The Keepers

Water, Fire, Lightning, Earth, Wind. The power of these five magical elements is reincarnated through the Keeper souls again and again. They are, or at least should be the most powerful people alive, commanding their respective elements with absolute power, a power that far surpasses that of ordinary mages.
When it comes to magic, the elemental kind is far easier to access than the clockwork kind, because an elemental magus need but to tune into one of the five Ur-Souls of the elements and bend a fraction of it to their will, whereas a clockwork magus will have to access the magic library of the Great Clockwork via their inner gates.
Keepers do not bend fractions. They speak a prayer, and the elements listen.

History of Keepers on Aqualon

After the War of the Reshaping, the Keeper Weapons had been freed from Odin's armory in Asgard and placed before the survivors of the winning side, the Midgardians, Vanier, and Swarten that had joined the Faceless World Shaper and Yilik. Among them, the Keepers rediscovered their strength, and they used their dominion over the elements to carve new nations out of their former great civilizations on a virgin planet.
For the entire First Age and the first half of the Age of the Iron Divide, great kingdoms and nations rose and fell with the birth and death of new Keepers until the rise of the Magus King of the Footlands. Wilhelm Staufer, Lord of Earth was the first Keeper to raise a mighty castle in the very center of the Middle Lands and establish a magocratic lineage. By his decree, his soul was to be the Magus King of the Footlands and their vassals forevermore.
A secondary line of stewardship was established, placing the other Keepers into power by proxy until a Lord of Earth came of age, but the charter was quickly amended as other Keepers took the throne of the Magus King for themselves and at times multiple Keepers vied for it, leading to the Keeper Wars in the latter centuries of the Age of the Iron Divide.

It was the First Invasion and the beginning of the Age of Heroes that lead to the uniting of the Keepers against the threat of the Nordmen and the Old Gods, creating the Council of Keepers, who would rule the Middle Lands thereafter.
Once the Great War was won, one of the amendments of the Peace Treaty gave the body of the Keeper Council express claim on the Keeper souls, meaning that reborn Keepers would by international law have to be extradited to the Middle Lands to be raised as Keepers of the council.
In turn, the Keepers, now in charge of the Middle Lands, vowed to maintain the peace.

Keepers of Note

Efalla

Efalla is considered the Grandmother of all Maoloaiya, "Tupuna o Maoloaiya", who consider themselves the children of her followers, the Efalli. She was the first Lady of Water on the new planet of Aqualon after the Reshaping of the World. She led the Vanierkindern to what would later become Vechnaya Bramma by the Brammenwoods and the Ainan Island Group, the birthplace of the Maoloaiya culture.

Horvath Innsrai

Lord of Fire Horvath Innsrai is most famously known for killing the Mad Magus Hestia who had fled her imprisonment after her infamous destruction of the City State of Estverde. Though people generally believe this to be indisputable proof of the impotence of even the most powerful elemental magus against a true Keeper of their Element, Hestia, in fact, awaited her death quietly, not resisting the execution. The true heritage of Innsrai is often outshone by this deed, for he was one of the most powerful Magus Kings of the Middle Lands, and also among the last few before the line ended. During the Age of Awakening, he maintained powerful relations with the Queen Paro of the Arkamanthali Empire, who was the Lady of Water at the time.

The burning sun in the middle, and the gentle river to the south. Let us make these lands fertile and mighty! — Innsrai to Paro Aui

Aui Nekhbet Eshe Tabla Kayun

From the 600s AID to her death in 22 AH, Paro Aui of the Red Sands, Lady of Water, spent her long life of over 300 years carving out an unmatched legacy that rose and fell with her mighty line. During the First Age and the Age of the Iron Divide, the mighty city of Arkatrash had sprawled along the great river Giranja throughout the Red Sands. It was the rise of Aui that led to its greatest centuries, for the Lady of Water spread the teachings of water magic among her people, using her incredible gift to terraform the desert. The entire Red Sands became a fertile, green garden, crisscrossed by artificial rivers and channels, and the great Pyramids of Arkamanthali were erected as her dynasty's palaces of rule. However, with the Great War during the Age of Heroes, Paro Aui was killed in battle, and the war effort stretched her mages so thinly, that the art became lost to the Arkamanthali people over the course of many decades. The rivers receded and the sand retook the fertile lands, and Arkamanthali became Arkatrash once more, an empire reduced to one great city around the unyielding banks of the Giranja.

