I · THE EIGHT THRONES

Bloc	Who rules on paper	Who rules in fact
BlocThe Clerical Order	Who rules on paperLumen I, 40	Who rules in facthim — and that is what nobody foresaw
BlocKönigsmark	Who rules on paperKing Eirik III of Mikaelvald, 44	Who rules in facthim, and the Council of the nine counts
BlocVykhradia	Who rules on paperKing Stanislav VII, 73	Who rules in factthe eleven magnates, through the Diet
BlocBrytonia	Who rules on paperQueen Aldreth II, 61	Who rules in factParliament — and, since 1886, credit
BlocMeridia	Who rules on paperKing Riccardo IV of Stromakrid, 58	Who rules in facthim at court, the Confraternities on the mountain
BlocVelinia	Who rules on paperCaptain-Doge Renato Cosma, 54	Who rules in factthe Ten in Black, and he is one of them
BlocThe Cantons	Who rules on paperthe Federal Captain, one-year term	Who rules in factthe College of Vaults
BlocThe Heptarchy	Who rules on paperthe throne is empty	Who rules in factseven courts that cannot coerce one another

The Clerical Order — Lumen I

Forty years old. Born Lumen Brask, Meridian, Independent Cardinal, raised in the emergency conclave of 1888. Recognised by the candle of Camuel. A visibly pure archaic faith, and raised by a family manoeuvre he suspects and has never confirmed.

His political situation in 1890 is unique in the canon: not one of the five factions chose him, the Coronati and the Inquisitorials settled on him as a blocking solution, and now they live with a One who owes them nothing and who — by the survival curve, being forty years old with two years on the throne — should outlast every one of them.

Königsmark — King Eirik III of Mikaelvald, 44

Lettered, pious, head of the Royal Church of the North. He crosses the Pass on foot when he changes office, and the courtiers follow on horseback, which humiliates them and is meant to.

He governs with a Council of nine provincial counts who are simultaneously the kingdom's heavy cavalry — the entire nobility is a military order, and so the council of state and the general staff are the same room.

His problem in 1890: he presides over a church whose Archangel has not spoken in thirty-three years, and he transferred the bishop who proposed admitting it to a coastal parish.

Vykhradia — King Stanislav VII Vykhradsky-Cracoviensis, 73

Frail health, a nominal crown. He joins by marriage the two great houses of the east, and that union is what has kept Vykhradia out of civil war for thirty years. It is his only act of government, and it has lasted thirty years.

The one that governs is the Diet of the eleven. Eleven bands on the flag, two of them houses extinct and represented by proxies — and since 1883 there have been sessions with nine present at which the secretary records eleven, as he always has.

Names of weight among the eleven, in 1890: Boyar Maxim Vykhradsky, 66, Civil Governor of Cracoviana until 1888, today in honorary retirement and not forgiving Aurum Roma for the nineteen days of silence · Boyar Tadeusz Ilnicki, 51, the richest and the newest, owner of half the wheat on the plateau · and the seat of Hnatiuk, extinct since 1821, voted by proxy for sixty-nine years.

Parliament governs, and the prime minister in 1890 is Lord Ambrose Whithall-Carrow, 58 — second cousin of the bankrupt house, which is the most uncomfortable political fact in the kingdom: House Whithall collapsed in 1886 and the man running the government carries its name.

And since 1886 the one who really rules is credit. The bankruptcy left liabilities nobody explained, an inquiry that found contracts referring to one another, and a market that never recovered its confidence. Sir Henri Brask-Whithall, 49, permanent correspondent in Aurum Roma since 1879, is the only member of the house with an intact reputation — because he was away.

Meridia — King Riccardo IV of Stromakrid, 58

Sincerely devout, without theatre: he kneels, he fasts, he walks barefoot in pilgrimage to the crater at the October feast. Married in second nuptials to Donna Isabella Brask-Wernli, 46 — the Pontiff's house has a queen, and the whole court of Aurum Roma knows how to do that sum.

He rules at court and does not rule on the mountain. The Confraternities of the Volkar take up arms when the bell strikes twice and ask nobody's leave — and in 1887 it struck three times, which had never happened.

