The ancient Dwarven kingdom of Malokron (derived from “Hammer’s Crown” in Old Helician) was founded by those who fled the Tomarran Plateau during the First Dwarven Exodus in the First Century. Malokron thrived for an age, its halls beneath the peaks of the Spine shining with silver, gold, and crystal. A terrible civil war and profligate use of terrible curses caused it to collapse in the Ninth Century, however, causing many of its shining Halls to be abandoned. The southeastern third of the kingdom fragmented even further, and many of the Clans within the mountains of Hammerhall were cast out of their ancestral homes. These Dwarves flooded south into the Amethran Plain in what came to be called the Avalanche Invasion and conquered the Vauldan Empire, which had been left weakened by the First Vauldan Civil War.
Though the Dwarves may have conquered the Empire, the Empire still won in the end; Emperor Monumental, the leader of the Avalanche Invasion and the first Dwarven emperor, took the Vauldan Throne and used the Empire’s bureaucratic structures to rule his new conquest. His granddaughter, Empress Vindictive, turned her eyes upon the Clans still dwelling in Hammerhall, proving herself a true inheritor of the Vauldan culture in their desire for conquest and expansion. Despite their adoption of Vauldan culture, however, the Dwarves left their own indelible marks upon the Empire — Dwarven traditions and ideals sunk deep into the Vauldan cultural zeitgeist during the century and a half that Monumental’s dynasty ruled the Empire, and that cultural legacy has never truly faded.
In the 25th Century, Emperor Didactic became concerned about the possibility of his enemies using the knowledge contained within the Tholmic Vault against him the Empire. He sent the Legions to take over the Vault, find any knowledge that might be harmful to his reign or the Empire’s interests, and purge it, as well as ransacking the sacred library for anything useful it might contain. The attempt failed, as the custodians of the Vault closed up the ancient fortress and used its magics to devastate the Legions.
However, Tholmar was displeased. He placed a curse upon the Empire and the Imperial Throne, making it impossible for any librarian or seeker of knowledge to understand an organizational system crafted by another, until he decided that the Empire had redeemed itself. The curse sunk deep into the Empire’s bones, and for the next millennia no Vauldan was able to find anything within a place of learning without sifting through it all or finding the person who’d set up the organizational system in the first place. Foreigners traveling through the Empire found the Imperial Libraries to be organized as if a madman with no understanding of the alphabet had put things away — the curse made anyone seeking to organize written material completely unable to come up with a sensible system, while still allowing them to find things they’d put away despite how completely nonsensical their system might be to an outside observer. Despite this, the Emperors who followed Didactic all seemed intent on collecting as much knowledge as they could, stuffing the Empire’s libraries with books and scrolls looted by the Legions or traded for by Vauldan merchants.
The Empire Resurgent has redeemed its old self, however, prioritizing learning and equal access to knowledge (as well as making substantial gifts to the Tholmic Vault). Tholmar lifted his curse in the 30th Century, shortly after the end of the Conjunction War, and the Empire is still trying to recover all the lore that was forgotten in the corners of libraries or misfiled in puzzling locations on the shelves. One of the endless jobs that Custodians do is to sort through the Old Stacks in every library in the Empire, figuring out what the various scrolls and tomes they find there are, and then file them in the appropriate places within the New Stacks. Many of the larger libraries have had entirely new wings constructed simply to hold the newly-organized books while the older wings are sifted through.
One of the side-effects of the Curse was an odd magical phenomenon deep within the stacks of the largest libraries. Space seemed to warp, the shelves shifting locations as one walked through them; it wasn’t unusual for an inexperienced Custodian to become lost within the libraries’ depths. To make matters worse, deep within the stacks the tomes began to release some of their contents as phantasmal creatures or nightmarish monsters. Custodians in those libraries quickly learned to defend themselves, and many of the more scholarly members of the Legions were recruited as librarians, the better to keep the stacks clear of hostile entities.
Today, most of these Phantasmal Stacks have settled down, the disorganized knowledge that gave them their unsettling power sifted through and placed in more harmonious arrangements elsewhere. Some of the oldest and largest libraries are still host to one or more of the Phantasmal Stacks, however, and Custodians are still trained as if finding a book might involve navigating their way through hostile territory. Knowledge is power, in the Empire, but it is also a dangerous thing if you are not prepared to handle it safely.
