Lithywae
Lithywae is the northernmost empire on the Remnant Continent and the last surviving remnant of the Nylvish Lydirian civilization that once dominated the Shattered Lands. It is governed by the Imperial Dynasty of House Lyllynet from the capital Athyllwyn, built into the Kaelthar Range at the continent’s northern spine. The empire is vast and uneven: imperial authority is absolute in Athyllwyn and thins with every league outward until, in the boreal interior, the law is whoever has the most Ren or the most bodies.
This unevenness is not a problem the empire is working to solve. It is a condition it has managed for centuries.
What is no longer stable is the court. The Emperor is in his waning years. His declining health has drawn him inward, and the absence of his direct hand has filled Athyllwyn’s Inner Ring with faction politics that have been building for decades. Four heirs by four consorts. A Chancellor who manages the empire the Emperor no longer can. A Daemon Sect whose leash has never before gone this slack. And across the empire, from the outer ring of Athyllwyn to the logging settlements three weeks from the nearest checkpoint, a Renak population whose conditions have been worsening long enough that the discontent has begun to find form.
Geography
Section titled “Geography”Lithywae’s territory spans from the Kaelthar Range at its center to coastlines on both east and west. The mountains form the empire’s spine: Athyllwyn sits in the central pass controlling transit between both shores, and two rivers run from the highland spring beneath the capital toward their respective coasts, organizing the land into western and eastern halves with the capital as the hinge.
The north extends through boreal forest into tundra and finally into the uninhabited ice archipelago at the continent’s edge. The far northern mountains, beyond Norrhyn and beyond any city, are where the Frozen Flower Sect maintains its compound at the last elevation the empire can be said to hold.
To the southwest, a leg of territory runs along the mountain range forming the border with Shejara, ending at the mining settlement of Morthryn. This is the empire’s southernmost reach and its most isolated: close to Shejara, far from Athyllwyn, and largely ungoverned by either.
For a detailed account of life in Athyllwyn, see Daily Life: Lithywae.
Government
Section titled “Government”Lithywae is an empire in form and in memory. In practice, it is an aging Emperor, a Chancellor who runs what the Emperor no longer can, and four heir factions that have been circling one another for years without resolution.
The Emperor holds the throne. His health has limited his court appearances and his active governance. He is still alive, still the apex of Nylvish standing, and still the only figure whose authority everyone nominally accepts. The court does not move against him. It moves around him.
The Chancellor manages the empire’s day-to-day governance: tax collection, judicial appointments, checkpoint policy, sect contracts. The position requires navigating the heir factions without visibly backing any of them, which has made the Chancellor one of the most carefully watched figures in Athyllwyn. Every faction believes the Chancellor is secretly favoring someone else. None of them are entirely wrong.
The Daemon Sect answers only to the Emperor. With the Emperor’s attention turned inward, the sect has operated with a latitude it has not had before. What individual members are doing with that latitude is not fully known, even within the sect.
The Four Heirs
Section titled “The Four Heirs”The Emperor’s four sons by four consorts of different rank are the organizing fact of Athyllwyn’s political life. Every significant figure in the city has a position on the succession, openly or not.
| Heir | Backing | Character |
|---|---|---|
| The Legitimate | Senior consort. The imperial bureaucracy, scribal class, court establishment. | The expected candidate. Not notably capable. His faction backs him because continuity preserves their own positions, not because they believe he will govern well. |
| The Capable | Pragmatist faction: military commanders, senior Maelstrom officers, anyone who wants the empire to survive the next decade. | Older than his rivals. Wrong bloodline rank by Nylvish standards. His faction is aggressive because they know his claim is weak and his ability is the only argument they have. |
| The Reformer | Individual Maelstrom members, outer ring residents with court connections, scattered Renak advocates. | Young and idealistic. Genuinely concerned with Renak conditions. The establishment fears him not because his faction is powerful but because his appeal bleeds across faction lines into people who will never formally declare for him. |
| The Boy | No faction. No significant backing. | The youngest. Overlooked by everyone, including those who will eventually need to find him. |
The Sects
Section titled “The Sects”The martial sects are not background institutions in Lithywae. They are power centers with their own resources, their own cultures, and their own relationships to the current crisis.
The Maelstrom Sect is the largest and most integrated into daily Nylvish life. Its members come from families, many of them Renak, and individual members maintain informal protections for their communities that the sect as an institution has not endorsed and has not forbidden. The sect leadership watches the heir factions with careful neutrality. Its members are not neutral.
The Frozen Flower Sect operates from its northern compound with minimal contact with Athyllwyn. Its members appear in the capital rarely and with specific purpose. They have not declared a position on the succession. Distance is doing the work that silence alone might not.
The Daemon Sect answers to the Emperor alone. Its public presence in Athyllwyn is minimal by design. When Daemon members are visible at an imperial ceremony or moving through the Inner Ring, people give them room: not quite fear, but the correct recognition of something that operates by different rules. What is new is the Emperor’s diminished capacity to direct them.
