The kingdom of Yù is one of the oldest nations in existence - it is, in fact, the oldest of the nations north of the Spine of the World. Situated in the center of the continent, with the mountains of the Spine to the south and the ocean to the north, it has always been strategically located to take advantage of trade routes between the East and the West. The wealth and stability lent by this position has led to the civilization's rise as a center of trade, culture, and magical learning.

The rise of the Church in Nineveh has begun the decay of millennia of stability in Yù. The Western nations have had their conflicts before, but the sudden expansion of Nineveh has turned the whole of the West into a contested area, with the nations polarizing between the lands captured by Nineveh and the alliance of the Independent States. Since Nineveh has historically been the kick-off point for caravans to Yù and the East, all trade from the West has broken down (thanks to the irreconcilable religious differences between Yù and the Church).

These developments have led to the beginnings of economic worries throughout Yù - it has never been a nation of producers. The reunification of the barren Empire of Sand has returned some balance to the economy, with the rice paddies of Yù expanding their production to feed the Empire's growing cities, but the power balance has been forced to change quite abruptly. The merchant families that have so long held power in Yù are feeling the loss of the Western trade routes, and the rural farmers are coming into wealth and power for the first time in millennia.

Dramatic change has also come to the government structure in Yù. Before the Fall, power was held by a bureaucracy of officials selected partially by state-officiated testing and partially by the influence of the nominees' families (often more the later than the former). This resulted in the offices being filled predominately by the sons and daughters of the great merchant families. The supreme office of the land was held in title by Yu-huang himself, but this was really a formality - the Jade Emperor was sufficiently occupied overseeing the celestial bureaucracy, leaving its earthly counterpart to his mortal subjects.

With the Fall, things had to change. The Jade Emperor was now physically present in Gu Gong, the capitol of Yù. The celestial bureaucracy and the earthly bureaucracy had to become as one. Unfortunately, the celestial bureaucracy was in bad shape - the thousand gods of the Yù pantheon were mostly small gods, presided over by Yu-huang as they went about their myriad tasks. As such, almost all were too weak to survive the Fall, leaving only Yu-huang to preserve the celestial order.

The earthly bureaucracy was dismantled to resurrect the celestial bureaucracy. This has resulted in a strange state of affairs, with mortals given posts traditionally held by gods. Many are merely clerical positions, which a human can handle much the same as a god, but there is still a certain peculiar quality to a minor government official being sent the prayer sheets of hat salesmen because, indeed, his post was once held by the goddess of hat salemen. (Needless to say, most prayers go unanswered these days.)

In some cases, however, a little more is needed - someone needs to stand in, to at least some extent, for a dead god. This, combined to the loss of fortune for the merchant families, has resulted in a shift of power from the merchants to the sorcerers and priests - those who can actually muster the power needed to perform something resembling miracles. Many of the sons and daughters of the merchant families are being hastily shuffled off to schools of magic, but the truth is that few of them have any real talent, creating a new democracy in the highest positions of the bureaucracy.

Yù is generally considered a beautiful land, laid out in a rippling landscape of broad, green valleys situated between rolling hills and low mountain ridges. The mountains grow more frequent and more formidable to the south, joining up into the foothills of the towering Spine of the World. The north, however, becomes almost totally flat, forming a strip of tidal plains running along the ocean. This strip was once frequented by caravans traveling between the East and the West, but the rise of Nineveh has neatly cut off all such traffic. Instead, the plains are becoming dominated by spreading rice paddies - farms growing rapidly to accommodate the increased demand from the cities of the Empire of Sand.

The old capitol of Yù is Gu Gong, in the mountains of southern Yù. The capitol moved to the coast millennia ago, taking up residence in the trade city of Gaochang - the old capitol dates from a period of war before the current period of stability in Yù, but Gaochang was much better situated to oversee the trade routes. Thirty years ago, Yu-huang moved the majority of the bureaucracy back to Gu Gong. The trade routes had dried up and war was approaching fast, so it made sense to relocate to the more defensible mountain city.

