Still something of a work in progress, but the essentials are there...

[hider=The Serene Empire of Vershellen]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/TMRRUXo.png[/img][/center]
[b]Nation Name:[/b] The Serene Empire of Vershellen (Demonym: Vershellese)
[b]Capital:[/b] Joyeuse, the Star in the South
[b]Population:[/b] 51, 727, 500
[b]Head of State:[/b] Her Effulgent Majesty the Empress Liliana, First of Her Name, Queen of the Vershellen Principalities, Matriarch of House Tara, Radiant Duchess of the Royal Marches and Marquess of the Rathing Sea, Defender of the Empire and the Star in the South, Lady of the Winter Dynasties and Mistress of the Opal Court.

[hider=The Divisions of Empire]

The Serene Empire has its origins and seat of power on a set of sprawling islands in the balmy equatorial seas. Imperial colonies have since been established on several other landmasses, supplying the islands with resources and acting as a market for the various foodstuffs and luxury goods the Home Duchies – the original islands of the Empire - provide. The islands themselves – with the exception of inhospitable, mountainous Monrutaine – are generally congenial, interspersing thick jungle and cloud forests with broad, open floodplains perfect for settlement. To others, though, Vershellen summers are stiflingly hot and incredibly humid, even with the frequent thunderstorms. The empire is split into several administrative and geographic units, as follows:

1.) [i]The Home Duchies[/i]. The origin of the Empire, the five Home Duchies are its beating heart. Richly watered by regular rain and spared the extremes of the world's weather as a whole, they are lush and green. The balmy capital region comprises the five principal islands of the ancient duchies – Arcadia, Monrutaine, Vallefay, Myrantia, Salamis and of course the Royal Marches themselves. The islands – with the exception of harsh Monrutaine – are a mixture of lush, rich rainforest and broad, fertile grasslands amply watered by rivers and dotted with sparkling lakes. Volcanic soil makes the ground almost explosively rich, whilst the mountains that exist are old and gently rolling, and the beaches slope down to the turquoise seas in long, white arcs. Most of the settlements of any note here are, unsurprisingly, seaports of one flavour or another, the greatest of which is dreaming Xantal on its thousand isles.

The imperial capital of Joyeuse sprawls across miles of the meandering river Venna in the Royal Marches.

2.) [i]Sairland[/i] - An archipelago to the south-east of the imperial heartland, in earlier times Sairland was an independent maritime nation and long-term trading partner of what was then the Vershellen Principalities. It was a state renowned for its commercial acumen, its music and its artistic sophistication, but in the latter days of its existence as an independent nation it was convulsed by the throes of revolution and internecine war. Vershellen, in particular, watched in horror as the Sairish people went mad – or so it seemed to them – burning down palaces and grand monuments that had stood for generations, tearing down a culture which had stood for centuries in a few short months. The Sairish merchant fleet and the navy together both quickly turned to piracy as the disintegration of the Sairish nation continued, fuelled by demagogues from a half-dozen different powers who had aimed Sairland like a missile at the Principalities and her shipping lanes, many of which passed through Sairish waters, long since considered safe and now suddenly some of the deadliest in the world.

Whilst Vershellen had initially tried to stay out of the conflicts in Sairland, as soon as Sairish ships began to prey on the Vershellen merchant marine, it became clear that [i]something[/i] had to be done. Those few Vershellese agents who happened to be in Sairland – and those that had survived the pogroms – were rapidly coordinated and the royal fleet sailed for Sairland in quick succession. The armada sent most of the Sairish fleet to the bottom of the sea in short order, just outside the capital Port Vannis, and, having defeated the seaborne threat, the Royal Army was the next up to bat, enormous troop transports disgorging fully a quarter of the entire army into Sairish harbours to restore order – by any means necessary. After several of the more belligerent pirates and agitators had been summarily executed by the advancing soldiery and their strongholds reduced to rubble by sorcerous bombardment, the islands began to calm down and the Royal Engineers came in to clean up the mess and repair some of the damage that the conflict – and the previous years of civil war – had wrought. With the agitators executed, deported or behind bars in the newly-created Empire’s [i]special[/i] cells under the tender care of the Harlequins, the Sairish citizens began to appreciate the return to sanity and the stability of Vershellen rule. 

The King of Sairland is Alexander de Rochevalle, governing his territory from the silver-domed Grand Palais in Port Vannis.

3.) [i]Cinnamon Isles[/i] - Exotic and engaging, a tourist destination right across the world – to quote a tourist advertisement ‘The dusky and enigmatic Cinnamon Isles, where natives the colour of rich chocolate cavort on the orange sands and wine-dark seas lap the shores under a nacarine sky.’ The Cinnamon Isles are found to the south and west of the Home Duchies. The mainstay of the Cinnamon Isles’ economy these days is tourism, unsurprisingly, given its great natural beauty and the aesthetic sense the Dominion’s rulers have preserved ever since the Isles fell under Imperial rule. 

