Anna is the second child and only daughter of Richard Longsun, King of the Santonia province, richest and most powerful of all the provinces of the Rotakan Empire. Known as the "spitfire princess", she has a short temper and is a fierce fighter.

Brown skin, dark brown eyes (almost black), black hair. She's got a straight, strong nose, almond shaped eyes with long eyelashes, well defined lips, heart shaped face.

She's is the second child and only daughter with three brothers. Her older brother is set to inherit the throne, while her two younger brothers (twins) are mostly set to de-flower as much of the city's youth as they can get their hands on, preferably in a drunken stupor.

Andrea Sands is an orphan of the Ionia slave plantations and part of the same gang that Oliver Sands is in. She tends to be the more level-headed one of the group, preferring caution to risk and often is the one that will play devil's advocate.

Andrea is thin to the point of slightly malnourished, though that's normal for anyone with Sands as a last name. She's got a mop of curly blond hair, high cheek bones framing flat gray eyes, a strong jaw, and sunken cheeks.

Like most, this isn't the first gang she's been in, but it is the longest. She carries issues from a prior gang that was claimed by a purge, leaving her the only survivor. She is highly antagonistic, especially against anyone she feels is acting in a way that might jeopardize the gang.

She and Oliver often get in fights, as Oliver is impulsive and tends to have a more optimistic approach to…well, everything. Despite their contentious relationship, Andrea often goes out of the way for Oliver, something that has spurred rumors amongst the rest of their group.

Branson Sands is quiet, level headed, and very good at disappearing in plain sight. He's extremely adept at blending in and surveying potential targets, which allowed him to work as a scout for various small gangs. Most of those gangs ended up broken or dead when they invariably took on a target they couldn't handle, not that he never warned them. He eventually settled with a small team, led by Mike Sands, who not only valued Branson for his ability to scout, but for his risk assessment.

Dia is a woman preoccupied with tech and for good reason. She has a gift that allows her to understand it in a way no one else can. Consumed with a driving desire to learn and create, Dia often ignores her friends, her own needs, and often just ignores reality itself to focus on whatever project she's working on. She's a woman in her head, but the real problems arise when what's in her head begins to make their way into the real world, a world not ready to handle what she's ready to create.

Finley loves exactly three things in life: women, booze, and sword fighting.

Oliver Sands is a orphan of the Ionia slave plantations. Abandoned as a child, he's never met his parents. Despite living in the slave plantations, Oliver has never been a slave, which he sometimes regrets—slaves, at least, get to eat every day. He often does not.

Shortish height with a thin, wiry build. Reddish hair, brown eyes, hooked nose, thin jaw. Tends to carry himself with his shoulders back.

Oliver's attitude and mouth do not lend themselves well to authority, which has alienated him from just about any gang he's encountered. Bouncing from group to group, he eventually fell in with a small group living on the fringes of society, avoiding purges, and stealing to meet their needs.

A slight, short boy known for being very particular about his clothing along with an unnaturally precise sense of time. With Santonian heritage, he's got brown skin, dark brown hair, brown eyes, and he's very short—he'll be lucky to reach 5'.

Sal has a strong sense of style.

Almond eyes, black-silk hair, pale face, thin lips, delicate features that bordered on beautiful. Stan has a lithe, effeminate body. A dancer's body.

Stan was born to a middling, grain mercantile family in the port city of Chuazuan, Sutan. By the age of three, Stan demonstrated a troubling trait, the nascent ability to shape graescence. While having a trait is often considered a great boon, Stan's ability to shape graescence was so powerful his parents feared for his life. Faced with the choice of turning their three-year-old son to the Inquisitors, or hiding, they chose to hide.

Terra was born the youngest in one of the most powerful families in the Empire. Her mother sits as head, ruling over and responsible for maintain the trade between the provinces. Her brother should be set to inherit, but he's proven to be uninterested in ruling and irresponsible, shirking his duties in favor of personal "interests". The last brother who proved incompetent had been "removed", never again seen. While Terra may have a tumultuous relationship with her brother, the last thing she wants is to see him dead.

Casters generally come in two types: slings and rails. Both are designed to fire some sort of small projectile at high speeds with relatively good precision (depending on the caster). Like any weapon, they come in many configurations and styles with an equal breadth of quality. Mainly, the configurations can be divided into two main styles, Handcasters and Longcasters, while the type of casters is divided into Slings and Rails.