Reincarnation is a reality. When a soul dies, it passes back through the cycle of reincarnation - being reborn with no memories of its previous lives. The Church of the One True God is taking advantage of this, adopting the view that those who do not convert may simply be killed ... perhaps they will be reborn in the lands already held by the Church.

The Jade Emperor acknowledges the logic of this view (cold-blooded as it might be), and has opted to do something about it. As the all-father of the Yù pantheon, he holds the office of psychopomp - it is his right to determine what happens to the souls of his worshippers after death. He rarely exercised this right before the Fall, though it was occasionally appropriate to grant a great soul limited divinity upon death, or perhaps to allow a soul to retain a portion of its past upon rebirth - allowing a great soul to live more-or-less continuously from life to life.

Now he exercises his right as psychopomp somewhat more broadly. Specifically, he keeps back the souls of all of his worshippers from the cycle of reincarnation. The problem here is that there is no place for them to go since, with reincarnation the norm, there is no afterlife - merely a constant state of flux. Fortunately, it was still within Yu-huang's power to create and maintain a pocket universe - a small world bordering closely on the physical realm that would serve as an afterlife for his worshippers. He named this world Yu-qing, the Heaven of Jade Purity.

Nobody excepting Chi Gu-niang and a few of Yu-huang's closest mortal advisors have been made aware of the existence of Yu-qing, and it doesn't appear that anyone has noticed the slight reduction in the world's birthrate brought about by the souls being slowly drawn off into Yu-qing. It does bear noting that this is a necessarily temporary solution - if allowed to go on indefinitely, Yu-qing will siphon off a large portion of the world's souls as people from other nations are reincarnated as worshippers of Yu-huang, then removed from the cycle of reincarnation completely.

When it is said that Yu-huang was the only one of the gods of Yù to survive the Fall, this is not entirely accurate. Technically, he is the only god of the celestial bureaucracy to survive the Fall. There was, however, one other god in the Yù pantheon powerful enough to form an avatar - Yuan-shi tian-zong, the Lord of the Heavenly Jewel (also called the Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning).

Yuan-shi tian-zong was the predecessor of the Jade Emperor - the all-father and supreme deity before Yu-huang. Yu-huang was actually the chief assistant of Yuan-shi tian-zong for eons before the elder god resigned his position in the celestial hierarchy in favor of Yu-huang. Yu-huang is now about equivalent in power to Yuan-shi tian-zong, though the later has eons of experience in excess of that possessed by his successor.

Yuan-shi tian-zong was a great god indeed - it is said that he was instrumental in binding the Yozis to their Hells in times long forgotten. He is also traditionally believed to rescue souls caught in the various Hells from the Yozis, setting them free to reenter the cycle of reincarnation. He is known to have survived the Fall (he came to Gaochang shortly afterwards to acknowledge the continued lordship of Yu-huang), but his current location and doings are uncertain. This has long been the case - ever since his resignation, he has not held himself accountable to the celestial bureaucracy, nor has he answered prayers.

The long periods of stability that Yù has historically enjoyed have allowed the development of varied magical arts. The sorcerers of Yù are widely considered to be among the best in their respective specialties. This can be something of a weakness, though - they also very rarely have much knowledge of arts beyond their specialties. This is largely due to the prominence of many sorcerous schools, each of which tends to jealously guard what knowledge they have. A more sharing approach the the matter might improve the versatility of the schools, but it cannot be denied that their specialization has allowed them to achieve spectacular heights within their preferred forms.

Unlike in most other nations, demonology is not viewed in any particularly negative light - it is seen as an art to be reserved for the strong of body and mind, but that is all. The demonologists of Yù have been studying their craft for longer than any other nations in the North, and they are generally confident in their ability to safely summon and bind their intended servants. They are admirably successful in this regard - there are a few foolish demonologists who fail to recognize their limits, but they tend to be self-eliminating.

There is also reduced risk of a demon escaping from such a sorcerer and getting loose in the world, since the major centers of magical learning in Yù are veritable minefields for unbound demons - the demonologists have been staying busy over the last several thousand years. It is said that in Gu Gong and Gaochang are so heavily warded that an unbound demon cannot approach within sight of the walls without being banished back to the Hell it calls home. For this reason, demonologists tend to be fairly cloistered, using the defenses of their homes as a safety net. There are, however, exceptions ... and the demonologists of Yù have made quite a name for themselves on the battlefield.