The Celestial Sword Sect is present in Lithywae because Ingridrid-polarity corruption does not stop at national borders. The Imperial Dynasty tolerates their presence. Tolerates is the correct word.
The Renak
Section titled “The Renak”The Renak are those without Ren: the non-cultivator population of Lithywae. In a society organized entirely around Ren capacity and the standing it generates, the Renak occupy the base of every hierarchy by default, regardless of lineage, intelligence, or wealth.
In Athyllwyn, the Renak workforce keeps the city physically running. The outer ring is predominantly Renak. The formal hierarchy provides them minimal protection: imperial courts that will hear their disputes eventually, informal arrangements with sect members who have families in those communities. What protection exists is fragile and dependent on the goodwill of individuals rather than the structure of the system.
In the interior, the protection is thinner still. The informal understandings that have kept the worst of the interior violence contained are only as durable as the people maintaining them. Those people are fewer than they were.
The discontent building among the Renak is not organized. It does not have a name or a leader. It is a pressure that has been accumulating long enough that it shows in how people move, what they say when they think they are not being watched, and how quickly a rumor about the succession reaches an outer ring market stall with no obvious connection to the court.
Relations
Section titled “Relations”Kyr’elian is the one nation Lithywae maintains functional relations with. Trade moves through Tyllym on the eastern mainland coast and Nolmyr on the offshore island. The relationship is transactional and durable: Kyr’elian wants what Lithywae’s interior produces, and Lithywae needs the trade income.
Dosharen is a cold relationship organized around historical Nyl-Janim enmity and sustained political distance. House Ejarif in Dosharen controls the mountain passes toward Lithywae and has been accused by other Dosharen houses of too-close dealings with Nylvish merchants. The accusation has not been resolved. The Lithywae court does not discuss Dosharen publicly.
Shejara maintains minimal contact. The border with Lithywae’s southwestern territory is formally managed and functionally ignored by both sides.
Notable Locations
Section titled “Notable Locations”Athyllwyn
Section titled “Athyllwyn”The capital. Built into the Kaelthar Range’s central pass, controlling transit between Lithywae’s eastern and western coasts. The highland spring beneath the city feeds the rivers that organize the empire’s geography. See Daily Life: Lithywae for a full account of the city and how it functions.
Thralwen
Section titled “Thralwen”Thralwen sits on the northwestern coast, the northernmost significant settlement on the western shore. Timber from the boreal interior, fish from cold northern waters, and the kind of population that ends up at the edge of things and stays. The imperial presence is a garrison and a checkpoint. The city’s actual governance is conducted by whoever has the most standing among those who have chosen to remain.
Orraeth
Section titled “Orraeth”Orraeth occupies the western coast at the mouth of the river running from Athyllwyn. The bay is navigable year-round, making Orraeth the primary western trade hub: goods from the interior move down the river, goods from coastal and southern trade come in through the bay. It is the most commercially active city in Lithywae outside the capital, and considerably less formal. The hierarchy functions here, but alongside money in a way that Athyllwyn’s court would find distasteful.
Tyllym
Section titled “Tyllym”Tyllym sits on the eastern mainland coast, facing Nolmyr across the water. Goods, people, and information moving between Lithywae and Kyr’elian pass through here first. The city has a more cosmopolitan character than most of Lithywae, shaped by the presence of Kyr’elian merchants with temporary residence permits and the constant traffic of the island trade.
Nolmyr
Section titled “Nolmyr”Nolmyr is the offshore island city, serving as the primary interface with Kyr’elian. It is the most outward-facing settlement in Lithywae: the hierarchy is present but adapted to the practical demands of trade across national lines. Foreign merchants who deal with Lithywae frequently never reach the mainland. Nolmyr is where Lithywae presents itself to the outside world, which means it presents a version of itself that the court in Athyllwyn has curated.
Norrhyn
Section titled “Norrhyn”Norrhyn is the northeastern frontier city, the last significant settlement before the territory becomes tundra and then ice. Its population is self-selected: Rennim who wanted distance from the sect politics of the capital, families who have been here long enough to have stopped thinking of anywhere else as home. The Frozen Flower Sect’s mountain compound lies beyond it in the northern range, which gives Norrhyn an unusual character: it is the last city before the empire’s most insular sect, and those who need to reach that compound pass through here first.
Morthryn
Section titled “Morthryn”Morthryn is built on a river outlet in the southwestern leg of Lithywae’s territory, where the mountain range forms the border with Shejara. Its economy is extraction: ore and stone from the mountains, processed and shipped north along the coast. The city is small relative to its output, because the work is physically demanding and the population that stays is those for whom better options have not materialized. House Diramesh in Dosharen monitors Morthryn’s output with interest they do not make public.