The capital of the Cinnamon Isles is the city of Cinnabar, where Aurelia Thierrault, the Vicereine of the Isles and Countess of the Bitter Sea in her own right, rules from her sandstone palace and the sleek shapes of hotels discreetly mingle with the villas of the wealthy, jostling genteelly for position along the curving sweep of the beaches.
[/hider]
[hider=Major Cities of the Empire]

[hider=The Imperial Capital, City of Light, Joyeuse]

The City of Light is well-named indeed. One of the largest and certainly grandest of all cities, it sprawls in a great valley that covers most of the capital island of the Empire, filling it with a blaze of multi-coloured light that can be seen for many, many miles, an earthbound sun challenging the celestial one. Great towers spear the skies in stately array, fantastically-decorated and faced with iridescent filaments that make them glow brilliantly in the dark. The wide boulevards with their trees and fountains and ornate streetlamps are always thronged with the best and brightest of the empire, and high overhead a constant silver stream of airships goes to and from the highest docks while trains shoot back and forth and the river – insofar as is still navigable – is thronged with barges and pleasure craft.

Well is it said that all routes lead to Joyeuse.

At the highest point of the city there lies the gargantuan Whisper Palace, a colossus of engineering skill across the centuries, towering high into the sky, its fantastic weight relying on the unsung genius of the Royal Engineers to keep it from collapsing in on itself. Every scrap is carved or frescoed, jewelled or gilded, studded with statuary, mosaicked and painted and sculpted in a glorious monument to Imperial power and prestige, surrounded by sumptuous gardens that are a perfumed buffer from the hustle and bustle of the great capital. Golden magefire leaps from every towering spire and dome, making the building completely unmistakeable.

It is here, amid the perfumed gardens and beautiful halls that took generations to create – every view is arresting and pleasing to the eye in some way – that the Empress holds her Most Honourable Opal Court and all the paraphernalia of executive government are to be found. It is here that petitioners are heard, important diplomats and heads of state are received in unimaginable splendour and are entertained lavishly. The Whisper Palace is a great patron of the arts, and it is rare to find a day on which no artistic endeavour is being conducted in the vast edifice. 

[b]Salano[/b] is the most select of all the districts in Joyeuse, surrounding the Whisper Palace’s imposing sprawl. It is a district of open squares and stately buildings, winding boulevards and elegant, upscale boutiques placed a discreet stroll from the winter palaces of the Empire’s greatest nobility. 

Sereniteers in dress whites are ubiquitous here, and are scrupulously polite. This is not to say, however, that they will hesitate to drag offenders to the Imperial Judiciary which bulks in magisterial splendour at the eastern edge of the district. The magnificent frontage of the Tellurian Opera House bulks large here, a poem in gilt and marble, attended by the foremost luminaries of the Empire and producing some of the finest musical compositions known, vying with the many smaller conservatoria, opera houses and theatres for noble patrons.

One of the most iconic buildings in the district – and indeed, the entire city – is the gilt-roofed Archades Palace, the residence of House Montclair in the imperial capital. Blazing even brighter than the Whisper Palace, it is a lighthouse right across the entire city, visible from almost anywhere. The Palace of Reason, home of the Imperial Star Chamber Parliament, is also to be found here.

[b]Godsreach[/b] is another upper-class demesne; here merchantier princes and the lesser nobility keep their winter residences. Incense is thick in the air, warring with the scent of hellebores and bougainvillea that grow everywhere in this district. Godsreach is famed far and wide for its cuisine, from the opulent restaurants whose names are household words to the tiny, hole-in-the-wall eateries that nevertheless promise gastronomic delights from across the world, mixed with the finest cooks the Empire can offer – and since the Vershellese hold chefs and eating in high esteem, that is fine indeed.

Godsreach is also the location of the Imperial College of War, the GHQ of the Imperial Army, a large but rather anonymous complex of buildings in the standard High Imperial style, discreetly guarded and wrapped around with an enormous bleeding heartvine. It is here that the highest level of military strategy is formulated and orders are given to military units in all the far-flung provinces of the Empire.

[b]Palatine Ring[/b] – this district is the principal marketplace of the entire capital city, a chain of plazas fringed by shops and beset by stalls of traders from all across the world, well is it said that in the Ring one can buy anything – from Charys jewellery to Archades pearls and exotic goods from the distant countries of the world, all brought by the great merchant marine of the Empire to Xantal and then shipped over to the Imperial Capital. 

This district is also the site of the headquarters of the Joyeuse Sereniteers, the White Keep, the ancient border fortress of the city, now long since subsumed in the urban expansion and now comprehensively repurposed, which keeps crime down to a minimum despite even the market-day crowds that throng the wide avenues.

The Imperial Bank and the Stock Exchange are also to be found here, nestling close to the Keep behind walls and their own guards to supplement the Sereniteers.

[b]Ravenna[/b] is one of the poorer districts of the Imperial Capital, where most of the workers who support the great edifice of their betters live. Well-serviced and well-lit, it nonetheless has higher crime than most other areas and is a perennial thorn in the Sereniteers’ side.

[/hider]

[hider=City of Dreams, Xantal] 

The capital of Arcadia duchy and the Empire’s greatest port city and second capital, it is also one of the more unique cities in Imperial dominions, built on the fractured southern end of Arcadia island, a city of a million canals and thousands of docks. It is a city of stark contrasts, the frenetic Docklands utterly different to the friendly gilded spires of Archades Citadel, a fairytale castle surrounded by lavish water gardens and relaxing plazas that sits at the centre of the Golden Triangle, a large portion of the city which is proverbial for the idyllic summer residences of many nobles and the unparalleled exotic diversions that can be found there and nowhere else – indeed, the headquarters of the Bliss Alliance, the Empire’s guild of those whose work is the pursuit of pleasure is to be found here. In many ways, Xantal is the holiday playground of the wealthy, a hotchpotch of styles and periods, all improbably jumbled together as citizens have built and rebuilt over the millennia and the well-heeled attempt to outdo one another in extravagance and outrageous style. 

