cities for prey, but Lagadha keeps the same strict anti-predation laws as all the rest. Wolves are the commonest predator here, with smaller numbers of lions and bears. The original name, Lagador, means “Purified” in Word and was given to the city after it was conquered long ago; the pronunciation has drifted over the centuries into its present form. It is home to the Barbican of Lagadha, the tallest tower in the world.
Its leader is chosen by tournament, judging candidates for wit, strength and whatever else a leader needs. One is held on the death of the sitting leader, or whenever a hundred citizens have qualified to challenge them. Qualifying is difficult and overseen by judges forbidden to compete. The challenges need not be lethal, but a contestant may mark themselves red to signal they accept battle to the death; this confers certain advantages, and killing an unmarked contestant is an automatic disqualification. A challenged leader traditionally steps down if there is a winner, though they may instead duel the victor to keep their seat. Tournaments are held at the foot of the Barbican, which carries a massive timer and leaderboard for the purpose. Lagadha also houses the Academy of Ortensia — Ortenza in common speech — the Circle’s military academy, founded in Wordermund’s time by General Ortensia, who saw the need for skilled commanders; it and the University of Terregor let each other’s students take courses. Its sigil is a tower, for the Barbican.
The Disowned City · The Gate City · Founded 57 BA · 390,000 mammals before the Blight
Called the Eighth Sovereign, Ctesiphon lies technically outside the Circle and is the way into it. It stands in the valley of Nacrousmaw, a gap in the Aureole Mountains, and grew outside the gate when the sentinels posted there brought their families to live beside them. It now takes in orchards and farmland around the wall, and buildings set into the wall’s sloping curve. Wall and gate alike are elaborately carved with scenes from the city’s history: the building of the wall, the sacking of the city, and the glorious battle in which the Herald was defeated. It is ruled by a Chief Magistrate from the Palace of Pearl in the Altstadt. The name comes from the ancient Sirda language and means “Resurrected Heart”.
Ctesiphon has no seat on the Sovereign Council, and its citizens grow less content with that as the city grows. Every time the question has come before the council it has been denied, the members preferring the status quo in which Ctesiphon remains the mutual territory of all seven. It is presently suffering a terrible blight, and its leader has become deeply unpopular as rumours spread that the affliction is a sign of the Mother’s displeasure with him and his rule. Its sigil is a seven-branched tree without leaves, a heart worked into the trunk.
Its Grand Bazaar is neither the largest market in the Circle nor the best stocked in any one kind of good, but it is remarkable for sheer variety, which the city enforces by controlling the stalls itself. The layout changes daily, so merchants must be able to set up and strike their goods quickly, and few stay above a month; the selection shifts constantly, running from books to brothels to restaurants to jewellers to armourers. It is a large and ornate indoor mall of several levels, with underground passages to the warehouse district and an enormous central hall opening onto the gates. The city sells seized goods here, and despite the City Guard’s best efforts stolen goods inevitably appear alongside them.
The City of the Crowns · Heart of the Federation of the Horns · Where the real power of Cerva sits
Sovuvesta is the largest mammalian city in the world, a radiant colossus of stone and water rising along the crescent shores of the Sea of Mulken. What began as a modest port became the gravitational centre of a civilization after the Seventh Congress of 1464, when the Hundred Kings made it their shared seat. Monarchs did not merely send envoys; they built legacies. Embassies became palaces, palaces became districts, and districts fused into a metropolis that remakes itself every five years, when the rulers and their courts converge once more. Every herbivore kingdom keeps a presence here, and the city has become a living map of the Federation itself.
It radiates outward like a great solar disc, district upon district, each keeping the character of those who built it: elephantine pillars thick as ancient trees, sweeping cervine arches, solid bovine bastions, and airy giraffid heights that reshape the skyline. Wide boulevards, open courts, and canals from the harbour keep ten million souls moving, while a secretive network of underground routes carries what the city cannot live without. Its threshold is the Sea Gate, a monumental arch of coralstone and sunsteel carved with the Mother, worn smooth by salt and still revered.
At its centre lies Erbour, neutral ground ruled by no single crown: the Assembly of Lords, vast enough for a hundred thrones; the Covenant Hall, where the Treaty of Erdenna rests in amber; and the Mother’s Locus, whose pale fire becomes the whole city’s rallying light in a crisis.
Life here is lived at the centre of the world. Education is a civic duty, public service is near-sacred, and reputation is currency. Yet the city never relaxes: its politics are constant, its espionage thrives in the spaces between districts, and its bureaucracy can stall the most urgent decisions. And always, across the Sea of Mulken, lies the League. Sovuvesta faces it by choice, a vigilant city that grew vast because it could not afford to be anything less.
