The Mage Federation of Arcanmere
At a Glance
| Founding Body | No founding house; a committee of five families, who have ruled since the Federation's inception |
|---|---|
| Founder | The human magi who settled the land after Solon's Rebellion (Second Yuga) and seized it from its Wood Elf inhabitants |
| Government | Magocracy in the guise of a federation; rule by the Pentarchy, the five highest archmages, drawn from the five founding families |
| Sovereign at the Dawn of the Present Age | Lysandra Vey, High Archmage and First of the Pentarchy |
| Languages | The Common Tongue (everyday); Pre-Common (heritage and scholarly tongue, the Latin-rooted speech of the Second Yuga, kept alive in the academies) |
| Dominant Faith | None; an atheistic society that holds magic and knowledge supreme |
| Sworn Power | One of the three nations of the Inner Triumvirate (with Mangholstadt and Sorkhold), bound by a shared creed of human supremacy |
Overview
Arcanmere is the great magocracy of the west: a nation that calls itself a federation and is ruled, in truth, by five families and the archmages they raise. It worships no god. In its creed, magic and knowledge stand above all things, and the only sovereignty that counts is the sovereignty of power. Under that doctrine the other races are not peoples but lesser things, "less evolved," to be used as cattle and as material for study.
Its character was forged twice over: once in the betrayal that built it, and once in the conquest that broke it. Arcanmere rose on the ruin of the Wood Elves who had sheltered its founders, and it learned to trust nothing when Androghengis Chandran bent it to his will. What remains is a closed and wary nation, sealed behind the Shimmerwall, bound to its neighbors less by love than by the cold arithmetic of survival.
Geography
Arcanmere holds the northwest of the Continent, set beneath the Abaddon Mountains that wall off the Northern Wastes beyond. To its south lie its partners in the Inner Triumvirate: Mangholstadt, the Holy Theocracy of the far western coast, and past the small Principality of Voss, the slaver realm of Sorkhold. Eastward the land opens into the vast Crimson Desert at the Continent's heart, which divides the western powers from the central kingdoms; northeast across that frontier, tucked under the same mountains, lies the Kingdom of Sangam.
The whole of the nation is ringed by the Shimmerwall, the vast magical barrier raised at the close of its war with Androghengis. Its closed borders are no accident of terrain but a matter of policy: Arcanmere keeps to itself, watched over by its wards and entered only on its own terms, and what lies within, beyond the academies and guild-cities for which it is known, it shares with no one.
People & Culture
Arcanmere is a society ordered entirely by magical power. In its law and its custom, the gift of magic is the measure of a person's worth and the source of every right; "magic is sovereignty" is not a motto but the literal architecture of the state. The strong in magic rule, the weak serve, and those without the gift hold little standing at all.
Beneath even them stand the other races. The Federation holds humankind to be the summit of creation and every other people to be lesser, "less evolved," and so its elves, dwarves, and the rest are treated not as subjects but as livestock and as material: bodies to be worked and bodies to be studied. Arcanmere's appetite for knowledge is boundless and entirely without mercy, and its laboratories ask no questions a conscience would.
One line the Federation does not draw is between the sexes. Among the gifted, a woman stands equal to a man; power, not gender, is the measure of worth. Arcanmere's cruelty runs instead along race and class: the human set above every other people, and the gifted noble above the common and the powerless.
The everyday tongue is the Common Tongue. Above it, in the academies and the guild-halls, the magi keep Pre-Common, the Latin-rooted speech of the Second Yuga and the language of their oldest texts and truest scholarship. Since the raising of the Shimmerwall, the people of Arcanmere have been a closed and distrustful folk, certain of their supremacy and content to keep the world at arm's length.
Government
Arcanmere names itself a federation, but it is a federation in name only. Real power rests with the Pentarchy: the five highest archmages of the realm, drawn from the same five families that founded it and have held it ever since. Theirs is a hereditary oligarchy dressed in the language of merit, where bloodline and magical might run together and the two are seldom far apart.
At the dawn of the present age, the First of the Pentarchy, and so the foremost power in all Arcanmere, is the High Archmage Lysandra Vey.