Glass is a term used to describe the effect that occurs when "shaping" graescence into a surface. Since Shapers and Shielders are rare, the term is most often used to describe graetech weapons that shape graescence into pre-defined forms. Those who carry such expensive weapons are said to be "packing glass".

Graescence is the essence of life. It is the lifeblood of society, the fuel for all technology, the bane of the classes, and power incarnate.

In other words, nobody actually knows what it is.

Heating things up with graescence is a rather simple affair, requiring two graescent fields interacting with enough dissonance to heat up the particles within. Two separate coils of Elderin core filament will do it, though there are ways to increase efficiency. The most common way is to split the filaments into spiralled fractals rotating in opposition to one another. The more fractals, the more efficient it will be, and the more costly. High end plates, stove, and ovens will have hundreds of branching, spiralling filaments working together to create heat with as little effort as possible. A low end hotplate, on the other hand, may only have two.

The principle currency of the Rotakan Empire. The Rocsillian takes the form of a small rectangular piece of cloth-like paper about three fingers wide and five fingers long. While other currencies do exist, the Empire actively discourages their use to the point of violence if they believe another currency might threaten the Rocsillian. As such, the Rocsillian is by far the common currency of the world, with others taking only niche applications.

Shaping is a difficult discipline in which a person generates two opposing forces using their graescence, then solidifies them together using a form of resonance between the fields. This creates an invisible "surface" that is often referred to as a "shield", reflecting its most common application. A Shaper can generate these surfaces and manipulate them into "shapes".

A Sled has two (or more, but usually only two) strips of Elderin core filaments (usually called runners) that run parallel to each other. The graescent fields generated will "press" against latent graescence below it, causing the sled to "float" in the air about a pace. Because something floating in the air has virtually no friction, the ends of the runner are curved up, causing them to press outward and provide a modicum of friction.

The Caldonian Rail system consists of a pair of stacked tunnels that wind through and between each of the major mountain cities of Caldonia. Each tunnel is lined with two thin rails upon which sit the railcars which move in opposite direction to each other, each straddling one of the rails. The railcars pull graescence from the rails themselves, powering various graetech within the cars, causing the cars to hover above the rails, and providing power to accelerate the cars along the rails.

Sometimes called a 'gift', a Trait is a natural ability to do something that would normally be either impossible, or take years of study to accomplish. While there is certainly a genetic component involved, Traits are random enough that most wouldn't consider it worth the effort to breed or create bloodlines to establish Traits in their children. Not that people don't try.

A drajin is a lizard, a very big lizard that's roughly the size of a large horse, maybe a little larger, used as beasts of burden. They are docile, lazy, and slow, with stubby trunk-like legs the size of a human torso. They have two bony ridges called a crest, following from their nose to wrap around their ear holes along the sides of their head. They have large, diamond shaped scales covering most of their body. Most are colored brown and grey, but there are rarer breeds with brighter colored greens and even reds.

Drajin tend to exist in one of two states: walking or sleeping. There's some debate (among the very few who care) as to when their 'sleeping' state is actually sleeping, or just some in-between state they slip into when they're not walking. The debate stems from the fact that they can move from their sleeping state to their walking state with virtually no transition, and that there doesn't seem to be a 'real' sleeping state.

Despite their slow, methodical pace, Drajin are used almost exclusively for transporting goods, usually as part of massive merchant trains. They are one of the few animals capable of (and practically the only animal willing to) power a sled for long periods of time, repeatedly. There've been attempts to breed faster Drajin, but the resulting breeds never have the sheer stamina the normal boring Drajin seem to possess.

A mythical dragon-like creature that supposedly lives deep within the Ice Blades and breathes…ice, though no one really knows how that would actually work. They're probably white, or maybe blue. They range in size from a large house to a small cat, depending on who you ask.. They have wings, probably. They eat small children, according to some parents.

Blooded in winter, verdant in spring, bleached bones in between.

The Elderin Tree is the foundation of all technology on Rotaka and, as such, is a tightly controlled resource. Growing, harvesting, or even owning a Elderin without a permit is considered a capital offense, with very few exceptions. Groves are owned by Royal families that operate under strict protocols that govern everything from how the trees are to be grown to how they are harvested. Even the groves themselves must be hidden from sight, so that the average Rotakan citizen has never seen one. Those Royal families who own a grove inevitably become rich. Wars are frequently fought over them.

