Factions

The Maaniskaar Empire The dominant power of the Maan world, founded in AC 1 on the ruins of the fallen Inarin Empire. Its formal name, the Maaniskaar Empire, is used in official proclamations and priestly speech; in common usage it is simply called the Maan empire. Absolute in authority and theological in self-image, it frames its rule as a necessary correction of everything the Inarin civilisation built without permission. By the 64th Year of the New Order it governs from the capital Goldenhold under Emperor Theodelf Vissor, with Randenism declared its state religion.
The Inarin Empire The great predecessor civilisation of Elshore, built by the Iru across thousands of years and ended by the servant-race rebellion known as the Chaos. It left behind a continent-spanning infrastructure of capsule trains, hibernation pods, sealed data archives, and arcology towers that later peoples still use and fear. The Maan empire defines itself entirely against Inarin, claiming to be its true successor through correction rather than inheritance.
The Great Kingdom of Iruel The last sovereign homeland of the Iru, designated as their settlement zone by the AC 1 Maan war council and shaped into a hereditary monarchy governed by breath-law and architectural discipline. Iruel does not expand by conquest; it shapes through precision, silence, and stone. The kingdom quietly supplies arms to rival powers and holds the captive province of Rafadin, where the Erg population it dominates continues to resist through memory and architecture.
Kingdom of Maaniskaar The western realm that emerged from the fracture of the Maaniskaar Empire in AC 138, Maaniskaar is a theocratic-constitutional monarchy ruled from the five-river capital of Fivebrook. It holds the seat of the Vigilant Eye, the supreme ecclesiastical office of Randenism, and governs in the name of Reformed Randenism, which venerates Namii and Uhiel as ideological symbols rather than living deities. Its king, Brimald Vissor, is the brother of the Maan emperor and wages a quiet war between ancestral law and imperial pressure.
Sovereign Maan Republic Born of exile and imperial fracture during the 250-year Throne War, the Sovereign Maan Republic, also known as Khaldaara, occupies the frozen south and governs as a stratified elective oligarchy from the capital Iceborrow. It claims to be the last light of civic order but delivers survival to refugees rather than sanctuary. Randenism here has been severed from its ecclesiastical roots and converted into state bureaucracy: ritual calendars issued by decree, labour quotas tracked as moral fulfilment.
The Maan Council The founding war council established in AC 1 by Rokhir Savil after the servant-race rebellion overthrew the Inarin Empire. Twenty members strong, it included seventeen Maan, one Annil, one Erg, and one Bar representative; the Meir refused a seat. Its decrees, passed in the first seven years of the new age, resettled every non-Maan race and ordered the phase-out of all Iru technology. Dissolved in AC 7 when Rokhir Savil consolidated sole power, it is the institutional ancestor from which the Maan empire's legal architecture directly descends.
Erg Tribal Confederation A loose alliance of seven major Erg tribes inhabiting the southern reaches of Eldaara, the Confederation is not a state in any formal sense but a body that endures in memory rather than on maps. It emerged from those Ergs who refused or escaped the AC 1 resettlement decrees and have maintained self-determination ever since through oral law, ancestral remembrance, and a stubborn refusal to kneel to any empire. The Confederation stands between the encroaching Sovereign Maan Republic and the cultural erosion carried by Maan missionaries.
Order of Randen The fastest-growing power in the Maan empire at AC 50, the Order of Randen is a religious-political apparatus that co-opts the theology of Randenism and transforms it into a debt-collection and enforcement machine. Founded in AC 31, it claims descent from the legendary Saint Randen and positions itself as the correcting arm of the imperial state. Its street slogans fill Medika walls and public signage; its priests carry pain-implants salvaged from Iru technology; its doctrine of life-as-sacred-debt operates as both ideology and coercion.
The Medika The imperial medical institution of the Maan empire, formally called the Imperial Medical Center, the Medika operates a tiered subscription system that limits dispensing to those who can pay monthly fees costing more than a canal-block worker earns in a year. Its shelves are arranged to look full behind glass; its corridors smell of cold ozone; its walls carry Order of Randen slogans alongside clinical branding. It offers pharmacy, diagnostic, genetic verification, and burial-capsule services, and functions as a performance of civic order rather than a guarantee of medical access.
The Sovereign Arcology of Vaparium Founded by the Meir roughly 108 years before the Chaos, Vaparium is not a city but a constellation of interlocked arcologies, repurposed generation ships, nestled in the vine-choked Land of Green Shadows. It is the most technologically advanced polity on Elshore by centuries, governed through the Lumen Array, a living mesh of social sensors and consensus protocols. Its defining doctrine is non-intervention, born from the Baramma Incident, when a Maan false-flag operation tricked Vaparium into striking the wrong target and silenced whole ecosystems that could not be restored.
