The Powers

Nations of Aeon

Eight crowns, republics, and colonial ventures shape the Mar de Oro. Each dossier covers what a nation inherited in faith, law, and commerce, and what it is trying to get done in 7202: what it wants, how it is moving, and what it stands to lose.

Present Politics

The Golden Sea in 7202

The peace is real. It is also fragile. Albion is testing the limits of Valdegracian power. Valdegracia itself is divided between those who would restore the old imperial order and those who believe survival requires reform. Between them sits Heller, autonomous in peace but bound to Valdegracia in war, building the strength to remain free without provoking the conflict that could take that freedom away.

Éirighdún wants the Marches back but refuses to begin the war that might recover them; Clann na Saoirse may yet create that war without permission. Stroomdijk's wealth is sustained in part by a colonial project whose methods are easier to ignore at continental distance. Luminore maps, studies, and publishes the New World while a growing colonial current argues that understanding it is no longer enough. Eisenmark and Volkharov watch from farther away, each asking whether the Golden Sea is about to alter the balance between them.

Nobody needs a general war. Several powers can accidentally create one.

These dossiers show one layer of Golden Sea power. The region's people and communities have older histories, while pilots, workers, households, harbor councils, and other local institutions hold knowledge and practical authority that no flag fully controls. Read Before the Flags, Tarlaxians, Natives of the Golden Sea, Canula Is Awake, and Institutions of the Golden Sea.

Mother-crown of the Solarian world, governing by patent, precedent, and cathedral corridor.

Valdegracia

Valdegracia is the oldest continental power, where crown, church, and noble houses have grown so thoroughly entangled that legitimacy itself has become a family argument carried on in cathedral corridors and cedar-scented archives.

Read Valdegracia dossier

Survey the coast, acquire the advantage, deny it to everyone else.

Albion

Albion is a maritime kingdom of ancient habit and naval genius, built on commercial calculation, quiet intelligence, and the settled confidence of a crown that believes civilization has a shape and Albion lies near its center.

Read Albion dossier

Finance it, move it, own the terms. The flag can stay where it is.

Stroomdijk

Stroomdijk is a parliamentary monarchy reborn from commercial revolt, whose real power lives in the Wisselbank, the great chartered companies, and a Directorate so deliberately unreadable that no foreign ambassador can predict its next move.

Read Stroomdijk dossier

A republic that argues in print, and expects the argument to be answered in print.

Luminore

Luminore is a Solarian republic that believes faith and reason are the same argument, organized around the continent's oldest university, a protected press, and a civic tradition that treats every question as legitimate if it is examined with rigor.

Read Luminore dossier

Examinations, foundries, and promises treated as load-bearing.

Eisenmark

Eisenmark is the disciplined home of Eisenmarkian Solarian thought, where order is treated as a form of devotion and military, engineering, and theological method share a deep reverence for exactness.

Read Eisenmark dossier

Counts time in generations, distance in winters, and rarely gives ground back.

Volkharov

Volkharov is an interior empire defined by vyderzhka, the cultivated art of outlasting what breaks other nations, bound to the Oraclean Communion and expanding slowly overland across distances that would exhaust any other power.

Read Volkharov dossier

Deep harbors, worked Éterlumin, and a memory book for every debt owed.

Republic of Éirighdún

Éirighdún is a neutral island republic of clans, harbors, and Éterlumin deposits, whose neutrality survives because every major power owes it money and prefers commerce to conquest.

Read Republic of Éirighdún dossier

Twenty years old, two Dukes, three dragons, and no appetite for being governed from abroad.

The Duchy of Heller

The Duchy of Heller is the autonomous Valdegracian colonial territory, governed by Dux Hernanus Costesius de Heller and Dux Franciscus Perezzi. Its flag carries two gold dragons and the silver dragon of the presumed-dead Generalis Costilas. The Duchy owes Valdegracia military allegiance in time of war. In all other matters, it governs itself.

Read The Duchy of Heller dossier

These dossiers describe who the powers are and what they want. To turn that rivalry into pressure at your table, read Adapting Threats, Institutions and Factions.