Orders are the social building blocks of the Empire. The members of an Order work together to build things, do business, practice magic, or otherwise work for their own prosperity and (hopefully) that of the Empire. A sizable majority of Vauldans belong to one or more Orders; while not every citizen of the Empire belongs to an Order, most Vauldans are of the opinion that not belonging to either an Order or one of the Legions limits someone’s potential in a fundamental way. From a Vauldan perspective, the idea that someone can become great or prosperous entirely on their own is viewed with extreme skepticism.
Order names are usually in High Amethran (the in-game-world’s equivalent of Latin), with the prefix “Ordo”; the Ordo Leonine would be the official name of the Order of the Lion, for example. Many Orders have complicated names with a whole string of adjectives and modifiers (”The Industrious Order of the Golden Lion of Varavento,“ for example) in an effort to differentiate themselves from others with similar names, though in recent years there has been a trend of Orders doing away with the traditional motifs and coming up with unique names that aren’t so much of a mouthful.
There is a tendency amongst many Orders to dedicate themselves to one God or Saint in particular. This is not a rule, or something that Vauldans expect of any given Order, but instead seems to be merely a result of like-minded people banding together; members of an Order focused on farming and agriculture are, unsurprisingly, quite likely to be followers of Anselt, while the members of a martial Order are frequently followers of Vallaros.
Every Order has a Standard, which they cherish, show off at every opportunity, and will fiercely protect if it is ever threatened. It’s seen as a point of pride by every Order to have their Standard imbued with an enchantment appropriate for the Order’s purposes. Orders without an enchanted Standard are viewed by Vauldan society as being too shallow or undeveloped to be taken seriously.
The Legions are the armies of the Empire, the forces that enabled the Old Empire rule half the Continent at one point and that have helped the Empire Resurgent maintain its hold on stability in the upheaval that Resurgent’s reign brought with it. They are also a source of pride for everyday Vauldans, and there’s a deep sense amongst the populace of the Empire that so long as the Legions stand strong, the Empire will never fall. Service as a Legionary is widely viewed as a patriotic duty and as a dependable way to improve one’s place in Vauldan society. Many Vauldans choose to do at least one tour of duty with the Legions when they reach their majority, regardless of which professional path they intend to follow afterwards.
Each Province has its own Provincial Legion that acts as a local defense force, and the Throne controls six (much larger) Imperial Legions. Provincial Legions are pulled almost entirely from the population of that Province, and many of those Legionaries spend part of the year working in a civilian capacity when they aren’t needed to help their Legion defend the Province. Four of the Imperial Legions are recruited from specific Provinces, and are stationed somewhere far from those Provinces except in wartime. The two Legionum Specificarum are specialist armies that recruit from all of the other Legions to pursue specific purposes within and outside the Empire.
Long ago, Empress Victorious conquered the entirety of the Amethran Plain, her Legions an unstoppable force that defeated all who stood against her. It’s said that one of Victorious’ greatest weapons were the Standards that she equipped her Legions with, enchanted with a curse that weakened the souls of all who beheld them. The Legionaries supposedly baptized the icons at the tops of their Legion’s Standard with their blood and bound a fragment of their soul into it, becoming immune to the curse and gaining strength for each foe who fell under it’s influence.
The authenticity of this story is still under debate; nobody has been able to replicate Victorious’ curse, for one thing, and the historical accounts are frustratingly vague about exactly how she won so many crushing victories. Nonetheless, ever since Victorious’ short but colossally impactful reign the Standards of the Vauldan Legions have been a mainstay of Imperial military culture, and over time have become a part of civilian culture as well. Every Order makes and maintains its own Standard, and civilians take just as much pride in their Standards and are just as fiercely protective of them as a Legion’s soldiers are of theirs. Even when a Standard is a Reliquary (which, unlike a Banner, doesn’t need to be a flag) Vauldans usually make them in the form of a flag or a pole with an emblem or figure on the top.
A Standard is a tall pole (at least over six feet in height), topped with an icon or set of icons representing the Legion or Order it belongs to, as well as a simple flag of some sort if it’s a Banner. Many are adorned with ribbons or medals commemorating great feats or accomplishments that the organization has accomplished. Glowstones are also a popular decoration, especially for the Standards of Legions and any Orders who have reason to take their Standard out in the darkness.
The Standard of an Order or Legion is its heart. If it falls, the people who are attached to it feel as if their heart has been carved out, until they can reclaim or repair it. Vauldans have been known to be suicidally protective of the Standard of their Legion or Order, and viciously defensive of it if someone should make threats against it. Vauldan fighters make heavy use of Banners in combat, relying on them for support and to give their commanders an edge against their foes, while Orders focused on less martial concerns frequently prioritize obtaining a useful Reliquary to improve their collective effectiveness.