Every part of the tree is useful. The leaves can be turned into a kind of hemp that is often woven into a virtually indestructible fabric. The bark can be turned into tinctures that are known to increase a person's ability to output graescence. The outer wood, often called 'Structural Elderin', is valued for its incredible strength, most commonly as support structures for buildings.

And, finally, there's the core. Every Elderin has one, stretching through the very center of the trunk and every branch. A single 'thread' of elderin core has the potential to conduct almost a limitless current of graescence almost without any loss. As such, Elderin core is the very foundation of every piece of graetech and, as such, is the most valuable part of the Elderin tree.

The only problem, the Elderin tree is extremely slow to grow. It can take years for an Elderin to grow only a couple fingers (a finger is, roughly, ¾ an inch—no seriously, that's the average width of a finger. At least, that's what Google says). To make matters worse, cores don't develop as large in groves as they do in the wild, though no one knows why. This is a big part of what makes it so valuable.

Finally, the processing of Elderin is an incredibly intensive process due to the fact that the Elderin tree is virtually indestructible. The very process is a closely guarded secret, one that the empire would (and has) killed to keep it that way.

The Elderin tree is virtually indestructible, which makes it dangerous. People have died accidentally impaling themselves on little more than twig they didn't see. The process of "trimming" the tree to get at the branch cores is a difficult process that requires very specialized graescent tools, along with time, patience, and skill.

The tree itself is the only known instance of an everleaf, a tree that never sheds its leaves. Through an unknown process, the leaves turn brilliant (some say blood) red for several weeks at the beginning of winter, before turning white for winter. Once springs arrives, the leaves turn a brilliant neon green before darkening for summer. While they never shed, they can be cut off if you have the correct graescent tool. When cut off, the tree will eventually regrow the leaves it lost, though it generally takes a full year. Cut too many, though, and the tree will die. Because of this, there is a strict rotation and maximum percent of leaves that can be cut from an Elderin tree, as decreed by the empire.

The bark of the tree is bone white, almost pristine without blemish. No knife can mar it. Even dirt has a way of flaking off. This makes the tree appear surreal, as though it doesn't quite fit in the environment in which it grows, too perfect for its surroundings. This has led some older cultures to venerate the tree as divine, though those cultures have long since gone extinct under the empire.

While the Elderin is a tightly controlled resource, there is one place a 'normal' citizen may encounter an Elderin: The Elderin Preserve, also known as the Whitewood forest. Located between the Santonian and Teres provinces, it contains not only the largest concentration of wild Elderin trees, but also the largest concentration of extremely dangerous monsters guarding said trees, or so it is said. Every year, dozens of expeditions venture into the Elderin Preserve for a chance to cut down a wild Elderin tree and sell it for enough money (Rocs) to set everyone in the expedition up for life. Occasionally, one makes it back.

Rotakan politics is a political system balances between three main components: The Emperor, the Chairs, and the Provinces. It makes up the backbone of the Empire's politics.

Often used as a title and honorific, it usually refers to a woman who is the head of a house in most of the eastern provinces. Occasionally, it's used as form of respect for a woman even if she is not a head of a house, or it's unknown if she is.

The Rotakan Empire is a world-spanning empire that operates as the unifying government for the Rotakan world. If propaganda were to be believed, it has always existed. As much propaganda does, this lie contains a certain kernel of truth. The Rotakan Empire has only existed in its current form for about 1500 years. However, before the empire existed an empire called the Rotakan empire. The Empire goes through iterations every few thousand years (soft average), where it will be overthrown only to re-establish itself as another Rotakan Empire under new management. To date, no one has overthrown the empire in order to remove it and virtually no one know when the first empire was actually established or how. A single unifying government has existed for so long it may not even occur to the Rotakan people that another was is even possible. Instead, the Empire is overthrown mostly because some province (or alliance of provinces) believe they have a better way to run the empire.

In the year 967 of the Empire, Rhian invaded Sutan. This was unprecedented. Rhian and Sutan until that point had enjoyed an extremely positive and stable relationship. They were so intertwined both politically and economically that most of the rest of the world treated them as a single province. The war came as a shock, and many wondered why the Empire issued a war writ in the first place…of course, those people don't really understand how the Empire works.

In truth, tensions had been growing between the two provinces for hundreds of years. Sutan had been slowly moving towards a more egalitarian society for hundreds of years, while Rhian became increasingly…not.