Geomancy is another art that is more-or-less unique to Yù. It is an extremely arcane form of divination that allows the practitioner to calculate how sorcerous energies flow and gather through an area, thus informing everything from the arrangement of rooms (feng shui is a small-scale subset of geomancy) to the construction of cities to the planning of journeys. In theory, if one follows the dictates of a geomantic calculation, one will enjoy much greater fortune regarding whatever the calculation has been applied to. Geomancy is also extremely useful for large-scale magical workings - the ability to guide the flows of power (and even manipulate the precise resonances involved) makes such monumental tasks much, much simpler.

Yù is also home to a number of other more common arts, often elevated to extremely sophisticated levels by the superspecialization of the nation's schools. Elementalism (the summoning and controlling of elemental energies and entities) is frequently seen, though elementalists are typically considered to be those who couldn't quite hack it as demonologists - the magic is similar between the two disciplines, but the stakes are much higher in demonology.

Mentalists are fairly common, since the subtle control allowed by that art well suits the highly political nature of life in the upper echelons of society (sometimes it's really just easier to make a bureaucrat think you filed form 18b). Yù also favors those forms of magic that are occasionally known of as the 'subtle arts.' From dealing in blessings and curses to the delicate art of healing the body and mind, schools have cropped up to teach these techniques (though they also are considered as less sophisticated form of magic, suited for those who couldn't master the higher forms).

Thaumaturgy is an art which was once unique to Yù but is becoming more and more common in other lands by forces of parallel evolution. Thaumaturgists are skilled in directly manipulating magic itself. It began in studies of how to detect and analyze existing spells (something which isn't typically possible for humans) and developed into a more complex art. A skilled thaumaturgist can reinforce or shatter an existing spell - even altering the specific parameters of a spell's operation. The obvious utility of this kind of magic has insured that it reliably crop up in any well-established center of magical learning, with the schools of Yù being some of the first to uncover its secrets.

Some sorcery is taught outside of the schools, as well. Religious orders are common throughout Yù, since the relatively wealthy nation has long had enough of a human surplus that it can maintain an extensive subculture of priests and monks. These informal schools never teach the more advanced arts like demonology or thaumaturgy (the schools guard such knowledge too closely), but they often teach the rudiments of mentalism and the subtle arts. Some orders of monks also teach magics related to stealth and war, be it to defend the nation or to make war among themselves (the orders of monks are notoriously competitive, though Yu-huang has managed to keep open battles to a minimum).

The land where the Empire of Sand now stretches was once a barren desert, inhabited by dozens of warring tribes scattered over vast deserts and plains. Not much has changed. The tribes, while nominally united by their worship of a single God-King, have never gotten along well - their grudges born in skirmishes over rights to scarce water sources and grazing lands and then retained and amplified over centuries of warfare. The theocratic government has until lately only held any real authority in the empire's small, sparsely scattered urban centers.

Thanks to these tendencies, the empire - though large and generally wealthy - was hardly a force to be reckoned with. Its neighbors knew better than to invade (the fast-moving guerilla tactics of the tribes have brought more than a few armies to a miserable end, their supply lines cut in the middle of the harsh desert), but they also knew that the so-called empire wasn't anything to be taken seriously. When it Fell out of Heaven, the God-King was not pleased by this state of affairs.

The intervening fifty years have seen marked improvement in the conduct of the tribes. Each still retains its sense of identity, but brutally enforced laws against internal conflict have begun to direct their competitive natures into directions that are more healthy for the empire as a whole. Of course, the very fact of its physical presence helps, since faith in the God-King one of the few points of agreement that applies to all of the tribes. All of this is still very much a work in progress, though, requiring the God-King's constant attention and personal involvement to keep in motion.

The Empire of Sand is a nation that relies heavily on trade. The tribes of the desert can generally take care of themselves, but the industries and urban centers that have been growing under the God-King's direction need to be fed, and in large quantities - more than the mostly barren empire can provide. Given that the rise of the Church has isolated the West from the rest of the world, most of this need has had to be satisfied with Yù rice, supplemented by produce from some of the far eastern nations and from Naram-Sin, the most accessible of the Southern nations.

