Factions

Standing assembly

The Standing Council

The permanent assembly where system powers bind themselves by name, record common acts, and expose the jurisdictions their signatures do not reach.

Unacknowledged authority

The Unwritten

Velyr

The Effacer authority, whose existence is argued from gaps in the record.

Retained advisors

The Unseen

Velyr

The Seers quietly retained by councils that will not admit to holding them.

Hereditary trade

The Mistbound

Ysil

Ysil’s hereditary Occulter trade, retained by families and holds to keep households, routes, and property outside public charts and registers.

Illegal combination

The Bound Circle

The legal name for practitioners acting in unauthorized concert, treated as conspiracy even though no continuing organization connects one circle to another.

Professional retainer

The Sealed Tongue

Velyr

Velyr’s professional trade in individually retained Sealers, whose filed contracts keep negotiations unreadable without making false statements appear true.

Hereditary state service

The Shroud

Edrane

Edrane’s unlisted hereditary Occulter service, preserving concealed approaches that let state traffic use roads other powers cannot reliably chart.

Standing house retinue

The Shadow

Rhovan

The unacknowledged Eclipser retinue House Kestar keeps at Kestovar to move columns without leaving a reliable account of their strength.

Proscribed devotion

The Faithful

Rethis

Proscribed Rethin apostates who hold the Deep to be a wound in the living Sky Father and obstruct the descents that their moon’s forecasts enable.

Hereditary custodianship

The Keepers

Caldrin

Caldrin’s hereditary custodians, preserving the rites, records, and sealed remains of Kalemdil without granting any outside institution a share in them.

Devotional college

The Skyreaders

Rethis

Rethis’s observatory colleges, treating tested publication as devotion while issuing the forecasts that open, delay, or close access to the Deep.

Sacred communities

The Wayshown

Serath

The Serathi who hold Oranth’s changing visibility to be miraculous.

Sacred communities

The Waymeasured

Serath

The Serathi who hold the same phenomena to be light, tide and haze.

Doctrinal aristocracy

The Ironbound

Mordane

Mordane’s mining houses, whose claims descend with preserved rolls of the dead and obligations inherited from the first working of each seam.

Popular observance

The Oranthine

Aurel

Aurel’s popular eclipse observance, preserving an unwritten agricultural calendar whose original Twofold meaning has been lost.

Informal creed

The Answered

Kalemdil

An informal belief among fragment crews that something within Kalemdil’s remains still responds, despite every investigated account failing examination.

Monastic order

The Unbroken Watch

Thelune

Thelune’s monastic astronomers and the register they have never let lapse.

Scholarly institution

The Second Memory

Namar

Namar’s archival duplicate of the Velyrian record, maintained at Tareth so no single institution can revise the shared account without comparison.

Certifying body

The Avowed

Aurel

Aurel’s certifying body for Kalemdil salvage, whose sworn provenance allows a recovered object to be sold, studied, lent, or insured.

Archival claimants

The Scions

Velyr

Velyrian archivists who treat surviving Kalemdil records as the separated portion of a collection inherited through Thessane’s institutional continuity.

State hard line

The Adamant

Edrane

The foreign name for Edrane’s unacknowledged Kalemdil policy: keep the far-side approaches, honor neither Embrace permit regime, and explain nothing.

Unlicensed trade

The Gleaners

Kestrel

Independent salvage crews that enter weapons-work sites closed by the Binding and sell what they remove through Kestrel.

Contracted patrol

The Wardens

Hound

The mixed patrol crews policing the marked passages.

Standing demand

The Great Inquiry

Serath

A recurring Serathi demand that every power examine Kalemdil jointly and open every surviving archive bearing on it at once.

School of interpretation

The Unaided Hand

Rhovan

Those who hold that a weapon must be drawn and loosed by one body unaided.

School of interpretation

The Common Accord

The default reading of the Binding, allowing mechanical advantage when a person supplies every measure of the force a lawful device carries.

School of interpretation

The Wound Spring

Kestrel

Those who see no difference between a spring wound yesterday and an arm drawn today.

University and archive

The Collegium

Velyr

The Velyrian universities, archives, and religious schools whose catalogue of sixteen roles supplies the categories used to license practitioners across the system.

Examining body

The Examiners

Ilyra

Ilyra’s medical examining body at Saphren, issuing the only formal Mender certification recognized across the system from a witnessed record of work.

Joint jurisdiction

The Threefold

Kharad

Three governments that license Eclipsers apart and prosecute them together.

Licensed practitioners

The Needful

Edrane

Independent Summoners contracted by Kharad for Deep descents and by Edrane for Shatter convoys, without a charter or common organization.