The Crown of Fangs · Capital of the League of Jaws · Seat of the Caiserate
Founded in 1771 AA on the banks of the Raeniron Lake, New Rushaya is the engineered marvel of the predator world, a city carved in ambition, blood and bone, and the seat from which the twelve predator nations are ruled. Where Sovuvesta evokes serenity and balance, New Rushaya exalts grandeur and dominance. It is built in concentric rings, and each ring declares a rank: the Outer Rings, where the bulk of the population live and train, give way inward, ring by ring, to the innermost, where the Caiser holds court. Its buildings are angular, colonnaded and spiked, stone and blackened steel touched with crimson banners and gold filigree, and torch towers blaze through the night above boulevards lined with statues of great generals, kings and beasts. At the centre the Fort of Incis, the Caiser’s massive and luxurious palace, rises like a flame caught in stone, visible from every quarter. It is a vast city, and there is no predator kind you will not find in it.
Two shadows cling to its glory, and only one of them is admitted. Its food comes from the prey farms beyond the walls, heavily guarded industrial operations that raise and harvest livestock, and which are controversial even among some League citizens. The other is an accusation the League has never accepted: that the foundations were laid by prey labour, taken in war or seized through debt, and then struck from the record. Prey nations have pressed the charge for a century. The Caiserate calls it a slander of the founding and points to the paid rolls of the Outer Rings, and no ledger has ever been produced that settles it either way. What has survived is not proof but a name, the Builders Beneath, and a thing predator children are still told: don’t complain, or you’ll be put to the pick like the Builders. The city exists to declare that the League will rise, will prepare for war, and will never again kneel to prey nations. It holds the League’s military academies, its strategic planning rooms, and the central offices of the Zahnrem, the predator high command; its great plaza, the Field of Teeth, can hold an entire Legion, and often does. The cost has been greater than any project in League history, and no Caiser has dared halt it, for to stop building would be to admit doubt in the predator destiny.
The Caiserate is presently held by the House of Tainia, a tiger family who took power during the Scourge after the wolf line fell in the collapse of Old Rushaya. At the heart of the Fort of Incis stands the Wolfram Throne, a great chair shaped like a massive wolf’s jaw and wrought in untarnishable tungsten, commissioned by Mordem Alsphar to mark his near-miraculous victory in the Throatcutting War. Its making is the stuff of legend and the tales disagree: some say the Mother personally appointed Mordem as the chosen leader of the predators, others that it is a chair stolen from a god of the underworld, though the most proclaimed telling holds that Raenir himself descended to bite Deiken, lost a fang in the doing, and that the fang fell to earth and became the throne, blessed so that only the Anax may sit upon it. It was thought lost with the fall of Rushaya in 1749 AA, until the Qurutzalcar’s defeat by the Slayer a hundred and three years later, whereupon Caiser Tygrim reinstated it as the axis of power in honour of the Slayer and the wolves who ended the Scourge. The Tainian Caisers rarely sit in it, preferring that it stand as a ceremonial symbol of the League itself. It is believed to be magical in nature, and to bless every holder with a long natural life.
The Kingdom of Wolves · Capital: Vegrnar, the Red Maw
Also known as the Kingdom of Wolves, Wovengar is the largest and most powerful realm within the League of Jaws. Its vast northern territories encompass mountains, forests, frozen coasts, fertile valleys, volcanic highlands, and ancient hunting grounds, inhabited by countless wolf clans whose traditions can differ as sharply as the lands they call home.
For much of its history, Wovengar was a patchwork of rival territories, warbands, and ancient wolf states. Centuries of feuding left the wolves powerful but divided, until the reforms of Duchess Almara brought the disparate regions into a common political order. The old kingdoms did not disappear, however. They retained their identities, laws, rivalries, and ambitions, making modern Wovengar less a single homogeneous nation than a great federation of wolfdoms bound beneath one crown and one League.
Wolves are so numerous across Wovengar that many remote tribes can live for generations without encountering another kind of animal beyond those known through trade, travelers, stories, or rumors of war. To the wolves, the world is consequently vast and strange even when their own homeland seems endless. Foreign peoples are often encountered first as legends before they are encountered in the flesh.