The Archadean Bacchanalia is more spectacular than even the capital’s and people come from all over the world to take part in the three-day glut of wine, women (or men, if your tastes run that way) and song. Xantal theatre and orchestras are known far and wide and its seafood is without compare – hardly surprising when one considers its location, a veritable floating city supported by the almost-inconceivably fertile duchy, with its orchards and vegetable farms and ranks of vines producing the very finest of spirits. The University of Archades, the premier institution of learning in  the entirety of the Empire, is also to be found here, its ancient buildings and college campuses sprawling across the centre of the city.

On the flipside to this holiday idyll are the buzzing Docklands on the seaward edges of the city, a vast labyrinth of cranes, wharves and warehouses that bulge with goods along the edges of the marina, while the hundreds of piers, wharves, docks and quays bustle with burly stevedores, merchants, sailors and captains. The taverns here are raucous and friendly, a haven for students and sailors alike, a far cry from the refined restaurants of the upmarket areas of town, but fights are nevertheless dealt with quickly by the Xantal Sereniteers; little violent disorder is permitted in the Archadean jewel. Fortified warehouses and docks hold vast stores of weapons and ammunition, and granaries under the city hold prodigious stocks of food, while the forest of aerial docks to the east of town can easily supply it for months.

The Imperial Admiralty, the governing board of the Imperial Armada, is also to be found here, close to Archades Palace – the Dukes of Arcadia have long been associated with first the sea, spearheading the development of related technology and the formation of the Armada itself.

Being the largest trading city of the entire Empire, Xantal’s transport system and marinas are concomitantly enormous; the largest train hub yet constructed has just been completed to allow hundreds of trains to disburse megatons of goods all across the home provinces and to take in the enormous harvests from the bountiful island, while the shipyards work ceaselessly to produce more and more trading ships of both aerial and nautical kinds to keep the Empire together.

Xantal and the surrounding duchy of Arcadia are ruled by Peregrine Montclair, the fifteenth Duke of Arcadia.
[/hider]

[hider=Coronne]

The beating industrial heart of the Home Duchies, Coronne is the centrepiece of Monrutaine island. It is not a tourist destination in the least; Monrutaine in any case is harsh and inhospitable, with sheer cliffs of granite, volcanic mountains and jagged reefs surrounding much of it. The island is split in two by the Charys range, the source of a great deal of raw materials for Coronne’s industrial combine. Mines honeycomb the foothills and cut into the volcanic mountains themselves, bringing forth a wealth of gold, gems and metal, as well as a great deal of fine masonry stone. This mineral tribute is then barged down the river to Coronne city and the vast foundries and forges of the League of Iron then turn this into almost any sort of good imaginable. Ars Technica, the premier engineering institute in all the Empire is located on the outskirts of Coronne, close to the manufactoria for the mass-production of alloys for the Imperial Armada that have played a large part in ruining Monrutaine more or less completely. The island can be seen for leagues by the glow of the furnaces, drifting up from the enormous manufacturing plants that have killed nearly every scrap of vegetation on the island, warring with the red blazes from the mines further inland that have wrecked the rest of it.

The Dukes of Monrutaine still maintain their ancestral residence amid the smokestacks of the industrial giant, a cyclopean fortress of obdurate granite, polluted and blasted by industrial effluents. In practice, though, the family resides in Joyeuse, remaining as far from the belching chimneys as they can. While they care for their duchy and the people in it as much as they can – they spend the most per head of any duchy on public health and other works, they nevertheless don’t choose to live themselves amongst all the pollution.

Nonetheless, Monrutaine duchy is an indispensable part of the Empire and the unity and strength of the duchy are very important – it is one of the primary construction yards for the Armada and Air Navy, and as such is protected by the cyclopean fortress of Coldharbour, a fearsome citadel bulking on the cliffs over the city, sited to support the Ducal Palace and the shipyards and rain fire down on any foe attempting to enter or blockade the harbour.

The current lord is Etienne de Reyer, the seventh Duke of Monrutaine.[/hider]

[hider=Bandahar]

Reachable only by train or airship, high in the mountains of its inhospitable island, Bandahar is a relatively small city devoted almost entirely to the profession of arms and under military governance as a primary Imperial staging ground and final redoubt in the event of invasion or revolution. 

Heavily fortified with the best that Sairish ingenuity can come up with, Bandahar is designed to be as close to impregnable as it is humanly possible to be.

Her mistress is Honore de Serenne, the Marshal of the Imperial Army.[/hider]

[hider=The Golden City, Vallefay]

In the very heartlands of the agricultural breadbasket of the Empire, in late summer, as far as the eye can see around Vallefay there is a sea of gold as the wheat crop ripens, matching precisely the buttery stone of the city. While duchy Arcadia provides Sairland with its fruits and vegetables, its wine, spirits and game, it is Vallefay’s extraordinarily rich plains, with two or three harvests a year, that put bread on the table of every Imperial household and help to fill the granaries of the Empire against famine.

Vallefay is also famous for its flowers, and the star-lilies that blaze day and night with radiance and sprout all over the city are on the tables of all the finest households in Joyeuse. It is known, too, for its mosaic and pottery works and the fanciful displays of their art that pave the city streets, but the intricate mosaic-work that adorns many of the finest buildings of the Empire is on the wane now and the workshops receive fewer and fewer commissions each year despite concerted attempts to raise the profile of their work and make them fashionable again.