<aside> 🎌 Mechanically, Vauldan Standards function just like any other Standard in the game; they are magic items that Enchanters can craft and that have a specific effect. Vauldans just care a lot more about them than other nations do, and have specific forms that they usually make them into (a tall pole with a flag or a figurehead on the end of it, preferably with a glowing crystal included somewhere).
</aside>
The Empire’s long history is rife with civil war and rebellion. Whether provoked by seditious nobles, rebellious common folk, or mutinous generals backed by their Legions, there have been painfully few centuries where some form of armed insurrection did not occur somewhere in the Empire. Over the ages, this had a subtle but still distinct impact on Vauldan culture, ingraining a level of cynicism towards power struggles within the upper echelons of the Empire within the common folk. One noble struggling for power against another, or the incessant infighting within the Senate over bureaucratic positions and powers, or the Legions coming through and marching towards Vauldis — all of these were things to hunker down and survive, more like natural disasters than something that the common folk had reason to care about besides seeing them coming.
In the centuries since Empress Resurgent took the Throne, however, this has changed. Many of Resurgent’s biggest reforms focused on reshaping how power moves through the Empire, placing significant restrictions on the nobility, Senate, and Legions alike. Those reforms had repercussions, however, as some of the great powers within the Empire sought to maintain their positions and privileges through force. As a result, the Throne and its loyal Legions were run ragged trying to preempt or crush rebellions across the Empire’s breadth for almost two centuries after Resurgent’s rise. Legion camps within the Empire became fortified positions, designed to be held against any other Legion should its commanders go rogue, “just in case.” Towns and cities built walls and trained their own militias so that they might fend off the grasping hands and imperious demands of aristocrats with delusions of power and a private army.
It is only in the last forty years that the Empire has settled into a true peace without a significant threat of insurrection. No part of the Empire has been left untouched by political violence, and the Vauldans as a people have grown thoroughly sick of it, developing a deep-seated distrust of anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to overthrow the government, or even significantly disrupt things by protesting or destroying infrastructure. The Legions who kept the Empire intact over the last two and a half centuries are hailed as the peace-keepers they are, and much of the appeal of joining the Legions to many Vauldans lies in the patriotic ideal of becoming part of the armies that have kept the Empire from tearing itself apart. Whether the Empire will be able to maintain this stability with the onset of a new Churning, however, is yet to be seen.
Despite the peace and prosperity of the past few decades, there exist some in the Empire who are unsatisfied with the status quo. They believe that the ways of the Old Empire were somehow better, that the modern Empire Resurgent is a weak and pale imitation of the “true glory of Vauldan.” Rumors are swirling across the Empire that these malcontents have come together to form a new secret society, the Aquilae Solaris, or Eagles of the Rising Sun.
So far the exact intentions of the Aquilae and how deeply they reach within Vauldan society are still shrouded in mystery. The Eyes of the Throne have found evidence that someone amongst the nobility is trying to stir up trouble by funding mercenaries to rob trade routes and paying archaeologists to dig up ancient Imperial vaults that are best left buried. Unfortunately, other than arresting those catspaws they haven’t been able to find out what exactly the Aquilae are after. Even the organization’s name and intention of overthrowing the current regime seem to have been planted by the Aquilae themselves as a propaganda tactic — a fact that is not reassuring to the Eyes or the Empire’s security forces, as it likely means that the organization feels secure enough in its position to start acting more openly.
Throughout its history, the various Thrones and noble houses of the Empire have dabbled in dark magics in pursuit of victory against their enemies, ethics and good sense taking a distant second place to ambition and Imperial dominion. The warnings of the Oruunari faith against such grim experiments were ignored, and many of those research programs bore terrible fruit. Fortunately for the Empire and the world around it, most such programs were short-lived. For some, the founders buried them after an experiment went awry and woke them up to the dangers of dabbling in such dark things. Others were shuttered because new leadership decided against funding the “grand ideas” of their predecessor. A few were shut down because the Oruunari or some other band of do-gooders got wind of them and sabotaged them, destroying the facilities or killing the mages responsible for whatever atrocity was going on inside.
Unfortunately, just because these programs ended did not mean they were properly cleaned up. Many of them were simply buried beneath the earth, kept mostly-intact “just in case” someone might need the dark secrets contained within them in the future. And, as so often happens with such secrets, after a few generations the location and contents of these dread vaults were lost to time, leaving them to fester in silence for centuries or millennia. Many of these sites still exist, scattered across the Empire, and every so often an archaeological dig will open an ancient cellar or dungeon and unleash some unspeakable horror cooked up by an Emperor of old. The people of the Empire are especially wary of old ruins during Churnings, for the Old God cultists seem to have some kind of sixth sense for where to find such eldritch leftovers and how to best unleash them to cause chaos and misery within the Empire.
