The Hegemony of Embersig

Background

If there is a dominant power in this world, that is the Hegemony of Embersig. This is a cosmopolite, multicultural empire in which humans, dwarves and elves live in the tranquillity of knowing they are under the wings of the richest, most organised and technologically advanced nation.^[1]

Why deny progress to other nations in Lindwurm? Why keep it from the rest? The Hegemony of Embersig is the harbinger of advancement, of development. It proudly expands its dominion through two main sources: first, enlightenment, reason. Second, the Black Legion.^[2]

The Hegemony of Embersig

Why deny light and progress to the other peoples? With an iron fist, the Hegemony expands its empire with two great resources: Reason and the Black Legion. Protected by their massive shields and jet-black armor, they represent the ultimate war machine.

The Hegemony is a relatively young and dynamic empire, home to several human ethnicities, the Aestarii elves, and the Ghent dwarves. All living in harmony. It’s the first modern State on the continent, with an advanced level of technological development, a cosmopolitan and multiracial society, some social mobility, religious freedom, and the Black Legion: a large force of highly disciplined and well-equipped professional soldiers who display an outstanding degree of coordination with the masters of tactics who lead them, the strategos.

The Eight Provinces

The Hegemony extends over an immense territory, which is divided into eight great provinces that were once separate kingdoms and cultures.

The unifying efforts of the government of the Hegemony have encouraged these provinces to develop an increasingly more fraternal bond. Despite this, they should not be considered as a monolithic whole, for each one has its own character. Generally speaking, the farther away a province is located from the core lands of the original colonization, the more unique its inhabitants and customs are.

Embersig

In the Maghar language, the word "Embersig" describes the concept of "all the people”, which includes not only humans but also elves and dwarves. Thus, the Hegemony is a melting pot that synthesizes the best of each culture: the Ghent dwarves, who descend from humble travelers once despised by their fellow dwarves, are engineers, bankers, craftsmen, and managers; the Aestari elves, who faced a rigorous life with stoicism to protect the wisdom of their people, are now scholars, wizards, teachers, and advisors; and humans, the shortest in lifespan and the largest in number, observed with disdain by empires past, are the mortar that holds the Hegemony together, they’re its arms, legs, and heart.

However, the Hegemony has many enemies and, despite the power of its armies, it must defend an enormous territory.

The soldiers of the Black Legion, welcomed cheerfully in most settlements as symbols of security and discipline, are forced to fight constant skirmishes. In the more recently incorporated provinces, rebels clinging to a defunct past and funded by rival nations wage a futile guerrilla war that has only been contained at a high price. For their part, the diplomats of the Hegemony must fight tooth and nail to preserve the respect owed by their neighbors, who see the young Gabor Vanyadi—nicknamed "the Child Hegemon" due to his 12 years of age—as a weak leader or, worse yet, a puppet.

An important consequence of the great differences between the different regions and cultures of the Hegemony is that humans as a whole aren’t as unified a political front as the Aestari or the Ghents, even if in recent times these dwarves have begun to feel increasingly more like citizens of their province rather than Ghents. After all, a Ghent dwarf from the Frozen Desert of Bakhlia has more in common with one of the nomads they travel with than with a dwarf who grew up in Arkhadja. However, this phenomenon does not occur among the Aestari.

Culture

With such a variety of peoples, it comes to no one’s surprise that at least twelve different languages can be spoken in the Hegemony; some of them are widespread and some others are limited to very specific areas. Among them are Elvish and Dwarvish. However, the vast majority of the Hegemon's subjects speak modern Maghar, a language that descends from Classical Maghar and incorporates a large number of loanwords.

Thanks to the recent invention of the printing press, the percentage of the Hegemony’s population who are literate is relatively high, only surpassed by the Mounthaven dwarves. The Hegemonic government has prioritized educating its upper classes and ensuring that as many inhabitants as possible can make the philosophy at the base of the Embersig Hegemony their own, exalting its founder, Zsofia Vanyadi, in the process. The Council of Four considers this a key aspect in ensuring the prosperity of the nation.

The Maghar alphabet is known as Szorkhan, but it can also be written using the Gae Assail alphabet used by the Aestari elves and the dwarfish runes used by the Ghentish. Although the elvish alphabet has traditionally been the working alphabet of culture (causing most Embersig aristocrats to boast of its use in their daily lives), the printing press is making the Szorkhan more prevalent, as it is more suitable for mobile typing than the delicate script of the Aestari.

Although most scholars in Lindwurm praise (and envy) the freedom with which knowledge is spread throughout the eight provinces of the Hegemony, there are detractors to this philosophy, especially in Feudom. Many in this deeply religious kingdom believe that this so-called knowledge is nothing more than propaganda, and they prevent their citizens from being exposed to it. They cannot allow the Black Legion to conquer their lands, but they also cannot allow the ideals of Embersig to poison the minds of the faithful of the Moon Goddesses.^[3]