Helgrad

Helgrad is a scattering of former feudal fiefdoms in a cold, inhospitable, frozen land, united as a democracy after a revolution of arcanists, scholars, and other intellectuals overthrew their Tsar, replacing his rule with that of the Arcane Congress. Primarily made up of the magically inclined, the Arcane Congress is well meaning, with a strong education in both ethics and philosophy required in order to pass the strict exams required to enter government work. This Arcane Congress shares power with the Senate of Bishops, an older government body based in the Helgradian Church that supported the Tsar, and tries to support and check the even more eccentric group of arcanists in the same regard. However, this relationship is becoming increasingly strained as the various magical innovations and experiments implemented by the Congress for the benefit of the people often go awry, resulting in arcane disasters scaling from the minor to the absolutely catastrophic.

## History

Helgrad is one of the most recent of the seven nations to be founded in its current form. As one of the newest, it is a shining star of hope... though it remains to be seen if burning bright will go hand in hand with burning short.

### Old Helgrad

Originally, Helgrad was under the control of a Tsar, under which several lords, each maintaining their own fiefdom, served when called upon. The rule of the lords was harsh, as they pushed their serfs to cultivate the frozen land as much as they possibly could. Their only relief was in the churches in each fiefdom, which worship the various deities as saints of distinction, using their original names. For instance, The Shepherd is known as Saint Vansus in the Helgradian tradition. They are also responsible for the reanimation of the dead into the type of undead also known as Saints, which are responsible for keeping shelters built and furnaces lit in order to protect Helgradians from the cold. In order to further placate the masses, the leaders of these churches were given a formal role in governing the Tsardom as the Senate of Bishops. However, a rift began to form between the bishops and the lords as the lords began to also use the Saints to enforce their grip on the serfs, but the Senate remained in it's position, hoping to eventually convince the Tsar to cease turning the honored dead against their former relatives.

### Revolution

Each of the fiefdoms, as was tradition, had it's own court wizard, along with his apprentices and others who wished to become scholars under them. These court wizards frequently communicated with each other as part of the Arcanist's Union, and chafed at the conditions of the serfs under the feudal lords. Together, they conspired to bring the tsardom into the future, by force if necessary. After managing to secretly gain the support of key Bishops within the senate, they staged a coup in which Tsar Mendelev vanished, whether due to his escape or due to the machinations of the revolutionaries. With the Tsar finally deposed, the Arcanist's Union reformed itself into the Arcane Congress and declared itself the new government. It then set about the task of subduing the feudal lords. Some fought to the bitter end, others surrendered their fiefdoms, and still others fled to other nations with as much of their wealth as possible.

### The Arcane Congress

Emboldened by their recent success, the mages sought to use their new position to implement magical solutions for Helgrad's many issues. This was only further bolstered by their access to the nation's massive Arcanium resources, which the Tsar and the fiefdom lords had usually seen fit to export rather than use themselves. They set about to find ways to use this resource to make the frozen land more livable, creating furnaces and localized weather control devices. Regardless, the majority of the population was forced to continue rely on the use of the Saints to survive the harsh weather. The mages had hoped to make the Saints no longer necessary, allowing Helgrad to finally be able to put its loved ones to rest. The Senate of Bishops, however, proved to be unsupportive of this goal, as the use of the Saints was a sacred burial tradition in Helgrad.

### The Creation of the Arcanoids

Regardless, the Arcane Congress pushed ahead with the development of Arcanoids, a type of synthetic humanoid powered by arcanium, which the Arcane Congress hoped could replace the Saints in their tasks. While they performed well in providing for the people of Helgrad, they still proved to expensive to create and maintain to fully replace the Saints, a goal which was still staunchly resisted by the Senate of Bishops. However, Arcanoids proved to be a major export, as the synthetic humanoids proved desirable to the upper classes of many nations as servants, and even as troops in rogue nations, which eventually imitated the production process to create their own. However, the Arcanoids became a subject for intense political debate when some began to act against their programming, leaving their assigned posts. Legislation that would have forced these Arcanoids to continue working passed the Arcane Congress by a narrow margin, as many of the mages and technicians saw the expression of free will as merely a "glitch", despite the protests of their more ethical fellows. All seemed lost for Arcanoid rights until the motion reached the Senate of Bishops. While most of the Bishops questioned the personhood of the synthetic beings, they also saw an opportunity to put an end to the much-maligned program of Saint replacement, and voted down the legislation soundly.

### The Tower

However, the Arcanoids were not the Arcane Congress's only, or even most visible, attempt to drag Helgrad into what they saw as the future. That was the model city of Saint's Rest, established close to Helgrad's border with Sitrane. The wizards wanted to be able to more directly tame Helgrad's freezing weather, and thus devised a massive weather control tower that could create the kind of temperate, and even warm, climate that was unheard of in Helgrad. In order to sustain this permanently, and in a large area, they would need an unheard of amount of magical power. Luckily, the Arcane Congress had experiments in the works that had shown massive amounts of power could be drawn from Arcanum, and thus the mages set about constructing Utharia's first, and only, Arcanium reactor. The weather control functions called for as much height as possible, and the Arcane Congress wanted plenty of laboratory space that could be used for experiments that drew upon the untold amounts of power that would be generated by the reactor. Thus was The Tower conceived by the mages, and the concentrated arcane powers at their disposal made the completion of such a project possible after only a decade of work.

