Throkam was not always the center of magical and economic progress on its side of the globe. The spark that would ignite the fire of political unrest across the land came in the form of a Nidu alchemist by the name of Amaran. Having broken away from his clan in search of higher pursuits, he had risen through the ranks of his profession to become confidant to the king himself. His brilliance reached a crescendo as he succeeded in his quest to create the elixir of life itself, which would grant the drinker a near- infinite well of lifeforce, such that given enough sustenance, they could recover from any malady short of death. In essence, the drinker became immortal. Overcome with panic at what would happen if such power were ever to make it out into the world, the king seized every last drop for himself and had Amaran executed, locking the secret to eternal life away forever. While his immortality elevated him to the rank of a god for the realm, inspiring fear and obedience in the hearts of his citizens, the incident had thrown the door to magical invention open and it would never close again. Inventors from across the land sought to rediscover the lost power, and while none could ever recreate Amaran’s magnum opus, their efforts were what began the age of magic in Throkam, and with it came a new dawn in the history of the world.
No longer was magic the sole domain of the Nidu. Fantastical technologies that blurred the line between fantasy and reality came to be created by those of every creed, and the elite amongst these makers adopted the moniker of ‘Grandmage,’ to share their skill and knowledge with those they deemed worthy and when the time came, to pass along their title. Factions arose in every corner of the continent, specializing in every area of magic imaginable. Knowledge of manacraft came to be a closely guarded secret among these factions, and fearing espionage and imitation, they came to be separated by geography, as they were by ideology. The north and the west became the abode of the masters of physical mana, the east of the mages of life, while the monasteries nestled in the mountaintops of the northeast came to serve as the dominion of the Nidu, the isolated and mysterious keepers of reality itself. These domains in themselves were subjected to broad divisions on the basis of specialization, which came to be known as regions – collections of towns and keeps bound in purpose by a certain vein of magic, operating under a guild.
The oresmiths, adept at thermal magic, settled at the foothills of the Icefangs where raw metal would be transported to be smelted and forged. The waterwielders, masters of fluid magic, made their home along the banks of the Jivaana, which flowed from the knolls just south of the Icefangs to the Southern Marshes. What remained of the north went to the practitioners of kinesis. Initially, the magi of life and the farmers of Throkam had come to occupy the northern veldt, sharing borders with the guild of the oresmiths, but abuse of thermal magic as Throkam struggled to control the power of flames led to the desolation of the veldt, and the move of the magi of life towards the south in what came to be known as ‘The Great Migration.’ However, by far the most powerful of the guilds were the masters of materials. The realm ran on metal for its coin and its swords; its castles and keeps were built of stone and wood; its subjects alive for naught but the wool and leather on their backs. Control over the enchantment of material was control over the bedrock of Throkam itself. Thus, the Grandmages of the guild of materials came to be elevated to the status of nobles, looking down over the rest of the realm standing on foundations of education and wealth. When the factions separated, they claimed the Westwoods.
To say that the effects of this division on Throic life were profound would be an understatement. The guilds permeated into every aspect of Throic life, but the most severe of them all was trade. Before Amaran’s opus, trade had been restricted to what little local merchants could barter off from the Claspir headed home to the Isles of R’oth. These merchants became almost immediately subject to the might of the guilds. Without stocking their magical artifacts, no merchant could survive the cutthroat competition that arose amongst bazaars across the continent. The age of magic was here, and the people of the realm had sensed it. Trade dues came to be paid not to his majesty’s regents appointed to oversee trade in regions, but to the Grandmages and their guildmasters. The regents, choked off of the economic power they had once held had no choice but to bow down to the will of the guilds overseeing the region. Though regents and their regencies still existed as the primary political structures of the realm, meant to execute the king’s will over his subjects, the true division of the land came to be through the guilds. The illusion of the absolute power of the regent over economic activity in the area became a tool for guildmasters overseeing the region to exercise political and economic influence from behind the veil of anonymity.