Vallefay also possesses an exceptionally-good university, rivalling that of Archades itself, with the Ducal Library there putting even the Archadean Archives to shame – a point of constant contention between the two ancient institutions, which compete hotly for students, sporting and academic attainment. 

The master of Vallefay is Alexis de Contarini, the seventh Duke of Salamis.[/hider]

[hider=Gagarin]

A large inland city on the island of Caziri, it is famed for its silk and its glass. The most sublime creations of glass come from the workshops of Gagarin, shaped and formed and worked by past masters of their craft, working to exacting precision and accepting nothing less than total perfection in form and aesthetics. Rinian glasswork is prized beyond gold in the Empire.

The dupioni silks from the mulberry orchards in the foothills outside the city also fetch high prices; Rinian tailoring is among the finest in the Empire; after all, it’s not for nothing that Gagarin is called the fashion capital of Sairland.

The mistress of Gagarin is Martine de Rochevalle, the tenth Duchess Caziri.[/hider]

May add more later…

[/hider]
[hider=Basic Demographics]

-[i]Sairish[/i]: Traders, merchant venturers and erstwhile pirates from Sairland, a small, fertile archipelago to the south and west of Tara’s Home Duchies heartland. The stereotypical Sairish appearance is one of pale skin, blonde hair, fine features and eyes like the sea itself.

-[i]Vershellese[/i]: Decadent elven natives of the Serene Empire’s heartland, the Vershellese are dark-skinned and fire-eyed, revelling in heat and humidity that would severely hamper others. A common myth is that their ancestors were burned black by the sun – though far from retreating from any mystical rebuke instead they flourish and thrive. Peerless engineers, to the Vershellese the world is the greatest, grandest engineering challenge of all, to be overcome by ingenuity, intelligence, steel and fire. And, if it proves useful, a dash of magic. This attitude has seen them drag themselves up by their bootstraps from the mud to the shining heights of their empire, and their eyes are fixed firmly on the glittering horizon.

-[i]Pencharnese[/i]: Hailing from the Cinnamon Isles, the dusky, laughing Pencharnese have held and cherished an economic rivalry with Sairland and the Sairish since time immemorial. As with many of the other significant groups in the Empire, their cosmopolitan homeland, they are fiercely proud of their trading heritage and their practices of hospitality.

[/hider]
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[hider=Important People]

[b]Empress Liliana[/b] - Serious and devoted to her country, the young Empress tries to be balanced and listens carefully to her Opal Court and their counsels, carefully taking soundings before committing to any action. Her still-childlike figure is a powerful tool in making others underestimate the power of the Empire, while internally she is held up as a beacon of hope. The Empress always makes a point of visiting any disaster area or great new development, to either celebrate the achievements of the people or to commiserate and direct more resources into recovery procedures.

Her closest counsel is the Imperial Chancellor, Peregrine Montclair, the Duke of Arcadia.

[center][h3][i]Her Majesty's Government and its Cabinet[/i][/h3][/center]

1.) [b]Peregrine Montclair, Imperial Chancellor and Duke of Arcadia[/b] - The affable and smiling fifteenth Duke of Arcadia, Earl of Xantal, Viscount Saere and Imperial Chancellor of the Star Chamber Parliament, Peregrine Montclair is the day-to-day [i]de facto[/i] head of the government. As Chancellor it's Perry's job to orchestrate the often-fractious Parliament and govern, in his empress' name, the far-flung possessions of the Serene Empire. 

Even before his ascension to the Chancellery, Peregrine Montclair was one of the most powerful men in the Empire – not that he shows it much, hiding his true power and wealth behind a smiling, affable façade. The balmy tropical seas around his pleasant, fertile duchy provide seafood, fish and pearls in cornucopian abundance, and the idyllic rolling fields and terraced vineyards which carpet the gentle landscape further grow luxury cash crops, succulent fruits and headily potent wines for the finer tables of the Empire. The Duke also receives vast revenues from the trading ports of his capital; indeed, he might as well own his own private navy, given he is the Chairman and owner of the Trifecta Shipping Group, one of the largest freight-and-passenger services in the Empire.

He is the leader of the [b]Centrist Party[/b] in imperial politics.

2.) [b]Honore de Serenne, Viscountess St. Clair and Marshal of the Imperial Army[/b] - The redoubtable Marshal of the Imperial Army and, therefore, [i]de facto[/i] Minister of War for the Serene Empire, Honore is a dark horse among the high nobility. The Serennes as a House are minor nobility in Arcadia duchy, but Honore, from a cadet branch of the family, pursued a highly successful career in the military, fighting numerous battles and rising through the officer corps (her family, after all, paid to put her through officer training rather than see her slog through with the rest of the grunts). She reached the rank of Lieutenant-General in the Royal Engineers before retiring to take up politics. She commands the entire army from the Imperial College of War, alongside her counterpart in the Navy.

She is a member of the [b]Centrist Party[/b].

3.) [b]William de Vallière, Viscount Vajours and First Lord of the Admiralty[/b] - Endlessly energetic, de Vallière is the dynamo that drives the Imperial Admiralty. A former Admiral of the Imperial Armada and relentless modernizer to boot, under his watch the Admiralty has commissioned and documented more studies, experiments and testbeds than at any other point in its history. His drive for all things new does not only extend to new ships and weapons, though - he has ruthlessly streamlined the notoriously-complex shipbuilding process to good effect and military acclaim. His signature practically sizzles on every important piece of Admiralty legislation or Board decision over the last few years, and it would be hard to find a more dedicated naval man.