In the days of the Old Empire, the Trade Year was a tradition semi-forced upon the youth of Vauldan in an effort to prevent bloodlines from stagnating. The original purpose was to move young adults out of their home Province into a new one, hopefully with a job lined up for them. The Trade Year was a year of time where young Vauldans would travel through the Provinces and apprentice in a single Trade in each (hence the custom’s name). After they returned home they would choose where they would move and what trade they would take up. Whenever someone left home after their Trade Year, their family would gift them a Trade Stone from their native Province. This was often a stone taken from the family’s house, from an ancestral tomb, or from some other location meaningful to the youth.
In the modern Empire, the Trade Year has relaxed quite a bit. It is no longer required by law, though few Vauldans choose to forgo it as the Throne pays for most reasonable expenses taken during the journey. Rather than focusing on "maintaining bloodlines," the Trade Year of modern times is an important tool for cultural exchange within the Empire. Each Province has distinct cultural traditions, and the travels of young folk on their Trade Year helps to bind them all together, making them true citizens of the Empire as a whole. Many youths still choose to apprentice to trades as they travel around, but it’s also perfectly acceptable to simply engage in the day to day life of each Province and explore the history and culture of your hosts.
Another change is the Trade Stone itself. Instead of the stone originating from their home Province, over the course of their journey the youth chooses a place in each Province that they developed a connection with, and takes a stone from that location. By the end of the Year they would have nine stones, one from each Province. They choose which stone becomes their Trade Stone in a coming of age ceremony with their family, indicating which Province they will move to. They either have the Trade Stone carved into an amulet and wear it as part of their regular attire or carry it as a worry-stone in a pouch or pocket, depending on its size and the wishes of the individual.
Trade Stones are precious personal mementos, and few Vauldans go anywhere without theirs. Legionaries about to go into battle will place theirs with their Standard-bearer or for safekeeping, and those who do not return to collect their stone after the battle is done are noted as being amongst the fallen or missing. A similar practice was developed amongst the Custodians — anyone seeking to enter the Deep Stacks within a library must leave their Trade Stone with the librarians, to mark who has entered and who has successfully made it out of the labyrinthine shelves. Marriage ceremonies always involve the couple holding each others’ Trade Stones for the duration of the ceremony as a show of trust, and when they pass away each Vauldan’s Trade Stone is embedded into the Ashstone that contains their remains as a way of showing their identity.
The Vauldan Empire is the oldest surviving nation on the Continent, with a history stretching back two and a half millennia. Imperial dynasties may have changed and the Empire’s borders may have grown and shrunk dramatically, but the Empire has continued in an unbroken line of Thrones from the first days of Emperor Triumphant’s reign in the 5th Century. As a result, Vauldans have a deep love for (some would say an obsession with) the study of history and archaeology.
In the Old Empire, this was a matter of patriotic pride: showing a deep and expansive knowledge of the Empire’s history showed how much someone loved the Empire and all it had done. In most Imperial histories, the Empire’s failures were glossed over and its victories highlighted and embellished, regardless of how accurate such accounts actually were. Other nations’ histories were viewed as unimportant; the Empire was the center of the world and all other nations were barbaric backwaters, their histories seen as either amusing folk tales or entirely unimportant.
In the Empire Resurgent, however, the study of history has taken on a more thoughtful and expansive perspective. Vauldans hold to the ideas that only through understanding the mistakes of the past can the Empire and its people hope to avoid them in the future, and that understanding the successes and failures of other societies might give the Empire the tools needed to build a brighter future. The study of history and archaeology is viewed as an excellent hobby for all Vauldans, whatever their profession. Other nations’ historical accounts are viewed as valuable pieces of the puzzle that is the mortal experience, and it is an ongoing project by the scholars of the Empire to disentangle the Old Empire’s propaganda from the actual truth of what happened in centuries past.
The Empire of old had an obsession with fire, associating it with death and glory and the burning heart of the Imperial identity. With the changes brought on by Empress Resurgent and her heirs, that affinity towards fire has transformed into a love of light itself and a fascination with the science and magic of optics and illumination. Vauldans have spent much of the last two centuries becoming adept at finding light within the darkness, developing a host of new ways of using light to illuminate the world around them. Stained glass windows lit from behind, ingenious fittings for lightstones, and complex arrangements of mirrors are all used to create and spread light through even the darkest places within the Empire.
