Maradia

Maradia shares the Southern landmass with Nafena. While geographically one continent, they are culturally distinct. The Dordon desert and surrounding mountains in the center of the landmass divides the two.
Maradia is the land of peace and order, or at least it claims to be. The "true" Maradian lands, those untouched by Nafenan religions, claim to exist as peaceful protectors that reject the militaristic foolishness of foreigners. Power is hyper-centralized here, based around the absolute authority of the Branch Offices, which hold a strict monopoly on producing The Empty . These once formed a united front that sought to abolish all war- but now they stand as the empires unto themselves, often claiming to be the True Head Office (religion here is basically synonymous with believing which office is the true Head Office). The Empty are the backbone of Maradian society, maintaining the roads, building cities, and even working the fields. They are strictly regulated and controlled by the Branch Office bureaucracies, which have become vast and unwieldy.
This has led to a kind of peace, as Branch Offices rarely snipe at each other (though the world shakes when they do), and no monarch or republic can claim legitimacy without continual Branch Office support. Maradia is sluggish and backwards in some ways, and yet innovative in others: while suspicious and slow to adopt foreign institutions, they are constantly on the cutting edge of mathematics, design, and urban planning. In its most prosperous regions, Maradia can even feel futuristic, as the Empty have allowed for large urban populations devoted to non-manual labor. The branch offices see these gems of empire as the Future, though they are just exceptions to the majority of Maradian life (which remains agrarian like much of the world).
Maradia has close trade connections to Ekraht and Nafena, and has begun colonizing the central tropics near Izekra.

Geography

Maradia is around 915,000 square miles of forested land, fairly flat with the occasional small mountain range. It is a land of storms, with cold typhoons in the South and warm hurricanes in the North. The temperature of these storms acts as a dividing line, bisecting Maradia into a warm subtropical North and cold temperate South. 
Maradia's Northern subtropical half is often imagined as "true Maradia", as it is the most ancient, rich, and developed. The Southern half, colder and more temperate, is forever half-foreign; a mixture of Maradian culture and rulership and Nafenan religion. 
North of all of this is the Northeast tropical fringe, which is culturally independent of the rest of Maradia, and the Northwestern islands. The largest of these islands is Silum, the great island of spices and wealth 140 miles from the continent and 413 x 91 miles in size. North and West of Silum is a great many small island atolls which serve as trade outposts to Ekraht and the colonies.

Alternative Name(s)

The Land of Wind

Type

Continent

Included Organizations

• Cult of the Living Stone
• Hierarchy of Heksala
• Keveket
• Latashu Sovereignty
• Temple of Ishket
• The Maradian Enforcers

Inhabiting Species

• Merfolk
• Sudraco