Altea

Languages: Talahaean, Altean (northern dialect,) Belissari (southern dialect, now used almost exclusively as the church language)
Cities: Aethrea

Geography

The province of Altea is land-locked, and both the geographical and political centre of the Sacred Republic. It lies in the rain-shadow of the Spine, and with strong, northern exposure it has a warm and dry climate. It is bordered by Argea, Berngaard, Ardheim – across the Spine – Zeryskaia and the Drow domain of Azeranzerai. Light forests cluster on the lower slopes of the Spine, running down into arable land and dry plains, irrigated by and from the rivers which run down from the Spine.
Altea is not an agriculturally rich province, and it does not produce even enough food for its populace, instead relying on trade with other provinces. This population is heavily focused on the cities, and includes a large number of non-residents who take up dwellings in Aethrea to participate in the political life of the church and the state.

History

In the first days of the Mage Sovereigns, the Regime entrusted the defence of the Regime against the Heptarchy to the Clan Belissarion. This family of sorcerers had fled from the Ophionic Empire a scant few generations before, but by combining wealth stolen from their erstwhile masters, arcane power, cunning and grown a small town into the city of Belissaria on the northern shore of the Great Delta. Under their new commission, they produced weapons and spells, summoned strange beings and armed their own scions for war. They created the citadel of Fulminara close to the Regime capital in Aethrea, in which to focus their efforts, and from that base they soon overtook the capital and toppled Regime power in Talahaea. With Bellisaria as their capital, they reshaped their territory into the Belissar Lasarate, established an arcanocratic peerage, and raised a cult to worship the head of the family as a divine emissary: the Lasar.
The power of the Lasar seemed at one time unassailable, but it was their own Cult of Magic that originally revolted against the Sovereigns. Narathia Belissarion, last of the Lasars, depended greatly on her priesthood for control. They turned on her while she was visiting the cult centre in Aethrea, cutting her off from the capital city of Belissaria so that she was forced to flee to the near-abandoned citadel of Fulminara. Her defence of Fulminara was tenacious, focusing the conflict in the north of the Kingdom and leaving the capital exposed to assault by the Zeranzeri Drow, who seized the entire Delta coast, including much of the Lasarate's farmland.
The Province was renamed Altea at the end of the War of Hubris, to distance it both from the Belissarion Dynasty and the humiliating loss of Belissaria.

Social/Political

Despite the loss of the south, the overthrow of the Lasars was otherwise achieved without complications or extensive collateral damage. Fulminara was razed to the ground, but the urban centres of the Lasarate and the infrastructure which bound them survived more or less intact. The aristocratic families were part of the arcanocracy, but also the hereditary mainstay of the Cult of Iuva. This connection to the Union meant that they survived better than those of their peers who were independent arcanists. Since it was able to start its recovery even before most of the Sovereignties were liberated, Altea emerged as the leading cultural force in the Republic.
Altea is now governed by the Magisterium, an assembly of magistrates elected by the people – which is to say the Estates and Guilds – of the various districts of the province. It is a politically dangerous province, with machinations between the old guard of the Estates, the rising powers of the Guilds, and the ever-present influence of the Church of the Eightfold Way, which appoints its own representatives to the Magisterium.
With the strength of the Estates, Altea still has many large manors with dependent tenant farms, but the bulk of its wealth, whether belonging to the Church, the old families or the Guilds, is in coin and invention, which it trades for food and goods from Ardheim or luxuries from Argea. It lacks the vibrant trade economy of Argea, but holds a vast amount of static wealth in the form of land, investments and bullion.
The dividends of these investments are converted into legacy – art, architecture and ideas – in pursuit of the obsession of the Altean upper class: The immortality of reputation. This is based on a philosophy of capital authorship which states that a work of craft or art is the credit and property of the one who pays for it, rather than those who create it. Altean high elves invest in buildings – either personal villas, public works or church properties, depending on whether they wish to display wealth, charity or piety – while the human nobility prefer to put their money into the development of science and philosophy. These are pursued in academies, institutes of lay education and research which were again protected by their links to the seminaries of the Cult of Magic when the arcane libraries were destroyed.