Modern Vauldan society views a well lit space as bringing clarity and virtue to everything within it. Vauldans prefer to have light with them wherever they go, and their settlements and traveling camps reflect this. The ceilings of the grand halls of Hammerhall and the Vein are studded with so many lightstones that they resemble a swirling galaxy in the night sky. Urban areas (both above and below ground) feature street lamps of many varieties that are kept alight throughout the long nights, banishing the darkness and allowing business to continue well past the setting of the sun. Vauldans rarely go anywhere without a personal lightstone of their own, and Vauldan caravans can travel long into the night due to the sheer amount of shining stones that they bedeck their wagons and draft animals with.
Vauldans treasure any kind of clever optical device, especially something that uses light to create beautiful patterns or that allows someone to see something that they normally couldn’t. Colored and shaped glass is used to create glorious artworks that shift over time or depending on the surrounding light sources. The Vauldans have enthusiastically adopted the Cerulean tradition of shadow-plays, putting their own spin on them by using carefully-crafted kaleidoscopes to create dazzling magical effects.
Vauldans are builders, with a deep and abiding love of stone and grand constructions. Where a simple wooden structure might do the job, Vauldans will insist on building it twice as big and out of stone. Vauldan families take pride in the grandeur and careful construction of their homes; it’s seen as a disgrace to the family if a building should ever collapse, implying that they either skimped on building it strong enough or failed to properly maintain it somehow.
This love of large stone construction is particularly true amongst the Imperial elite. Emperors and Empresses throughout Vauldan history have made a habit of building grand monuments and vast public buildings across the Empire, showcasing the Empire’s (and thus their own) power, prosperity, and might. Nobles of the Empire have followed suit, building (slightly) smaller monuments across their domains, both as a way of competing with their neighbors and as a way of employing and maintaining control over the commonfolk within their lands.
The end result of millennia of such construction is that the Empire is practically littered with monuments and ancient stone buildings. Some are decrepit and have fallen into ruin after being abandoned for centuries, while others are lovingly maintained by archaeologists or local residents. Ancient structures such as the Grand Amphitheater of Lanercost or Cirrane’s Flooded Gardens are still just as beautiful and majestic as they were a millennia ago, and practically every Vauldan settlement bigger than a village has its own set of historical monuments that a traveler can visit.
The abundance of monument-building is also a perpetual opportunity for archaeologists and treasure-hunters. There always seems to be another “new” forgotten ruin being discovered in the more remote areas of the Empire, forgotten by time until a wandering shepherd trips over a stone that turns out to be part of an ancient monument. Not all of these places are necessarily safe — many such sites were abandoned for a very good reason — but they are all part of the Empire’s history, and Vauldans have a deep passion for digging through and trying to understand the monumental legacies of their past.
In the towns and cities of the Empire, every morning begins with the sound of the Imperial Criers shouting the news of the day. Originally set up as a way for the Old Empire to disseminate propaganda across the expanse of the nation, in the years since Resurgent’s rise the Imperial Criers have been turned into a blend of national postal service and auditory newspaper. Each day, the Throne, Governors, and Senate collect important news and send it out to all corners of the Empire, where it is declared in the local Forum for all to hear. Only the smallest of villages are left out, and even then copies of the day’s Crier Post are left behind in the nearest town to be distributed to nearby villages.
To ensure speedy distribution of information, the Criers have set up small outposts across the Empire, using specialized rituals and fast horses to send messages across the nation in a matter of days rather than the weeks that it would normally take to cover such vast distances. In the last four decades the Criers have also begun offering mail-delivery services, allowing citizens to take advantage of their rapid-delivery network for a steep fee, though such deliveries are limited to letters only.
In the past, whenever the Empire won a great victory in war it would commemorate that event by parading captives, stolen treasures, and the victorious Legions and their generals through the streets of the Empire’s cities. These processions were called Triumphs, and were major propaganda events for the Old Empire, miniature festivals that both raised the morale of the Vauldan populace and crushed the spirits of any conquered peoples.
In the Empire Resurgent, though, there were far fewer military victories to be celebrated. Having sworn off conquest, the Thrones have changed the tradition of the Triumph into something more suited to the Empire’s new approach to its future. Instead of parading conquered peoples and stolen treasures through the Empire’s cities, the Throne sponsors Triumphs to celebrate diplomatic victories and the defeat of internal threats within the Empire. Whenever a lucrative trade deal is signed or another nation sends gifts or thanks to the Throne for some service rendered by Imperial forces, the accomplishment is celebrated by the entire Empire with parades and processions featuring the gifts and any ambassadors who are willing to be part of the celebration.
