The Verum Imperium

The Verum Imperium is a large empire on Yorth, stretching from the north shores of the Tychi Sea to the Endless Ocean in the far north of the Borean Wastes, bordered to the west by The Pious Union of the Awakened and the Ophidian Bay, and to the east by the Kingdom of Zelaya along the great battlefield known as The Crimson March.   The Imperium is ruled by the seemingly immortal Emperor Aeternus, and has been since its inception over 3,000 years ago. The Imperium considers itself a meritocracy, where rank and title are earned by service to the Imperium (whether that be military, scholarly, industrial, agricultural, or otherwise) rather than by noble birth. The Imperium welcomes all of the Awakened to its lands, and considers all of them equal. As a result, it boasts populations of peoples from every race of the Awakened, even Giants who have rejected the Ordning. This is made possible in part by the outlawing of all religion in the Imperium, with the Automaths demonized as cheats and liars.   The Imperium is also home to a new race of people known as the Goliaths, who took the Emperor's vision for a utopian society of the Awakened to the extreme by maintaining a strict set of rules around reproduction that favors as much mixing of the Awakened races as possible, selecting for the advantages of each. The Emperor Aeternus himself has served as a model for the Goliaths, as he himself transformed himself physically into this "perfect" specimen of Awakenedom through magical means. While the meritocracy of the Imperium offers no special favors to the Goliaths in a strict legal sense, their ambition and subculture of perfection often finds them placed in positions of power and authority within the Imperium.   In addition, The Imperium has created a new race known as the Warforged. The skilled mages of The Imperium made use of constructs for all sorts of purposes, especially as the population in the Imperium struggled to grow in comparison to their neighbors. But, when war broke out with the Kingdom of Zelaya, the automatons created by the mages were of limited use as they had to be given well-defined orders or controlled directly. Imperium mages solved this problem by imprinting the souls) of those they defeated (namely Beastfolk, and later Zelayans) into the machinery of new, advanced golems, after wiping clean the memories of their past lives. Thus, the Imperium supplied themselves with ready-made soldiers for the war, whose numbers would only grow with each victory.   The war with Zelaya broke out over both Imperium and Zelayan expansionism coming to a head in the hinterlands between their empires. The Imperium pushed eastward for resources, and because they had heard of the Zelayans and wished to conquer them, either annihilate or subdue them, and take their magic and technology for their own. The Zelayans, then, fought not only for their own self-preservation, but also because the holy sites on Yorth were understood to be essential for them to extinguish the fires on Kumah and put an end to the Infinite Sorrow, allowing them to return home. The began with many small skirmishes about 30 years ago, and as forces and settlers from both empires rushed to build up the lands along the newfound border, skirmishes led to battles, which led to war in earnest, beginning about 20 years in the past and raging ever since.   The Imperium maintains a steady program of propaganda disseminated within The Pious Union of the Awakened, and though the clandestine propagandists are jailed whenever they are caught, a steady stream of new recruits has left for the Imperium. The The Union fears that one day, The Imperium may begin to look south and west for resources and lands to fuel their war machine, and so relations between the two countries have cooled.   The capital city of The Verum Imperium is Verus, on the northern coast of the Tychi Sea. Along the coast further east and south are the cities of Compita, Litore, and Navalia, these last two perilously close to The Crimson March and The Kingdom of Zelaya. North from Verus runs the Praeclarus Canal, with the city of Anrka built into the walls of the gorge through which the Praeclarus passes as it enters the Ardus Barrens. The canal terminates at the great city of Cassefin on the shores of the Ophidian Bay. Further north is Port Drake, and the outpost of Tor Ignis in the far north, tasked with keeping the Ophidian Bay's mouth clear of ice. The wealthy city of Shadelane lies nestled in a valley in the southern Undal Mountains northeast of Verus, and the great Forge-City of Fornax lies to the north in the shade of the Undals in the eastern Vastus Timberland. Finally, the city of Urinor sits on the shores of the Unfathomable Lake where the Vastus Timberland gives way to the Borean Wastes of the far north.