Economy
For all its talk of supremacy, Arcanmere lives on a borrowed lifeblood. Its whole society runs on maanthrika, and maanthrika is a resource almost wholly controlled by Khemareth, the Dark Kingdom against which Arcanmere wars. It is the great vulnerability beneath the Federation's pride: a nation that holds itself the supreme power of the age, dependent for its very breath upon the supply of an enemy.
What Arcanmere makes of that lifeblood, it sells. Its true industry is the forging of magical tools and weapons, wrought in its workshops and exported to any realm with coin enough to pay. The Mage Federation arms the Continent, and asks no question of the buyer beyond the price.
Religion
Arcanmere keeps no faith and bends no knee. Alone among the powers of the west, it is an avowedly atheistic society, one that holds the worship of gods to be a weakness of lesser minds. In their place it raises magic and knowledge, with science folded into magic as one and the same pursuit, to the rank of the only things worth reverence. If the Federation has a creed at all, it is this: that power understood is the highest good, and that there is no truth a sufficiently advanced people may not seize for itself.
Military
Arcanmere makes war as it makes all things, by magic. Its armies are armies of battle-mages, and its defense is a craft of wards, snares, and entrapments, a land sown with magical traps for any force foolish enough to test the Shimmerwall. Behind that barrier the Federation is very nearly unassailable, which is no small part of why it has endured as long as it has.
Yet for all its mastery, one art has escaped it, and the failure rankles. Seal Magic was long held to be beyond the reach of humans and of every race but the Agnivansha, a closed door no human hand could open, until Vayu of Sangam, the Seal Sage, opened it. That a Sangam prince should achieve what the assembled genius of the Mage Federation could not has bred a deep and abiding jealousy. Arcanmere has labored to master Seal Magic in his wake, and every attempt has ended in failure.
History
Founding
The land that is now Arcanmere belonged once to the Wood Elves. When Solon's Rebellion threw down the Agnivansha in the Second Yuga, human settlers came west into the elven country, and the Wood Elves, in kindness, helped them to take root. The humans repaid that kindness with slaughter. When they had grown strong enough, they turned upon their benefactors, conquering the land and killing or enslaving as many of the Wood Elves as they could reach, and driving the survivors ever further east. Upon the ground they had stolen, the victors raised the Mage Federation, and set its rule in the hands of the Pentarchy.
The Open Age
For a long age thereafter, Arcanmere lived as an open society of magic. Knowledge passed freely within its borders, the guilds and academies flourished, and the Pentarchy governed a realm confident in its supremacy and untroubled by the world beyond. That openness ended with the coming of a conqueror.
Prior Wars
When Androghengis Chandran, the Second War God, marched on his genocidal campaign against the Agnivansha, Arcanmere was not spared the choice every power of the age was made to face. He came with his forces and bent the Mage Federation to his will, and Arcanmere submitted, trading its obedience for survival and for the spoils he promised it: riches, and slaves. It did his bidding while he lived.
When at last Androghengis died, the Federation resolved that it would never again lie open to a conqueror, and turned its whole art to that single end. The result was the Shimmerwall, the great barrier raised about the nation so that it might never be invaded again. Arcanmere has been a closed and distrustful people ever since.
The Present Age
For readers caught up to the most recent volume of the Soulfire saga.
At the dawn of the present age, Arcanmere stands as one of the three powers of the Inner Triumvirate, bound to Mangholstadt and Sorkhold by a pact of mutual defense. It is at war with Khemareth, the Dark Kingdom, even as it depends upon Khemareth for the maanthrika that sustains it.
Its quarrel with the east it frames in its own proud terms. It names Ash "the Noble Bastard," and counts him no true sovereign but a servant: the sword-arm of the enigmatic Emperor, the Third War God who leads the Outer Alliance now arrayed against the Triumvirate. For all its contempt, Arcanmere keeps to the Triumvirate less from loyalty than from cold calculation. It values the shelter of the joint defense, and it knows it lacks the strength to overmaster Sorkhold and Mangholstadt and stand alone.