Though this started as a reactive bit of propaganda on the occasion that a diplomatic success just happened to occur, in modern times it has fostered a bit of an activist habit in the Empire’s diplomatic corps and the Legions. Rather than invading other lands for glory and loot, the Empire now actively looks for opportunities to aid other nations. The Throne has instituted a number of incentives for the Legions and any diplomats who venture out beyond the Empire’s borders to earn goodwill from foreign lands, granting significant boons of Strata along with financial rewards to those who can secure a diplomatic Triumph. The other nations of the Continent in turn have realized that they can often get the Empire’s assistance for an inexpensive sum so long as they’re effusive with their thanks and send pieces of artwork or commission monuments as part of their repayment of that aid.
At the heart of every Vauldan settlement is a great plaza, known as a Forum (plural Fora). Even tiny villages have a town square paved with stone, and in the largest cities the Forum can be half a mile wide and is often surrounded by monuments to the city’s past. They are the heart of a settlement, the hub that the village, town, or city is anchored to and rotates around. Fora are used as public meeting places, market squares, and the sites of festivals and other celebrations. Citizens come to the Forum to chat, trade, discuss politics, listen to lectures by professors from the local Collegia, and more. The Imperial Criers start their day’s announcements at the podium in the center of the Forum, and then spiral out through the rest of the settlement to deliver their news and proclamations beyond the central plaza.
It has long been customary in the Empire when constructing a new settlement to begin with the Forum, and only once that has been laid out to begin construction of the rest of the town. Fora are often built much larger than the settlement actually needs at its foundation — far better, in the Vauldan perspective, to build it bigger at the outset and leave room to expand than to need to tear down the buildings that will inevitably grow around the Forum when the town grows large enough to need a larger central plaza. Once a settlement grows from a village into a mid-sized town, a grand city hall and courthouse all in one called a Basilica is constructed on one side of the Forum. As a town expands into a city, it builds new Fora and Basilicas in central locations within its new developments, fostering community-building within each new district as it grows.
The Fora and Basilicas of a settlement tell a visitor a great deal about how that village, town, or city sees itself and its history. A Forum starts as a simple stone-paved plaza, but it is quickly customized by the residents of the settlement, who add their own flourishes and decorations. As time passes, the buildings around the Forum (particularly the Basilica, once it’s constructed) become covered in statuary, mosaics, murals, and bas reliefs depicting the settlement’s history and the accomplishments of its people. If the Forum is large enough, obelisks and other similar monuments are placed within it as further memorials to the settlement’s past and (hopefully) future glory.
The Collegia are centers of learning in the Empire. Each city has at least one, and the larger metropolises often have four or five. They teach all sorts of skills to anyone who can pay the tuition, from basic arithmetic and letters, to carpentry and masonry, to advanced engineering techniques and arcane ritual theory. Each Collegia tends to be either a generalist institution, teaching an assortment of basic skills to children and adults of all ages, or specializes in a specific thing and focuses hard on training their students in mastering all the permutations of that particular subject. None of the Collegia can rival the massive size or energy of the two Universities of Sunderwyl, but the sheer number of institutions across the Empire and the intense competition between them makes for a thriving environment that benefits Imperial students of all levels of education.
One of the biggest complaints that foreigners have about the Collegia is their price tag — the tuition for the most advanced courses can be eye-wateringly expensive, and even enrolling a child in a Collegia to learn their letters and numbers is often fairly pricey as well. To address this, and ensure that the Imperial populace can gain as much benefit from them as possible, the Throne “encourages” local Benefactore to fund scholarships and sponsor public lectures by their favored Collegia. Many Collegia compete for such patronage, and there is often a symbiotic bond between the local Collegia and businesses in the community, with the Commercios sponsoring the Collegia and the Collegia in turn helping to train the workers who make the Commercios’ businesses prosper.
The Casea di Libri, or Imperial Libraries, date back to the Vauldan Golden Age at the start of the Third Millennium, vast structures built by the Throne to house the accumulated lore of the Empire so that Vauldan scholars might learn and bring even greater glory to the Empire. They flourished, for a time, and gave rise to scholarly societies that would eventually become the modern Collegia. But then Emperor Didactic’s folly provoked Tholmar’s Curse upon the Empire, horribly muddling the organization within the Libraries and throwing the whole system into chaos.