He is a member of the [b]Expansionist Party[/b] in imperial politics.

4.) [b]Gabriel de Marin, Marquis of the Reach and Foreign Secretary[/b] - Tenth Marquis of the Reach, Earl Rosemont, Earl Tavistock and Baron Tenshard, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is a powerful man indeed. A career diplomat and politician, the Gothic colossus of the Foreign Office is a home away from home. Precise and smooth, a graduate of Queen's Ring Academy and Polaris University, like most of the Cabinet, he is supremely comfortable in the clubby atmosphere of Parliament and a past master at its many and varied backroom deals and internecine political intrigue.

As Foreign Secretary, he is well-placed to put that particular talent to use on a wider stage. As chairman of the [b]Expansionist Party[/b], he is a strident and well-known voice in Parliament, pushing for bringing civilisation to the benighted heathens of the world by any means necessary.

5.) [b]Nathaniel Ruthven, Earl Summervale and Chancellor of the Exchequer[/b] - Precise and unflappable, Nathaniel Ruthven is the oldest and perhaps most conservative of the current Cabinet. Having engaged in the mysterious world of high finance for many years as Lord Allenby - his courtesy title, before ascending to the earldom - he has a keen understanding of what makes the Treasury tick and, crucially, how to keep it ticking. Instinctively against any great new expenditure of imperial lucre, he keeps tight control over the purse-strings of government.

A valued - but extremely irritating - member of the Cabinet, his careful fiscal policies often force Peregrine Montclair and the other members of Cabinet to exhaustively justify their spending plans. Once set on an issue, he has a will of iron and is very difficult to shift. He is a member of the [b]Centrist Party[/b], and is known as the Father of the House of Blood, being the longest-serving aristocrat in Parliament.

6.) [b]Olivier de Perrault, Baron Daubeny and Chairman of the Imperial Board of Trade[/b] - Head of the sprawling imperial trading bureaucracy, responsible for every port and freight terminus in the land, in charge of tariffs and customs, the Imperial Board of Trade is a powerful body, and its head an influential man.

Rotund and jolly, Daubeny is a renowned gourmand and epicure, enjoying the finer things in life that his position affords, either in the form of gifts and treats from the great merchantier houses looking to persuade him and his committees one way or the other, or else in the enviable access his position affords.

Perhaps naturally, he is a member of the [b]Expansionist Party[/b], aligning closely with their ideals of ordered imperial dominion - and with it, yet more trading destinations under the empire's banner.

7.) [b]Solomon Holmes-Selkirk, Viscount Oriel and Secretary of State for Home Affairs[/b] - Details! [b]Expansionist Party[/b]

8.) [b]Cynasse de Montrachet, Countess Fenton and Secretary of State for the Colonies[/b] - Details! [b]Centrist Party[/b]

9.) [b]Amelia Farnese-Sagari, Viscountess Thalassa and Secretary of State for Magic[/b] - Details! [b]Centrist Party[/b]

10.) [b]Martyn Hamilton, Viscount Drax and Secretary of State for Industry[/b] - Details! [b]Expansionist Party[/b]

11.) [b]Charles Clare-Malet, Marquis Templecombe and Attorney-General to the Opal Court[/b] - Details! [b]Apolitical legal advisor[/b]

[center][h3]Her Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition[/h3][/center]

1.) [b]Sir David de Borbonne, Baron Mersenne and Leader of the Opposition[/b] - Details! [b]Liberal Party[/b]

2.) [b]Airey Fanshawe-Curreau, Earl Vallon and Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs[/b] - Details! [b]Coextensive Party[/b]

3.) [b]Sadi de Carnot, Viscount Carnot and Shadow Foreign Secretary[/b] - Details! [b] Liberal Party[/b]
[/hider]
[hider=Culture and Society]
A cosmopolitan melting-pot of virtually all the races across the world, the Serene Empire’s humming, raucuous, [i]busy[/i] port cities ring with a hundred languages. Spices and tea, gold and gems, hardwood lumber and stone, slaves and oil, coffee and copper, iron and wine – and, of course, aetherium by the gross and great gross of tons…these are the lifeblood of the Empire and its industrious, hedonistic citizens, traded in their labyrinthine markets. 

Indeed, it is said that in dreaming Xantal, oldest and greatest and most vibrant of the Empire’s many port metropoli, anything anyone might conceivably desire can be had…provided the money holds out. 

A tide of gold imperials rolls between the empire and the wider world, and rarely has time to go cold. The vast merchant marine carries Vershellen sailors and traders to the four corners of the globe; no coastal country hasn’t had a visit from a Vershellen merchant clipper, and an intricate filigree webwork of trade routes criss-crossing the Known Globe all converge on the dark heart of the Empire.

The Vershellese, the oldest citizens of the Empire, are in many ways products of their environment: the balmy, fertile volcanic islands and warm, giving tropical seas. Hospitable to a fault, oh yes, friendly and open and with a palpable love of life. The relatively easy life afforded them by their lushly giving homeland gave them time since antiquity for intrigue and plotting, for byzantine ritual and labyrinthine court protocol.
Not all is idyllic, though – the spectacular summer thunderstorms can wreak untold havoc, as could the many volcanoes that dot the imperial heartlands, and it is here that the Vershellese demonstrate their other great talent. Peerless engineers, they have been building and damming, diverting and drilling and blasting since time immemorial. Water on the Home Duchies dances to the tune of tens of thousands of busy, industrious professionals, and the tireless Royal Engineers are making strong inroads on the lava which still occasionally bedevils imperial prosperity.

