Factions

Magistocrats
First and foremost among the factions is the Magistocracy of the city-state Meridian. Straddling a strait and situated at the south pole, Meridian is the largest and most prosperous city on the planet. Nearly every citizen of Meridian and its surrounding forest boasts some ability with magic, and in Meridian, it is magical power that determines political power. The Magistocrats are the ruling elite, policing and armed forces, business class, and productive base. Food is not grown, it is created through powerful spells. Clothing, machinery, building, and any number of mundane things are magical, in Meridian, and created and maintained by magical means. There are no rank-and-file soldiers, only the knowledge that whatever fool were to sail against Meridian would be eradicated with an idle hand-wave, as the Magistocrats barely missed a decadent beat. The Magistocrats maintain friendly relations with the Freeholds to the North, and their neighbors in the Faelight Forest to the southeast, and are central to a global network of trade. However, relations are strained, at best, with the Sun People far to the East, who are unable to trust a society made up almost entirely of wizards.

Most Magistocrats wear finely decorated and enchanted robes, with swirling paintings, feathers that shed and vanish into puffs of smoke, heatless flames, or any fancy limited only by its owners imagination. They live in relaxed luxury in towers of gold and silver, and the largesse of the ruling class keeps those outside the circle in pacified comfort. Their finery reflects the beauty of their environment, with glittering starlight to the frozen West and an eternally blazing twilight to the East. They float above the ground in enchanted carraiges or carpets, drawing power daily from marble and platinum fountains of mana throughout the city. All this finery comes with a certain arrogance, and Magistocrats are often unaware of how their own vulnerabilities as their vanity pushes them towards greater and greater excesses of power. Humans unable to draw mana at all are rare in and around Meridian, and often find that there is no place in society for them and leave. On the other hand, those gifted few able to generate mana spontaneously are of particular interest to the Magistocrats, though if their designs are for good or ill remains to be seen.

notes - you start having enrolled in an academy for them, the archmage who's secretly unable to use magic at all befriends you. their damming of the world's mana flow is kinda the beginning and end of all our problems here. after the prologue, you're being hunted by these harry potter motherfuckers. magistocrats are forbidden from settling disputes with magical duels, so one-upsmanship in displays of power, threats, and making political alliances tends to be more of the determining factor of political power at the very top. at the bottom of the organization it's more obvious because those magistocrats have jobs doing magic of some kind, essentially. disputes that would require a duel are settled with an actual duel, like with swords. cheating by enchanting your shit is pretty common. these guys, on the whole, are pretty chaotic-neutral.

The Magistocrats are headed by the Council of Six - the six most powerful wizards in Meridian. Entrance onto the council can only be obtained through the death or abdication of an existing member, as well as the unanimous vote of the remaining five. Naturally, this lends itself to a great deal of game of thrones shit. At the very top of Magistocrat society, sitting above the Council of Six, is the Seventh. The Archmage.

Freeholders
While Meridian shines like a golden jewel, to the north, across the Middle Sea, lies a nation as grey and dull as Meridian is fantastic. Small, humble clay settlements regularly dot this large, mist-shrouded island of grey clay and rocky fjords. The people are of every race and creed, but primarily consist of the wiry and olive-skinned Nebulo people. A feudal and isolationist society centuries past, the Freeholds now welcome foreigners of all kinds, and while each individual Freehold may be internally governed differently, each is represented in a national senate, housed in the old capitol of Luno. The Freeholds are cold and damp, lit only by a pale, wan morning sun, and bounded to the West by a tundra of eternal night. Few edible plants grow at all, and Freeholder cuisine depends entirely on heavily spiced root vegetables, fish, and the occasional mutton - not to say that it's bad, the ingenuity, hospitality, and indeed cuisine of the Freeholders is legendary. Wool blankets worn as a constant outergarment stave off the cold, and while there is no wood, iron, gold, or flows of mana to be found on the island, there is nothing the Freeholders cannot fashion out of the endless grey clay on which they live. Ceramic cookware, jewelry, and weapons harder, stronger, and lighter than any steel can be found all over the world - for a price - and many a traveler is shocked to learn that even the roughest of Freeholder homes is made of this miraculous material.

Each Freehold is different, but most are centered around a single artisan's guild, monastic or ecclesiastical institution, or even a formerly aristocratic family. Individuals travel untroubled from Freehold to Freehold, perhaps working some years with the Stargazers Guild, a few months as a fisherman, and then finding a home in one of the many Craft Guilds. There is no money, and what wealth there is is shared within each Freehold, though any good Freehold will readily come to the aid of a struggling neighbor, and can expect the same show of solidarity in return someday.

In addition to their unparalleled craftsmanship, Freeholders outfitted with ceramic armor and spears are some of the finest light infantry in the world, and Freeholder mystics guard many cosmic secrets, even wielding them in battle. Many, but not most, Freeholders are devoid worshippers of some fuckin star goddess, and even non-religious elements of their culture are starry. it's pretty dark where they live, astronomy is big. outside of magistocrat co-conspirators, freeholder astronomers are the most in-the-know about what's going on geotechnically with the planet.

the cleric npc is one of em. star cleric. with a spear. he's pretty badass.

