The Griscian Commonwealth [Main Lore]

[Tyranny]

A Tide of Order

Introduction
Amidst the sunset of the Unbroken Empire, a fragmented nation of colonial principalities was forged from a poor, decentralized wreckage. Many of Grisic's first people were refugees, fleeing from the destruction of Mithira by the Gods, the annihilation of the Empire's great province of a hundred million souls. They saw beams of raw energy descend from the skies, razing the mounds of entire cities in moments, and not long after they arrived at the fledgling coastal towns was the world rocked by disarray. The descendants of the Empire's capital lands, the Griscian people swore a vengeance against the Gods; a vengeance borne of trauma and fear, a loathing for what they had been dealt. At the very beginning of Grisic's birth came the Divine Abolition, a refutation of all that the people of Atharen had ever known, and a path towards science and reason above all.

Overview
Grisic, the Grisic Empire or the Griscian Commonwealth, is the most populous, second largest, and most powerful nation on Atharen. It is the direct successor to the Unbroken Empire; while Daravin claims the same for itself, Grisic's claim contains far more legitimacy. Many of the elite families of Grisic are the same as those in the Old Empire, and its populace is almost entirely comprised of settlers from its core province. x

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The Core

Technology
Work in progress.

Society
Work in progress.

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Griscian Military Uniform

The Foundations

Culture
The core foundation of Griscian culture is the Pillars. Griscian society is built on the standards of these six ordinances: Prosperity, Modernity, Honor, Duty, Reason and Truth. Statues and monuments to these Pillars exist across the Griscian realm, mounted above fountains in city centers, with inscribed tablets looming weightily on the walls of elite homes and in buildings of law and official appoint.

These values describe what should be the ethics of a modern man: he should be dutiful, placing his loyalty to his nation above all, with the nation surpassing the self. He should strive towards prosperity, for his own life and the lives of others around him; no one should ever accept mediocrity, or settle in their "place." He should act with dignity, and honor the laws and responsibilities of his post, respecting the value of others around him. He should strive to be modern, avoiding superstition or the baseness of an animal. He should always seek objective fact over conjecture or belief. Finally, he should strive to learn more about the world and to use rationality as his basis for navigating known and unknown reality.

As the core of much of Grisic's culture, the Pillars are very important, and they are strongly encouraged throughout society. Their standards are pressed even in basic conversation, with modern, gentlemanly and lady-like behavior ingrained as a common courtesy and expectation. Griscian society is obsessed with what philosophers call "sanitation;" all people must act with poise and articulation lest they be seen as filthy and lesser, and all places and buildings must be clean, orderly and maintained.

Importantly, the Pillars are said to be the best structural basis for humankind, with the other races being excluded from their providence. Grisic considers nearly all non-humans to be primitive and unrefined, incapable of properly integrating the Pillars into their raw and irrational natures.

xx stuff about food and architecture

Marriage
The Commonwealth has among the world's most stringent restrictions and norms around marriage. It is the belief that all men and all women must marry and procreate, in order to further the will and reach of the Commonwealth. Typically, men are expected to marry by thirty, while women are expected to marry shortly after their mandatory years of civics (by around twenty two). Grisic is perhaps the only nation on Atharen where homosexual marriage is outlawed, even though homosexual practice -- and intimacy -- is legal and accepted. This is largely due to the Commonwealth's lack of Necromancy; without Necrodoctors, binary sexual reproduction methods are the only avenue of populating society, and every adult is expected to father or mother at least three children to adulthood in order to fulfill the Pillar of Duty.

The restrictive expectations set by Griscian society on families often severely inhibits a woman's ability to pursue her own career, especially given that more children typically means greater esteem for a family (and in particular the mother), while less generally invites judgment and scorn. To be socially viable, a Griscian couple should have at least five children or more, forcing the mother to quite attentively focus on her flock.

