Societies of Arcasia

A World Overview of Peoples, Powers, and Politics

Arcasia is not defined by a single empire or culture, but by a shifting web of kingdoms, exiles, nomads, guilds, and hidden orders. Some trace their roots to sunken golden ages; others are young nations scrambling for power in the vacuum left by fallen empires.

This article provides a high-level overview of the world’s major societies and how they relate to one another. Each entry here can later be expanded into its own full article.

Major Civilizations

Merfolk of Chelonia

Ancient, secretive, and arcane, the merfolk of Chelonia are the descendants of a pre-calamity empire whose homeland now lies beneath the waves. Their coral cities and living architecture surround the Great Pearl, an artifact that fuels their magic and stabilizes their realm.
To surface-dwellers, Chelonia appears to “rise” cyclically, but the merfolk dwell there year-round, managing carefully controlled trade with select coastal cities of Tilçanhu. They guard their secrets fiercely and debate internally whether to remain hidden or re-emerge as a world power.

The Empire (Before and After the Fall)

Once a sprawling, magically regulated, bureaucratic empire spanning large swathes of Faenas and the western lands, the Empire united diverse peoples under a central Mandate and a state religion. It built great ley-road networks, monumental cities, and observatories.

After its collapse, the Empire shattered into successor states now counted among the Free Peoples. Yet remnants endure: decaying heartland provinces, exiled scholar-courts, and disciplined legions who dream of restoration. To many, the Empire is remembered either as a civilizing force or a suffocating conqueror.

The Kurai Shogunate of Sukoku

The Kurai are a proud, lupine people exiled from the mainland generations ago. Their island homeland of Sukoku, just west of Faenas, is mountainous, mist-wreathed, and steeped in ancestor rites and martial tradition.

The Kurai are not shapeshifters but a true wolf-folk species with rigid clan hierarchies and a code of honor forged in defeat. Their politics revolve around rival daimyō and their shogun, old grudges against the Empire, and a wary posture toward mainland powers. They maintain strict control of their shores and a fierce sense of cultural identity.

The Free Peoples of the West

After the fall of Empire and the Kurai’s retreat, the western continents did not unify—they fractured. The “Free Peoples” is a catch-all term for the nations, city-states, and confederacies that emerged in the power vacuum.

These include river kingdoms living off trade and agriculture, coastal principalities that profit from maritime commerce (and sometimes piracy), and plains confederacies of former vassals who vowed never again to bow to a single banner. They are fiercely independent, rich in local character, and politically volatile.

The Mystical Kingdoms of Tilçanhu

Tilçanhu’s southern jungles are old as myth. Kingdoms rise atop ruins of even older civilizations, each strata infused with wild magic and leyline currents.

Here, priest-kings, moon-sages, and nature-bound orders guide society. Spirits are treated as neighbors, not abstractions. Their astronomy, architecture, and bio-arcane craft rival anything the Empire once built, though outsiders often dismiss them as “mystics” until confronted with the truth. Tilçanhu’s rulers are wary of both Chelonia’s oceanic power and the expansion of the Free Peoples.

The Dwarven Holds of Dwellomel

Dwellomel is a network of deepholds and strongholds carved into the great mountain spine of Arcasia. The dwarves of these holds are renowned for precise metalwork, ancient runecraft, and engineering that even the Empire struggled to fully understand.

Their society is clan-based, oath-bound, and slow to change. Some holds trade heavily with the Free Peoples, exchanging metal and craft for food and timber. Others close their gates, suspicious of surface politics, emerging only when mining rights, borders, or sacred stone are threatened.

The Roaming Clans of Auborea

Auborea is a realm of northern wildlands and tundra steppes, where survival demands mobility and cooperation. The roaming clans follow herds, weather patterns, and subtle star-omens across vast distances.

They preserve their histories in song, shared around communal fires and during great gatherings known as Starmeets. Known for gifted trackers and hardy warriors, the clans maintain a respectful distance from fixed states, though they sometimes work as guides, monster hunters, or scouts for the Free Peoples.

Nomadic and Maritime Societies

The Nomadic Tribes of Zareem

South of Westbroon lies the Zareem Expanse: deserts, salt flats, and echoing canyons. Here, the Zareem tribes travel by “song-lines,” ancestral routes preserved in music and memory.

