Note that these entities are- or rather were- all under the domination of the Empire, having to pay tribute and follow the Emperor’s laws. Some have declared independence since then, while others have remained steadfast to the Empire.

Tolos: The central province and originator of the Empire. It is a mostly flat country, with exceptionally fertile plains that make it the breadbasket of the world. Its cities are also some of the most populous in human lands. Of course, the Ascension has changed all of this: the province is now infested with monsters, and every day another great Tolosi city is methodically razed. The area around the old imperial capital of Tolos is even worse off, now a barren wasteland filled with so many demons as to make mortal life impossible. None have seen the capital and lived to tell of it since the crisis began.

Free Cities of Cadea: The Cadean cities are in a unique position: theoretically part of the Province of Tolos, they have nevertheless been granted imperial charters guaranteeing their autonomy and self rule. This was largely done for their acceptance of taxation. The Cadean cities are some of the wealthiest in the world, and they are the primary ports on the western sea. Since the Ascension, they have been raising armies to defend themselves, but seperately, each city-state acting on its own.

Chaldia: The province of Chaldia is the home of the Dwarven people. It has fallen a long way: once the center of a mighty empire, it now is home only to ruins. The province is ruled from the underground dwarven city of Bucephal, home to the Burning Three, those hungry gods which demand human sacrifice. The land above is inhabited by humans, whose ruling Boyars pay tribute to the dwarves- in coin, food, or sacrifices- for their protection.

The dwarves of Chaldia are the oldest and truest worshipers of the Burning Three. Rivers of sacrifices are fed to their beacons in exchange for their divine blessing and wisdom. Since the Ascension, their gods have become far more active: day and night, their high priests feed their flames, receiving visions and instructions. The Three have commanded the Chaldians to marshall everything to fight the infernal armies, and the dwarves have thrown themselves into the struggle with gusto.

Pontus: Lying beyond the Coromic mountains and the Koyat Desert, Pontus is a land of myths and legends. It is covered in a thick, humid forest, with an oppressive heat. It is the realm of the elves, and was only recently added to the empire under Emperor Uriah. Imperial government has not penetrated this isolated realm; the elves will be ruled only by elves, specifically the elves of Pontus, who use the power of their enslaved god to maintain their hegemony over their kind. It is ruled by an oligarchy of the most powerful families of the city who rule in a great council. From Pontus flows exotic goods which are highly prized throughout the Empire, such as silk and spices.

The elves have in the past month shut themselves in as the Imperial Legions withdrew. The borders of Pontus are being closed off and fortified, and by all appearances the elves plan on leaving the rest of the world to rot.

Coromis: The Coromic mountains are sheer and, like the eastern desert, offensively hot. It is no surprise then that the land is inhabited by the orcs, the hardiest race to walk the earth. These are not the orcs of the east, however, who lack any kind of central government. Coromis is ruled by a king, a king who rules through clans, but a king nevertheless. It is a closed land, and little trade passes through it; orcs have little desire for coin.

The Kingdom does have one export, however: Soldiers. In the past centuries, orcish mercenaries have become almost universally used across the world, their feared phalanxes the beating heart of the Imperial Legions. The relationship between the Empire and the orcs is an indirect one; the orcish king swore fielty to the Emperor, and offered anual tribute in the form of soldiers to serve in the Legions, and in exchange the Empire left the orcs to rule themselves.

Koyat Desert: A vast and uninhabitable region, the Koyat is barely considered part of the Empire, populated only by orcs. Nevertheless, in this desolate environment the Koyat tribes survive. Since the dawn of time they have launched raids on neighboring lands from the desert. More recently, many tribes have forged an uneasy alliance with men from Jadis, becoming tools in the endless wars between the cartels.

Jadis: This autonomous province is a principality in name, and an oligarchy in fact. It is centered on the island city of Jadis, a merchant metropolis made fantastically rich by the gem trade. Virtually every precious gem in the world is mined in the Koyat Desert, and must pass through the Atar river, into Jadis.

