United Domains of Gaea

Theorized to have originated from a universe outside the Interminate Lands, the United Domains of Gaea has spread its tendrils of influence into the Western Reaches, carving out colonies and trading posts amid untamed frontiers. Drawn by whispers of boundless mineral wealth and rare, coveted materials, they have set their sights on exploiting the region’s riches.

Yet, the Gaeans are strangers here, their understanding of the arcane art of thaumaturgy shallow at best. However, millennia of innovation unshackled from thaumaturgical reliance have forged a technological prowess unmatched by any other nation in the Known Expanse.

Technology

Their firearms strike with a precision, rate and power unrivaled by any Confederation counterpart. Their treadguns, which the Gaeans call tanks, are armored titans bristling with devastating weaponry. Yet, these behemoths defy expectation, moving with a grace and speed that leaves the Confederation's clumsy designs in the dust. Above, the air vibrates with the hum of sleek aircraft, executing maneuvers so fluid it seems the pilots are painting their dominance across the sky.

But the United Domains' superiority is not merely confined to the battlefield. Deep in the heart of their industrial complexes, manufactories churn out technological marvels with mechanical precision and breathtaking speed, eclipsing the Confederation's best efforts. Their trains defy convention, gliding along elevated tracks without wheels, as if carried by an unseen force. Even their ships are a revelationsleek, elegant vessels driven not by the whim of wind or the grit of steam, but by a seamless blend of machinery and enigmatic energy.

Their automata, the so-called robots and drones, are feats of engineering artistry. Unlike the Confederation’s lumbering, golem-like constructs, these machines are intricate wonders of cables, gears, and unknown mechanisms. They learn, adapt, and think, completing tasks in minutes that would take human teams hours. These mechanical companions are more than tools; they are a testament to the United Domains' technological prowess.

Nowhere is the brilliance of the Gaeans more evident than in their mastery of biological and genetic sciences. Their profound understanding of life’s fundamental building blocks has enabled feats that, to Confederation observers, verge on the miraculous. Disease and illness have been all but eradicated from their society, rendering Gaean citizens nearly invulnerable to the maladies of the Interminate Lands. Through these breakthroughs, they have also unlocked remarkable enhancements to both body and mind. The average Gaean lifespan is an astonishing 200 years, dwarfing the Confederation’s 70 to 80 years and making their citizens paragons of physical and mental endurance.

Ultimately, the full extent of the United Domains' technological prowess remains shrouded in secrecy, guarded fiercely behind their tightly controlled borders and the unrelenting military presence in their territories; rumors circulate of even more astounding advances, from weapons that can consume matter itself, to devices that control the weather, to machines that can predict the future with a startling degree of accuracy. Even from what the Confederation knows, it is clear that they are woefully outmatched. 

Culture

The people of the United Domains are driven by ambition and fueled by innovation, seeing themselves as explorers on the edge of progress. Their society champions individual achievement, rewarding those whose brilliance propels the nation forward. Their society is remarkably egalitarian, for there is little distinction between the roles of the sexes and individuals are judged solely on the merits of their capabilities. Every citizen has also served at least four years of military service, thus ensuring that they are all experienced combatants and capable of defending their communities.

This shared vision of greatness is bound by the philosophy of the Great Work, an ethos that justifies their bold expansion into the untamed Western Reaches. Their nationalism is tempered by a grudging respect for the Confederation’s thaumaturgic mastery. Yet, they see their rival as an antiquated relic, chained to traditions that stifle progress. To the United Domains, the Confederation’s reliance on thaumaturgy has left it stagnant, while their own embrace of technology promises a luminous future.

The Mendicant

No name inspires as much awe, contradiction, and dread across the Interminate Lands as the Mendicant. Whispers of his deeds and schemes echo across boardrooms, bunkers, and battlefields alike, from the hushed reverence of Gaean contractors to the clipped anxiety of bureaucrats and the cold caution of generals. Even among the artificial intelligences of the United Domains, his name surfaces in cryptic remarks and curiously reverent tones, as if his influence extends beyond the biological. And yet, despite this ubiquity, nothing about him is certain.