They navigate via wind-tuned instruments said to resonate with desert spirits and ride specialized mounts adapted to the dunes. Zareem caravans are the arteries of long-distance trade, carrying goods between continents through lands most others cannot cross. They sometimes smuggle magical contraband or rare artifacts, creating friction with more settled powers.

The Tidebreaker Pirate Guilds

West of Faenas, the Shattered Shoals shelter the Tidebreaker Guilds: not mere pirates, but a loose confederation of crews bound by a shared code.

Ships belong to the Guild instead of captains, and disputes are settled in ritualized duels known as Sparrow Courts. They raid imperial supply lines, sell their services to desperate coastal lords, and maintain uneasy ties with those who can pay for secrecy or protection. Some crews have unnerving knowledge of Chelonia and its cycles.

Transnational Powers and Guilds

The Sapphire Ledger

The Sapphire Ledger is a vast merchant consortium that operates across Arcasia’s major ports and trade hubs. It is run not by nobles, but by Merchant-Lords elected by shareholders.

They own caravans, fleets, bonded warehouses, and heavily guarded vaults. Their ledgers are rumored to be magically bound, impossible to alter without sanction. While they bring stability to trade, they also manipulate prices, undercut rivals, and quietly fund conflicts when it suits their interests.

The Ring of Iron

The Ring of Iron is a loose society of technomantic artificers, many of them dwarven or trained by dwarves but not bound to any single hold. They pursue dangerous fusions of rune-magic, clockwork, and experimental machinery.

Some holds revere them as visionaries; others exile them for reckless innovation. Their mobile forges and experimental constructs are both marvels and hazards, and their obsessions often drag them into conflict with more conservative powers.

Mystical Orders and Hidden Networks

The Whispering Veil

The Whispering Veil is an order of lunar mystics who track and interpret the twin moons, Selunvar and Thalune. They maintain wandering temples, hidden observatories, and libraries of celestial records.

Kings and councils sometimes seek their counsel, but many find them disquieting. Within the Veil, splinter sects debate the meanings of eclipses, the fate of Chelonia, and whether a new empire is destined to rise.

The Boreal Pact

In the deep northern forests and glacial valleys live tribes bound to powerful spirit-beasts: mammoths, sabertooths, frost-stags, and stranger things. Together, these tribes form the Boreal Pact.

Their shamans commune with primal forces that few outside the north can even perceive. They remember imperial incursions vividly and brook little interference from outsiders, honoring ancient agreements with Auborean clans but wary of southern ambitions.

The Hollow Syndicate

The Hollow Syndicate is a clandestine network that trades in memories rather than coins. Instead of money, clients pay by surrendering specific recollections, which are stored in hidden vaults and used for leverage, blackmail, or eventual resale.

The Syndicate’s internal rules are rigid and peculiar: memories are never destroyed, only stored or reassigned. Their influence runs silently through courts, merchant houses, and even religious institutions, making them feared and difficult to confront directly.

The Web of Relationships

Arcasia’s societies are bound together by a dense web of trade, rivalry, respect, and old wounds. A few broad patterns define the current age:

• Chelonia and Tilçanhu share ancient magical ties but mistrust each other’s ambitions over oceanic power.
• The Free Peoples depend on Dwellomel for metal and tools, on Zareem for desert routes, and occasionally on Tidebreaker crews for deniable naval force.
• Empire remnants and the Kurai Shogunate are locked in a deep ancestral grievance, each seeing the other as the architect of their suffering.
• The Sapphire Ledger exerts soft power over many realms through trade and debt, often in quiet rivalry with more spiritual or isolationist factions like Tilçanhu, the Boreal Pact, and Sukoku.
• Zareem tribes and Tidebreaker Guilds form the hidden veins of smuggling and unofficial commerce, bypassing imperial laws and merchant monopolies.
• Mystical orders such as the Whispering Veil, and networks like the Hollow Syndicate, operate across borders, pulling unseen strings in moments of crisis.

No society moves in isolation. Decisions made in a Chelonian council chamber, a Sukoku war-tent, a Tilçanhu temple, or a Ledger countinghouse can cascade into consequences thousands of miles away.