Irra governance is governance by the old laws. These are precepts and teachings first laid down eons ago, in the aftermath of the old war that wiped humankind from the earth. All races respect the old laws to some extent, but the elves live by them as literally as any mortal race can.
- Old law rule 1: no interspecies conflict
- Old law rule 2: conflicts within species must have a ‘good cause’.
What constitutes a good cause? Wars have been fought on that subject, funnily enough. Elves have their own highly complex system for determining if something is a ‘good cause’. People tend to listen to them because they’re good with magic and their best warriors are terrifying. If no good cause, all races are duty-bound to take action against ‘the aggressor’. Irra have a highly complex system for determining who the aggressor is. Again, the amount that people respect the Irra’s opinion on the matter is directly proportional to how likely the Irra are to actually enforce anything.
- Old law rule 3: you can’t own a creature capable of rational thought.
Subsection A: but if circumstances are justifiably desperate you can eat them.
- Old law rule 4: Obey your lord first. If your lord fails you, Obey your family.
- Old law rule 5: Listen to the whims of magic in all things. Magic is the beating pulse of the world and all it’s dreams, and there is no better teacher. All other laws are secondary to this one.
Magic dying means the elves are relying more on dusty legalistic interpretations rather than the pulse of the world itself. As a consequence, other races are increasingly less likely to heed them.
The Irra are governed by a council of their eldest, known as the Convocation. The Convocation is charged with enforcement of the old laws, but they are not allowed to make their own. The Irra have little tolerance for lawbreakers, and will happily throw accused offenders in prison while the council spends months or more determining the exact nature of the crime committed and the punishment suitable. Though it is the job of the convocation to interpret the law, the enforcement thereof usually falls to community peacekeepers. These are more civil servants than warriors, as any truly formidable martial threat will be left for the mythical Irra knights to deal with. The duty of schooling and medicine have been placed on the individuals. It is a family’s responsibility to teach their young about the old laws and about magic. If any Irra falls ill, they are to go to their healer, of which there is typically one per community.
The Bajir native to Irrum Vath live on the slopes and shallow caves of the mountain. They are defined by a rigid caste system of family units, priests, and hunter-warriors. They have a complex pantheon of gods and are typically uninterested in the old laws interpreted by Irra and the Kobolds. Power in the society of the native Bajir rests in the might of the chief and the words of the priests, and from tribe to tribe and generation to generation, the style of these leaders can vary from brutal to enlightened. These tribes care for their own but are quick to condemn those who break the cultural taboos of their people. They are uneducated in the ways of magic, choosing instead to teach their young to hunt and fight. Those few among them who learn the old arts despite the lack of teachers are either feared or revered depending on the circumstances. Elders are respected, even if they are wrong. Kobolds find the Bajir primitive, and the Irra abhor the sheer chaos that can arise from “the Bajir way of doing things.”
Recently though, a new kind of Bajir has started to emerge from the west. They are different; more organized despite their apparent status as vagabonds and refugees. They come in a strange group known as a “company”; a band of mercenary warriors who say they have lost faith in a vast holy war being fought in lands to the southwest. These Bajir were gathered by kings and warriors from across a great number of nations, but now they are bound together by rejection of their former leaders and their aim to start a new life in this new land. Not only warriors, this company brings young families, skilled craftsmen, and hanger-on merchants that are rapidly changing the balance of power in the upper regions of Irrum Vath. These new Bajir operate on a novel system of governance by which all recognized members of a company are given a vote, which is cast in favor of competing leaders and courses of action. They are fiercely loyal to each other, and the memory of fighting for scraps and dying for far-removed rulers has made these Bajir value a society where hard work is recognized and rewarded; where those suffering are given a hand to hoist them up instead of scorn. They are also fiercely loyal to their leaders far past the point of cultural expectation. Their laws reflect these values, even if they are new and rather untested. However, many of these outlanders are still mercenaries at heart, and it is not at all uncommon for the popular and legal decision to unceremoniously lose out to the profitable decision in public discourse. There is increasing tension between war-weary leaders trying to keep the peace with the locals and lower-level company members itching to advance their own fortunes.
The outlander and native Bajir, for their part, have fought bitterly in one breath and dubiously integrated in the next. Most of these mercenary Bajir hold to the ideal that any can join their number, and welcome the natives among their ranks. However, they are equally as enthusiastic about cutting down any who oppose them. Many natives in turn seek to win the favor of the newcomers to turn the tide against longtime rivals.
Lymantrian government exists only when the Lymantria themselves decide there is a need for it. Small groups of Lymantria will spend decades or even centuries going about their own business, and only convene with others when they come across disputes they cannot resolve internally. Unlike the Irra, who will gladly write their laws into stone so long as one has the sheer patience to sit and watch them do it, Lymantria are cagey about themselves. Despite their talent for mystical constructs and seemingly impossible works of craftsmanship, Lymantria appear to lack a written language beyond basic mathematical notation. Hence, any kind of definitive record of the manner by which they conduct themselves is nonexistent. Lymantria teach their offspring what their progenitors taught them, and such secrets are not shared with outsiders. Should a Lymantria be injured, they will be healed by one of their machines.
With this freeform government, the Lymantria see little distinction between ruler and ruled, with the line being blurred. Lymantria prefer to simply go about their business instead of worrying about these distinctions. The Lymantria consider their resources free for the taking, however, those who cause harm to another Lymantria while procuring those resources face consequences for doing so. This helps the Lymantria work together to benefit themselves as a whole.
The Kobold style of governance is, to put it diplomatically, robust. They live in clans, which due to their high rate of reproduction tend to grow quickly. When a clan reaches a critical mass, the most often course of action is to split the population. Usually, the strongest, wealthiest, and most respected Kobolds stay in the original clan, while those with less clout tend to end up within the offspring clan. These new clans typically retain a much lesser portion of the original’s wealth and resources. In addition, the new clan must adopt new crests and regalia. As a consequence, Irrum Vath is home to a dozen of old and powerful Kobold clans that can trace their lineage back into antiquity, while half-a-hundred lesser clans feud among themselves for dominance and prestige beneath them. The larger clans have the resources to sustain larger populations, and when the time comes that they must split it is a momentous event for all races of the mountain. Rarely are such transitions uneventful, and the sort of Kobold leaders capable of managing such a transition without any kind of violence are the sort that will be remembered in myth and legend. Oftentimes, resentful split-offs from the major clans will start a war to regain the resources they were denied in transition, banding together with lesser clans to start a conflict that typically ends up dragging every major power in Irrum Vath along for the ride. The Kobolds do not have any schools. Instead, education is the duty of the (typically very large) family unit.
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