Fortunately, the empire can afford the bill. While it has very little agricultural land, its expanses hold vast mineral wealth, from coal and iron to gold and salt, and the exports of these resources have made it a wealthy nation, with its few cities standing like jewels in the desert. Furthermore, the northern reaches of the empire are much more temperate - the land there being poor in soil quality but ideal for the pasturing of cattle, sheep, and horses.

Mostly desert, the Empire of Sand begins in the foothills of the Spine of the World, extending northward over vast reaches of sand and stone. This is Dasht-e Kavir, the Great Salt Desert which fills most of the empire and continues into the nations to the east. In the north, the desert begins to fade into rolling grasslands before terminating in ocean on the north and the west.

The empire's capitol is the city of Chaleh, which has held the chief temple to the God-King since before the empire's formation. Chaleh grew up out of a simple convergence of trade routes - it is at the crossing of several trade routes within the empire, as well as at the end of trade routes both from the West (now limited to trade from Yù) and from Naram-Sin, in the South.

When the Fall occurred, almost all surviving gods did so by taking on an avatar form, with the God-King standing as the only broadly known exception. It had always preferred to interact with its people through an intermediary (possibly why it was so surprised at the empire's state of affairs), so it often spoke through its high priest, channeling into the man and using him as a mouthpiece. During the Fall, it simply took this to the next level, possessing the high priest, tearing away his soul, and replacing it with its own divine essence. (The tales have it that the God-King was highly displeased with his priest at the moment.)

This unique tactic seems to have allowed it to retain more power than the other gods did - perhaps because it is simply residing in the body while the others are their bodies, with all the attached limitations of physical form. Regardless, the God-King demonstrably has access to more of its power than most of the other Fallen gods. It still has limitations (tapping too much of its power would likely destroy the mortal flesh that it is using as a receptacle), but this degree of power has gone far to reinforce the faith of the tribes and the city-dwellers alike.

Despite their differences, the tribes of the Empire of Sand all share the same basic cultural background, upholding traditions passed down from ancient times, dating from before even the theocracy of the God-King. Many of these traditions are being lost in the cities - the nomadic culture of the empire giving way to a new, urban culture.

Perhaps the most important element of tribal culture is the division between 'us' and 'them' - consciously separating the rest of the world from the empire in almost every respect. There is a word, 'Agam, which refers to all those who neither worship the God-King nor speak the common language of the desert tribes. The etiquette appropriate for dealing with 'Agam is distinctly different from that appropriate for dealing with other members of the Empire of Sand's cultural group. It is not necessarily worse, just different. There are things that one can say to an 'Agam that one cannot say to another worshipper of the God-King, and vice versa.

The other tradition that tends to confused outsiders is that the tribes differentiate between sex and gender. Gender roles are very strictly laid out, allowing for very little choice in behavior, occupation, or mode of dress. However, either sex may take up either gender role, and it is possible to change genders one or more times during one's lifetime. For instance, all leaders and warriors are of the male gender, but a woman can do these things if she also takes up the other role requirements of a man. If she does so, she marries as if she were a man, and she can take either another woman as a wife, or she can marry a man who has adopted the roles of a woman.

This runs throughout imperial society, though outsiders rarely really understand what they are seeing. In fact, when interacting with 'Agam, tribespeople usually speak of themselves and of other imperial citizens using true sex, rather than adopted gender roles.

The tribes also have a long sorcerous tradition. The desert is an unforgiving place, and they have adapted using methods both mundane and magical. Their arts began in simple survival magic, but the more skilled of their sorcerers gradually developed new arts, often geared toward waging war against one another.

The traditional nomad sorcerer-shaman is called a fugara, meaning 'weak' (since many of them fast extensively in order to more easily attain ecstatic states). They have a number of shamanic practices, collectively known of as zikr - these are not terribly powerful, but they are essential to survival in the harsh desert of Dasht-e Kavir. Zikr actually consists of two arts, being that of healing and that of harming. The former is generally just referred to as 'zikr,' while the later is called witchcraft. Most of the time, a fugara is only familiar with one form of zikr or the other.

