The Heavenly Axis

The Heavenly Axis is, depending on who you ask, a harmonious unified empire surrounded by obsequious tributaries or a mess of mostly-independent kingdoms, united only in their mistrust of foreigners, and every so often someone gets a big head and sees if they can get other people to call him 'emperor.' According to imperial maps, The Heavenly Axis is surrounded by the three great expanses: the Sea Expanse, the Grass Expanse, and the Sand Expanse. According to the maps people actually use, The Heavenly Axis is surrounded by dozens of different countries and tribes, but the maps with The Heavenly Axis in the middle and the three expanses shaped like pie-slices makes for a very nice aesthetic.   Part of the reason that The Heavenly Axis is such as mess is because humans, spirits, and deities live among each other, in a tenuous peace run by unspoken agreements and implicit lines in the sand. Aristocratic ghosts meddle in politics, harvest goddesses offer blessings for a fee, and living instruments with arms and legs busk on city streets.   Above the world of humans, there stands an expansive palace of the afterlife, a massive bureaucracy in which the (figurative) worlds of humans, gods, and spirits mingle and attempt to reach some semblance of organization.