Wovengar is fiercely martial. Its clans have produced legendary warriors, raiders, tacticians, knights, hunters, and warlords, and nearly every region possesses its own conception of what a wolf ought to be. Some worship discipline and honor; others prize cunning, prophecy, scholarship, commerce, or sheer strength. The result is a civilization united by ancestry and political necessity, but constantly negotiating what wolfdom itself means.
At the heart of the kingdom stands Vegrnar, the Red Maw, the great city on the River Van and the sacred birthplace of Raenir, the Wolf-Father. Every major clan maintains a presence there, and the Great Moot gathers wolves from across Wovengar to debate matters affecting the whole kingdom. Vegrnar is consequently the closest thing Wovengar possesses to a common identity: a place where its countless peoples meet without having to cease being themselves.
The spiritual life of Wovengar is equally divided. The ancient traditions surrounding Raenir, the Spiral, the Eclipse, and the ancestral powers remain dominant, but the legend of the Slayer has become an increasingly powerful force in wolven culture. Cults dedicated to the Slayer are widespread, ranging from small warrior brotherhoods and household traditions to movements seeking recognition as genuine religions.
For all its strength, Wovengar remains a kingdom perpetually wrestling with itself. Its clans remember old wars, old humiliations, old glories, and old claims to supremacy. Some dream of restoring ancient kingdoms. Others want greater unity. Some seek expansion, while others simply want to be left alone. The League may call Wovengar the Kingdom of Wolves, but within its borders are many different answers to the same question: What does it mean to be a wolf?
Capital: Azgra · Dominant lineages: Avar, Arktar, Gezigar, Wulrikai
Once the seat of the wolven people, the capital of Old Rushaya, and later the heart of the lost Caiserate, Avaroth's golden age has passed, but its luster has not faded. It remains one of the most politically important kingdoms in the League of Jaws, and the word of an Avarothi elder carries weight far beyond the kingdom's borders.
The mighty Walholl Fortress dominates the southernmost tip of the Erethegren Mountains, its ancient stones steeped in the memory of every oath sworn within its halls. Avaroth is home to the Warwolves, the elite warrior caste whose name commands respect and fear throughout Wovengar. The Avarothi consider themselves the keepers of Wovengar's memory, and their greatest ambition is not conquest but restoration. Yet Avaroth's greatest weakness is also its pride: it possesses enormous prestige, but considerably less power than it once did.
Capital: Worgrem · Dominant lineages: Arktar, Avar, Sturma
A militaristic and honor-bound kingdom, Artarus is the steadfast ally of Avaroth, often described as its stoic older brother. Where Avaroth dreams of what Wovengar once was, Artarus concerns itself with ensuring that what remains does not collapse. Artaran warriors are trained from cubhood in the old disciplines: the shield-wall, coordinated hunting, fortification, and the sacred duty of protecting one's pack even at the cost of one's life.
Worgrem is a city of iron and stone, its forges rarely cool. The Artaran Code, a rigid system of honor, duty, and sacrifice, governs life from the lowest whelp to the ruling Warlord. To break the Code is to invite exile or death.
Capital: Saren · Dominant lineages: Mulkari, Avar, Nerengar, Sangai
Once famous for feasting halls, Ulfhedinn, and sea raids, Berkja has become a grim and wealthy guardian of the trade routes through the Mulken Sea. It controls the Bay of Fangs, the gateway to Wovengar's eastern wealth, and profits from tariffs, shipbuilding, fishing, salt, and maritime trade.
But Berkja is haunted by the Broken Whine, the shore where 9,000 dugen landed in peace and were ruthlessly slaughtered. The poles upon which they were hanged still stand, and the Berkjan government refuses to remove them. The atrocity remains one of the clearest monuments to Wovengar's hatred of dogs, increasingly controversial even within Berkja itself.
Capital: Renzron · Dominant lineages: Wulrikai, Avar, Havakar
Wulrik was once among the greatest raiding powers of the ancient world, its longships darkening every coast within reach. That power has faded, but the culture that produced it remains. Wulrik was the birthplace of the mighty Ulfhedinn, elite warriors who could rouse a terrible, unnatural savagery in battle, though their numbers are now greatly diminished.
Since the War of Unifications, Wulrik has lost access to the sea, and the Wulriki have never accepted this loss. Their greatest ambition is to regain a coastline, whether through diplomacy, purchase, conquest, or eventual war. They do not necessarily want their empire restored. They simply want the sea back.
Capital: Kostris · Dominant lineages: Morren, Avar, Carsakai
Morr is a shadowed kingdom with a long history of blood pacts, assassinations, prophecy, and religious secrecy. The Morric are renowned seers and interpreters of dreams, reading omens in animal behavior, weather, blood, stars, and ancient relics. Their oldest blood-pacts bind families to ancestors and powers older than the modern clans.