The primary form of zikr is chiefly concerned with curing ailments and toughening its recipients against the environment. A fugara skilled in zikr can heal mortal wounds, cleanse diseases of the body and mind, and allow a man or animal to travel for days in the desert without need of water, food, or rest. Witchcraft does much the opposite, weakening its targets and afflicting them with disease or madness. Both forms grant the ability to scry upon and communicate with friends and enemies alike - a useful tool in the expanses of the desert.

Zikr is an indirect art, effecting its cures and curses through the augmentation of herbs, water, and other substances which are then applied to the body. As such, it is more difficult to use than similar arts, but it is also generally more difficult to resist (making zikr witchcraft all the more dangerous).

The magical practices of the tribes have never held any particular unity. Almost all tribes are familiar with one form or another of zikr, but they also possess a hodgepodge of other magical ideas, ranging from elementalism to weather manipulation to augury. However, these arts had been developed within specific tribes by lines of fugara, and the result was fragmentary and half-hazard at best.

This began to change as the God-King drew together the tribes and encouraged the growth of the cities. Separate traditions came together, and while the fugara of the various tribes still weren't big on sharing their magical knowledge, they did begin to see common elements - noticing where they had solved different problems relating to certain types of sorcery, and realizing that their individual knowledges could be combined into more advanced, complete arts.

Given the tribes' propensity for competition, this probably would've been the end of it were it not for the creation of the University. Seeing the untapped resource to be had in the scattered magical traditions of the tribes, the God-King established a center of magical learning in Chaleh. The first recruits were the more unusual of the tribal shamans and sorcerers, forming a nucleus of experimentation that gave birth to some new and startling methods. This in turn led to a wider acceptance of the University, and more of the talented tribal sorcerers put aside competition in order to avoid being left behind by the better-trained students and teachers of the school in Chaleh.

The chief arts that have arisen from the University's studies are those of elementalism and weather manipulation. Elementalism is very similar to that practiced elsewhere, but the University variation extends to the summoning and bargaining with djinn, which the fugara have long had a degree of familiarity with.

Weather manipulation is an art closely related to elementalism, as it allows the practitioner to guide the elemental forces already present in the world, manipulating weather phenomena without the intervention of otherworldly entities. It is, however, possibly misnamed, since the students of the University are beginning to reapply the same techniques to controlling other aspects of the world. For instance, a handful of such students have mastered the techniques necessary to cause earthquakes and shape the earth to their desire. There have likewise been experiments into fire raising, though this is proving a difficult art to formulate.

Thaumaturgy has also been arrived at at the University, brought about by the need to more closely study the underpinnings of magic. So it was in Yù, and so it was in every other nation to uncover these secrets. Thaumaturgy is, however, a very new art in the Empire of Sand, and less than half a dozen sorcerers at the University grasp even the basics of the art.

There is a second religion in the Empire of Sand, though it is very limited in scope. This is an primordial cult, one of a handful of fringe religious groups that worship the autocthons - the supposed inscrutable beings that predate the gods and, presumably, the world. This particular faith worships something that they call the Nameless God, which they claim speaks to them from a large, black stone that they found in the desert millennia ago.

The God-King tolerates the cult's existence, though the empire at large is not permitted to waste their prayers on it. The cult claims that the God-King fears what their Nameless patron would do should it wipe them out. Everyone else assumes that the God-King merely considers them to be beneath its notice.

The desert tribes are not the only inhabitants of Dasht-e Kavir. In addition to the djinn, ghosts, and monsters that dwell in its expanses, there exist a number of orc clans operating more-or-less independently of one another out in the desert. The tribes refer to the orcs as al-'Agam al-ba'ida, meaning something close to 'those lost in the desert.' This name is often simply abbreviated to 'Agam, which can be somewhat confusing for outsiders (since that term also applies to all those who are not part of imperial culture). Scholars typically refer to these clans as the Agami orcs, to avoid confusion.