With the channels for the flow of wealth from the regencies to the crown dried up and the state’s control over local governance giving way to guild-run regions, the impact of factions soon reached the court of the king at the capital. The years had made the old monarch paranoid. Drunk on the power his immortality granted him, he had grown ever more afraid to lose it. In his mania, he saw the inability of his regents to exercise power over the kingdom as a malicious attempt on his authority, and blinded by the belief that his stature made him supreme, the king allowed the Grandmages a seat at his council, hoping to exploit the power and influence that the guilds held over their respective regions. This treaty between the guilds and the king came to be known as the ‘Great Charter of Control,’ wherein the Grandmages were appointed his majesty’s regents over their respective strongholds. This was exactly the opportunity the mages had been looking for. Almost all trade in the realm went through the capital since it was the only city in the entire realm where coin was minted. Power over coin meant authority over trade, and the king offered it up on a platter. His greed soon became his downfall, as the Grandmages turned out to be masters of manipulation and deception, and proceeded to wrest political control from the king and his council through their cunning lies and silver tongues, becoming the true overlords of the kingdom of Throkam. The most ingenious part of their designs however, was that they did not attempt to replace the king themselves, letting him believe that he was still lord of the realm, but controlling his authority through deception and treachery. Thus the immortal king himself became nothing but an illusion to inspire loyalty in the hearts of the people, while true power came to reside with the factions.
All power is liable to abuse and this was no exception. The Throic were fool enough to idolize the guilds for their magic and love their king for his power. Revolt was an impossibility. The Claspir were thrall to coin and as long as the realm prospered, they would never think to betray it. The Nidu were ever elusive but the threat of their magic was best left unprovoked. It was unwise to risk their wrath through warfare. That left the Ichui, masters of weaponcraft and engineering, in their fortress province of Ichuran deep within the northern reaches of the Icefangs. They controlled the flow of metal from the mountains with an iron fist and if magic in the realm were to prosper unchecked, then it was imperative for this control to fall into the hands of the capital. Thus, the kingdom waged war on Ichuran, raining fire and stone on its walls till the skies above the Icefangs turned darker than coal and the mountains glistened red with the blood of the fallen. Soon, the bodies began to outnumber the stones they lay on. Helpless against the might of the entire realm’s magic, the Ichui had no choice but to concede their power over the metal trade to Throkam. But having the power to reduce an entire province to rubble is not the same as having the power to govern it. The Icefangs guarded Ichuran from threats on all sides. The only way to reach it was through a narrow valley known as the ‘Orepath’ for the metal that it helped move from the mountains to the realm and convoys along it would be exposed to ambush. Setting up barracks at Ichuran too was a madman’s dream; the soldiers would never survive the climate. Simply put, there was no way to keep Ichuran. So the Grandmages engineered an ingenious pact between the capital and Ichuran: That it could trade freely with the realm for metal on the condition that it accepted its status as a semi-sovereign province under Throic hegemony and recognized his majesty the king as the supreme ruler of the land. Refusal meant decimation. The Ichui accepted the generous pact and thus concluded the conquest of Ichuran.
For a moment, the realm settled. The Claspir came to Throkam, not to make it beg for the scraps from their voyages, but to bring it the first pickings from their bounty from across the ocean, and the capital became the center for magical invention on its side of the geographical charts. The Nidu, dwindling in numbers and horrified at the sacrilege with which Throkam abused its magic,retreated to their monasteries high up in the Icefangs. The Ichui either succumbed to the allures of the thriving enchanted weapons industry, breaking away from their culture and values, or retreated back to Ichuran. The kingdom of Throkam reached a precarious balance.
However, deep within the capital, conflict was brewing. Decades old feuds were reignited as the factions remained confined to the court of the crown for fear of losing their influence on the king. The conflict was inevitable and the cycle of violence began repeating as often as the cycles of the sun. Mages from opposing guilds would break out into brawls that would decimate entire buildings. The people would riot. The city would suffer. Again. And again. It continues to the present day, with the capital locked in unending violence, and Grandmages of the council at each other’s throats, their action rippling across the realm with severe and permanent consequences through a political system impossibly entangled in the pursuit of pride, power and wealth
Artifact 1 – Sarvasv Barara