The Vershellese group together into sprawling extended family groupings, the Houses Major and Minor of the empire. There are thousands of them, linked by a complex and ever-shifting webwork of mutual interests, old feuds and older alliances, and favours owed and owing. Any Vershelleen of wealth and breeding would be expected to casually sweep a ballroom with a languid gaze and instantly see the webwork at play, the whole shadowy Great Game of House politics immanent in the air and yet never overtly referred to. 

The most powerful Houses Major have given the Empire its nobility, the aristocrats which rule the Home Duchies and the Colonies by grace of the crown. They walk a perpetual tightrope; those to whom great things are given, greatness is expected, and wherever an imperial noble fails in their oaths to crown and country the Empire is quick to cut out the rot before the glittering Opal Court is compromised. This is not to say that the imperial aristocracy is a closed club; far from it. Many a successful merchant prince, daring explorer or industrial magnate, whatever their origins, have found their accomplishments under the imperial aegis acknowledged with an estate and a peerage, the state gathering to its bosom the best and brightest of its blood.

In the past, where other nations fell to infighting and civil war, to bloody revolution and dissolution, the Crown has provided stability, and with stability has come prosperity. Monarchs come and go, aristocrats flower and fade in the House of Blood of the Star Chamber Parliament, but the Crown endures. 

The aristocracy is not a closed club, either; Vershellen has a long tradition of ennobling its successful luminaries, and that tradition continues to this day. In every commoner's briefcase there rests a ducal coronet – with enough hard work and inventiveness anyone in the empire may grasp it.

There are several identities within the empire – Sairish, Pencharnese, Vershelleen and so on, but all are imperial citizens, equal and with the same rights, duties and privileges as those fortunate enough to live in the imperial heartlands. A great deal of effort goes into securing an overarching imperial identity.

In the main, the civilised Vershellese do not believe in gods or divinities of any kind; this is an ancient quirk of the realm, for in antiquity they many a time faced foes preaching blood and thunder to the Vershellese, prophesying that the very trees and rocks and the seas themselves would come alive and slaughter them in their sleep.

None of this occurred, breeding a deep disdain for gods and god-botherers in the early Vershellese, a trait which has remained to this day. Again and again, Vershellen has faced zealots, witch-doctors, self-proclaimed avatars and paladins of other faiths and prevailed; the closest thing they have to religious devotion is their pride in their empire and their trust in people and steel. Any so-called 'divine' phenomena are, their mindset asserts, due to currently-unexplained natural or arcane occurrences, the province of science or magic as yet not understood.

Religion is allowed in the Serene Empire, however - so long as it does not threaten the safety of the citizens or the good order of the empire. They are merchants, through and through, flexible and adaptable across a hundred different cultures and accepting of many a harmless little peccadillo.

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[hider=The Imperial Economy]
Given the geography of most of the nation, the mainstay of the Vershellen economy is shipping and trade – trade is the lifeblood of the state and it has many policies and laws to make establishment there highly attractive – and lucrative. Hundreds upon thousands of shipping companies originate in and are headquartered in the Empire, giving her a merchant fleet nonpareil.

Other vital sectors of the economy are generally more in luxury goods – imperial wine and brandy is famed right across the globe, for instance, and chocolate is also a major part of their exports, for example. There is also a substantial mining industry, wresting the volcanic wealth of empires from the rich earth, and tectonic upheaval in the distant past has produced vast seams of coal close to the surface to feed their ever-hungry furnaces.

Declining in importance now is the production of foodstuffs, at least on the export roster, as much of the silver bounty of the seas and the grain from the Home Duchies is now used to feed the Empire’s expanding population rather than contributing significantly to the balance of trade. 

The final pillar of the imperial economy is aetherium, the Serene Empire’s term for crystallised magic. Rich wells of magical potential densely dot the imperial heartlands, enormous spiralling veins and near-pure crystal mountains are not uncommon sights in the magic-rich isles, and despite the near-ubiquitous use of basic cantrips across the empire, they have barely scratched the surface of the arcane wealth heaped upon their country.

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[hider=History]
Imperial history, appropriately enough, begins with records of diplomatic negotiations, ties and alliances forged between various peoples and factions that occupied the lands around what is now the Imperial capital, Joyeuse, as various interests jockeyed for power amongst themselves.

The original Island Accords are still to be found in the deepest and most carefully-controlled archives of the Whisper Palace, signed in blood and held there as part of the Imperial Museum, one of the finest collections of artifacts from centuries of culture and from around the world – including Dominions past and present, and those items looted in war from other nations. 

Following the accords, and the unification of the warring factions under one leader, whose line would come to be imperial family to this day, the then-Kingdom entered a stage of peace and prosperity, allowing the flourishing of the sciences and the arts of all kinds – theatre and music, the first flickerings of arcane experimentation and extraction, improved viticulture and agrarian practices, the first establishment of the rule of law – the beginnings of the Sereniteers, who proudly trace their organisation’s history right back to King Halaven the Third, known for his massive engineering projects – the paving of every road in the Kingdom, for one – as well as his devotion to the rule of law and the ending of the feudal system of complete and total autocratic power of his nobles.