Custodial archives

The Quiet Register

Archive orders that preserve the locations and condition of sealed records while declining to interpret, disclose, or sometimes produce what they hold.

Industrial alliance

The Forge Dominion

Kharad

A Kharad-led industrial alliance that coordinates what cargo the mining moons of the Grasp will carry or refuse.

Patron and client league

The Chartbound

Talassar

The layered maritime dependency linking Avarra to Talassaran courts and those courts separately to Caelor through charts, warning, escort, and fleet service.

Dock compact

The Free Ports

Kestrel

Kestrel’s dock compacts and resident assemblies, free of a patron but still subject to the Binding and dependent on Caldrin’s road.

Custodial institution

The Trust

Aurel

The keepers of the system’s grain reserve.

Common institution

The Storm Covenant

Talassar

Talassar’s storm crews, maintained across court boundaries.

Political faction

The Unreturned

Aurel

The Aurelian party that wants the moon’s food leverage actually used.

Chartered house

House Aurethane

Velyr

The Velyrian house that keeps treaties and protections, including the Carthis commercial charter, and turns their recognized wording into durable authority.

Shipwright house

House Corvane

Velyr

The Velyrian shipwright house that controls the orbital yards above Demeris and licenses completed vessels as warships.

Financing house

House Ilvareth

Velyr

The Velyrian financing house whose loans built much of Kharad’s descent infrastructure and secured contractual access to the Deep.

Office-holding house

House Oressa

Velyr

Velyr’s imperial house, holding the High Seat, inherited offices at Vhalessa, and enough seats in the Chairs to make removal impossible but rule alone unattainable.

Unanimous gathering

The Circle

Rhovan

Rhovan’s unanimous gathering at Orasai, where five equal Oathlords may bind the moon together and none may speak for it after they disperse.

River house

House Varakh

Rhovan

Rhovan’s river house, controlling Varakhen’s crossings, granaries, markets, and flood works while pressing a capital claim the other four houses refuse.

Military house

House Kestar

Rhovan

The Rhovani military house that controls Kestovar’s launch grounds and roads while keeping the strength of its Eclipser retinue uncounted.

Marching house

House Orran

Rhovan

The marching house whose seasonal territory lies along the Golden March, with its court, herds, households, and fighting strength traveling in one column.

Broker house

House Tavrin

Rhovan

The broker house that keeps Serevan Crossing neutral, turning safe passage, enforceable market rules, and visible terms into political weight at Orasai.

Ceremonial house

House Maroth

Rhovan

Rhovan’s land-poor ceremonial house, speaking first at Orasai and protecting the neutral procedure from which its precedence derives.

Permanent administration

The Stewards

Namar

Namar’s independent offices of water and passage, controlling reservoir draws and canyon roads through succession by a single trained apprentice.

Concord of kingdoms

The Captains

Caelor

Caelor’s assembly of island kingdoms, giving each crown one Captain and one vote over shared seas, fleets, charts, quarantine, and foreign affairs.

Assembly of estates

The Estates

Aurel

Aurel’s assembly of regional governments, agricultural institutions, and hereditary landholding families, led for life by a Purveyor who controls the moon’s public agenda.

Hereditary monarchy

The Iron Crown

Othryn

Othryn’s hereditary crown, controlling external trade, royal roads, high ports, armies, and warrants while the old holds retain their workings and household authority.

Technocratic directorate

The Kharadi Directorate

Kharad

Kharad’s government of experienced industrial directors, ruling by permit from Dhorak under an Overseer whose authority lasts only while the Deep corridor answers.

Council of ministers

The Senate

Edrane

Edrane’s council of life-held ministerial peers, ordered by unrevised precedence and led by the senior living officeholder rather than an elected executive.

Assembly of chartered institutions

The Charter of Ilyra

Ilyra

Ilyra’s headless assembly of chartered institutions, empowered to grant or withdraw the public right to act in the moon’s name but not to administer their work.

Sworn assembly of principalities

The Koravelan Compact

Koravel

Koravel’s yearly sworn assembly at the Oath Basin, binding only the principalities that accept each obligation and preserving every undertaking until it is fulfilled.

Council of community elders

The Elders

Varos

Varos’s council of river-community Elders, meeting at Luravai under a Chief only when channels, disease, passage, or foreign traffic require a common act.

Confederated communities

The Serathi Concord

Serath

Serath’s unranked sacred communities, acting collectively through separately affirmed covenants recorded at Witness Hall rather than through a central assembly.

Assembly of watershed councils

The Weir

Myr

Myr’s watershed councils, seated at Lethwyn under a Harbormaster. They refuse almost nothing and schedule everything, and the schedule has not yet come round.

Assembly of bonded quays and counting houses

The Scales

Carthis

Carthis’s assembly of bonded quays and counting houses, governing commercial districts and arbitration under a Velyrian charter it cannot alter.