Forest people
near meridian there is a forest. it's radioactive with magical overflow (from meridian) and it's full of mutants. but like, cool mutants, like giant mushrooms and talking caterpillars and satyrs and gnolls, like some real alice in wonderland shit. people live there. they tend to be good at magic, and they also make up most of the population of meridian.

Druids
some forest people are druids some druids think balance is achieved by the elimination of the magistocracy. They're not, technically, wrong.

Ice Elves
Far to the west lie the islands that were once home to the mighty elves. Naturally gifted with magic such that the lowest elf rivaled the highest Magistocrats, they lived in lands of mild winters, fine wines, and enchanted luxury. Alas, all things must come to an end, and what was once a proud kingdom is now a frozen wasteland. Cloaked in eternal night, entombed in miles-thick mountains of ice, not a single living thing exists within thousands of miles of the icy dead. Beyond even the realm of the frost giants, there is no evidence, even, that there were ever people here, no sound save for the howling of the wind, and perhaps, just beyond the edge of hearing, the quiet sobbing of one who is utterly alone.

(she's a samurai!)

People of the Sun
southeast of the forest, large mountain range. largest civilization left on the planet. have iron and steel. Worship the sun.

The vast majority live on the shadowy side of a long mountain range, in homes cut into the rock itself, or in caves high among the peaks. On the sunward side, colossal, irrigated terraces have been cut into the mountain, supporting city-sized farms and jungles of food in the eternally blazing late afternoon sun. Their society is in constant tension between three factions - a weak and poorly aging royal family, surrounded by powerful loyalists; the sun clergy, and the military de facto rulers. Distrustful of magic and openly xenophobic, relationships with their neighbors in Faelight are strained, at best. This isn't to say the Sun People are entirely unschooled in the arcane arts, their necromancers and mage-priests are fearsome by any standard.

The Mage Hunters
In a world full of magic, there are invariably wizards of great power and great evil. the dedicated detectives of meridian special victims unit. The something or another order dedicates themselves to hunting down dangerous magic users and adding them to the ranks of the formerly living. They are judge, jury, and executioner, answer to none but their own order, and are equipped with powerful anti-magic tools alongside good old fashioned sharp bits of metal. They operate in all nations, and are headquartered in Meridian itself. Primarily consisting of Paladins, as well as a fair amount of Rogues, Clerics and Psionics, any rogue faction or individual mad wizard stands no chance at all.

Eastern Freeholds
The Freeholds stretch east from their capitol across a few islands until they reach a high peninsula overlooking a scorching, infested desert. This peninsula is home to the easternmost Freeholds, who have devised methods to convert sunlight into physical mana, able to be stored and transported. This bottled mana powers the arcane machineries and weaponry that allow these few humans to live past the edge of the habitable zone, and stage regular forays into the burning wastes beyond.

Lizardfolk
While the confluence of magical energy flow in Faelight has caused drastic mutations in plant and mammalian life, thousands of miles away in the deserts eternally roasting under an endless midday sun, similar overflows of mutagenic thaumatic energy have warped the lizard and insect life into rudimentary sapience. With motives and social structures unclear to humans, with whom they have little contact save for the occasional wasteland skirmish, whether these folk even exist is still a matter of academic debate in most circles. Those who know, especially the Sun people and their neighbors and vassals, know the threat of a single-minded, unfeeling, selfless army of giant reptiles astride ants and beetles the size of elephants, is an uncomfortably real one. At the heart of their realm, in the very apex of the sunward side of the earth, a pillar of burning atmosphere streaks into the sky above, and circling it can be seen the undisputed monarch of all repitilian peoples - the last dragon.

Pirates, Barbarians, and Kingdoms
Overland passages between continents are largely blocked by impassable heat or cold, and most nations trade and travel between each other by sea or magic. For those without means for teleportation, port cities are common, but the seas are dangerous, with everlasting hurricanes, lakes of near-boiling water, and deadly pirates. A surprisingly cosmopolitan group, on the whole, any culture has a few representatives amongst those who pillage the seas for a living - gnoll captains have been reported commanding crews of lizardfolk and Magistocrat exiles, while just a few islands over, a circle of druids have taken to the seas to sabotage Freeholder whaling ships.

In the margins of the civilized lands and their busy trade routes are many small tribes, loose kingdoms or federations, holdfasts, small city-states, and nomadic peoples that make up the rest of the population of the world. Notable concentrations of these folks may be found in the southern Faelight coast, where seafaring warriors scrape out a living on the beaches, the plains to the east of the Sun Capitol, where tribesmen burrow beneath the earth to escape the sun, and among the islands of the eastern sea, where peaceful kingdoms have fished for generations.