Introduction to Politics & Powerful Organizations

Subject: Who holds power on Aropria, and who works across everybody's borders
Covers: Ten powers, five guilds, and the current state of the friction between them

Ten powers divide the continent between them, and they are not all nations. Alongside them are the guilds, which hold no territory, answer to nobody, and are in all ten — which makes them the more interesting half of this section.

The ten

Alvania, Caliharah, Curath, Nashriam, Rowlem and Vas'tek are the six with the most weight behind them, and they are nations in the ordinary sense: borders, a capital, and somebody who speaks for them.

The other four are each irregular in their own way. Karg and Kende are nations — Karg a free state that takes anybody who arrives and asks nothing about where they came from, Kende the Alium homeland. Garshalla says outright that it is not a nation and does not behave like one: it is a confederation of tribes. And Polyandrium is a city, which holds more than half of every Cryptum alive.

They are not variations on a theme, and the sharpest illustration is two of them together. Curath is a feudal empire that keeps slaves. Karg takes the people who get out of it, and asks them nothing.

The Great Houses of Nashriam is the one place this section goes below the level of a nation, because Nashriam's houses are powers in their own right.

The guilds

Five organisations operate across every border on the continent, and between them they touch most of what an ordinary person's life runs on.

The Clerks notarise contracts and mint the draas. No agreement on Aropria is complete without one of them, which makes them the closest thing the continent has to a shared institution.
The Guardians of Tomorrow test children for congruence aptitude under contract to every nation, and see the result through to whatever comes next for them.
The Ion'cavar are the hunters, and the reason a settlement on a bad border can sometimes get help.
The Kindlers find the newly woken Kin and raise them, which is an institution rather than a kindness at the scale it happens.
The Slaver's Syndicate is the one that is banned in places and operating anyway.

Where the friction is

Current Political Tensions is the page for what is actually strained right now, and it is the one in this section most likely to have moved since you last read it.