The orcs were in the desert before the humans, long predating the tribes' migration to the area. Many of the skills practiced by the tribes were learned from the orcs over the course of millennia, from the mundane knowledge needed to survive in the desert to the arts of zikr. Since then, the orc clans and the human tribes have always had a distantly respectful attitude toward one another - they interact very little, and they are polite when the circumstances force them to cross paths.

Human knowledge of the orcs' past is limited and often distorted, but what few legends men have managed to pick up suggest that the orcs originated in the exodus of a small group of goblins from the deep caves in which their kind normally dwell. What might have driven this group from their familiar caves to the bright, expansive reaches of Dasht-e Kavir remains unknown. The orcs worship their own gods, and it is unknown as to whether or not these gods Fell alongside the gods of man. Unlike the goblins, the orcs don't seem to have any particular problem with the dwarves (though, granted, there have been limited opportunities to test this).

The long isolation of the orc clans is beginning to lessen. Shortly after its Fall, the God-King personally approached some of the clans, eventually securing an agreement of mutual defense with a couple of the clans. The orc clans rarely go to war, but they are mighty indeed when driven to it - the few conflicts that have erupted between the orc clans and the human tribes tended to end badly for the tribespeople. This is doubly impressive when considering that the orcs have no tradition of domestication or metalworking and were thus fighting horsemen on foot and lightly equipped.

With the God-King's pact, the orcs have been seen more often in human lands as the clans that agreed to the pact begin to gather into a formal war machine - the eventual intent being that the orcs march alongside the tribes when the war with Nineveh comes home.

Nineveh's Church of the One God was born out of Fall, reasoning that the Fallen gods must have been cast down by a higher power (and, truly, no better explanation has yet been put forth). Their ultimate conclusion was that the Fallen gods were indeed false gods - cast down from Heaven by the true creator, whom they began to refer to as the One God. Taking up a banner against the Fallen, they set about toppling their former god (Shamash, the Eye of the Sun) from his position. Astonishingly, they succeeded, seizing control of Nineveh and setting off a series of aggressive expansionist wars.

The Church exists for one reason - to cleanse humanity of the sin of idolatry. According the the Chuch, mankind's worship of false gods angered the One God, the true creator of the world. However, he mercifully gave humanity a chance to repent by casting the false gods out of heaven. With the gods bound to earth and limited in power, humans were given a chance to do penance by destroying the false gods they once worshipped.

Therefore, the Church has two goals - to stop all remaining worship of false gods and to destroy the false gods that now walk the earth. It is willing to spend lives in order to achieve this. Either by making war against the infidel, or by sending armies into battle against the false gods, the Church has killed many in its Holy War. This may seem to be a moral quandary, but remember - in this world reincarnation is real.

Those who do not convert are simply be killed in the hope that they will be reborn in the lands already held by the Church. Eventually (when the Church rules all human lands) every human that passes through the cycle of reincarnation will be brought up in the teachings of the Church. If the heretic's soul can not be saved now, it can be set aside for later (violently). All is justified, for when the twofold goals of the Church are accomplished, the One will return humanity to his graces, and the kingdom of God will reign triumphant.

In the decades since the Church took over Nineveh, it has created a small empire, rapidly conquering the surrounding nations. Nineveh was always a powerful nation, and the unexpectedness of its conversion into an expansionist religious state allowed it to wage its first wars highly successfully. The expansion has slowed, however, running up against mountains, alliances, and the borders of equally powerful nations.

The land that the Ninevan Empire now covers can be divided into three general phases of expansion. The first wave of expansion is now decades in the past, and the current generation has been brought up under the theories of the Chuch. These parts of the empire are considered a part of the nation of Nineveh. The capitol is in old Nineveh at the city of Kanesh, which is also called the City of God within the empire (but rarely elsewhere).

The second wave of expansion was more recent, starting about twenty years ago and ending about five years ago. The nations conquered in this push (the Western Provinces and the nation of Kerma) still hold onto some of their individual identity. They have the right to self-governance so long as they tithe to Nineveh and obey the demands of the Curia. They also tend to have resistance groups within them, ranging from cults to the Fallen gods to nationalist freedom fighters.