Five great cartels dominate this trade, and thus Jadis itself: The Emerald Cartel, the oldest and most prestigious one; the Gold Cartel, which by focusing on banking and trade has made itself rich beyond any other organization in the world; the Ruby Cartel, which uses populism and control of the tributary cities to attempt to accrue greater power; the Saphire Cartel, which dominates the mining trade in the desert through its secret alliance with the orc tribes; and the Amethyst Cartel, renown for offering assassination as a service to clients. These factions are always struggling for power, with the one controlling the Prince being the hegemon.

Pannonia: Pannonia is a relatively young nation, formed when the orcs pushed the nomadic human Pannonians tribes out of the Koyat Desert, five hundred years ago. They conquered the large basin of the Czara river, the grassy borderlands between the desert and the northern kingdoms. The Pannonians became a feared military force, the ferocity of their cavalry known to all as castle after castle fell to them. The northern kings began to pay them tribute, first to avoid invasion, and then to build up the Pannonians as a march against the raiding bands of the Koyat.

Faucher: The Kingdom of Faucher is a wealthy and powerful realm, an autnomous kingdom within the Imperial whole. Faucher is notably centralized, its king commanding absolute control over the nobility, the clergy, and the burghers. The entire kingdom is governed as if it were the personal fief of the king. The capital, Villeroi, is one of the largest cities in the world, as large as the metropolises of Pontus, Tolos, and Jadis.

Frisia: The Frisian lowlands have never been ruled by the Frisian people. Instead, conquerors come and go, each displacing the last. The longstanding war between the Fauch and the Havish kings for control of the territory only ended when Mymish warlords invaded, conquering all of Frisia for their own. The ensuing three way war lasted until the Empire arrived and imposed itself. For the first time in its history, Frisia was no longer a battlefield, for which the Empire earned the gratitude and loyalty of the populace.

Havendall: If Tolos is the beating heart of the Empire, the Havendall province is its fist. The Havish people are rough, straightforward, and possessed with an unmatched love for war. Indeed, they are almost always at war with each other, their nobles only stopping their fratricidal civil wars to wage war on their neighbors. Since its incorporation into the Empire, the Havendall has mostly quieted down, its people's appetite for bloodshed directed towards foreign lands by the Emperors.

Mazovia: The Mazovian people are used to hardship. The kingdom's location between three powerful peoples has made it a frequent target for invasion throughout history, which has only served to harden the Mazovian resolve. This flat country is ruled by a king who is chosen through a peculiar method: election. At the death of the king, all the nobles of the realm, regardless of their power or station, assemble to vote on the next one.

Myrmir: The northern kingdom of Myrmir is a recent and artificial creation. Until two hundred years ago, that land was ruled by a multitiude of petty kings, fierce warlords who led raiding parties to terrorize the coasts of the southern lands. Many of them carved out their own kingdoms there, though these inevitably collapsed when the chieftains died. The Tolosi conquest of two hundred years ago ended that age, and a puppet king was placed to rule over the tumultuous land. To this day, the Myrmen have not truly accepted foreign rule, and the legions are constantly at work quelling rebellions.

Humans: Humans are an unwanted race. They were created by the god Andora largely as a side effect of creating the elves; the god wanted perfect mortals to serve it, and as humans were less perfect than the elves, it gave them to the elves as slaves, the same as the elves were its own slaves. Eventually humanity managed to free itself from its chains and flee north, across the desolate Koyat Desert. In this colder northern land they founded numerous kingdoms, and have grown to be the dominant power in the world.

Orcs: Orcs were first created by the god Garmosh to serve as its warriors, capturing mortals so that the god could feed on them and thus accrue its own powers. Hardy, strong, and lacking a need to eat (it is theorized they draw sustenance from the sun, as they are less active during nighttime), orcs inhabit the desolate Koyat Desert and the Coromic Mountains. They are not stupid, though their shorter lifespans means they tend to spend less time learning than other mortal races. Nor are they blindly agressive. They are devoted above all to following a leader, whether that be a chieftain, a king, or an emperor. Following orders is in their blood. This makes them the perfect soldiers, for which they are widely used as mercenaries by the princes of the world.