Kostris is built among cliffs and ravines, its temples concealed within the stone. Morr's greatest power is information. Other clans may distrust Morric prophets, but they seek them out when ordinary knowledge fails. Some Morric traditions maintain connections with the ravens and the ancient Takhar-followers who revere Raenir.
Capital: Kalagar · Dominant lineages: Hurak, Arktar, Avar, Stikari
Hurcan is a devout kingdom centered upon celestial signs, divine ancestry, and the sacred Warwald Forest, the largest and most dangerous forest in Wovengar. Its depths contain creatures unknown even to the wolf languages, and the Hurcani patrol its borders to prevent whatever lives within from spilling into settled lands.
Hurcan is home to the greatest chapter of the Order of the Eclipse, the knightly religious order devoted to Raenir. The Hurcani read the stars as others read books, and believe the Eclipse, when Raenir swallowed the sun, marked the beginning of true freedom.
Capital: Vrimrir · Dominant lineages: Gezigar, Arktar, Avar, Havakar
Gezigor is the rising military power of Wovengar. The Gezigori believe the old kingdoms have become complacent, and they are building fortresses, expanding roads, recruiting armies, and steadily extending their borders. Vrimrir is designed for war: thick walls, immense barracks, military academies, and forges operating day and night.
Unlike Wulrik, Gezigor does not dream of the past. It wants a new Wovengar, one in which strength rather than antiquity determines authority. Everyone knows the question is only: when will Gezigor decide that its next enemy is another wolf?
Capital: Khorric · Dominant lineages: Hulian, Avar, Gurlai, Sangai
Hulian is the great center of law, scholarship, jurisprudence, and diplomacy in Wovengar. Khorric is filled with libraries, courts, academies, and monuments to ancient lawgivers. The Hulian Codex is the closest thing Wovengar possesses to a common legal tradition.
Hulian's influence comes from institutions rather than armies; its judgments can carry trade penalties and collective sanctions. Its goal is simple: keep Wovengar arguing in courts rather than killing one another in fields.
Capital: Erscentem · Dominant lineages: Sangai, Avar, Mulkari, Arktar
Sanghund is a warrior kingdom built around sacred oaths and ritual combat. It possesses the largest coyote population in Wovengar. The coyotes, known collectively as Sangai, are regarded by many wolves as lesser kin; Sanghund rejects this distinction. Here, status comes through the Blood Oath, and anyone willing to swear it may become part of the pack, regardless of lineage.
Erscentem is filled with dueling grounds, oath-stones, and public arenas. Sanghund wants the other kingdoms to acknowledge what it already believes: kinship is proven by loyalty, not ancestry.
Capital: Ermar · Dominant lineages: Gurlai, Avar, Arktar, Hulian
Gurlen is the intellectual center of wolven warfare. Its warriors are taught strategy before combat, and its generals are sought by kingdoms across Wovengar. Ermar is filled with military academies, map rooms, archives, and schools of logistics.
Unlike Hulian, Gurlen is concerned not with how society should be governed but with how conflicts are actually won. Its great weakness is the danger of becoming predictable, forever tempted to fight the next war as though it were merely another version of the last.
Capital: Vegeir · Dominant lineages: Sturma, Arktar, Carsakai, Avar
Sturmaz is a volcanic kingdom whose warriors are forged amid ash and fire. Vegeir lies upon the slopes of an active volcano; its streets are paved with cooled lava, and its forges draw upon the mountain's heat. The Sturmazi believe the volcano is sacred, and those who survive its fury are thought favored by Raenir.
Their black-armored elite are famous throughout Wovengar, their armor produced from rare volcanic materials. Their philosophy is grimly simple: the mountain will eventually destroy them, so they intend to meet it standing.
Capital: Zrad · Dominant lineages: Havakar, Avar, Gezigar, Wulrikai
Havoc is the most unruly of the major wolf kingdoms. The Havoci were once among the most feared wolves of Carnaron, and many ancient Warwolf bloodlines trace their ancestry to them. Zrad changes constantly: warlords rise and fall, alliances form and dissolve, feuds become wars.
Other kingdoms consider Havoc dangerous but cannot simply destroy it, for its warriors remain valuable in major wars and its bloodlines are intertwined with Wovengar's military history. Havoc's greatest desire is freedom from restraint.