Chartered assembly of treaty houses

The Hosts

Oravel

Oravel’s assembly of treaty houses, governing neutral courts and protected records from Pheron while refusing obligations that could compromise its independence.

Navigational and customs authority

The Remnant

Caldrin

Caldrin’s sovereign chart, beacon, customs, and escort authority, governing the most reliable passage through the Shatter from Darsen.

Confederation of maritime republics

The Flotilla

Melora

Melora’s confederation of maritime republics, convened afloat under a Speaker to settle navigation, fleet levies, quarantine, and common dealings with Caelor.

Gathering of chartered settlements

The Muster

Vandor

Vandor’s temporary gathering of charter holds, summoned at Ferren Basin to answer a specific question of defense, water, transport, or external relations.

League of self-governing city-states

The Avarran League

Avarra

The common name Avarra’s self-governing city-states use abroad, held in trust at Bareth without creating an assembly or authority over the harbors.

Hereditary empire

The High Seat

Velyr

Velyr’s hereditary imperial office, issuing charters, assenting to legislation, confirming the First Chair, and giving the empire its formal voice abroad.

Governing assembly

The Chairs

Velyr

Velyr’s hereditary governing assembly, where four great houses and roughly thirty lesser ones vote beneath the High Seat in fixed numbers that no later district has changed.

Local assembly

The Hearth Assembly

Dovara

Dovara’s local assembly, governing internal law and citizenship while leaving culture, memory, and belief to its receiving communities.

Local council

The Interior Ecology Council

Aster Vale

Aster Vale’s local council, governing its enclosed habitat and protected biomes while Aurel controls the restoration stock exported from the reserve.

Local council under sovereignty

The Range Council

Galed

Galed’s local test-range administration, directing daily trials and producing evidence whose legal certification remains Kharad’s.

Port administration

The Harbor Authority

Last Harbor

Last Harbor’s Edrane-backed port administration, responsible for refuge, safety intake, repair access, and closed failure inquiries beyond the Shatter.

Medical administration

The Halcyon Medical Directorate

Halcyon

Halcyon’s professional medical administration, responsible for treatment, quarantine boundaries, and the decisions that move patients between them.

Signal administration

The Relay Directorate

Avenor

Avenor’s local signal administration, carrying traffic across the Shatter without reading it and preserving neutral emergency access under a Velyrian charter.

Local assembly

The Rim Assembly

Damaris

The local assembly of Damaris, governing rim settlements and shared thermal works while Edrane provides defense and carries external representation.

Custodial administration

The Archive Custodians

Osira

Osira’s custodial administration, governing archives, schools, preservation standards, and access while Namar protects the moon and represents its charter abroad.

Local agricultural councils

The Agricultural Councils

Tiravel

Tiravel’s agricultural councils, coordinating water, cultivation, harvest labor, and shared markets for its independent estates while Aurel guarantees external trade and protection.

Joint hold administration

The Geothermal Holds

Valdyr

Valdyr’s geothermal holds, jointly maintaining Zorvek’s administration and shared heat obligations while retaining authority over their own settlements, systems, industry, and access.

Custodial councils

The Sanctuary Custodians

Elowen

Elowen’s custodial councils, governing settlement, research, access, and land use beneath the sanctuary emblem while Myr carries the covenant beyond the moon.

Botanical administration

The Custodians of the Planting Lists

Sorell

Sorell’s growers, physicians, and planting-list custodians, governing medicinal cultivation, preparation, research, training, and access while Ilyra protects their work abroad.

Custodial councils

The Custodial Assemblies

The Nameless Moon

The Nameless Moon’s custodial councils, governing inhabited districts and licensing excavation, recovered material, and unrestored access under the High Seat’s charter.

Yard guild

The Shipwrights’ Guild

Lyr

Lyr’s shipwright guild, governing its civilian yards, labor codes, hull surveys, and certificates under a Velyrian external charter.

Estate compact

The Pelorin Estate Compact

Pelorin

Pelorin’s compact for shared utilities and property disputes among old estates that otherwise govern their own sealed gardens, residences, and archives.

Watch authority

The Edrani Outer Watch

Vigil

Vigil’s operational authority, turning distant sensor returns into Edrani warnings while controlling station access without commanding defense or interception.

Mining guilds

The Crystal Guilds

Saphra

Saphra’s crystal guilds, controlling extraction, cutting, assay, documentation, and access to the optical-stone works beneath Caeloran protection.

Survey administration

The Survey Directorate

Farwatch

Farwatch’s local survey authority, setting observation priorities, controlling docking, and issuing preliminary warnings while Edrane supplies and formally represents the station.