The City of Veldonia - Part III

The political landscape of Veldonia is a viper’s nest of ancient grudges and desperate power grabs. While King Jeoff Silvercrest sits on the throne, his authority is a crumbling facade held together by tradition and little else. The kingdom’s true power lies in the tension between the arcane elite, the divided faith of the city, and the noble houses who are competing to see who can replace the Silvercrest as rulers of the kingdom.

The College of Arcane Lore

While the College is an academic institution, the Keepers of the Orrery are its political heart. They seek to maintain a monopoly on Vaelorian artifacts recovered from Ker Nethalas, and see the city as their laboratory, with the King being a necessary, albeit dim-witted, shield against the commoners.

The College is currently lobbying for “exclusion zones” in the Slums, areas where they can legally “excavate” (tear down housing) to reach suspected Vaelorian vaults. So far they haven’t managed to get full approval, but some tests have already started, without the explicit consent of the city’s leadership.

Archmage Valerius Thorne, a man rumored to have replaced his own heart with an ancient Vaelorian relic, controls the College and the Keepers, making him one of the most powerful individuals in the kingdom.

The Silvercrest Loyalists

Led by King Jeoff Silvercrest, this faction consists of the old blood families who claim lineage back to the Unification. Their main agenda is the preservation of the status quo and the distraction of the masses, to which end they fund the Great Arena with staggering amounts of gold to ensure the games never cease. To them, politics is a game of aesthetics; as long as the wine flows and the refuse is cleared from the palace gates, they are content.

The Vane Family are the most prominent rivals to the Silvercrests. They occupy the manors closest to the Palace and are secretly waiting for King Jeoff’s debauchery to finally bankrupt the crown so they can buy the throne.

The Divided Churches

Although presenting a unified front for the rest of the city, the different churches in the pantheon are in constant struggle. The tension is defined by three primary factions within the pantheon, each vying to be the ultimate moral authority over the city’s soul (and its lucrative justice system).

• The Solar Hegemony faction is heavily influenced by the Oxze Empire, and are aggressively trying to “Oxze-ify” the Veldonian faith, conspiring to make a particular deity stand above all others. If it weren’t for their inability to decide which deity should preside, they would have already achieved their goals.

• The Unification Traditionalists represent the Old Faith of the Alderworth Kingdom, established during Varkonos Silvercrest’s Unification. They worship the concepts of Law, Duty, and the Royal Line. They believe the king’s word is the highest divine decree, and want to create a closer link between religion and state, by ordaining the Silvercrest family and giving them religious authority.

• The Mortuary Priesthood: A grim, silent wing of the pantheon that manages the city’s relationship with death. They acknowledge the dark reality of Ker Nethalas, but don’t have a cohesive way of dealing with what it represents. While the other churches pretend the necropolis doesn’t exist, the Keepers believe it is a “divine hunger” that must be fed to stay dormant. They are generally considered lunatics and are the most isolated faction, often accused by the other churches of being Vaelorian sympathizers who secretly harbor the necromantic rot of the past.

  
  

The priests of the pantheon are also united in their hatred of the Seventh Circle. They view the flamecasters’ Eternal Flame as a secular, magical perversion of divine light. The internal struggle often pauses just long enough for the churches to collectively lobby the King to tax the Seventh Circle’s embassy into oblivion.

The Azari Delegation (The Seventh Circle)

Housed in their unnaturally warm embassy, the flamecasters of the Seventh Circle are the city’s most volatile political wild card. Nominally here for trade (Azari spices and fire-resistant silk are extremely desired commodities), they are actually monitoring the Aether-wells of Ker Nethalas. They believe the necropolis is a rot that threatens to spread across Iskandria. They provide the Eternal Flame that lights the High District’s streets, ensuring public support for their presence, although they have recently started threatening to extinguish it if the King does not grant them a permanent seat on the High Council.

Political Hotspots

• The Revenant Trials: Every time a Revenant rises through the ranks of the Arena, the different factions bet on them. A successful Revenant is more than a gladiator; they are a political symbol that can be leveraged and used to advance a particular agenda.

• The Grave Tax: A heated debate in the Royal Court regarding how much the King should tax the relics brought up from the depths. The Shadowsong Guild currently controls the flow, though, much to the Archmage’s fury.

• Helvonian Influence: Neighbouring Helvonia is steadily increasing their cultural dominance over the Alderworth Kingdom, with Helvonian music and literature serving as the spear point of their technological dominance over the region.