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Over about a decade, unions sprouted up in all the major cities of Sutan. With the appearance of these male-driven unions, Rhian began a counter cultural movement within Sutan to suppress them.

Rhian couldn't very well act overtly—they were a separate province, after all—but there was enough political capital to quietly stir the fears of many in the existing matriarchy who were growing increasingly uncomfortable with the rise of male power. Most of Rhian enacted a policy of never trading with anyone who employed unionized men, but they also pushed a quiet propaganda war within Sutan designed to stoke the fears of the matriarchy. This culminated in a rather brutal purge, where unionized men suddenly found themselves without work and any women who supported them ostracized.

A tipping point came with a spree of murders that spread through all the major cities in 966. Hundreds of men died, tied naked to the porch pillars of prominent businesswomen who were known to support a more egalitarian view of equality. These men were tied up, usually in the early morning, and left to bleed out, their tongues cut out and their manhood sliced off and left in the mud. Not everyone fully bled out and died, so later murders would find their throats cut as well. The extremely clean cuts left no doubt as to who committed the atrocities. Only a shaper could manage a cut so clean, and only women could truly be shapers (culturally).

If the matriarchy thought this would cow the men, they were greatly mistaken. Within a few months of the murder spree, virtually the entire Sutanese economy ground to a halt as more than 80% of the men in the country refused to work. The murders resumed with a new fervor, but the work did not. The assault on the male class solidified the union in a way nothing else could.

With the economy ground to a halt, it wasn't long before Sutan faced major financial problems. Entire houses fell into ruin, although none of them were supporters of the union. In fact, not a single house supporting the union fell—they all ended up oddly solvent. Nevertheless, the entire province faced imminent collapse toward the end as their reserves bled dry.

After three months of this, two things became apparent: the province would not survive another month of strikes, and the union would not back down. An emergency quorum of Matrons was convened, but due to an odd quirk of the law, none of the fallen houses could attend. It was considered a disgrace to allow one's house to descend into ruin and therefore a question on their ability to walk the path of wisdom. They were barred from any quorum until such time that they could raise their house again.

The vote may have been…lopsided. Just a little.

The Fathers were then writ into the province and officially recognized, although not without also permanently writing in The Mothers as the unequivocal ruling body of the province—those present may be sympathetic, but they sure as hells below weren't going to give up their rule.

The Fathers didn't care. They'd made it abundantly clear who truly made the province run. Without them, there was no province.

The Mothers and the Fathers had finally entered a truce, a very uneasy and fragile truce.

That was when Rhian invaded, one of the dumbest decisions ever made by province, as history would recall it anyway.

Rhian's invasion galvanized the Sutan province against "the serpent within". The narrative shifted, and suddenly it was Rhian who committed the murders, trying to turn Sutan against itself in order to weaken them to this very invasion. The houses that fell, those that opposed The Fathers, were cast as puppet houses controlled by Rhian.

The narrative shift quickly—some say, too quickly, almost as though Rhian's propaganda network had been suddenly coopted. Whether this was actually true, no one knows. But the Fathers rallied, and every man went back to work overtime to rebuff the existential threat that Rhian presented.

It was a close thing, at least on paper. Rhian hadn't suffered three months of economic stagnation. Instead, they'd used the opportunity to "transfer" much of the wealth of the sympathetic Sutanese houses to them, all in an effort to fund not only their army, but quite a few mercenary armies as well. This left Rhian with an almost unbeatable advantage, and they might well have conquered the Sutanese province with ease if it were not for The Fathers.

While the Rhian emptied the coffers of many Sutanese houses sympathetic to their cause, the Fathers had been reallocating asset for…centuries. While the Rhian army and mercenaries (mostly mercenaries) marched on Sutan, The Fathers had been busy hiring their own mercenaries…for centuries.

And many of those mercenaries had been playing both fields, something the Fathers actively encouraged.

The Fathers had been amassing their own mercenaries. This fact was not lost on the matriarchy, at all. And yet, when presented with a mass invasion, they found it convenient enough to ignore the obvious ramifications, accept the "help" of the Fathers, and drive back an invasion they would have otherwise been helpless before.

And so Rhian found its own mercenary armies turn against them at the most inopportune times.

The Fathers and the Mothers had never been closer.

The "Father's War" was a short one. Rhian conquered two cities before being rebuffed thoroughly, their metaphorical tails tucked between their legs as their own hired mercenaries (many of which were male led) chased them back into their province. Sutan quickly rebounded, both the Fathers and the Mothers united in such a way that allowed them to quickly rise in prosperity.