The third stage of expansion was a little different, occurring over the last decade. First, the Church sent an expeditionary force across the Spine of the World to capture the small mountain nation of Punt. Then, just recently, missionaries secured the conversion and loyalty of Aksum, which had previously been a satellite nation of the Empire of Sand. These acquisitions are clearly tactical in nature, unlike the wild expansion of the first and second waves. Here, the Church is establishing a presence in tactically important locations in order to continue their expansion to the East and to the South in a more thoughtful fashion.

The governing body of the Church is the Curia, composed of a select group of highly respected priests. The members of the Curia (called Curates) are tapped from all paths of the priesthood - the Inquisitors, the Missionaries, and the non-specialist preachers. They serve as generals and local governors of the empire, but this by no means constitutes the entirety of the Curia - many remain in Kanesh or simply travel, overseeing the empire.

Outside of Nineveh proper, the Curia does not handle the day-to-day affairs of local governments. However, the Curia does rule the empire as a whole. When a decision must be made, a quorum (consisting of at least a quarter of the current Curates) must be convened at Kanesh. Usually, there are enough in the City of God to do so, but occasionally a few must be recalled to the city before deliberations can start. When the Curia comes to a decision, its word is law and must be obeyed throughout the empire. If a nation under the control of the empire failed to do so, it would likely result in the quick dismantling of the offending nation.

The priests of the Church serve many purposes. Many are simply priests and monks, worshiping the One God and ministering to the people of the empire. However, there are other paths a priest may take. Some join the Mission, converting heretics to the worship of the One, either by preaching in cities outside the empire's reach or by taking up arms in the Holy War of forcible conversion. Another path is that of the Inquisitor, searching out heretics and schismatics within the empire.

The Mission exists to convert unbelievers to the worship of the One True God, since the Church believes that the One will return to the world only when all mankind has given up the worship of false gods. It makes little difference how the infidel is converted - there are as many Missionaries in the armies of the empire as there are preaching the Word in the street. Either way, the heretics' souls are saved. The Holy War is fought primarily with soldiers of the empire, but the Mission supplies the War with commanders, generals, and elite soldiers. As such, it is difficult to rise in the armies of the empire without joining the priesthood.

The Inquisition is the mirror of the Mission. While the Mission goes to work outside of the empire, the Inquisition turns its eye inward, searching for the sinners, heretics, and schismatics who, if left unchecked, will corrupt the empire from within. This is a necessarily secret occupation - the traitors will rarely declare themselves, and often the only way to save them is to kill them and bless their next incarnation.

The Church has its prophets. The first was named Aram, and it is he who first spoke to the One God. He was the driving force behind the formation of the Church and the destruction of Shamash, and he then went on to be the guiding hand behind the first wave of imperial expansion. He died of old age about a decade ago (he was already quite elderly at the time of the Fall), becoming an icon for the Church's continued growth.

His successor, Leah, is without a doubt the single most important person in Nineveh. Church doctrine has is that the One has spoken to her since early adolescence, describing to her his desired path for the Church. Rumor within the empire has it that he has also granted her extensive mystical knowledge, making her one of the greatest sorcerers in the world. (Reports of her involvement in the Mission's major battles suggest that these rumors could hold some truth.)

Leah is a member of the Curia, spending most of her time touring the empire and lending her power and guidance to the war effort, where needed. Being only in her early twenties, she will most likely be around for quite some time to come.

The Guild is the chief trade organization for pretty much the entire world. Smaller groups handle smaller trade routes within and between regions, but the Guild goes everywhere - Nineveh, the Empire of Sand, Lyr, the South, and the dwarven cities are all regularly visited by Guild caravans and ships. There is evidence (based on the goods that the Guild can provide) that Guild caravans even venture into other worlds, trafficking with otherworldly civilizations. The Guild neither confirms nor denies this.

A Guild caravan is usually the single best source of goods in any given region. Each caravan often includes upward of twenty or thirty of their signature two-story tall wagons, dozens of merchants, and up to a hundred mercenaries and Guild enforcers. Virtually anything can be bought at such a caravan (even the occasional magical object), and they can often make special arrangements to obtain particularly rare items in time for their next pass through your region.