Marriage ceremonies in the Commonwealth tend to be very illustrious, with the gentleman in the relationship often taking on a decade's worth of debt to plan a sufficiently decorative wedding. Excellent attire, a prestigious venue and skillful catering are expected of a proper family, with the couple itself barely able to relish in their amenities as they are forced off the podium to consummate once rings are exchanged.

Magic
Magic is roundly condemned throughout the Commonwealth. As is stated in the Magic article, Griscian historians often emphasize -- as early as primary school for the Empire's youth -- the historical impact and dangers of magic throughout time and era. They reference, correctly, the cruelty of the Sil'Norai and their subjugation of others through the arcane; the sacrifice of slaves with Blood Magic, and the decimation of the Elven Kingdom's elite by hubristically claiming immortality through Necromancy. It is the educated consensus in the Empire that magic is a poison proliferated by the Gods to make mortals discordant, weakening their social order while simultaneously making them more delectable meals for them in the Well of Souls. To this effect, to wield magic is a crime of social decay, willfully inviting a contagion that -- if spread -- will ruin the social order of Griscian society. The punishment for most mages is a public burning, during which it is emphasized that the mage being charred on a pyre is being given a mercy; a cleansing of the rot they have allowed to clog their veins, and take residence in their soul.

Grisic exports this ideology internationally, through academia and through the Divine Abolition. While the Divine Abolition is largely a body focused on stamping out religion and occultism throughout the Empire, the Inquisition (the Abolition's enforcers) are active globally, funded by the Empire. Many of the Inquisition's most prolific members are actually mages themselves; they are known as the Penitent, a sub-faction of magi who find their condition to be loathsome, and who believe that they might only achieve morality, according to the Griscian Pillars, by purging the world of as many mages as possible. The ultimate goal of the Inquisition is to make entire Marks of Control go extinct, or in other words, to make all magics Lost Magics: unachievable relics of history.

Most Inquisitors are Sunderers, and all Penitent are initiated into Brand so that they may use Ethersight and Huntersight to track and slay other mages across the globe. The Penitent are very active in the areas most influenced by the Commonwealth, and have nearly eradicated magic from Khadai, as well as Grisic's colony of Hallix.

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Emperor Vergil Fairfax and Empress Palmyra Fairfax

The Structure

Governance
While Grisic describes itself as a Parliamentarian Autocracy, many other nations label it a "Fascist Dictatorship." In truth, the people of Grisic accept this label with pride; the Commonwealth was the origin point of Atharen's fascist philosophy, refining old Unbroken concepts into a stratified ideology. Grisic is, perhaps, the most centralized nation on Atharen. Nearly all power exists within the state, which has the right to arbitrate the fate of all within its purview. It is a top-down system commanded by the somewhat elusive House Fairfax, the direct descendants of the province's first colonial viceroys.

Grisic is ruled by a complex bureaucracy, its power divided between the Gilded (Nobility) and the House of Law. The Gilded are the only nobles in the Empire, nine Houses that rule each province, with their Lords considered hereditary "Governors," and sometimes "Dukes." While the House of Law wields great power within the Commonwealth, the greatest power lies in the hands of the nine Houses of nobility, who may rule their own realms with oversight from the Emperor alone.

The House of Law, or Parliament, decides federal law and determines the allocation of the federal budget. In theory, the House of Law is in fact capable of passing laws that supersede the Gilded's internal policy, though the nine Lords have an incredible amount of influence and sway over Parliament, with much of the seats being occupied by their relatives. In total, there are one hundred and twenty eight seats, a new seat added for every million souls in the Empire. Parliament's positions are not elective, and are instead determined directly by Emperor Fairfax, who -- in addition -- wields the sole ability to revoke a Senator of Parliament of their seat. Each member of Parliament holds their seat for a minimum of six years, at which point the Emperor determines whether or not to renew their position.

