Welcome to Axylus

Welcome to Axylus

Nothing Ever Begins.
There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this story or any story springs.  
The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, or some tale that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes, the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making.
-Clive Barker, Weaveworld

Evensong

As the sun begins to kiss the horizon, there can be heard throughout the land, a song of strange, haunting notes that are high and fine, yet resonant. It stops only when the sun vanishes for the night and has never failed to play once in thousands of years. This is The Evensong, and it is a fact of life in Axylus. It is as well known to the inhabitants of that continent as the turning of leaves in autumn, or the appearance of flies around spoiled meat.
The song issues from sets of titanic pipes which jut up out of the continent in perhaps a hundred places, the locations following no discernable pattern. They are relics of a distant bygone age. Few ever think about how they still play, fewer can even begin to guess at how long they have done so, and none now living could say why.

The Land

Once, the continent of Axylus was a part of a mighty landmass, other parts of which are still extant, but that was long ago; before the time of the wisest elders, and before the time of their father's father's father, and for many centuries beyond that.
The world has moved on from the age when the mighty Brennia, immortal and glorious, warred against the terrible and eternal Muireae, and those men and women who have lived here for countless generations remember them only in myths that exalt them as gods.
The stories of the people who live in Axylus; who work, struggle, fall in love, raise children, grow old and die here are no less worth telling than any legend about Rhewennon the Winter Wolf. Here are tales of slaves and common soldiers, told side by side with the stories of kings and great knights.

Axylus is an island, roughly eight hundred miles from its northernmost point to its southernmost, and a bit more than half that in width. Home to about eight million people, it is principally divided up into three nations, notwithstanding a handful of small freeholds and independent communities. These nations are commonly referred to as the Kingdom, the Queendom and the Holy Empire, though officially, each only refers to their nation as Axylus.
The Kingdom occupies the northwest quarter of the island and is home to nearly 2.5 million inhabitants. It is divided into five duchies, each with between three to five counts that answer to the duke. The counts in turn are attended by a handful of barons. Every lord has absolute authority over their domain, checked only by their liege lord and the king himself, at least in theory. In practice, politics are a delicate interplay of influence, favors and deception between the various noble families of the kingdom, with wealthy trade organizations, the Brennian Church, and various other factions thrown in for good measure.
The king, Roderick III is the tenth monarch of the current dynasty. The progenitor, Roderick I, was not the bloody handed conqueror one might imagine. Instead, he was a skilled, even soft-spoken diplomat, who brought five principalities together as a bulwark against the aggression of the Holy Empire (see below). The present Roderick, on the other hand, is a bluff and bellicose ruler, spoiling for a proper war.
The Queendom occupies the northeastern quadrant of the island and is home to more than one and a half million inhabitants though its name is something of a misnomer. While Queen Aurelia holds the distinction of a royal title, her position is not hereditary, nor is her power absolute.
Instead, she presides over a council of nearly two hundred tribal chieftains who rule on matters that concern all the tribes. The ruler is elected from among their number upon the death of the current monarch and holds veto power over any act that the assembly proposes, as well as the authority to adjudicate disputes between chieftains. Though the position may, in theory be held by a man or a woman, for the three centuries it has existed, it has been held by a man only twice, and those not for long, hence the name. Why this should be is unknown, save to perhaps a few.
The forests and mountains of The Queendom are home to hundreds of large tribes which consist of clans who primarily exist by following and tending to herds of cattle, goats and other such animals. Towns and small cities exist for trade and as neutral ground for members of different tribes or clans to conduct business, but the people of the Queendom do not build castles of stone to live in as the lordlings of the Kingdom do. In the Queendom, stone houses are for the dead.
Aurelia herself has reigned for thirty years. Having ascended to the throne at an uncommonly early age after leading her tribe to victory in a bloody civil war, forgiving the trespasses of her vanquished enemies and restoring peace to the land.
The Holy Empire encompasses quite nearly the entire southern half of Axylus along with almost half of the population of the continent, making it far and away the most powerful of the three nations.
Here, a version of the Brennian faith practiced by kinglanders, which holds that only the sun-god Golaurus, master of the Golden Wheel of the Ages, along with his avatar in the mortal world, the god emperor Magnus Cryf, is the only fit object of worship. Where once there was a land of many creeds, the land south of the great river Rhuthro, (perhaps the only thing that has thus far thwarted the advance of the empire north into Kingdom lands) is now littered with ruined, empty temples and churches, their preists long ago slain or captured and their idols dragged before the throne of Cryf to be broken and placed in the sun-god's temple to be humbled before him.
Though the Holy Empire does have old families of power and wealth, the emperor confers no noble titles to any save himself and his immediate family. Instead, the great cities and surrounding towns of his lands are governed by holy ministers of the faith. The greatest of these are the Offieriex, who oversee, vast lands, and also form the core cabinet of the imperial government. Beneath them are the Rhadiae, those responsible for administering imperial justice in a given region. The most common of the fully ordained priests are the Braichiae. Though their seemingly mundane administrative roles might seem relatively unimpressive to a kinglander, their orders may not be questioned by any save a higher priest of the faith, or an officer in the military.
Magnus Cryf himself is as much a mystery to his own subjects as he is to outsiders. Said to be the very same man who rose up and forged the empire much as it exists today more than three hundred years ago, it is not a mean honorific when he is called the sun-god's avatar. He is said to possess potent magical powers, the stories of which none would credit were it not the claims so common among residents of his mighty capitol of Civis Argentus and visitors there alike.