JesseLowe/Realm
The Realm; The Blessed Isle
Recent History
The Civil War went hot after the Mask's defeat. Mnemon, her hand tipped by the fallout from her ally's fall, made her move. Demons and other sorceries took out the heads of several houses -- Ragara, Cynis, Cathak, Peleps -- and House Mnemon's allies revealed themselves. For a year, war raged on the Blessed Isle.
On the one side, Mnemon, V'neef, and Sesus, backed by the knives of the Iselsi. On the other, Ragara, Cynis, and Cathak. House Nellens was all but destroyed by Mnemon in the early stages of the conflict, a betrayal that gave Mnemon a much-needed hoard of treasure to conduct the war. Houses Peleps, Ledaal, and Tepet stayed out of the war as best they could. Peleps, even though deeply offended by Mnemon's initial attack, secured the waters around the Isle against invasion, turning back any attackers who thought to take advantage of the war. House Ledaal, along with the Immaculates, acted as neutral intermediaries, and managed to channel much of the conflict away from the most vulnerable areas of the Realm. House Tepet took the time to secure its holdings outside the Isle, swiping several satrapies from the distracted V'neef and Mnemon houses.
The war ended with the defeat of House Mnemon. Mnemon herself was slain by Cathak Cainan on the steps of the Imperial Manse, and her house has been all but destroyed since. Many of the House fled into hiding or the Threshold; of the rest, any Dragon-Blooded Mnemon who led troops was executed, and those who did not were rendered Outcastes. Its holdings were divided among the victors. V'neef, too, suffered, and survives as barely a minor house. Less than twenty Dragon-Blooded still remain to the House, and its fleet is long gone. House Sesus saw which way things were going a month before the final defeat, and withdrew its forces into belated neutrality. It is now in much the same position as the Tepet, the pride of its House destroyed and its reputation in tatters. Iselsi has, finally, been utterly annihilated. The only scions of that doomed house that might remain are refugees in the Threshold.
This is how things now stand, some ten years after the disappearance of the Empress. It is badly weakened, but now presents a united front (mostly). There are only seven Great Houses left. In order of pre-eminence, they are: Cathak, Ragara, Peleps, Cynis, Ledaal, Tepet, Sesus. After the defeat of Mnemon, the Mouth of Peace convened a special session of the Deliberative. There, the victors of the war established a compromise government to impose order on the Realm before any more damage was done.
The Empress' funeral was never held. Rather, the Immaculate Order announced that the Dragons had granted her godhood -- she has been deified as the goddess of the Realm. The Deliberative now holds considerably more power than it did under the Empress. To rule, they have elected five Consuls, one to represent each Immaculate Dragon. That the Consuls are also highly favored scions of the victorious Houses is no coincidence, and it is becoming apparent that a discreet power struggle is all but inevitable among them. Houses Cathak, Ragara, Cynis, Peleps, and Ledaal each field a consul. (I just haven't decided on the names yet.) Tepet and Sesus are both left in the cold due to their weakness. The Regent was quietly assassinated once the Consuls took power.
Present Situation (RY 773)
Now, instead of open war, the struggle for dominion is quietly waged in the halls of the Deliberative and the streets of the Imperial city, on the trade routes of the Blessed Isle and the shipping lanes of the Inner Sea, as the Houses compete to see who can recuperate from the war quickest and who can field the most potent allies. Rebuilding on the Isle proceeds apace, slowed by bureaucratic tangles and the simple lack of resources.
Outside the Blessed Isle, the Realm has suffered greatly. In the South, it holds only An-Teng and has a tenuous grasp on the kingdom of Harborhead. In the East, Greyfalls has fallen to an empire carved out by Anathema. To the West, the Anathema Lyta has nearly destroyed the Realm presence more than two or three days sail from the Isle. In the North alone can the Realm boast of some success -- the Roseblack, backed by a legion of Mountain Folk (no one knows how she got them) and a motley army drawn from the Vermilion Legion, her own House, and Cherak, beat the Bull of the North back into icewalker territory. Whether he lives or not is unknown, but his power is broken for the moment.
With that victory, of course, the Consuls consider the Roseblack a threat to their own power. To nullify that threat, and to keep her away from the Realm, they named her the Daimyo of the Wyld Hunt. In name an honor, it is in fact a permanent exile.
