Aetrimonde

Today, in order to provide some additional context for Gwynne’s backstory, I’m going to present some of the lore of Caras Elvaren.

Summary

Caras Elvaren was first settled during the Age of Glories by elf dissidents and exiles looking to avoid the attentions of the sorcerer-kings of Caras Seidharen. During the Collapse, these scattered enclaves banded together, took in elven refugees from the east, and built themselves into a more egalitarian successor to the Seidharen magocracy. Today, Caras Elvaren is a post-hardship (though not yet post-scarcity) society, built on the tireless labor of automata, fueled by an endless supply of magical energy drawn from Aetrimonde’s ley lines…but this utopian state of affairs is a delicate one, supported by fragile infrastructure that certain forces now work to dismantle.

Vital Statistics

Official Name: Caras Elvaren
Capital: Cathrach Talsien
Official Head of State: None
De Facto Heads of State: Gwetheir ap Wridd, Archmage of the Academy; Melianthe Cerunna,
Speaker for the Assembly; and/or Brynmor, Princeps of House Meilyr, depending on who you
ask.
Primary Inhabitants: Elves, trolls, gnomes
Currency: Statum (gp), obol (sp), morion (cp). Also drachma (electrum, 4 sp).

Founding

In order to understand how Caras Elvaren became what it is today, one must start by discussing its predecessor. The ancient elven kingdom of Caras Seidharen was the most magically advanced nation of its age, but this did not make it a pleasant place to live–quite the opposite, in fact. It was a magocracy, a government ruled by the magically talented, and in these elder days before wizardry and artifice became widespread, this largely meant rule by sorcerous bloodlines and the occasional warlock whose studies into Aetrimonde’s deep magics bore fruit.

In such an environment, magic became a tool of oppression: the rulers of Caras Seidharen bound invisible spirits to serve as spies, and used geases to compel their subjects to inform on their neighbors. And what magic was not used to ensure their continued reign, they expended on vanity projects like palaces made of enchanted glass and fountains that spouted and endless supply of wine. The concept of turning magic to civic purposes–of using it to raise the standard of living for lesser talents, or even the nonmagical population–was not even considered.

The sorcerer-kings and witch-lords of Caras Seidharen collectively had grand territorial ambitions, and so they permitted their subjects, especially the troublesome and discontented ones, to leave and establish colonies in distant lands. These colonies were forced to remain small (to prevent them from forming a center of power to rival Caras Seidharen) and insular (to keep them from forming ties with rival powers), but other than that they were largely ignored, and in some of them, the seeds of rebellion took root…

If not for the Collapse, there might eventually have been a civil war as Seidharen colonies broke away from their homeland. But as it happened, the Collapse saw the center of Caras Seidharen’s power destroyed, its rulers killed or vanished, and many common elves displaced. Many of these refugees found their way to former colonies, and in the cluster of colonies that would become Caras Elvaren, the refugees’ shock and horror at the pointlessness of the Collapse mingled with the locals’ rebellious leanings, forming the basis of a new political philosophy.

Caras Elvaren was founded on two principles. Firstly, there ought be no laws or rulers except those that the people consented to. And secondly, magic should serve the welfare of the people, not the other way around. Building a functioning society on these principles required a delicate balancing act: on the one hand, it was necessary to place constraints on the use of magic, to ensue that practicioners did not wind up in charge again; but on the other, in order to have magic used for civic purposes, it would be necessary to reward practicioners for practicing magic and putting it to constructive ends. The resulting compromise has come to be called the Arrangement: so long as arcanists refrained from exercising political power and employed their magic in the service of the people of Caras Elvaren, the people would ensure that arcanists enjoyed a privileged and relatively luxurious position in society.

Early History

The first few centuries were rough on Caras Elvaren, as they were for most nations in the wake of the Collapse. The influx of refugees badly strained the colonies that had banded together under the Elvaren banner, and at times there were struggles to keep the citizenry fed.

The system of rationing imposed during these harsh times led to the first of Caras Elvaren’s enduring civic institutions, the House system. Initially, rations were issued to family units, but this rapidly proved inefficient: in light of the lack of housing, communal living became the norm, and having a member of each household individually collect and then re-pool their rations was cumbersome. The rationing system rapidly evolved to issue rations to each household based on the number of people living under each roof, for ease of administration (and because it allowed for a fairer distribution of rationed products, like firewood, that could be shared by larger groups). Distributing the household’s rations among its residents then became a matter for the household to settle privately. Because it was possible (though sometimes difficult, in those early years) for elves to leave one household and join another, taking their ration entitlements with them, many systems were devised for fairly distributing a household’s rations.

Among the rations issued by the fledgling Elvaren government was the magic ration, entitling a household to the work of an arcanist under the Arrangement for a fixed number of hours per year. Initially, citizens largely used the magic ration on an individual basis, requesting magical healing for injuries sustained in their flight from Caras Seidharen, magical repairs to tools and belongings, or just magic to help carry heavy loads or clear land. However, as the initial crisis passed, households were able to use their magic rations for permanent improvements, like magical lamps and heat sources that replaced the need for oil and firewood. Larger households pooling and saving up their magic rations could arrange to employ an arcanist year-round to give them good weather for their crops, or commission enchanted tools like self-propelled plows or automated spinning wheels.

