The Kingdoms of the Sacred Light.

These kingdoms, most of the time little more than fiefdoms and small towns, are a loose organization of lands with three common threads: language, human dominant, and the remains of Unstoma. These are the places that were left to fend for themselves after the great slaughter the LeatherWing committed long ago. Collectively they speak a common tongue called Highlander. Highlander is what is left of the old Unstoma language after its eradication, the problem is that over the centuries each of the 4 main regions have cultivated unique dialects of it.

• Northern: Spoken mainly in the shield lands to the south and the northern edge of the barbarian lands the beasts known as the LeatherWing came from. It is called Northern because anything to do with the frozen south is seen as a course. To go south is considered to be a high insult.

• Riven: The peoples of the eastern border are dominated by the area of Five Rivers; as such the local dialect is often just referred to as River Speak or more formally Riven. As the frontier and the largest still existing city, most people view the east as something of an anomaly and there is fear those people will not stand with the Kingdoms but with the Free City.

• The Heartlands are the wilds of the Great Smoking Mountains. With their strange fire pits that never stop burning and their deep canyons and gorges. The people of this land speak the oddest of the dialects, and while unnamed, their accents are so thick that anyone with their drawl is automatically assumed to be uneducated.

• Highlander; from the collection of more power kingdoms and cities that dot the western coast and great the sun, to those that still dot the old imperial isle across the scar sea, lay the true centers of art, language and education. Here the papacy teaches priest who go out and try, with some success, to teach the word and true language. Highlander proper is, at least to their ears, an educated tongue.

The Kingdoms have banned together to serve the gods of old, those that predated the coming of Unstoma, and hope to avoid the decadence of the old Empire. They bear a special distrust of all things Southern with its frozen lands and barbaric people.

The Gothen

Wise is the person that not only remembers but celebrates the one simple truth, we are but mortal and death cares not for your station. Even the immortal elves who will never feel the touch of death due to age die. Nothing escapes the mistress, not now, not ever. When outsiders here this core belief and see the trappings of death, they fear the Gothen. They need not. These people are not death worshipers, quite the opposite, they worship life. The constant reminders of their mortality has shown them to savor every day, for it may be your last.

A few towns lie deep within the Smoking Mountains, and each knows where the other is. They are a group that enjoys freedom and will have none tell them what to do or how to live. Religion is deeply important to them, and deeply personal. No Gothen will tell you what god they follow, they let their actions speak for their gods. Unlike the Human centric Kingdoms of the Light, Gothen Society has members of any race that feels 'The Call' and while most are raised in it, some always seek them out. Elder Elves and half Elves often become 'Of the Goth', one for a place to finally belong, and one once they understand there is no escape.

The Wyld

Throughout the forests, the dark places, the high mountains, and the crags of the land lay the Wylds. The Wylds are a lose coalition of mainly elven kingdoms hidden in the deep branches of the far off places. Mostly hidden, mostly elven, because the truth is, like the Kingdoms of the Sacred Light, the Wyld are a people of a single faith, the reverence and worship of the old ways; the Fae.

The shepherds of the people of the Wyld are The Hidden; a cabal of Druids, Clerics, Bards, and Paladins that see to the spiritual needs of their people. While these people are all at their heart nature worshipers, they take as many diverse views of that as the spirts the venerate.

The two major divides, the only ones that truly matter to them are the Seelie and Unseelie (the seeming and un seeming). Good and evil do not play a role in these distinctions, what does is appearance.

The Seely do everything with in their power to appear to be beautiful, worthy, and noble. To the Seelie, appearance is everything. This can hide black hearts indeed.

The Unseelie see this facade as a type of lie, and there are few things blacker than a lie. To the wyld words have power and lies, oath breaking, and falsehoods are anathema. This causes quite a bit of friction between the two sides as one cannot grasp how the other lies so freely, while the seelie can not fathom how the unseelie cannot see how their demeanor tells lies about the beauty of the wyld.

Outside of that singular diction you have the Sith, the Sidhe, the Hunt.