Over the centuries, the Casea di Libri adapted, and the profession of Custodian was born, librarians trained to venture into the dark and twisting stacks within the Imperial Libraries to find whatever information was being sought by those who came to them. The Throne still sponsored the maintenance of the Libraries, but in many cities the local Collegia cooperated to ensure that the Custodians were well-trained and paid according to the increasing risks involved in delving into the Phantasmal Stacks at the heart of the Libraries.
In modern times, with the lifting of Tholmar’s Curse, the Imperial Libraries are undergoing a renaissance. Many of their halls are still cluttered with tomes and scrolls waiting to be sorted, but they are no longer impossible for any but their native Custodians to utilize, and any Vauldans who seek knowledge can venture into them to learn. The Custodians are still needed, however, for the Phantasmal Stacks still remain deep in the hearts of many of the Libraries. The Custodians’ new duty is to delve within those shifting halls to retrieve as many ancient tomes as they can, so that the knowledge of the past can be brought to light once more.
Every culture, especially those with wealthy nobility or aristocracy, experiences fads; the Empire’s most recent obsession is, of all things, the egg cup. Decorative cups are displayed in noble houses and the homes of wealthy Fabricae and Commercios. Folk of all Strata carry around an egg cup tied to their belt or worn as an amulet; these “carry cups” often get used as a shot glass rather than actually holding an egg, but the point of the portable ones is to have them on display rather than actually using them. Dishes that make use of eggs have exploded in popularity within the Empire’s culinary scene, and even when a meal doesn’t actually involve eating eggs there are often brilliantly-painted eggs on display as another sign of the host’s wealth or artistic talent.
Retiring from the Legions after multiple tours is seen as an honor, but the Legions don’t provide much in the way of a pension besides granting an ex-Legionary the funds to purchase a farm or start some other small business. One of the standard means for a retiree from the Legions to support themselves is to become a Tutore (too-TOR-eh), or a “teacher of lessons,” and offer their services as both teacher and guardian to those who can’t afford the tuition for the local Collegia.
Foreigners are often surprised by just how much knowledge Legionaries are expected to have to perform their duties; while a soldier on the line may not need to have much knowledge of mathematics, sergeants and all higher officers must learn how to do logistics, plan basic fortifications and constructions, and have a decent grasp of the history and geography of the region they’re operating in. Those who retire from the Legions are often quite capable of teaching the basics of literacy, numeracy, engineering, and history, and many Vauldans view a Tutore’s tutelage as being superior to that of someone who hasn’t served in the Legions. The Legions often offer small subsidies to successful Tutores, in the hopes that students who are taught well by ex-Legionaries will in turn be more likely to consider joining the Legions themselves.
Tutores are also famous for being able to defend themselves and their students; a number of stories exist (likely fictional, but at least a few are true) of a Tutore using their martial skills to keep their charges safe from some villain. Many Vauldans of high Strata pay for the services of a skilled Tutore to teach their children specifically to have yet another line of defense against someone targeting their heirs, and even commoners appreciate the security of putting their children under the watchful gaze of someone who has been trained in how to fight and protect others.
Foul and mad-cap humanoid Spirits that haunt the farms and fields of the Empire, Egg Goblins have a supernatural hunger for eggs and a murderous hatred of poultry. Vauldan farmers leave a small basket of peeled hard-boiled eggs out on their doorstep each full moon, in the hopes of placating the local Egg Goblins should one decide to visit their coops in the night. Even when their hunger for eggs is sated, however, Egg Goblins are known for their magpie ways, collecting shiny trinkets and trash that they find in their wanderings, often stealing things that are left out in the open and not nailed down. The creatures are not much of a threat physically, but are damnably swift and agile and hard to pin down. Curses that would slow or hold one in place slide right off of them, and they have a knack for sensing the approach of hunting parties from a long ways off; the phrase “hunting an Egg Goblin” is a metaphor for a futile waste of time, in Vauldan society.
Tiny Spirits of decay and entropy, gremlins exist across the Continent, but the Vauldans are much more scared of them than any other nation, having a cultural phobia of the little monsters vastly out of proportion to the actual threat that they pose. Children are regularly threatened with meals spoiled by gremlins, having their favorite toys fall apart, and other awful but ultimately minor things if they don’t behave. Many Vauldan structures have spells and runes carved into their foundations intended to ward away Gremlins, though the efficacy of such things is sadly not very reliable.
A Spirit of bad luck and awful timing, the Mirfee is firmly believed in by almost every Vauldan, though nobody has actually been able to verify the creature’s existence. Vauldans refuse to speak as if something is going to work until it successfully does for fear of provoking a bout of bad luck, and make a point of double- and triple-checking their preparations for any significant endeavor, knowing that the Mirfee is most likely to strike exactly when they don’t check.