After much wrangling and seven assassination attempts, the King’s reforms became codified and enshrined into law, but it was his son who truly enforced them, massively increasing the power of the fledgling Sereniteers and starting the Imperial Judiciary to hear cases too serious for local justice or the rough music of the mob.

In this way, and by dint of new peerages and privileges being handed out to those who did their duty by their people – and did it well – the Kingdom earned itself a noble class possessing that rarest of all virtues in lords, a sense of duty and [i]noblesse oblige[/i] to their subjects, a great boon that has seen the landed nobility and gentry as a whole, and the monarchy itself, through all the turmoils and upheavals of technological advancements, Imperial expansions and social change, keeping their positions at the top of the heap.

After the fledgling kingdom was secure in her home territories, had built up her infrastructure and settled down, with the stately march of the seasons bringing with them food and wealth, the thoughts of the high nobility – and of the crowned head of the kingdom – turned, inevitably, towards imperial ambition.

The Kingdom had long since traded with various neighbours – simple settlements, for the most part, which peaceably joined the burgeoning kingdom without much fuss as the benefits for doing so – and the potential repercussions for resisting – became ever greater. As the trade fleets expanded and technology marched forwards, pirates and ne’er-do-wells began to plague the sea lanes, preying on the wide-beamed cargo ships, looting and burning them, often putting the crew to the sword.

The upshot of this, and the proverbial screaming of the merchantier princes in Joyeuse, was the formation of what is now the grand Imperial Armada, originally little more than a small group of light, fast escort vessels to protect trading ships.

Soon, though – under the enlightened guidance of the Empress Clarisse – the fledgling Armada grew into a true blue-water navy, capable of projecting Vershellen power on a scale never before imagined. Swiftly following this seminal development – which remains at the core of imperial policy today – came the idea of the Dominions, the island colonies across the sea which girdle the imperial heartlands.

Very little disturbed the orderly expansion of the Empire over the next several centuries; the Empire had never really gone in for conquest in the conventional sense, believing it to be, in general, prohibitively expensive and lead to massive unrests for centuries down the line. Instead, they favour a much more insidious method of incorporation, the integration of one nation into the greater whole by means of favourable trade deals, massive investment, and advisors and consultants to the highest levels of government.

When the fall came, it was internal, rather than at the hands of an external power. The Empire had grown rather complacent on their islands; wealth almost beyond imagining was theirs, the continental powers had blasted themselves back to the stone age through some colossal sorcerous endeavour gone badly wrong, and those few powers who still retained an ocean-going capability were firmly focused on the continent itself. This allowed men and women of weaker will and watered ambition to rise to the top of Imperial society, and it was there that the rot first set in. Some nobles – far from the majority, but still some – grew lax in their duties, indolent in their wealth and privilege, abusing their subjects and opening the door for dissatisfaction and demagogues, resistance and insurrectionist movements.

If strong leaders had been on the Empire’s thrones, this would not have been tolerated; the Eyes and Harlequins would have been mobilised to remove the offending nobles and nip the resistances in the bud before appointing a competent and loyal servant to the newly-vacant titles. However, the Court and Council of the day ignored the warnings from their underlings in the Dominions and continued as if nothing were amiss. Others in the nobility began to follow the example of the initial few, seeing that no crushing repercussions emerged, and the seeds of revolution grew ever richer. When it came, the upheaval was immense, throwing all of the imperial world into chaos.

The Great Revolt is the term now used to describe that period in time, where it seemed that the Empire was disintegrating around its leaders. Everywhere they turned there was revolution and civil war, colonies deserted left, right and centre, there were riots on streets that had been peaceful for centuries and the Imperial Eyes and Harlequins were woefully inadequate to deal with the scale of the violence. The Imperial Army, too – what was left of it after defections and massacres - was occupied in its own power struggles, and the Armada was often busy fighting itself to keep control of the trade lanes that kept the Empire solvent. With a weak leadership and conflicting orders, it seemed as though the diminished, disorganized military was incapable of holding the Empire together.

Many in the Empire seriously began to consider the possibility that their nation would come apart at the seams, and began to make plans to leave, abandoning ship with as much of their wealth as possible before the fires of war consumed it all.

It was into this collapsing morass that Emperor Alexander – The Magnificent, as he is now known – stepped on the occasion of his ailing father’s death – possibly assisted, persistent rumour holds – by a poisoned blade. Exercising powers that hadn’t been used for hundreds of years – and in many cases, completely forgotten-about, the young monarch excised much of the failing leadership of what, in the time of crisis, was the most important branch of the Empire – the military – at a stroke, promoting able officers he’d met in his position as a military officer and heir in to fill the gap and devising a new strategy by which the Empire as a whole might be saved.

It was a fairly brutal method, to be sure; the bulk of the Army and Armada was recalled to the Home Duchies, while the rest were ordered to gather up as much food as possible and retreat to regional strongholds, there to await the return of the main forces. Food shipments from Arcadia and Salamis duchies to the outlying colonies ceased and began to be stockpiled in the Home Duchies instead, while Coronne’s foundries fired up to a level not seen for two hundred years, refitting and rearming the battered Army and Armada under its new, decisive commanders.

