Atarlie Empire

The Atarlie Empire is a nation-state on the eastern side of the Atlas mountains, extending across the Northern Shore to the Eastern Sea, and bounded by the Hearthlands in the south. Populated largely by a haughty branch of the Elven lineage (often known as High Elves in other nations), the Atarlie consider themselves the true rules of Wisteria and the highest lifeform in Ahren. Like any good empire it is actually fairly diverse, integrating humans, halflings, and gnomes from the regions it has conquered, who can obtain full citizenship rights and occasionally even serve in positions of authority.

The Atarlie People, whose name show their connection to the Sun, are often called Sun Elves or High Elves in other lands, by contrast to the relatively “base” Carcolie or other, more exotic offshoots of Elvendom. They are creatures strongly tied to the natural flow of arcane magics, for which they are known and using which their cities and architecture are constructed.

Elven society is both extremely dynamic generation-over-generation in terms of social and economic mobility, and seemingly unchanging to shorter-lived races such as humanity. While it does distinguish between aristocratic, landed, and working classes, those lines blur constantly through intermarriage, political intrigue, and economic mobility (in both directions). Individual regnal periods of individual emperors are relatively long in human terms but still can seem short and end brutally by elven standards, though bloodless coups are more common than full-on imperial assassinations.

All this being said, the Altarie nonetheless consider themselves to be the steadfast guardians of natural and divine order, worshipping the High Elven Pantheon and banning the worship of all gods outside that within their domain. They maintain an internal cohesiveness of realpolitikal and legal power unseen in other nations of comparable size, such as the Bastonians or the Clans of Magnus; while individual Bastonian Monarchs or Dwarven High Kings may achieve similar cohesion, it rarely survives the interregnum. The elves therefore have a pronounced culture of bureaucratic and magisterial civil services which are not seen nearly as pervasively elsewhere.

Atarlie adventurers broadly fall into two classes – elite legionary units or former units now operating as “dogs of war” or “soldiers of fortune”, and disaffected members of Atarlie lowerclasses seeking to make their fortunes elsewhere. Exceptions exist, as always, but as the Empire is seen by most of its citizens as the most preferable domains in the world, exceptions to the two above rules rarely adventure outside the wildernesses of the Empire itself.

Atarlie Geography and Government

Understanding Atarlie Senatorial Politics

While the external view – and the titular expectation – of Imperial power is that the Emperor is the most powerful individual among the Atarlie, the truth is somewhat more complicated. While the Emperor has a great deal of unilateral power with regard to foreign policy and military affairs, the critical powers of taxation and treaty ratification reside in the hands of the Senate.

The senate are a political class (and body) of landed gentry, exclusively Elves, who must meet requirements of ancestral service within the senate along with a certain minimum level of civil or military service prior to being appointed to the Senate. While an Emperor can raise new senators who meet the requirements into their ranks, the Emperor does not have the ability to dismiss the senate.

Because of this the Senate can often hamstring Emperors who have become unpopular among their number, but the Emperor can also retaliate by swelling the senate’s ranks with persons who serve their own interests.

Provinces and Protectorates

The Empire is broken up into a series of provincial holdings, each under the purview of a Prefect, who is responsible to the Emperor for leveeing forces according to the province’s capabilities and to the Senate for meeting requirements of law and taxation.

The Empire also has a practice of establishing protectorates – often centuries later becoming provinces. Currently, the principal noteworthy protectorate is the Hearthlands. Attacking the Hearthlands from land would require either bypassing Imperial territory or launching an attack across the Atlas Mountains, which would involve bypassing the territory of the Clans of Magnus, who fiercely defend their mountain home.

Atarlie Culture

Fighting, Warfare, and Death

Curiously for an Empire (and therefore a military power), the Atarlie see warfare as an unfortunate but necessary evil. Most expressions of Atarlie imperial power are soft power – displays of force used in place of actual battles, and games of economic manipulation.

These Elves also have a saying: “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in the battlefield”. Professional military service is encouraged among all the races that make up the empire (and is one of the paths the gentrified class can use to improve their position), and unlike many other nations the Imperial Legion is a true, standing, professional military force, sworn to servitude with the emperor directly.

The Elven Pantheon teaches an afterlife with an Elysium, not unlike Bastonian conceptions of Heaven. However, Elven morality is far looser and less restrictive, placing a focus on self-improvement and increasing one’s connection to the flows of the arcane.