Adelbert Trast

Adelbert Trast along with his Guardians, Clarie Vinstek and Karl Trast was the inventor of wind riding, the magical combat style of the The White Lancers of Aerialis, which were founded after his heroic death in 192AH. While this legacy strongly outweighs his lifetime contributions in the memory of the people, he was a fierce Keeper of Wind, who fought against Old Gods on even footing, defeating many powerful foes during the Great War and ultimately suffering his final defeat at the hands of a squadron of Valkyries while securing the escape of his Guardians.

The Keepers of Today

The year is 1703 GE, and the Keeper Council is in shambles. With the death of Lady Kathlyn and the flight of Lord Kenji, who is suspected of her murder, only Sammeth, Lord of Earth, Din, Lady of Fire, and Atlas, Lord of Water remained, and Atlas too, or so goes the official narrative, turned against the council, leaving only two to govern the Middle Lands from the Tower of Five.

Atlas Muundir

Lord of Water Atlas Muundir is best known for his campaign and victory against the dread animancer Balsibart, who depopulated entire islands on the Ocean Belt and was stopped by Atlas and a group of intrepid heroes that faced him in the Saltplains.
There, Atlas used his command of water as well as old magic to seal the animancer far underground inside an ice berg within the Secret Ocean below the Great Land.

Din of High Saxia

Born among the mighty The Angel Saxons, Lady of Fire Din boasts a powerful magical heritage and has displayed impressive prodigy to match it from an early age on.
With three Keepers dead or defected from the council, she is the only Keeper remaining besides Lord Sameth Gildorn, though the Lord of Earth keeps her on a tight leash, insisting she focus on her education rather than state affairs. For this reason, her proxies, the Guardians of Fire, have taken over many of her duties in governing the City of Fire, Lumina Aka.

Kathlyn Dulheine

Said to have killed herself with her own trident Ankerias in 1702 GE, Kathlyn Dulheine, Lady of Lightning died under suspicious circumstances, the prime suspect being Kenji Sokolow, Lord of Wind.
With her death, her permanent seat as one of the three consuls of Fulgrath also opened up temporarily, and her absence has left an uncomfortable power vacuum in the Republic of Fulgrath.
Kathlyn was a powerful Keeper, and most infamous for her childhood years, when her uncle and friends hid her away from the Keepers on the Corsic island of Rastrowel. There, she had to discover her powers without the aid of her trident, a weapon belonging to her by birthright. Even though not in full possession of her Keeper Powers, she faced the ancient and powerful animancer Vordestra and came out on top at the end of the confrontation, a feat that is still recounted in stories throughout the Corsic Ocean.

Sameth Gildorn

The oldest among the living Keepers, Lord of Earth Sameth Gildorn is considered a wise and learned man, who used to teach at the Gladering University in Arda. His knowledge of magic and history is extensive, and he has been a trusted guiding influence among the other Keepers for years, before the tragic events that lead to the current state of the council.

Kenji Sokolow

Like Kathlyn Dulheine, Kenji Sokolow, too, did not grow up among the Keepers in the Tower of Five. His father, Antonin Sokolow, known as the Black Czar of Vechnaya Bramma defied the extradition treaty of the Age of Heroes, withholding his son from the other Keepers and withstanding their advances too.
The immortal Czar had amassed a vast array of powerful animantic magic and creatures under his employ, fortifying his lands against attack for many centuries, and even the Keepers were loath to face the dark magic of his Outcast animancers, those who had learned their craft in fabled Druith and had paid the price for learning how to abuse it.
It was Kenji himself, who defied his father and fled to the Middle Lands to claim his destiny, but the shadow of the Black Czar is long, and sometimes he still felt it within the mighty walls of the Tower of Five.
Now, he has fled those walls, leaving the tower after the death of Kathlyn, to where, no one knows...