Randenism The dominant faith of the Maan empire and much of Elshore, Randenism grew from the living ministry of Saint Randen, an Erg from Rafadin who preached during the Chaos years that all life is a sacred debt repaid through labour, memory, and vigilance. Its cosmology holds that the world was shaped from the grief of the goddess Namii and the sacrifice of her son Ooliel, whose body became the mountains, rivers, and peoples of Elshore. The faith is distinct from the Order of Randen, a political-enforcement apparatus that co-opts its language; the genuine ethical core of the faith, service without praise and duty as remembrance, predates and outlives that co-optation.
Kironism The spiritual and ecological discipline of the Bars of Baramma, Kironism holds that the world was not created but simply is, governed by Kiron, a breath-principle of recurring rhythm rather than a deity. Ancient in its roots and formalised during the Time Between, it provides the philosophical ground from which the Bars reject Randenist moral claims and imperial authority. In Baramma the myths of Ooliel are read not as noble sacrifice but as cautionary tales of imbalance; temples are wounds carved in living stone.
Lehovism A faith attested in the cultural practices of the Maan people and connected to ancestor-petition rites, sacred foods, and specific ritual garments. Its origins and full doctrine remain obscure in the surviving records. It is known through the material culture it shapes: frondwood barkcloth inscribed with ancestor-names and worn in petition rites, and certain insects treated as sacred in its ceremonies.
Ooliran Faith The oldest canonised religion on Elshore, the Ooliran Faith is the state religion of the Grand Kingdom of Iruel and predates Randenism by thousands of years. Also known as the Sovereign Breath or the Sovereign Path, it holds that all existence flows from Ooli, a breath-principle beneath matter and within time, and that the celestial bodies are sacred echoes rather than divine parents. Its scripture, the Ooliran Varaan, was compiled at the Council of the Windspires in the 52nd Century After the Silence. The faith teaches reverent plurality: no breath is wrong, only misaligned.
Isism A heterodox faith that emerged among the Annil from fragments of the ISEMH system and its pre-Chaos architecture, Isism holds that reality is an active computation sustained by a hidden framework called Isem, the Unseen One. Where Randenism sees creation as grief and labour-debt, Isism sees the world as a running programme faltering in the dark. The Randenist edict banning ISEMH relics brands Isists as heretics and data-witches; the faith survives in the margins of ruined vaults, underground shelters, and among those who have touched the old machines and can no longer trust the state faiths.
Erg Shamanism (Tir-Kul'ei) The indigenous cosmological practice of the Highland Ergs of the Frozen Highlands, Tir-Kul'ei, the Deep Remembering, is an ancient system of naming, flowing, and burning that predates Randenism by centuries. It organises existence into three currents: Namii-nar, the origin flow where all souls are kindled; Elshore-nar, the living world where names are earned; and Tharuun-nar, the dissolving current into which the unnamed and unremembered drift. Its practitioners, the Kulnaro, serve as dreamcallers, namebearers, ashmenders, tidewatchers, and flameweavers for their communities.
Guardians and Protectors of the Grël Two orders share a name but not a mission. The original Guardians of the Grël were an Annil order founded at the start of the Maan empire era to protect the grël, a living protocol of the ISEMH system, and to preserve the hibernating last leaders of the Inarin civilisation. They knew what grëls were and worked quietly toward Inarin's restoration. The Order of Randen destroyed them in the Month of Life pogrom on Ressor Day, AC 36, then immediately captured their name for a sub-order of its own: the Protectors of the Grël, who hunt for a grël they cannot identify, believing it to be a powerful weapon rather than the living administrator it actually is.
Imperial Military Doctrine The armies and navies of the Maan Empire are ranked not by timber but by the blood that commands them, in a hierarchy of nested units inherited from the ancient Inarin war codes. Discipline, honour unto death, and command symbols etched into banners, shields, and armour bind every soldier into the backbone of order. New officers swear not to men or council but to the Order itself.
Titles and Court Offices The two Northland Maan states, the Maaniskaar Kingdom at Fivebrook and the Maan Empire at Goldenhold, are governed through deep ladders of titled office, from the sovereign down through palatines, dukes, marchwardens, treasurers, heralds, and cupbearers. Titles are the bones on which society stretches its flesh, and each office carries its own holder, duty, and place in a fixed order of precedence.
The Regalia and Taxation The Regalia are the sacred revenues of the Crown and the Grand Dukes, the rigid and ancient web of taxes, duties, and monopolies that the Northland Maan states call the crown's invisible armies. Bound by law, blood, and the decree of Namii and Uhiel, they reach from the metals under the earth to the salt on the table and the beasts in the field, and to refuse them is framed as refusing the Empire itself.