Regime

After the Cataclysm, the remnants of the Union of Eldar sought to maintain Elven unity by recreating their fallen civilisation. Holding that the Union had represented the greatest possible good in the world, they set out to remake it in every particular. Unfortunately, this meant that while they intended to create a legacy for the future, in truth they were always looking back. Because of this, and the single-mindedness of the Stalwart leadership, who gave little heed to competing visions or opinions, the new order was probably doomed from the start.
The heart of the Regime was in Talahaea, where the first post-Cataclysm was built. The architects of Aeternis, the Threefold City, consciously mirrored the aesthetics of Eldar and set the pattern for the Regime with its focus on verticaliy and naturalistic asymmetry. Its towers were fashioned to look like natural rock stacks, weathered to glassy smoothness. Its nickname reflected the fact that the city existed not only in the material realm, but in thePrimal Wild and the Grim Plain, forming a bridge between the three.
With Aeternis established as their centre, the Stalwart extended the hand of friendship to the other kindreds, offering them a place in the new Union which they dubbed the High Regime. By extension, its people were to be the 'high elves', although that term was quickly reserved to the for the bureaucratic aristocracy and then, as the Steadfast occupied most of the roles in said aristocracy, to the Steadfast as an ethnic group.
Despite this power imbalance, the cooperation of the four kindreds allowed the nascent Regime several advantages. First, by rapidly re-establishing their union after the Cataclysm, the elves were able to begin expanding while others were still consolidating. Second, they were able to pool their knowledge of Eladrin arcanotech sufficiently to restore the planar engines which allowed cities to pierce the mirrors. While they lacked numbers, the Regime proceeded to develop many of the first principles of alchemy, artifice and wizardry in the relative security of Aeternis, and so emerge as a great power in the world of the early Mortal Age.
The Regime was built on, and in many ways for, cities. Working out from Aeternis, the forces of the Regime would sweep out to seize territory, then construct a new city to hold that territory. Beginning with a keep, the complete city would be built up around this base on a relatively standardised plan. Each city was unique, but all shared common features, including the people, buildings and activities associated with the so-called'Five Pillars' of the Regime.

1. Divinity - the worship of the Five Who Make and theCulture Gods ofthe Regime; the temples, the clericy and the conclave (an assembly of senior clerics responsible for religious policy and orthodoxy.
2. Arcana - magic, science, study and understanding; the scholars and sages of the academies.
3. Civics - architecture, administration, bureaucracy and nobility; the aristocracy and the guild of architects.
4. Martiality - defence and expansion; the regiments and the militias.
5. Trade - capital and wealth; the trade guilds and merchant companies.

The Steadfast were the driving force of the Regime, and tended to take responsibility for divinity, civics and arcana. Initially taking a strong interest in the pastoral aspects of civics, clashes with external threats and rivals increasingly saw the Kindled and Vagabonds relegated to martiality. Trade was and remained the domain of the Flowing.

• Politics of the Regime
• Civic Status in the Regime
• The Regiments and Militias

The Legion Wars ultimately brought the Regime to an end. Casualties in the regiments were far higher than anyone was used to, throwing the inequality between the kindreds into sharp focus. The highborn senates and magisterial officers directed mostly ash and wood elf troopers into doomed clashes with the heavily-armoured forces of the Legions and their seemingly inexhaustible Horde auxiliaries. While the Legions probably lost more people, the slow elven life cycle amplified the impact, and the use of human troops and anciliaries failed to mollify those who, having once been forced to the frontline, would not push others ahead of them.
The First Legion War ended in no small part after the Kindled abandoned the Regime as a whole, families and entire populations leaving their homes for a new life in the Underhollows. As the Second Legion began, increasing numbers of highborn were transfered from the militias to the regiments, killing Senate and popular support for the goal of expansion. Vagabond companies were pushed increasingly from reconnaisance to main battle roles for which they were ill-suited, and subjected to punitive discipline if they survived the inevitable failures. The greatest punishments were meted out to those who dared to live where their highborn officers did not, leaving little doubt which elven lives truly mattered.
With the campaigns of the Second War stalled, the vagabond and Flowing kindreds withdrew from the Regime, leaving the cities en masse. Rebellions of the Anciliary Regiments turned the Third War into a chaotic free-for-all which ended in the withdrawal of Regime forces, the orc Uprising, and the rise of the Ophionic Empire. In the heartland of Yethera, the authority of the High Senate waned, as neither the High Senate nor the Prime Magistrate were elected anymore. Cities began to raise their own regiments again, merging them with the militias. A disingenuously-named Grand Senate was elected to try to restore the Regime, but in its final century, the civilisation was more nostalgia than state, a fading memory of greatness honoured in a handful of trade compacts and defensive 'understandings' not worth the name of treaty.
When the Mage Sovereigns made their move, the centralised resistance was non-existent, as cities and their dependent territories fell individually, each to their own conquerors.

Legacy

In modern times, the legacies of the Regime are scattered and few. A handful of ancient buildings, relicts and texts, the designs of traditional elven clothes and weapons - in particular the katakri, paired curved blades, either twinned or one long and one short; shorter versions may have both blades attached to a single handle - and the desire for order and civilisation in the hearts of the High Elves.
While each elven kindred seeks their own legacy, the four share a legacy that not all of them wish for: the legacy of the Regime.
The Regime was the second great project of the Steadfast, after the great Union of Eldar. The Union had been a bold experiment, to create cities rooted on the earth instead of floating above it. The Regime was an attempt to recapture that pioneering spirit and make it into their legacy, but was thwarted from the start by its essentially backwards-looking ambition.
It was doomed also by the Steadfast's blind insistence on representing the other kindreds. It was in the time of the Regime that the Steadfast gave the kindreds their common names, dubbing themselves the high elves and, by unspoken extension, designating the others as 'low.' They structured their new Regime with their own kindred as rulers, architects and sages, and the others as soldiers, scouts and merchants. Neither the sea elves nor the ash elves, nor even the Adamant's closest allies, the wood elves, had much say in the policies and practices of the Regime.
The third doom of the Regime was its ambition, and the accompanying disregard for everyone who was not of the Regime, not an elf, or not Steadfast. The senate of the Regime chose conquest and conflict, then sent Flowing ambassadors to make promises, Vagabond scouts to find reasons to break them, and Kindled soldiers to fight and die.
The Regime was a high elven conceit, but its legacy casts a shadow on all elves. Few outside of the old Regime heartland in Talahaea truly trust an elf, and certainly not a high elf. The cities of the Regime are admired for the elegance of their architecture and the sophistication of their infrastructure, but many domes, arches and aqueducts have been left to crumble simply to posthumously spite their builders. There are even those who refuse to use the Regime's roads, although far more who will give out volubly about the Regime's failings while grudgingly allowing the advantages of a well-laid highway.

Type

Geopolitical, Empire