And yet, it was a long war, one that arguably never ended. For Rhian never stopped trying to purge Sutan of its sacrilege, launching invasions every several years. The Sutanese matriarchs maintained their stalwart support of the Fathers, forever watching over their collective shoulders at the men who tirelessly worked to keep them in their place.

While the plantations on Ionia are owned by the empire and worked by slaves, the dynamic between the slaves and the Empire shifted over centuries as the number of slaves grew beyond Empire's ability to manage. After many mistakes and bloody suppression of countless slave revolts, the Empire eventually found it more convenient and cost-effective to allow the slaves to govern themselves and simply extract from them what they needed.

Thus, the slaves have their own (still unofficial and unrecognized) government, politics, and socio-economic system. Entire generations have been born, lived, and died as "slaves", though many wouldn't identify themselves as such. Most simply think of themselves as Ionians.

The Ice Blades are a series of massive ridges of ice running mostly north to south in the southern part of Yuan. Not much is known about them, except that most consider the formation to be unnatural because of the evenness and regulatory of the “blades”.

There are monsters there, most notably the Ice Wyvern, but those that do are so adapted to the harsh cold they never venture far beyond the blades.

The Ice Blades are largely unexplored, somewhat because of the monsters but mostly because there’s virtually nothing there but ice. It’s also in such a remote part of the world that exploration simply isn’t considered worth the effort or risk.

Ionia is the name of the Rotakan moon, although it is more like a sister planet than a moon, especially give that it is slightly larger than Rotaka, not that anyone alive knows that. It is habitable, but only barely. It is much drier than Rotaka, entirely subsumed by vast deserts broken up by bottomless ravines and sky-scraping mountain ranges.

There is only one path to Ionia, the Worldgate, a massive gate situated in the heart of the Rotakan capital city. Soaring hundreds of paces in height, and sitting over a thousand paces in width, the gate to Ionia is the only permanent, self-sustaining portal in existence. No one knows who built it, and all attempts to study the gate have failed. Its very existence defies everything known about how graescence works.

Rhian is the eastern most province in Rotaka and the largest. Like all of the eastern provinces, Rhian is a matriarchy, with a highly stratified society utilizing an informal caste-like system divided into the Royal, Merchant, and Labor classes, broadly speaking—there are subtleties and subclasses within those castes. Out of all the eastern provinces, Rhian has the strictest caste system, with very little mobility between the classes.

While the other eastern provinces have slowly aligned with the Empire's more egalitarian mindset over the centuries, Rhian has mostly resisted that trend, keeping both its classes in place and its men firmly beneath the rule of their wiser counterparts.

Roshan is an arctic province in the southern hemisphere that is mostly known for exporting a large variety of unique seafood. Most of the population lives along the northern coast, as the rest of the country is considered too cold and, if not unlivable, then certainly not desirable.

Even the habited coast would be considered almost uninhabitable by most of the rest of the world, with the majority of the land taken up by sheer cliffs, rocky mountains, and steep forests clinging to (and holding down) shallow loam. Very little is flat enough for crops, not that it hardly matters with such a short growing season.

What makes Roshan livable are the thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of inlets, coves, and tributaries carved into the coast line, feeding into the largest fresh-water sea on Rotaka. Within most of these lies a small fishing village, who export a small amount excess seafood in exchange for the staples needed to survive. These exports will make their way to increasingly larger settlements until they finally land in one of Roshan's two major ports. The food is packed into ice (sourced locally as part of a local industry) and sent out to be consumed by wealthiest of Rotakan royalty. Roshan seafood really is considered the best.

Culturally, Roshan is considered a matriarchy, same as the other eastern provinces. In truth, it's hardly one except in name. Certainly, the larger port cities have a hierarchy familiar to Sutan or Rhian, but the vast majority of the population live in small villages that have developed a necessary culture of cooperation over hierarchy. It is considered taboo to be a lord, and somewhat stupid besides, when all hands are needed to survive.

Roshan, like the other eastern provinces, have a larger contingent of female shapers than normal. Unlike Sutan and especially Rhian, though, a male shaper is just as celebrated as their female counterpart. As a whole, though, Roshan have far fewer shapers overall than their northern neighbors. What shapers they do have tend to be far more skilled and powerful. No one truly knows why, though Rhian in particular has tried to figure out.

