A country made by water
Lithaea occupies a broad basin ringed by the Taurignis Mountains. Snowmelt and perennial springs from the northern highlands feed the Lithanar, the country's central river. The Tāwail descends from the eastern Oritaurignis Mountains and receives the Chanar; the Cydnus and Hūanzi join the system nearer the center of the basin. Together these waters broaden into Lake Zafeiros before the Lithanar forces its way through the Pyli Gorge and reaches the Bakalatu Sea.
This river system explains the country's wealth and the placement of its towns. Lithaeabhat dominates the lake and the meeting of the central waterways. Kavronis controls a northern industrial corridor. Zyrigsmé commands the southern delta and maritime trade. Smaller towns stand where roads meet rivers, where the cultivated plain gives way to forest, and where the eastern valleys narrow into mountain approaches.
Peoples and culture
Lithaea is home to humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, and many other peoples. Its public life reflects layers of settlement rather than a single culture. Elven civic traditions, art, engineering, and scholarship remain visible beneath institutions created or reshaped after the Khanish conquest. Human military and bureaucratic traditions dominate the state. Dwarven mining and craft communities are especially important around Kavronis, while river and coastal towns carry their own mercantile customs.
The modern court presents Lithaea as a united human-elven realm. Sultan Jamerishon's marriage to Lady Juvilia, an elf descended from the old ruling line, and his decree recognizing equality between humans and elves are central to that public identity. The law changed faster than society. Residential segregation, unequal access to wealth, racial political movements, and memories of dispossession remain part of daily life.
The modern Sultanate
The Sultan is the sovereign and final authority. Thirteen appointed members form the Grand Council, led by a Vizier, and oversee national administration, law, infrastructure, trade, the Grand Army, and the state system of slavery. Lithaeabhat has its own seven-member Petit Council under the Muhtasib.
The Scholai answer directly to the Sultan. They protect the royal family and treasury, investigate forgery and threats to the monetary supply, and act as an intelligence service. The Grand Army guards borders and roads and can be called into the Khanate's wars. The Exkoubitos serve as Lithaeabhat's city watch under the Petit Council. Other cities, notably Kavronis, retain local institutions shaped by their own histories.
Read about government, armed institutions, and political factions →
Law, labor, and slavery
Slavery is not incidental to the Lithaean state. It is embedded in criminal sentencing, public administration, military practice, and the labor economy. People may be sentenced to years or a lifetime of state servitude; some are assigned to domestic labor, mines, public works, or military service as janissaries. The Central Garrison in Lithaeabhat contains the Penitent Repository, a magical archive of slave scripts used to catalogue and control legally enslaved people.
The system is defended as law and order by the state and opposed, evaded, or exploited by different movements throughout the country. It is one of the clearest places where Lithaea's promise of equality conflicts with the machinery inherited from conquest.
Faith in Lithaea
The widespread Khanish pantheon is headed by Beykríuh, the creator and Prime Mover. Dirilüma guides life, death, and souls; Günanára and Diriay govern sun and moon; Yildirym and Twüleya rule sky, storm, and sea; Adaghan watches over wild nature; Šerkerdé and Mergzanda are associated with war, horsemanship, learning, craft, and archery; Ugenmari presides over love, beauty, fertility, and healing.
Temples are civic institutions as well as sacred places. Military devotion to Šerkerdé, Scholai reverence for Mergzanda, healing work associated with Ugenmari, and the great temples of Beykríuh and Dirilüma all shape public life. A newer movement called the Qanûn increasingly treats the Khan as a divine emissary or object of worship, creating tension with older understandings of the pantheon.
A history still being argued
Before the conquest, Lithaea was governed by an elven Senate. Khanish armies under General Oösmaron took the country, remade its institutions, confiscated property, expelled many elves from Lithaeabhat, and imposed killing and enslavement on resistance. Oösmaron's assassination six years later was followed by civil war and the dynasties of Malasdier, Malasdier II, Jarazied, and Jamerishon.
The fullest surviving account was written in the voice of the Khanish state. It preserves people, places, and a useful chronology, but presents conquest as civilization and opposition as moral failure. Reading Lithaea’s history means listening for the lives and memories that official histories leave at the margins.
The places of Lithaea
Seventeen settlements lie across the regional map, from the capital and major ports to mountain towns known through only a handful of surviving stories. Together they reveal a country far larger and more varied than its court and capital.