Velinia — Captain-Doge Renato Cosma, 54

Doge of the Sails since 1887 and a third member of the Ten in Black since 1881, which is publicly unknown and privately known. He always speaks in two layers, one for the room and one for whoever follows.

Three sons, none of them at sea — keeping to the letter the unminuted decision of 1830.

And since 1889 the Ten are nine. One died and the seat stayed empty.

The Cantonal Confederation — the Federal Captain

An annually elected office, deliberately weak, deliberately rotating, and held in 1890 by a watchmaker from Genfkanton named Ulrich Brenner, 47, whom nobody outside the Confederation could name.

The one that rules is the College of Vaults — seven directors for life, holding no public office, who give no interviews and whose full list is not published. Chaired in 1890 by Konrad Wernli-Halden, 63, of the house that runs through the entire canon.

The doctrine of the weak office is explicit: there is no neck to squeeze.

II · THE CURIA AND THE ORDERS

Lord of Salvation — Dominus Salutis Quinto, since 1885. Former Marshal of the Limes Orientalis. Hard line, close to the Coronati and the Inquisitorials. He can mobilise the army without consulting any Cardinal-of-State, and the Pontiff can dismiss him, and that is the balance.
Cardinal-Inquisitor — Lorenz Severus II, 64. Great-nephew of the Lorenz Severus who wrote the Tractatus de Tempore Inverso in 1853. Head of the Congregation of Doctrine. He has been disputing jurisdiction over the Commissars with the Lord of Salvation for five years and will not yield.
Cardinal Adriano Veris, 69, Reformed. A second-generation Veheranic refugee, his left hand lost at the Twilight Keep, he prays the Veheranic Rite in private — and he stood down from his own elevation in 1888.
Mother Dorothea, Mother Vigilant. One of the three women with direct audience of the One. She signed the third-shift dispensations and does the arithmetic every year.
Inquisitor Reinhardt Voss, 47, Brytonian, serving in Aurum Roma because no inquisitor serves in his home region. No visible personal faith; he believes in the method.
Sister Iván Korlavna, 24 in 1888, Vykhradian, from Cracoviana, a miner's daughter. White in year four. She is the face of the cost.
Grand Master of the Knights of the Seal — Andrej of the House of the Limes, 59. Without a family name for thirty-seven years, by the Vow of the Name. He answers directly to the One, bypassing the Lord of Salvation, and he is the only person on the continent in that position.
Prior General of the Hospitallers — Brother Gaspar Wernli, 55, cantonal by training and by temperament. He is the one who has been handing incomplete records to the Inquisition for nine years, and he decides every month what to erase.
Cardinal Sebastien Vergesa — dies in 1889, a year after the conclave, refusing to testify about it. He left a sealed box in a sergeant's hands in 1887.

III · THE SWORDS

The Age of Stagnation has no iconic sword, and that is canonical: there has been no offensive since 1884 and no commander plans to win. What there is are line administrators.

Post	Name	Note
PostMarshal of the Limes Orientalis	NameIgnác Pohl, 61	Noteinherited the front from a man who inherited it. Has never commanded an offensive and never will
PostRoyal Marshal of Königsmark	NameCount Halvar Steinbrekk, 52	Noteheavy cavalry; one of the nine counts. He still talks about victory, and he is from Königsmark, which is why it is not ridiculous
PostMagnate Marshal of Vykhradia	NameHospodar of the Banner Juri Zavadka, 57	Notecommands in the Diet's name and answers to the eleven. He was not at Cracoviana
PostAdmiral of the Serenissima	NameAdmiral Iacopo Ferrin, 58	Notea career commoner, decorated, and not admitted to the hall where his own victory is celebrated
PostCrowned Admiral of Meridia	NameAdmiral Bartolo Ranca, 63	Notehas disputed the Tenebrum with Ferrin for nineteen years, and the two no longer speak
PostBrytonian Imperial General	NameGeneral Sir Cedric Malloy, 55	Notegets the Legs Inquiry of 1872 handed back to him once per administration
PostSergeant Boris Lemkov, 51	Name—	Notehas walked the line for thirty years and has carried a closed box since 1887. He occupies the sword's empty column, and he is the most exact thing the age produced

IV · THE MONEY

The cast that was missing entirely. In 1890, four of the eight powers are decided by people holding no office at all.

