The Land of Soul
Soul is one land under one throne. Four provinces, each under its king; four kings answering to one emperor. At the center of all things lies the Drakemere; at the center of the Drakemere, the Lion.
The old surveys say the land takes its name from Solace, its westernmost province. Why a whole land should be named for its farthest corner, the surveys do not say.
The Four Provinces
Skyreach
High plains and peaksMount Nourtris and the Icespike Spires hold the snowline; below it stand the Dark Forest and Magikis, town of the collegiate mages. Blrenk keeps the crossroads, and Paradise sits at the far shore — named honestly, its people insist.
Its herds moved early this year. The drovers shrug.
Greenhollow
The deep woodsThe Great Forest, oldest timber in the land, grows against the Tyrenious Mountains Range. Zinlon and Morrin Stead keep the wood’s edge; Lonsor Meadow feeds the north; the Lost Hamlet is not lost, merely hard to find. At Trelk on the lakeshore, the Liongard ferry takes on passengers.
Its charcoalers complain the wardstones sweat color. Wardstones do that, say the wardwrights, in a dry season.
Kingsmoor
The old seatThe throne’s first home, before it moved to the water. The First Plains and the Golden Hills grow the empire’s bread; Lake Trious waters it. Dragonth and Marthon keep the markets, joined by the Opus Regla, the old kings’ road. Offshore lie the Isle of First Inheritance and the Ralto Estate, held by the same family since anyone bothered counting.
Solace
Nearest the red horizonWesternmost of the four. Dark Reach and the Regning Outpost watch the borders; between them lie the Deadlands, the Lost Plains, the Deep Red Volcano — which has not burned in living memory — and the peak the maps call the Red Dagger. Its ageless king is absent, as ever, from the Accession stair; his banner is carried by proxy.
Solace has grown quiet of late. The survey does not say why.
Liongard, Called the Lion
The capital stands on its island in the Drakemere, reached by ferry. Its lamps are lit every night by decree of the emperor himself, the flame caught in golden panels until the whole city seems made of gold. The streets are carefully planned, wide enough for two carts; at the city’s heart rises the Imperial Tower, from whose steps the emperor speaks, and the crowds gather in a semicircle to hear him.
Locals do not say Liongard. Locals say the Lion.
The Drakemere
The great lake at the land’s center, gold at dawn and silver at dusk. By night the two moons ride on its water, one red, one blue. The ferrymen know its moods better than the map room does, and are not shy about saying so.
Of Time and Festival
The empire reckons its years in the Era of the Seal; this survey is compiled in the year 1145. The night is kept in watches; the night sky is kept by the star-charts of the map room, which the cartographers correct each season with great confidence.
In high summer the empire keeps Accession Day, the festival of the emperor’s crowning: the city in gold and banners, the procession, the precedence of the four kings read aloud at the stair — Skyreach, Greenhollow, Kingsmoor, and Solace, whose king does not come.
Of Colors
Two colors are legible to every soul in Soul. Gold is the crown: the guard’s gold chest plate, stamped with the crowned, horned, winged beast of the founding myth. Red is the other thing — the order that is spoken of quietly, when it is spoken of at all.
“The knife remembers, even when the hand forgets.” — a proverb of uncertain origin, which the chancery would prefer not to explain
Of that order, the chancery publishes only one document. It is a wanted decree.