Capital: Erzan · Dominant lineages: Ruldan, Avar, Hulian, Gurlai
Ruldin serves as Wovengar's great intermediary. Its envoys travel between rival clans, negotiate treaties, arrange prisoner exchanges, and attempt to prevent wars before they begin. Erzan is filled with embassies, meeting halls, neutral markets, and residences for foreign delegations.
Ruldin's strength is its neutrality: an attack upon a Ruldini diplomatic mission is considered an attack upon mediation itself. The Ruldini believe war represents the failure of diplomacy, and their greatest fear is that Wovengar will grow so divided that diplomacy can no longer bridge the gap.
Capital: Xerith · Dominant lineages: Tempari, Stikari, Arktar, Avar
Tempus is the greatest wolven kingdom ruled by a single pack. The Tempic worldview is built around time: every part of life is regulated by ritual calendars, sacred intervals, astronomical observations, and carefully maintained schedules. They believe time is the framework within which Raenir's gift of freedom becomes possible.
Xerith is a city of clocks, astronomical towers, calendars, and precisely organized streets. Tempus is a major producer of preserved meat, hides, ice goods, and astronomical instruments. To the Tempic, everyone else is simply wasting time.
Capital: Welvesren · Dominant lineages: Stikari, Tempari, Avar, Arktar
Stixis is the northern kingdom bordering the dark Marennoch Sea, a frozen body of water filled with the remains of ancient creatures. The Stixis bone-seers believe every bone retains an imprint of the creature from which it came, and through careful examination claim to read memories, omens, and futures.
They also perform a vital service: recovering the remains of drowned sailors and lost expeditions from the Marennoch, so their families can know what became of them. Stixis seeks knowledge of one thing above all: what, if anything, remains after death.
Capital: Earith · Dominant lineages: Carsakai, Morren, Sturma, Avar
Carsun is a mountainous kingdom whose wolves inhabit high valleys, passes, and isolated settlements. The notorious Vampire Wolves, or Blood Drinkers, originate here; their reputation claims that they consume the blood of their enemies to inherit their strength, though whether the practice is widespread or merely exaggerated is disputed even among Carsuni.
Despite its isolation, Carsun is one of Wovengar's most outward-looking kingdoms. Its mountain passes connect Wovengar to distant civilizations, and Carsuni markets contain foreign goods rarely seen elsewhere.
Capital: Zreta · Dominant lineages: Nerengar, Mulkari, Avar, Arktar
Neringi is the wealthiest power of eastern Wovengar and the center of the great seal-hunting trade. Enormous quantities of meat, hides, and oil arrive through its ports, producing powerful merchant houses, vast markets, and a formidable military.
Neringi's sacred Howl is performed by thousands of wolves simultaneously; the Neringi claim it summons storms from the Dawn Ocean, and the storms, inconveniently, have a habit of arriving anyway. Its ambition is to remain eastern Wovengar's undisputed power, and its greatest danger is that wealth breeds rivals.
Capital: Azhazir · Dominant lineages: Dirakai, Avar, Ruldan, Arktar
Dirus is the kingdom no other kingdom quite wants to claim. The Dirani are exiles, shunned from many sacred places and surrounded by stories concerning an ancient crime or curse whose truth is deliberately obscure. Despite this, Dirus is not weak: Neringi supports it as a buffer against eastern threats.
Azhazir is dark, quiet, and heavily guarded, its people having learned to survive without the approval of the rest of Wovengar. Dirus wants only two things: survival and, someday, vindication.
Capital: Gaurhoth · Dominant lineages: Gauren, Nerengar, Mulkari, Avar
Grimwatch occupies the eastern cliffs overlooking the open sea, and its wolves serve as Wovengar's first and final line of defense against maritime threats from beyond. They fight creatures of the deep that have no proper name in any wolf tongue; some appear only in certain seasons, and some have never been successfully killed.
Gaurhoth is a fortress-city of cliffs, watchtowers, signal fires, and sea walls. The Grimwatch receive little glory. Their reward is simply that the villages behind them survive another year. They do not seek conquest. They hold the line.
Population: all major wolven lineages
Vegrnar is the great capital of Wovengar, standing upon the River Van, where Raenir, the Wolf-Father, is believed to have been born. It is the most cosmopolitan city in wolfdom, with no dominant lineage: Avar, Arktar, Mulkari, Havakar, Tempari, Stikari, Carsakai, Gauren, Sangai, and countless others live side by side.
