Silvertree Empire

The Silvertree Empire was founded on the first year After Arrival (0 AA) by Emperor Magnar, in the heart of the Lands of Man. It is made up of the remnants of six former kingdoms and three vassal states. It is large and varied in geography and custom, so the mores explained in this article will be based on the closest to imperial norms as can be described in 200 AA.

History

The Lands of Man were a place of constant strife for two thousand years, as humans slowly came into their own as a race. Rival warlords would squabble over the shortest miles and the smallest plowable fields, driven by that most human of motivations: greed. Soon, lesser warlords and their bands would be taken into larger groups, and six rough kingdoms came together, to say nothing of the smaller cultures on their peripheries. There was Northland, in the frozen tundras, where brave diminutive folk hunted trolls and built palaces out of ice and rode black, angry waters; mighty, mountainous Ravynnar, where bare-chested warriors took slaves and forged roads from their endless vaults of iron; rich Tyresia of blue-painted domed halls and verdant meadows; endless Noirda, where volcanos left black-sand deserts, and camel-mounted traders grew rich off of transit; Ptolnom, the kingdom of wild veldtlands and countless white-stone citadels; and last great kingdom, Arias, where seafarers filled markets with whale meat, and distilleries produced flammable fluids for weapons and utility.

From this war-torn world rose a warrior, Magnar the Noirdan, a fighter in a land of traders. He led a contingent of his greatest warriors into the very capital of Tyresia, and sacked it. Ravynnari warlords moved south to protect their closest ally, and Ptolnomic spearmen moved north to protect Magnar's bid for arable land. Soon, four massive armies fought over the now-lost city of Byblon, and it was reduced to rubble. At night, the learned of all of the camps began to note a large, blue light, brighter than any star, growing larger in the sky every night. On the fifth night, the light was brighter than the moon, and larger too, and a great roaring began to fill the air. Winds lifted up in the camps and on the seas, and men and dwarves fled in fear. The light, impossibly bright, lit the sky on fire, and with a great earthquake, came down onto the ruins of the city.

Magnar, fearless Magnar, left his camp that night, and disappeared into maelstrom. For a week he was missing, and then, when the winds and dust settled, he emerged, clad in silver armor, arm-in-arm with a strange, willowy being. The Arrival occurred, and with it the foundation of the empire. With his new allies, the elves, Magnar brought the Lands of Man together, and forged a lasting peace.

Within fifty years, Magnar laid waste to the orcish kingdoms in the Longspine Mountains, and made truces with the Western Kingdoms, which would join with the empire as vassal states. He embraced the technology created by the gnomes, and began to follow the Silver Path with his new elven comrades. The empire undertook a twenty year campaign, The Harrying, which purged the gnolls from the central plains, and began to set up forts along the periphery. For one hundred years, the empire consolidated and grew strong.

When homesteaders and squatters from beyond the periphery began fleeing back into the empire, fearful of a malevolent force, Magnar began an investigation. The goblinoids and their allies had begun spreading east from their homes along the western coast. In 180 AA, Magnar created the Western Settlement Act, appointed three March-Princes and their constituent dukes and counts, and continued the spread of the empire west.

Politics

To appease the strongest and richest within the empire, Magnar agreed to continue the tradition of peerage, but streamlined it and did away with unnecessary titles. Within the Silvertree Empire, each of the former kingdoms is led by a prince, as are the three border marches. From there, princely lands are divided into duchies, which are each led by a duke, and those are then further divided into counties, which are ruled by counts. Counties are further divided into patron-lands, which may or may not be ruled by patrons eligible to hold the rank of count. A baron cannot become a viscount or count unless they inherit the title, but a viscount can become a count, a count can become a duke, and a duke can become a prince. Viscounts and counts of each duchy meet regularly to discuss business and internal conflicts (dukes regularly meet with each other and their prince) and each of those parties are eligible to live in Silvertree to represent their land on the world stage, but most have an agent represent them to better insure their power at home.

Reforms brought about during the Centennial Jubilee of the Empire, commoners gained the ability to vote for representatives in Silvertree, and each county votes for a non-patron every two years to act as an agent for their issues. Many representatives, especially from the marches, opt to spend their two years within Silvertree, and receive weekly messages from their constituents.

Commoners of all stripes are expected to pay a quarter of their yearly earnings, whether in gold or in physical tribute, to their counts. Patrons are expected to pay a full half of their earnings, or opt to spend a quarter on improving their holdings and send the other quarter to their count. The count is able to keep one half of this tribute, one quarter is spent on the county, and the other quarter is sent to the duke. Because a duke is often already the head of a county, he is obligated to send all of this accumulated wealth to the prince, who sends all of the consolidated tribute to the Emperor. Many counts, dukes, and princes (especially the latter two) add to their annual take by investing in companies and building monopolies in their territories.

Industry and Technology

Architecture in the empire is hugely varied, and comes from several sources. Northlander architecture is based around a tall central hall, with low spaces off to either side, to provide comfort and warmth to both halflings and humans. Ravynnic architecture is similar in form, but stone-based, and due to far-fewer halflings, tends to be more monumental in scale, reflecting the mountains; central halls can be two or three stories hall, and within the massive spaces, several lesser families may live together, or a single family and their slaves would have lived under a single roof.