Banking and custody

Konrad Wernli-Halden, 63 — College of Vaults, Bernkanton. Guards 40% of the continent's gold and owns almost none of it. In 1890 his own archive notified him of an account originating in Karzhar through three intermediaries; he applied the Indifferent Origin Clause of 1824 and closed the matter in two days. He promoted the junior clerk who found it.
House Falkenrath, Bernkanton — the second largest. Specialised in liturgical credit: an advance against mineral not yet purified. It prices future faith, and the instrument is held, by three cardinals and in writing, to be the most cynical thing this world has produced.

Trade and shipping

House Malvezzi, Velinia — the largest shipowner on the continent. Moves close to a sixth of the inter-bloc freight in mineral. Matriarch: Donna Orsola Malvezzi, 71, who negotiates masked in formal audience because the law permits it and because the law exists for that.
The Insular Cross Company, Brithon — runs colonial routes outside the Curia's control, a permanent scandal. Governor in 1890: Mr Reuben Stark, 52, without title and without house, who rose from clerk to governor in nineteen years and is received in no house in Brithon outside the office.
House Dobronravov, Vykhrad — grain. Buys the harvest of the eleven and resells it to the continent, including, through three intermediaries and since 1848, to the other side of the Limes. Nobody investigates because investigating would produce an answer.

Industry

Herrenwerk Ferrumkar — the Order's largest forge, and it is not private: it belongs to the Curia of the Hashmal. Technical director Aloys Perger, 58, cleric-engineer trained at the Schola, with the arc eye in both eyes and twenty-two years underground before ordination.
Manchaster — there is no single owner. There are four textile houses and three coal houses dividing the city, and the oldest, Halloway & Sons, employed thirty-one thousand people before the strike of 1881 and employs twenty-nine thousand in 1890, and the number has never risen again and nobody remarks on it.
The Volkar Refineries, Meridia — Ardentine. A Crown concession, run in practice by the Confraternities. Master Refiner Ercole Vanni, 49, who answers to the king on paper and to the bell in the field.

V · THE CIVILIANS

Secular politics and agitation

Lord Ambrose Whithall-Carrow, 58 — Brytonian prime minister. See §I.
MP Josiah Penrose, 44, Brithon — son of the reformer who raised the factory age limit from seven to nine in the Children's Act of 1858, and who considered that his life's work, and was right. Josiah has spent his career trying to take it from nine to twelve. He has been failing for sixteen years.
Delegate Ewan Doyle, 39 — the man of five foot four who negotiated eleven weeks of strike in Manchaster sitting across from an employer of five foot ten. The strike was broken by hunger. He is still in the city.
Konstantin Bilek, 47, Ferrumkar — Broken Glass. Doctrinal heir of the industrial heresy: he maintains, with arithmetic rather than theology, that purification is nobody's monopoly and that Ferrumkar proved it in 1852. He does not take up arms. Which is why the Reformed still do not know what to do with him.
Mother Superior Anezka Roth, 68 — White Vigil. She signed the three written protests against the third-shift dispensations: 1885, 1887 and 1889. None was answered. She is going to write a fourth.

Justice

The Ten in Black, Velinia — nine since 1889. An exceptional tribunal created in 1790 as a commercial emergency measure, never dissolved. One of the nine is the Doge.
The Pontifical Tribunal, Aurum Roma — the Order's court of last instance. Presided over by Cardinal-Dean Ottavio Sarni, 77, the oldest man in the Curia, who has judged under three pontificates and says the second was better.