Parliament's chambers lie at the heart of Starkwayte's Upper City, in a building known as Whitehall. Hearings and debates run most of the year, most of it famously drab; financial and trade policy, business and urban planning are the most common points of discussion, though occasionally moral prescriptions or discussions on the direction of the Empire are held.

Military
Work in progress.

Religion
Grisic's fundamental values are antithetical to the concept of an organized religion. Instead, state mandated anti-theism is the norm, with the largest "religious" institution being the Divine Abolition; a morality council wielded by the Emperor to persecute those of faith. The Divine Abolition is divided into two Courts: the Court of the Sword and the Court of Principle, though these are dated and formalized ways of referring to its two key factions, the Inquisition and the Ordained.

The Inquisitors are the faction most, especially foreigners, imagine when they read or hear of the Divine Abolition. They are a faction with both internal and external influence, crushing religion and hunting mages across Atharen and even Icheron. The Inquisition is known for their effectiveness, and their lethality. As an institution, they have slain over a dozen Draedan (the children of the Gods) across the centuries since the Bleeding, and are a leading reason that the Draedan that still exist today rarely let their divine heritage be known. Like with mages, the Inquisition culls all entities connected to the Gods, whether it be their children, practitioners of their arcane remnants, or professors of their faith. While the Inquisition rarely kills theists, they are fond of slaying their preachers and priests, or any who would take up the cloth in the service of "old superstitions." By doing this, they cut off the heads of the hydra, diminishing the Path (the faith of the Living Gods) by making those who would organize it fearful of their lives.

The Ordained are less well-known, and exert their influence internally. They are legalists, and focus their efforts on running intelligence operations throughout the Commonwealth in order to discover theism and the occult. Managing countless intelligence operatives, they physically annihilate religious and occult spaces, while managing the prosecution of those discovered to be faithful. Few milquetoast theists are outright sentenced to death in Grisic, though many of them are imprisoned and "re-educated" for years or even decades. Many die in prison, working as indentured laborers, assembling the tools and machines built to kill their peers in the faith across the continent. The Ordained have a weighty influence -- they are excellent spies, and have infiltrated businesses, clubs and even subterranean, night-dwelling pockets that form through the Empire like a tumor.

Grisic is, unsurprisingly, home to a great deal of lust and curiosity for all things arcane and unknown. While all Griscians claim to profess belief in the Abolition and the Pillars publicly, millions cannot help but wonder what might be. For this reason, it is a cradle of countless large and influential cults, many of which follow an ancient God said to dwell in the seas surrounding Grisic's eastern coast. On the island of Solemn, located in Pike, one particular cult -- the Sons of Solemn -- has existed for hundreds of years, and has spread through the Empire's coastline like a disease. There is an increasing emphasis on suppressing this faith, which appears to alter the minds of its followers, resulting in entire towns being lost to madness and throwing themselves to the seas.

Throughout Grisic, occultism is an underground obsession, and more and more look to the supernatural to explain what the Pillars cannot.

Laws
Work in progress.

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Starkwayte, Capital of the Grisic Empire

The Commonwealth

Climate
Work in progress.

Realm
The realms of the Commonwealth are divided between nine Provinces, each of which is led by a legendary Gilded House.

Fairfax: Ruled by Emperor Vergil Fairfax. x

Morghent: Ruled by Governess Margaret Reid. x

Pike: Ruled by Governor Matthew Vernon. x

Sundria: Ruled by Governess Catherine Indred. x

Striven: Ruled by Governess Alayne Lyne. x

Warwick: Ruled by Governor Vincent Brigham. x

Westmire: Ruled by Governor Tancred Stratham. x

Bethany: Ruled by Governor Damien Lindgrave. x

Arnhem: Ruled by Governess Victoria Drest. x

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The Metrics

Demographics
Total Population: 128,000,000~
Humans: 88%
Hyr'Norai: 6%
Orkhai: 2%
Druskai: 1%
Arkanai: <1%
Gnomes: <1%
Others: <1%

Economy
Work in progress.

Language
Work in progress.