Red and orange are the colors of death in Vauldan society, representing the flames that consume the bodies of the dead and free their soul to journey to the afterlife.
Formal mourning lasts for five work weeks after the death, one for each God, during which the mourner wears red or orange garb and those closest to the departed are encouraged to take time off of work to focus on the grieving process; Vauldans are notorious for throwing themselves into their work to avoid thinking of painful things, and this acts as a socially-mandated way to get them to start the healing process rather than burying their pain and letting it fester.
After being ritually cleansed by a priest of Alethos, the body of the deceased is cremated or turned to ash via the Return To The Cycle ritual, and then that ash is incorporated into a large brick suitable for use in construction, known as an Ashstone. The deceased’s Trade Stone, if it is available, is traditionally incorporated into one of the surfaces of the Ashstone so that it might be seen once the brick is incorporated into a building.
In times past, the entire bodies of the dead were entombed, before space constraints led to the adoption of cremation in the 25th Century and eventually the custom of incorporating the ashes into Ashstones. There are still countless tombs and crypts scattered across the Empire filled with skeletal corpses and bonedust of ancient Vauldans. As the tradition of making Ashstones evolved, it became customary for brickmakers to use enlarged kilns as crematoriums, and eventually the profession of brickmaker and undertaker became one and the same across most of the Empire.
Once the Ashstone has been fired and cooled, it is delivered to the deceased’s closest kin, who hold a memorial for the departed family member. The stone is placed on an altar in front of a tall candle that is lit at the start of the ceremony. Small cups of strong spirits mixed with a particularly bitter red tea called Weeping Flame are usually served. Speeches are made to share and remember all the things that the departed accomplished and contributed to during their lives, with special emphasis on how they helped their family, community, and nation. Mystics of Bakharos are often asked to officiate, blessing the memorial and the memory of the departed.
Once everyone has said their piece, those closest to the departed work together to ceremonially extinguish the candle, symbolically accepting the end of the deceased’s life. The smoke from the candle is blown over the brick, carrying away the last remnants of the departed’s ties to this world and allowing them to move on to the afterlife. It’s considered terribly bad luck for everyone nearby if the candle is allowed to go out on its own, and so it acts as a timer on the ceremony, to keep the speeches from going overly long and remind those in attendance of the fleeting nature of life.
After the memorial, the Ashstone is taken to the family home and added to wherever on the homestead makes the most sense based on who the deceased was in life. A gardener’s Ashstone might be used to build a new raised garden bed, while a builder’s might be used as the structural base for a new building, and a scholar’s might be used to build a new bookcase in the study. The Ashstone is always arranged such that the person’s Trade Stone (if it’s present) is visible, and many families treat the Trade Stones of their departed ancestors as small personal shrines commemorating them.
A day in February, celebrated every four years, to commemorate Empress Resurgent’s breaking of the Generals’ Triumvirate and the Imperial Chains, prior to releasing the Empire’s vassal-nations and beginning the process of ending the constant insurgency and rebellions. It features solemn processionals past shrines to those lost in the wars of conquest (on both sides), the ritual breaking of an icon of Misano, and the ritual binding of the citizens of the town or neighborhood with a single chain or rope, symbolizing how the nation must focus on building itself up rather than tearing down others.
The Spring Equinox has a celebration that features a frenzy of construction, as workers take the day off to enter into a building competition. Actual professional builders (masons, carpenters, stonewrights, etc.) act as foremen and supervisors for the amateurs, and most of the projects are entirely decorative and neither load-bearing nor intended to last more than a year, but the point is more to build bonds between each other and exercise the creative and constructive spirit that Vauldan is known for. When there’s no room to build new structures, or an area has fallen into disrepair, the community often decides to take the opportunity of the festival to go into a day-long frenzy of repairing worn-out buildings, walls, and streets. The decorative towers, arches, and paving stones put in place, year after year, contribute significantly to the continual growth and repair of the nation’s towns and cities.
The Autumn Solstice is celebrated throughout the Empire by wide-spread gift giving, particularly by noble households to as many people who live on their lands or work in their businesses as they can afford to give to. It’s also a time for seeking counsel, where the wise folk in a community offer guidance to those who lack the resources or knowledge to have enough prosperity to give such gifts. The Imperial Throne in turn takes the day to offer resources and loans to nobles and merchant houses who are struggling financially, though they require any such beneficiaries to also submit to regular and thorough Imperial Audits.