VI · THOSE WHO WRITE

The Compilator — the anonymous Curial archivist who compiled the Chronicle of the Five Ages (1890) and the Living Atlas (1890) out of seven and nine voices. Never named, and must not be. He withholds names by his own decision — it was he who removed the name of the pact-bound man executed on 9 April 1890.
Donna Cecilia Brask-Stromakra, 79 — de facto matriarch of the Pontiff's house, the Meridian narrator of the Living Atlas. She has decided the marriages for forty years and writes on the balcony facing the volcano.
Boyar Maxim Vykhradsky, 66 — the Vykhradian narrator. He lost the city he administered.
Captain-Doge Renato Cosma, 54 — the Velinian narrator, and one of the nine.
Bürgermeister Wernli — the cantonal narrator, who fixed the number of seventeen cantons and the Federal Pact of 1817.
Canon-Archivist Teodor Marek, 52, Schola Maior — the cartographer of the maps that do not close. A post created in 1857 to reconcile the incompatible accounts of the three expeditions into the Limbo. Twenty years, three maps, three informants all judged sincere. He reconciled nothing and is still in the post.
The Gazeta Aurelina, Aurum Roma — the Order's newspaper. It does not lie; it omits, which is a different art.
The Brithon Ledger — the free insular press, and the reason the Legs Inquiry of 1872 has been cited by reformers for eighteen years despite being shelved by three administrations.
Sir Henri Brask-Whithall, 49 — permanent Brytonian correspondent in Aurum Roma since 1879. He is the point where the continent's two greatest houses touch, and he lives in the city of both.

VII · TECHNIQUE AND SCIENCE

Engineer Marta Hoyer, 38, Schola Coronata — one of the few women holding a technical chair in the Order, by way of the White Vigil and not the university. Ballistics and metrology. She is the one who proved, in 1884, that the standard balance of the Canons ages, and the finding was shelved because correcting it would mean revising the Canon of 1842.

VIII · THE OTHER SIDE

The pact-bound keep their human house names, and that is deliberate: it is the genealogical proof that they were Veheran.

Court	Who rules	Note
CourtKarzhar	Who rulesCouncil of the Crowned of the Flesh — twelve, by consensus, under an empty throne	Noteit presides and does not rule
CourtSathkar	Who rulesBoard of master-forgers — seven families. Dean: Rodha Vetrikova, 41	Noteproduces everything and presides over nothing
CourtBelkar	Who rulesChief Administrator Lubor Danys, 55	Notethe second most powerful man on the other side, and nobody says so
CourtLeviakol	Who rulesthe admiralty, by conquest — in 1890, Ostap Krev, 33	Notehe will command until someone brings in a bigger prize
CourtMammon-Ur	Who rulesthe Mother House, holding no public office. Senior partner: Verek Solomirov, 60	Noteoperates inside Brytonia, the Vaults and the Order
CourtAsmotheri	Who rulesfour houses, by blood. Matriarch: Zoria Halych, 58	Notekeeps every lineage, including those inside the Order
CourtBelikatra	Who rulesa council that meets when it meets	Notesince 1857 it has sent no contingent and has never said why

Volmar Kossch — the only human pact-bound man on the list of the Forty Icons, seen exclusively from outside, with two competing versions the canon does not resolve.

IX · WHO CROSSES WHOM

Connection	What it is
ConnectionLumen I ↔ Donna Cecilia	What it isthe aunt who has decided the marriages for forty years, and the nephew who suspects how he reached the throne
ConnectionLumen I ↔ King Riccardo IV	What it isthe Pontiff's house has a queen in Meridia. The whole Curia does that sum
ConnectionSir Henri Brask-Whithall ↔ Lord Ambrose Whithall-Carrow	What it isthe honest cousin in Aurum Roma and the prime minister carrying the bankrupt house's name
ConnectionCardinal-Inquisitor Severus ↔ Lord of Salvation Quinto	What it isfive years of jurisdictional dispute over the Commissars, with no concession
ConnectionBrother Gaspar Wernli ↔ Inquisitor Voss	What it isnine years of incomplete records. The most loaded friction in the universe, still to break
ConnectionMother Anezka Roth ↔ Mother Dorothea	What it isthree written protests, no answer, and the two women know the same arithmetic
ConnectionAdmiral Ferrin ↔ Admiral Ranca	What it isnineteen years sharing the Tenebrum without speaking
ConnectionBoyar Maxim ↔ Aurum Roma	What it isnineteen days of silence in 1888, and he does not forgive it
ConnectionOnésimo Farkas ↔ Ilinca Vares	What it ishe did not report it, and he completes her records
ConnectionBoris Lemkov ↔ Vergesa's box	What it isclosed since 1887, and the canon ends with him alive and the box shut
ConnectionMarta Hoyer ↔ the Canon of 1842	What it isshe proved the balance ages, and the finding was shelved
ConnectionKonstantin Bilek ↔ the Reformed	What it isthe heir of Ferrumkar who does not take up arms, and is therefore insoluble

The cast of 1890