Dwarves: The dwarves were the first race to walk the earth. They were the chosen people of the Burning Three, and in the days when gods walked the earth, their Chaldian Empire ruled the world. But the war between the gods hit the dwarves hard, and when the gods disappeared, the dwarves fell into chaos and infighting. They never truly collapsed, the Chaldian Empire still existing when the Tolosi invaded three hundred years ago, but the dwarves fell into a sort of lethargy, seemingly accepting their decline. The dwarves are devout followers of the Sacred Three, and by burning mortals alive in the three great beacons in the capital of Bucephal, they empower their gods.

Elves: The fickle elves have always been an arrogant people. They were created by the god Andora as the "perfect" race. In fact, they thought themselves so perfect as to be above their very god, and they used their given powers to enslave Andora in the sacred lake of Pontus. In all the years since, the elves have forcibly extracted powers from their god, all while praising its name. Nobody knows the mind of the elves, except for the elves. When the Empire marched into the jungles of Pontus, not ten years ago, they expected a bloodbath, but the elves simply surrendered peacefully, giving nominal fielty to the Emperor in exchange for being left alone. When Uriah II returned to the capital, he was obsessed with ideas of godhood. Some have said that it was the elves who gave him his mad ambition for divinity.

There are stories of the dawn of the world and the creation of the races, but these belong more to myth than history. The earliest events we know for certain occurred is a thousand years ago, with the migration of humanity north beyond the Koyat Desert. It was also in this time that the primordial Chaldian empire began to decline, the disappearance of its gods leading the dwarven cities into infighting. This was helped along by the solidifying elven realm of Pontus, which won much land from the decaying empire by using the powers of its own enslaved god, Andora.

After that period of upheaval, things mostly settled down. The only major disturbance was when the orcs displaced the human Pannonians from the Koyat desert, leading them to conquer a large swathe of land to the north. Four hundred years ago, Tolos chose an Emperor as its ruler, after a period of local conquest. The centuries since have seen a slow and methodical conquest of the world, completed when Uriah II marched into the forbidden jungles of Pontus and gained the fielty of the elves there. When Uriah returned to the capital, he was consumed with an ambition to achieve godhood. Needless to say the events of the Ascension ensued.

Magic comes from only one source: The gods. To wield these powers, one must be blessed by one of the divines, voluntarily or not.

A word on the gods themselves. There is but one pantheon of uncontested gods. It is a broken pantheon, however, broken by strife and war. In the dawning days of the world, after the war at the start of time, the gods ruled over the mortal masses, using them as slaves. Some gods objected to this and stressed the mortal right to freedom. The others disagreed... violently. A war among the gods ensued.

Which side won the war is unclear. Most scholars are of the mind that neither side did, that in the conflict the gods were all killed by each other. The fact is, currently, the gods are at least inactive, if not dead. Eight gods are known to still inhabit this world, but they are feeble and require sacrifices to affect the world, otherwise appearing only in dreams and visions. These gods are the Burning Three, blood-thirsty gods who demand human sacrifice in their great beacons, in the dwarven city of Bucephal; Andora, a petty god who created both mankind and elvenkind, who drove the former into exile and was enslaved by the later, its powers forcibly extracted from it by the elves of Pontus (by drowning mortals in a sacred lake as sacrifice); and Garmosh, progenitor of the orcs, who is fed whenever the wielder of its sword kills someone, though the Sword of Garmosh has been lost for centuries.

There are three further gods, who fought to liberate mortals in the divine war, and now refuse sacrifices in their names. They wander the world, occasionally giving their gifts to a champion who they believe embodies their will the best. These are Oromis, the proud, just, and stubborn one; Morcar, a trickster who favors guile and cleverness; and Neaneth, humble and meek, driven by compassion and mercy.

For one to have magic, one of these gods must have granted the mortal these powers. Because of their long lifespans, elves and dwarves are more common as magic wielders.