The few attempts at invasion (mostly by Rhian, but Sutan gave it a shot once) have been met with either disaster or…endless tedium. Most Roshan shapers end up in the port cities, concentrating enough power there to deter the largest fleets. While it's possible to conquer the outlaying settlements easily, there's just too damn many of them and nothing of value gained by doing so. Invaders tend to give up after a dozen or so settlements, usually from boredom.

The Rotakan world is made of deep oceans and tall mountains with over seventy percent of the world taken up by landmass. The oceans dive hundreds of leagues deep, often straight down from the mountain shorelines. The mountains extend far higher, beyond the line where air ceases to sustain life.

Rotaka orbits a twin planet, Ionia, which is of similar size. Except whereas Rotaka is a lush planet full of life, Ionia is a desert planet. The proximity of the celestial bodies generates large tidal forces on both planets. As such, Rotaka has extreme tides, pushing the ocean hundreds of paces in some places.

Santonia is, by far, the largest and most influential province in the Empire in almost every respect. It has the largest population, the most political influence, the largest provincial army, the largest economy, the largest province by size, and the…largest unused, possibly inhospitable landmass in the world.

Wait, what?

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Yes, uninhabitable landmass. Setting aside the rather questionable ownership of the Elderin (no one owns the Elderin, because no one can own it), something like 80% of Santonia is uninhabited…by Santonians, and most of that are the Santonian plains.

The Santonian plains are weird. They're vast, with a size that dwarfs most other provinces. All the major trade roads route around it. Santionia doesn't use it or patrol it. Monsters roam it. Barbarians inhabit it.

Wait, barbarians?

Yes, barbarians. Massive brutes wearing animal skins with mostly white skin smeared with war paint, roaming the plains, using chipped war axes to hunt down monsters and eat their flesh raw. When they're done, they roar, like an animal, because of course they do.

At least, that's what most Santonian's believe, anyway. The truth is, most of the "barbarians" are little more than small self-sustaining farming communities. Yes, they must deal with "monsters", and they have experience fighting beasts that most would run from, but they certainly don't eat the flesh raw. Why would they? Fire is a problem solved hundreds of thousand of years ago. So yeah, they cook, just as do most people.

They also only inhabit the edges of the plains. While that constitutes a rather significant portion of land, one might say a small province's worth, it is barely a tenth of the plains. Deeper in roam monsters no one can challenge. Also, deeper in are scattered endless ruins from ancient civilizations that predate this Empire and the one before…uh, and likely the one before that. There've been a lot of Empires…or empires. Only the current Empire can have a capital 'E'.

It's a thing.

Let's take a step back. In truth, barbarians are mostly a side-note to the Santonian narrative. Santonia is (and always has been, officially) a monarchy. It's one of the few that exist. Of course, it's subject to the Empire just as any province is, but the sheer history behind the monarchy is rather impressive, reaching back through so many iterations of the Empire that nobody truly knows where it began.

Also, it's one of the few provinces that truly understand the iterations of the Empire. The Santonian monarchy has survived multiple iterations, and maintains a record of such. Of course, they don't advertise this fact, keeping those records behind such tight security that not even the monarch's children know of its existence. And yet, that very knowledge is one of the key balances of power against the current Empire.

Because there's nothing a world-ruling Empire wants is for the knowledge that it is just one of many iterations leaking out to the general public. Such things have a way of eroding authority which…

…you know what, let's leave this one alone for now.

So, yes. Santonia is a monarchy. It also has a long rich history of selling marrying (don't let anyone tell you otherwise) its eldest princess to the Empire's next in line, whoever that might be, in order to maintain its position as the most powerful province in the nation.

Sooooo…yeah, there's a bit of a…tight relationship with the Empire and Santonia.

And then came Anna Longsun…

Well, shit.

Okay, let's not get ahead of the shit-show that's going to be (hint: it's a big one). Santonia has one of the most impressive cities in the world, Castel.

Castel, the capital of Santonia, has twelve twisted spires. Each of these spires has a base larger than most towns, even many cities. They twist, turning about themselves as they reach toward the skies. Every twelfth floor is consumed by a…garden. This garden is engineered to direct 90% of the light inward so as to produce enough food for the other 11 levels which…

You know what, that's not important. In truth, the spires of Castel are a marvel to rival the pillars of the Rotakan capital, something the Rotakan Empire would rather not dwell upon.