These magical conveniences remained the province of large and well-organized households, however, and as households grew and merged to take advantage of these economies of scale, it began to stretch the definition of “household.” As some households reached hundreds of members, and their actual houses became sprawling compounds that nonetheless still shared one roof, it became necessary for the Elvaren government to recognize this consequence of their rationing system, and loosen the legal definition of households. Under the new title of Houses, households became the smallest unit of political organization in Caras Elvaren: while it would no longer be required for all the members of a House to live under one roof, the government would issue rations to the House based on its membership, and it would be up to the House’s leadership to divide the rations fairly. And because leaving a House would no longer even necessarily require moving out, this further encouraged House leadership to set up, and adhere to, fair and equitable rules.

Meanwhile, the Arrangement and the magic ration led to a similar system of rules and rations among Caras Elvaren’s arcanists. The need to organize arcanists into work details in response to citizens’ use of their magic rations, and to train more arcanists in response to the demand, led to the creation of the Magisterium, an organization that became one part arcanists’ guild, one part academy of magic…and one part self-regulatory body, ensuring that its membership held to the Arrangement. Arcanists who agreed to answer requests made using the magic ration, and to keep far away from politics, could expect to be housed, fed, and clothed sumptuously in the Magisterium’s facilities. And the Magisterium set rules for which of its members could take which work requests, creating systems of professional certification, seniority, and so on that ensured citizens could expect a consistent response to their use of the magic ration. Cynical minds have often observed that with all the workplace politics of the Magisterium, it’s no surprise that Elvaren arcanists have generally been willing to stay out of ordinary politics…

Recent History

In 319 AAC, a journeyman artificer in a backwater Magisterium tower simultaneously blew himself out of a third-story window and made a discovery that redefined Caras Elvaren’s approach to magical engineering. Arcanists since time immemorial had known about Aetrimonde’s ley lines, naturally-occurring flows of magic deep beneath the earth. In a few places where these flows came closer to the surface, it was possible for magicians to harness them, gaining a noticeable increase in their spells’ power. The journeyman, of the name Aediswyr, had idly wondered if a magical device could be made to tap into a ley line–and his fourth prototype was so unexpectedly efficient at doing so that the resultant flow of magic overwhelmed the device’s physical form, the safety circle containing it during the test run, and the emergency ward that Aediswyr, already moving towards the window, hastily put up between him and the explosively overloading device.

The Magisterium could hardly fail to notice such a discovery, and Aediswyr received both a promotion in grade and an official caution for insufficient safety precautions before he was out of his sickbed. Aediswyr’s Ethereal Resonator was reverse-engineered¹ by the Magisterium to safely harness the energy it drew from the ley lines. It was an overwhelming success, and the most pressing question in the higher ranks of the Magisterium overnight became what to do with such an abundant power source. It was eventually pointed out that if positioned with enough precision on a junction of ley lines, the Ethereal Resonator could be scaled up almost indefinitely, to the point that a sufficiently large model could remotely power typical magical devices for miles around, even with the enormous efficiency losses such a use would incur.

The first ley tap, as the facilities are known, went online two years later in a remote farming village, where it proved capable of powering the entire community’s specially-enchanted magical farm implements. “Specially-enchanted” is perhaps a misleading term, because the only thing special about the enchantments was their lack of an internal power source: the ley tap enabled the creation of commercial-grade magical items as much as 90% more cost-effectively, and was quickly rolled out across Caras Elvaren.

Three centuries of abundantly available magic has transformed Caras Elvaren. Not content to just power enchanted tools, the Magisterium’s Ley Tap Commission put to work every artificer they could spare building a golem labor force powered by the taps. The golems, organized and administrated by the Magisterium, have now replaced virtually all hard physical labor in the nation. Their labor produces the bulk of Elvaren food and raw materials, and an increasing share of other goods and services including clothing, housing, and transportation. And, under the auspices of the Magisterium, all citizens are entitled to a share of the golems’ labor: enough to live stably and securely, if not lavishly, on–and if they want a greater share, they can earn it, by spending just a few hours per week working as a handler for golems on tasks that require supervision.

The ley taps and the golem workforce have made Caras Elvaren a relative utopia. But for those in the know–the arcanists of the Ley Tap Commission and the Golem Labor Administration–it is a very delicate thing, reliant on advanced magi-machinery and thaumaturgical engineering.² All of Elvaren society is dependent on the taps, the golems, and the bureaucracy that manages both; if something in this system were to break, if the institutions that support it were somehow disrupted, it could easily lead to starvation and chaos. And that is before considering that the ley taps, machines a hundred meters and more tall, are themselves based on a device that exploded in its first test run…

Up Next

Check back next week for the second part of this series, covering Caras Elvaren’s society, politics, and current events!

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1. Aediswyr protested the usurpation of his personal project by the Magisterium, and was reminded that any spell, enchantment, or device produced by an arcanist working under the auspices of the Magisterium became the intellectual property of the Magisterium, to be held in trust for future generations of the Elvaren people. ↩︎
2. Aediswyr himself had a brief career in the Ley Tap Commission, which he ended by resigning in protest of the plan to place ley taps in populated areas. He spent more than a decade publishing increasingly unhinged pamphlets decrying the use of his invention, before vanishing. Conspiracy theorists have connected his disappearance to an industrial accident the next year, in which the prototype of the Mark II Ley Tap underwent premature initiation and melted itself into a thousand tons of magically-polluted slag. ↩︎