In this manner, the hammer of the Empire was brought down on one fractious Dominion after another. Deprived, in many cases, of food from the Home Duchies, the colonies began to struggle and the instigators of rebellion found it harder and harder to gather armies and fight the tenacious remnants of the colonial peacekeepers. Then, too, with the full might of the Eyes and Harlequins focused on one province, demagogue after demagogue was found dead in their beds, some seemingly of old age, some rather more spectacularly. The remainder often sprouted knives from their foreheads in the middle of rabble-rousing speeches, and this broke their resolve; they scattered into hiding, where the Harlequins hunted them down at their leisure.

With those who had fanned the fires of revolution dead, and the spirit of rebellion on the wane, the Army and Armada sailed back to reclaim their old lands, re-establishing marine control, retaking and rejoining the fortresses which secured each province in Imperial hands, bringing in the support of the Royal Engineers to rebuild damaged cities and strongholds, even as civilian barges discharged tons of food back into the colonies from the great stockpiles that had built up in the preparatory phase of the plan.

The Emperor also reformed the methods by which civilian governors were appointed, returning to the old ways of merit-appointed Governors-General followed up with Empire-educated natives in the fullness of time, rather than appointing members of the old families as had become common practice.

It would, of course, be folly to say that this plan went off without hitch, hindrance or casualty, however. Some of the outer colonies died out entirely, others overthrew Imperial rule completely, but the very core of the nation and her most populous and important Dominions were preserved as one, cohesive whole.

With the immediate threat of the disintegration of the Empire gone, more finesse was applied to the remaining colonies; the Harlequins sharpened their knives – and other, subtler devices – and quietly removed (either fatally or not) the leaders of the resistances in the other colonies. Into this breach there stepped the traditional silver-tongued Vershellen diplomats, plumply well-fed and supported by a reinvigorated Imperial Armada, a stark contrast to the by-then shabby resistance movements and the gaunt, starving people as a whole. The greater part of the Empire was won back without great bloodshed, through words and treaties rather than by the sword.

It must be remembered, though, that whilst the Empire is now hale and whole again, it has spent a great deal of blood and treasure on fighting itself, and at the end of the Great Revolt many cities and colonies lay in ruins. Vershellen has exerted herself to the utmost in reversing that damage; her shining cities once more reach for the heavens and her economy roars triumphant, but the scars of the Shattered Age run deep, and much is still being recovered. Whilst powerful, the Armada is not the titanic force that it once was, for example, and many of the finer and more esoteric points of the arcane arts were lost when the Empire splintered. The Army, too, still suffers; spread wafer-thin across the breadth of the empire and starved of many resources as the Vershellen scramble to try and rebuild their glorious navy.

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[hider=The Imperial Army]
The Imperial Army is a very grandiose term for the loose patchwork of House Guards, local militia forces and imperial retinues that currently serve the Empire as its land forces. An island nation, the Armada has always been the Senior Service, taking the lion’s share of the military budget and most of the glory. The purpose of the Imperial Army has always been to build fortifications and keep the colonies pacified, following in the wake of the Imperial Armada; it doesn’t have the logistical legs for a protracted land campaign, let alone the training, equipment or leadership.

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[hider=The Imperial Armada]
Evolving from the escorts of merchant venturers setting out on the great blue main in search of riches, and thoroughly fed up with the depredations of the pirates and freebooters that infested the thousand fractured, tropical isles of the imperial heartland, the Imperial Armada is a true blue-water navy. Three hundred black-hulled ships zealously guard the trade lanes of the empire, sleek and deadly and crewed by the cream of the Imperial military. It is run from the Imperial Admiralty in Xantal, located close to the largest shipyards of the Empire – and to the capital.

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[hider=Traits]

[b]Imperial Animation:-[/b] Hulking, clanking, hissing war-constructs are a common sight in the armies of the more magically-puissant nations of the world – able to shrug off the attacks of all but the most powerful, serving as bulwarks for allied forces and mobile heavy weapons platforms. The Serene Empire has taken the field much further, and golems of all kinds have proliferated through imperial lands, from tireless industrial models, working through heat and noxious fumes that even the Vershellese would find lethal, to colossal military warforms, to delicate and precise artisan variants and everything in between.

[b]Fully Developed:-[/b] +4 points to Development. 

[b]Peerless Engineers:-[/b] Show a Vershellen native a problem and they’ll devise an engineering solution for you. Everything can be broken down, at bottom, to an issue of [i]production[/i] and/or [i]construction[/i]; as a people they love to build and plan and make and mould. River flooding? Dams by the bushel. Housing crisis? Soaring spires in grand array. Lack of harbour space? Carve a new marina from the living rock. In ages past the empire fused magic and technology together to make a multitude of machines that imposed their will on their lands; such information has long been lost, but the skill and temperament for such wonders still remain within the people. 

[b]Seaborne:-[/b] The Empire is a land of seafarers, and the Army has always played second fiddle to the Armada. Indomitable at sea, on land their training and doctrines are lacking, and they focus almost exclusively on the time-honoured imperial strategy of colonial peacekeeping, working from a network of fortresses and bastions. This makes them rather unsuited for a long land campaign – at least against foes of comparable sophistication.

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[hider=Tech Trees]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/6EVI6WB.png[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/tXrDweZ.png[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/VnhAmJa.png[/img]

[img] https://i.imgur.com/DmpNGHf.png[/img]
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[hider=Rolls]

Land Area: 14 – 3 = 11
Land Fertility: 15 
Development: 19 
Land Power: 1 (swap)
Naval Power: 11 + 1 = 12
Economy: 19 
Magical Reserves: 17 + 2 = 19
Magical Sophistication: 7 (swap) + 5f = 12
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