In Tyresia, where the climate is generally more temperate, large outdoor spaces developed on the hall model of architecture, and columned spaces are the norm, and the distinctive flared domes of their great houses or places of worship grew up around the need to release warmer air from their halls, and soon became decorative elements. Noirdic architecture is very similar to Tyresian architecture, but columned spaces were relegated to interior courtyards, and heavy outer walls are necessary to keep out the elements. Flat roofs are also very common, with the dry climate, and the high-roofed halls and domes flattened out into broad clerestories to let in more light and provide air circulation.

Ptolnomic architecture is the most distinctive architecture of the Lands of Man: the traditional dry-stone methods of their engineering is most stable in circular patterns, so Ptolnomic citadels are based on fractals of circles, with wide outer walls breaking into smaller and smaller circular structures within. Ptolnomic domes were logical ways to enclose theit structures, not decorative, and tend to be shallow and wide. Arian architecture is still very much in keeping with Northlander architecture, with heavy stone foundations learned from Ptolnom to anchor their buildings, and wide columned verandas to make their wet, warm climate more hospitable.

As the marches opened up, the syncretic Arian architecture became the standard for domestic architecture throughout the new lands. Inexpensive to build and structurally sound, Arian architecture proliferated quickly. High, soaring Ravynnic architecture became the standard for holy sites, sometimes expanded internally with Tyresian columns, and sometimes with Noirdic courtyards. Civic buildings will typically reflect the tastes of the earliest inhabitants of the area, but will usually tend towards Arian simplicity and utility, with decorative elements added on. The nobility, with their greater education and expensive tastes, build homes reflecting their worldliness.

Contemporary dwarven architecture virtually indistinguishable from human architecture, but tends to be shorter than usual, and a little taller than halfling architecture. For example, hall-form architecture built by a dwarf will be of a uniform height, unlike traditional Northlander methods. Before dwarves made an effort to become a part of human civilization, and were nomadic, they lived in strong, circular tents made of heavy furs and leather with a central hole for ventilation, buily on permenant stone foundations.

Elven architecture is lightweight and mobile, made up of silvercloth, an otherworldly fabric which appears to be canvas, but is much stronger, and has a distinctive sheen. The traditional ways elves erect their tent-like homes is almost floral, with many petals of silvercloth expanding outwards from a central post. To better blend in, most elves use their traditional materials but construct in ways that are formally in keeping with their surroundings.

Arts and Culture

Religion

Religion in the Silvertree Empire is a complicated matter. Before the Arrival, the Lands of Man played host to perhaps thousands of deities. After the Arrival, and the knowledge of the elves began to disseminate, an uneasy malaise of spirituality began to spread. Many decided that worship was unnecessary, and that the gods themselves were mortal wishful thinking assigned to natural phenomenon. Temples fell into disuse across the empire, and religiously based charities collapsed. An age of humanism and experimentation began to grow, though, founded on the vast stores of knowledge in the universities and libraries of the Lands of Man, as well as the oral traditions of the dwarves and the strange, inscrutable knowledge of the elves. A new time of learning and meditation swept the empire.

This was the norm for one hundred and fifty years, until the Cleric Zales, the Learned of Boccob, posted his "Syllogism" on the Silvertree. He posited that the evidence shows that the elven way of thinking shows that the deities of old are in fact distinct consciousnesses, like the residents of Broadholm and the beyond, and are in fact purveyors of blessings and curses, and can wield the fabric of reality far more powerfully than any mortal practitioner. His hypothesis caught on like wild fire, and using the new gnomish technology of the printing press, he and his followers began a massive campaign of pamphleting. The Great Awakening began, and continues to this day.

Now, a resurgent worship in the gods has begun. Many do not revere them as sacred beings anymore, but rather as agents of great power who must be appeased. This has also sparked a syncretic movement from the elves and their Broadholmian adherents, and the Silver Path is spreading as well. On top of the humanist leanings of the past century, a new dawn of spiritualism and science is spreading over the empire.

The major gods of the human pantheon are Boccob, Pelor (and his ascendant, ancient champion St. Cuthbert of the Northland), Heironeous, Ehlonna, Yondalla, and Olidammara.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender and sexuality are complicated issues in the empire. On the one hand, the laws binding the empire stipulate to egalitarianism; on the other, the former kingdoms that make up the empire have their own unique takes on the importance of gender.

Northlanders have always been nominally egalitarian. Their drive to survive in their desperate environment led to a tribal community structure that allowed for gender equality, and women and men shared leadership duties. The Ravyn were much the same, though less out of necessity and more out of a mutual, familial respect. Farther south, in Tyresia, the population is very different; even a woman of high political standing or talent is immediately a second-class citizen, and open to scorn and derision. Noirdic women are not second-class, as Tyresian women are, but they could never hold real power before the Arrival, and a culture of powerful matriarchs controlling aging husbands or powerful sons became commonplace, and this cultural phenomenon passed south into Ptolnom. Arias, the youngest of the kingdoms, and made up of individuals throughout the Lands of Man, is a hodgepodge of different attitudes and mores regarding what gender implies.

Since the Arrival, sexuality has been treated as a fluid, personal thing, and is treated as such. However, the roots of homophobia in misogyny are evident, and Tyresia is the worst in terms of treated non-heteronormative individuals.