Every kingdom maintains a presence in the city. The Great Moot meets in Vegrnar, where the clans are formally equal, and the Wolf-King, when such a figure exists, is crowned in the Temple of the Spiral. Avaroth claims to possess Wovengar's memory; Hulian its law; Hurcan its faith; Gurlen its wars. Vegrnar claims to contain all of it, and that is why every clan wants a place within its walls.
Conciliator · The Lion's Cirice
The most widespread and institutionally powerful of the four faiths. Rooted in the legacy of Wordermund's empire, its seat of authority is the High House of Vornstrom. It is a highly organized, predominantly female clergy whose priestesses serve as religious teachers, midwives, tutors, and caretakers.
The Order understands the Mother as the supreme creator and guardian of mammalian existence, placing her within a divine family. Its worship is centred upon the Cirice, a circular sanctuary with the Mother represented at its heart.
Its reading of the Severance is conciliatory: the Mother permitted her children to leave her immediate care so that they might mature, but never intended that they remain separated forever. The Order therefore seeks to find her and restore the world to a greater paradise, one in which her children have grown beyond their original innocence.
Its strength is institutional. It preaches "Magnanimity" and cultivates it through education, charity, medicine, and the care of the vulnerable — including Aberrants, who it holds must be cared for rather than condemned. It is the most recognizable expression of the Cirice as a civilizational religion: a faith that seeks to shape society, preserve knowledge, and prepare creation for the Mother's return.
Conciliator · The Threefold Mother
The Devout worship the Mother through three manifestations: the Child, the Womb, and the Crone — the stages of her existence, associated with the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. The other planets are understood as former incarnations of the Mother during her time in the Void.
This distinguishes them from the Basileans, who regard the Mother as perfect and ageless. To the Devout, her changing aspects reveal the sacredness of life itself: birth, maturity, fertility, age, and renewal.
They are particularly influential among herbivorous communities, with strong support within the Confederation. Their religious life emphasizes fertility, motherhood, and the raising of children; their Three Hares motif, popular among the lagomorphs, symbolizes both the Three Aspects and the lost blessing of fertility.
They regard Raenir as a villain whose actions brought the world into peril, and seek to undo the damage by restoring the Mother and the lost age of fables. Their particular emphasis on the sacredness of same-species reproduction has proven controversial; other Circian traditions regard the Three Aspects as incompatible with the Mother's perfection, producing considerable theological and social conflict.
Severer · The Mother's Maxim
The most explicitly martial of the four traditions. Their faith centres on the Mother's Maxim, which they hold as the authoritative foundation of their teachings; unlike the Basileans, they do not recognize the Lion's Libri as sacred scripture.
They believe Raenir possessed the wisdom to enact the Severance, and regard it as necessary to create an honourable world — one in which the Mother's children must confront danger, prove themselves, and attain Magnanimity without her protection. Their virtue is bound to courage, discipline, martial prowess, and the willingness to face death. Their clergy, the Soothsayers, are themselves respected warriors, and serve as spiritual advisers to rulers throughout the League of Jaws.
Their eschatology is elaborate: the Valkyries, the Mother's female servants, select the strongest warriors who die in battle to become Einherjars, to be reincarnated for the final battle against Deiken, the great evil. Central to this is their reading of the Slayer as Raenir reborn, who will lead the Mother's forces and deliver the final killing stroke. Their faith is more permissive toward relationships among predators, while holding a strong taboo against predator-prey unions.
Severer · The Lady of the Lake
Perhaps the most unusual of the four. Centred on the Book of Ninian, they teach that after the Severance the Mother did not abandon her children but sacrificed her divine powers to become the Lady of the Lake — humbling herself to live hidden within creation as an equal.
Preserving her presence and her mark upon the world is their sacred duty. They see magic not merely as a dangerous remnant of the Severance, but as a gift inherited from the Age of Fables — a trace of the Mother's continuing presence, corrupted, and to be understood rightly through her love and guidance.
Their relationship with the Mother is intimate but not dependent. She may intervene when necessary, yet reliance upon her intervention is sinful; her hidden presence is a reminder that her children must continue to grow. An exclusively female order, their temples stand along the shores of the Mulken Sea; they accept aquatic mammals — dolphins, orcas, and whales — and their most sacred artifact is a vial of blood believed to be that of the First Incarnate, the Mother made flesh after the Severance.
They share much doctrine with the Basileans — indeed the Order of Basileus is understood to have begun as an offshoot of this older faith. Their essential distinction: they seek neither the Mother's permanent return nor the restoration of her former rule. She is already among her children, and the greatest devotion is to honour her presence without demanding her intervention.