Within the ranks of the Office for Strategic Coordination and Assessment, Gaea’s formidable foreign intelligence agency, the miasma of disinformation runs so thick that not even their highest operatives agree on his true identity. Misinformation is not merely a tool turned outward; it is used inward, sowing confusion not only among the Confederation’s spies, but within the very minds of Gaea’s own operatives. This deliberate obfuscation renders any coherent understanding nearly impossible.

Interrogations of captured Gaean prisoners of war yield nothing stable. Some speak of him as a guiding hand, a benevolent architect behind civilization’s greatest progress. Others describe him with trembling bitterness, as a tyrant cloaked in logic and technocratic detachment. A few even seem confused when his name is mentioned, as though it carries no clear referent. It is not ignorance that fuels this dissonance; it is belief shaped by exposure, filtered through faction, ideology, and experience. What the Confederation has gleaned suggests less a single man and more a myth carried by a thousand fractured truths.

Even among the Tallymen, the elusive, vengeful remnants of the 32nd Special Operations Battalion, no consensus exists. These erstwhile soldiers, now turned into Gaea’s most hunted renegades, possess an unsettling knowledge of classified Gaean technology and doctrine, often exceeding the briefings of high-ranking officers. Yet on the subject of the Mendicant, their accounts spiral into incoherent nonsense. One claims he is evil incarnate, an architect of atrocities so vast that even Gaean AI turned away in shame. Another speaks of him as a fallen prophet, imprisoned by the very Council he once sought to steer toward utopia. A third whispers that he is not a person at all, but a shifting role passed down through centuries, each bearer molded by necessity into something more or less than human. And strangest of all, some refuse to speak of him altogether; not out of fear, but out of what can only be called reverence. No two Tallymen offer the same truth, as if each had glimpsed a different face of an unfathomable being.

Only a few things remain soli beneath the haze. The Mendicant is unquestionably male, or at least assumes a male form. He is known to be the most long-lived among the Gaeans, and this, in a civilization where the average citizen already lives two centuries, is no small thing. His longevity hints at something more than biological. He is not immortal in the mystical sense known to the Church, but in some other, more deliberate way. Perhaps technological, perhaps arcane, perhaps both.

What is certain is that he is the mind and hand behind the Ordinator project, a creation so secretive that not even the most skilled oracles of the Imperial Oracular Service nor the Amarian Church’s most exalted diviners from the Synod of Prophecy have managed to extract meaningful insight. This is unprecedented. Even the great weave of fate, typically tangled and flawed but still discernible to those who know its strands, seems to flow around the Ordinators, as if the universe itself hesitates to observe them.

That is where clarity dissolves completely. It is unknown if the Mendicant is subordinate to the Technocratic Council or if he operates above it, unseen and untouchable. Some factions within the Confederation believe he rules the United Domains in totality, a shadowed sovereign behind the mask of collective governance. Others speculate that he is merely a figurehead, a creation of the Gaean propaganda engine meant to symbolize a deeper structure; perhaps even a hive mind. More extreme theories exist as well. Some Isornian scholars fear he is not human at all, but an alien intelligence in synthetic guise, seeded into the world by the dying throes of a forgotten reality. The Church, never shy to see the hand of evil behind every mystery, preaches that he is an archdemon masquerading as a man, one of the Grand Dukes of the Abyss itself, one whose false immortality is a corruption of the divine spark. Meanwhile, hidden, persecuted cults among Gaean populations whisper prayers to him, elevating him to the status of a god, perhaps the only one they will ever know.

One of the most fiercely guarded secrets in the vast and labyrinthine architecture of the United Domains is a project so shrouded in layers of misdirection and obfuscation that even those tasked with containing the uncontainable are left groping in the dark. Heimdall, Director of ALEPH-NULL, the clandestine body responsible for securing the boundaries of reality itself, the hunter of paradoxes, the silencer of names never meant to be spoken, is himself unable to fully grasp its dimensions. He has sealed vaults of ancient anomalies, cast down entities that once ruled forgotten dimensions, and imprisoned fractured gods within quantum loops, yet he does not know the nature of the Ordinators. He suspects, perhaps, but even his suspicions are hollow shells compared to the truth.