Language and Scholarship

The Atarlie Alphabet is a syllabary alphabet, used in the recording of all variants of Elvish language, as well as in some traditions of magical writing, such as those employed in The North. Atarlie Elvish and Carcolie Elvish are sufficiently similar in their spoken form as to be mutually understood by speakers of either, and many of the other races of Wisteria simply refer to both languages, collectively, as Elvish. However, this is not true of all elvish variants.

The Atarlie Empire has perhaps the most developed and active tradition of formal scholarship the world over. While under- and lower-class families experience much the same educational process as seen elsewhere in the world (focused apprenticeship), the middle and upper classes enjoy a much more generalized education at the hands of privately-funded schools or even private tutors. The goal of this education, in addition to its stated goal of broadening the student's horizons in a manner befitting a "ruler of the world", is to prepare the student for the Atarlie Civil Examination - an annual round of official examinations that assess the student's suitability for public service and gatekeep civil service positions, most of which are seen as ways to rapidly advance in social or economic position.

Owing to the tight relationship between the Atarlie and the Arcane, schools of arcane magic are extremely common throughout the empire. Most small cities can boast at least one academy focusing on a particular school of magic. In larger settlements, additional schools or even Universities teaching broader fields of study exist.

Atarlie and the Adventuring Classes

Barbarians are exceedingly rare among the Atarlie; if they exist at all it’s usually in an underclass absorbed into the empire recently. Atarlie senses of decorum and military traditions do not encourage the fury required by the Rage mechanic, nor the style of combat itself.

Bards are common in a variety of forms – professional scholars and adventuring troubadors alike. Silvyr Vavaris’s clergy includes a disproportionate number of bards, whose combined use of divine and arcane magics often makes for unorthodox, but useful, Theurges.

Clerics are actually quite common, both among the pastoral clergy and in military and adventuring contexts. Elves take their religions and traditions seriously, and while most elves worship the entire pantheon, clerics continue to focus on a single member of the pantheon as their divine patron.

Druids are common among the worshippers of Dyffros Inarona, and form the backbone of the clergy of that particular member of the panethon. The social role of druids is both as healer and soothsayer, particularly in the country where they might be the only clergy present, such as in farming villages.

Fighters are common within the empire, though the heavier armour and weapons seen in Bastonia and the lands of the dwarves are rarer, seen only among the higher classes or certain specialist warriors – military doctrine favours light or medium armour and graceful weaponry.

Monks are rare within the empire, and are usually of archetypes that favour armed combat, if they exist at all. There is no corresponding god that would serve the monk class well; monks within the empire’s ranks are usually either transplants or students of transplants and are seen to have something of the foreigner about them regardless of their original heritage.

Paladins are surprisingly rare, as High Elven society tends toward Lawful Neutral rather than lawful good. Those that exist often serve as justicars or magistrates, though some are functional templars, maintained by the clerical orders of Gods whose alignments would suit their alignment restriction.

Rangers are an extremely common class among the high elves and can represent any of a number of social roles as befits their combat archetypes and character creation choices. Whole legionary units are composed of rangers almost to the exclusion of others, and representatives of this class can be found among a number of civilian roles, such as dedicated hunters (including of monsters), couriers, cartographers, and the like.

Rogues are extremely common (as is their combat specialist prestige class, the Assassin). In addition to the usual criminal underclass, anyone who is interested in maintaining their social and political position (or improving it) usually employs a few rogues as spies, informants, and the like.

Sorcerers are not seen as negatively in the Empire as they are in some other lands, and the arcane bloodline is extremely common. So closely are the Atarlie tied to the sources of magic in the world that it commonly bubbles in their very veins. Sorcery is so common in the Empire that Sorcerers are not always (or even often) proper adventurers, particularly among the older landed and aristocratic families.

Wizards are also extremely common. Most Atarlie cities have one or more schools of magic, usually focusing on an individual area of study, though a few Universities exist, catering to more generalist wizards-aspirant. Atarlie are so well known for their wizardry that Atarlie wizards are often in demand in other lands as educators, and adventuring Atarlie Wizards are often travelling the world as part of their research. The Atarlie Empire is one of the only places in Ahern where the practice of necromancy is not illegal, though uses beyond communicating with the dead are frowned upon.