Belhacint

“Sure, they seem charming, with their white teeth and their nice shiny breastplates. Don’t fall for it. The prettiest sword in the world will still kill you.”

— Harren, cynical aethernaut

Some countries, unable or unwilling to expand out into the Aether, shun the wider world. Others make their presence known, along trade routes and diplomatic channels, like distant spiders plucking at the strands of a great web. Even these juggernauts of industry and war are dwarfed by the Holy Empire of Belhacint, which has sunk its talons, in one way or another, into every splinter of Orphan.
Belhacint is a grand empire, synonymous everywhere on Orphan with good steel, pretty words, and hypocrisy. Along with Dhavashri, it is one of the two principal belligerents in the ongoing cold war for dominion over reality.
Belhacint is a theocracy, built on a foundation of loyalty to the memory of God. Its leaders want to follow the Demiurge’s plan as well as they can, even though their understanding of it is woefully incomplete. Therefore, to the Belhacinti, the war for reality is a holy war, and waging it is their sacred duty.

Good Steel and Pretty Words

Even in the centuries since the war turned cold, Belhacint’s foreign policy has been one of aggressive expansionism. As a result, it controls a great deal of territory. Not only does it rule over its home splinter of Templegarden, it has also recently assumed control over Windreach and has established footholds in the Moranneon, Hyylana, and the Radiant Waste. Its wider influence can be felt everywhere on Orphan—whether it be by the presence of its envoys, or simply its finger on the scales of the global economy.
This policy has long been very profitable, but is now becoming a problem. The war machine ever demands more meat and steel, and Belhacint is stretched thin. But what can be done? Militarism and imperialism are at Belhacint’s very core; it literally couldn’t exist without its ceaseless warmongering to sustain it. For any real change to take place, the entire country would need to be burnt to the ground and then built up from scratch.
Belhacint presents a veneer of benevolence and stately decorum, even to the countries it invades. At this point, that veneer is wearing thin; Belhacint’s popularity is at an all-time low.

For the Fatherland

Belhacinti culture is dogmatic and hierarchical, and places heavy emphasis on duty and obedience. The Belhacinti people are taught from birth to give up their lives in service of the greater good. Almost everyone in the country knows someone who shipped out with the army and never came home.
Enemy countries are not enough. To sustain its people’s nationalistic fervor, Belhacint’s government must also invent threats from within. The Belhacinti news often speaks of subversive elements and terrorist fanatics, especially those belonging to the purported sect of heretic angels who, believing that the Demiurge will one day return, wish to preserve reality in stasis until It does.
Belhacint’s official theological stance is that God is gone for good, but that even Its memory is worthy of worship. This worship takes the form of an eternal mourning period; Belhacint’s churches, of which there are many, are silent, solemn places, where echoes roost among high ceiling vaults.

The Sevenfold Archonate

The River Hymn runs through the Belhacinti heartland. At one point, it widens into a lake; the perfect sphere of Heaven, hanging directly above, causes the sacred waters of this lake to rise in impossible tiers. Throne, the capital city of Belhacint, is built upon this floating lake, an impossible feat of soaring gothic architecture haloed by swarms of airships.
The city is named for the throne in its royal palace, which stands symbolically empty. The Belhacinti have an aversion to monarchy; in God’s absence, the country is ruled—and has been, for all of recorded history—by the Sevenfold Archonate, a group of seven ultra-powerful angels.
In Belhacinti culture, there is no notion of the separation between church and state; the church and the government are one and the same. Each of the archons is the head of one of the church’s seven branches, called ministries. These ministries are:

• The Ministry of Alms, which combats poverty and oversees public works and services.
• The Ministry of Art, which concerns itself with the study of arcana and science.
• The Ministry of Coin, which handles matters of money and taxation.
• The Ministry of Faith, which concerns itself with the moral rectitude of Belhacint’s citizens.
• The Ministry of Peace, which handles diplomatic endeavors.
• The Ministry of Law, which oversees matters of law and peacekeeping.
• The Ministry of War, which handles the myriad logistical and organizational concerns of Belhacint’s neverending war effort.

Officers and Lawmen

In Belhacint, aasimar are afforded near-automatic respect, while full-blooded angels are revered. Almost everyone in a ruling position is either an angel or an aasimar, and the country’s noble families invariably have at least some amount of angel blood.
The noble houses of Belhacint’s labyrinthine aristocracy are largely left to self-govern. In return, they are expected to uphold the law and collect taxes from their subjects, as well as to cooperate enthusiastically in Belhacint’s war efforts; the vast majority of the Belhacinti army’s officers are of noble birth. Some high-ranking nobles also serve the Sevenfold Archonate directly as provincial governors or mayors of cities, positions which come with extra perks as long as everything keeps running smoothly.
According to the Ministry of Law’s statistics, Belhacint’s gendarmes solve almost every major crime that is committed; however, it’s an open secret that these numbers stem from the gendarmerie’s habit of arresting innocents and forcing false confessions. As if the well-armed, violent gendarmes were not enough, the citizens of Belhacint also have to worry about the Saints, the Ministry of Faith’s secretive inquisitors, who will stop at nothing to root out heresy and corruption.

Echoes of the Past

Generally speaking, necromancy is taboo in Belhacint. Human remains are considered sacred, and imbuing them with a shambling mockery of life is a crime punishable by death. However, this taboo does not extend to the calling of spirits, which is done with such regularity that it has become a mainstay of Belhacinti culture.
The Ministry of Art operates a large number of so-called “spirit parlors” all through the country. Spirit parlors are reliquaries in which remains lie in state, ready to be taken out and used as foci for summoning the spirit they once housed. Deceased leaders and heroes are often brought back in this way, to be consulted on matters of policy or military strategy. In this way, the honored dead are still involved in the running of the country.
The gendarmerie employs spirit parlors to call the victims of violent crimes for use as witnesses. There are also private spirit parlors for the rich, and many noble families keep a ghost conjurer on their staff—for business and pleasure both. Among the upper classes, who can expect leniency from the Saints, occultism is a perennial hobby, and séances are not uncommon as an evening’s light entertainment.

THE HOLY EMPIRE OF BELHACINT

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Capital city: Throne
Heads of state: The Sevenfold Archonate
Languages: Belhacinti
Currency: Belhacinti minah

Belhacinti is much like the country where it is spoken: equal parts ornate splendor and militaristic precision.
Example names: Adan, Arcadios, Ariessos, Bela, Berian, Cassador, Drusylla, Eldryn, Elenka, Ianos, Iulia, Loric, Lydien, Madelen, Marcos, Nikolaos, Petrys, Simeon, Sorana, Taros.