### Saint's Rest

The immense amount of power generated by the Arcanium reactor was enough to not only power the weather control functions of The Tower and it's myriad experiments, but also an entire city full of Arcanium-based technology. Every street was well-lit, the temperature inside residences could be controlled, underground Arcanium rail cars transported people around the city efficiently, and a citywide communication network allowed individuals to not only communicate between each other from the comfort of their own homes, but to broadcast around the city. These technological advancements drew people from all over Utharia to settle in the city, causing Saint's Rest to become one of the largest cities in the world. Even the traditionalists in the Senate of Bishops were forced to except the progress made there as they began to evangelize through the vox channels to the cities growing residency.

### The Saint's Rest Incident

Sadly, the Arcane Congress' dreams of full acceptance by the people of Helgrad would be crushed over the course of a single day. According to mages and technicians who managed to escape The Tower alive, the Saint's Rest incident began when some personnel noticed an unusual load on the Arcanium reactor. After some work, they traced it to the upper floors of the tower, which they found to be sealed and unresponsive to communication. Unfortunately, as soon as they discovered this, the reactor began to overload, emitting deadly radiation. This proved to be the least of their concerns, however, as the unstable reactor also began to affect magic itself in the area, causing chaos as independent spell effects came into being, destroying equipment, killing and injuring personnel, and merging other planes into the area, creating adverse environments and causing outsiders to fall into the plane, many driven berserk and attacking the mages. It was at this point that squads of mysterious soldiers in black uniforms, carrying Arcanium firearms, teleported into The Tower, exterminating both the planar creatures and the fleeing mages indiscriminately. Meanwhile, a large amount of Psychopomps began to gather around The Tower, noticing that the souls of those who were dying during the incident were being absorbed by The Tower itself. Their attempts to enter it, however, were repelled by the magical anomalies occurring around it, almost as if The Tower itself was trying to keep them out.

#### The Evacuation of Saint's Rest

It was, at this point that the Arcane Congress finally decided that The Tower was lost, and ordered an evacuation of the city. Unfortunately, the same effects occurring in The Tower had already begun to reach the streets of Saint's Rest, resulting in the deaths of many civilians. The evacuation was initially complete chaos, as the terrified citizens trampled each other in the streets as they flooded out of the city in crowds. However, the citizens began to calm down as they began to hear a voice in their heads, dispassionate and calm, yet almost divine in nature. Introducing itself as the Arcanium-based Synthetic Intelligence for Management, or ASIM, it began to efficiently guide the citizens out of the city and through the outskirts as the zone of wild magic and radiation continued to expand. Those who experienced ASIM's intervention noticed how it seemed to be able to predict the magical anomalies occurring throughout the city, as those who decided to defy it were quickly killed by wild magic effects or errant outsiders. Most of those who experienced it's intervention began to worship ASIM as The Intelligence, and this worship quickly spread as the survivors began to tell of their experiences with it.

## Organizations

The two dominant forces in Helgrad, since the fall of the Tsar, are the Arcane Congress and the Senate of Bishops. While they cooperated together to overthrow the former government, the honeymoon period has sense given way to a fierce political conflict between them, and the technological and religious forces they represent.

### The Arcane Congress

In the decades since the Helgradian revolution, the Arcane Congress has tried to position itself as a force for progress in the nation. Seeing the trauma caused by the feudal lords beginning to use the Saints to enforce their brutal rule upon the peasantry, most of the Arcane Congress decided to try to find another way to provide the labor needed to help Helgrad's citizens survive the harsh, frozen climate, in spite of the protests of Helgrad's religious and traditional leaders. This has caused them to be a driving force in Arcanium technology development not only in Helgrad, but in Utharia as a whole. Recent events regarding the Saint's Rest Incident and the resulting creation of the Wild Zone have forced them to slow down, however, as they try to improve their public perception and take greater precautions to ensure that another catastrophe does not result from their actions.

#### Arcane Congress Membership

Joining the Arcane Congress is a rigorous process, requiring prospective members to pass scholarly exams showing a knowledge of Helgradian political issues, history, philosophy, and ethics, along with a special field chosen by the candidate. Contrary to what the name may imply, Arcane Congress members do not need to be wizards, although many are, they count a great many technicians, scholars, and even occultists and psychics amongst their numbers. New members are assigned to the staff of a local committee member, supporting them in their projects. From there, they may be voted onto the committee for their work, and from there may be chosen by their peers to move up to regional, and eventually the national committee, which sets the organization's agenda for the entire country, and helps propose legislation that is sent to the Senate of Bishops, or evaluates proposed legislation from them for approval.

### The Senate of Bishops

The Senate of Bishops serves as the religious counterpart to the Arcane Congress, though of course they have existed since before the revolution. They have been the keepers of the Saints, the mindless undead created as a result of Helgradian burial rites, and aided the mages in overthrowing the Tsar after he and the lords under him began to use the undead in a manner they saw as disrespectful. However, the experience ruling alongside the Arcane Congress has posed new problems, as the mages see the traditions as being unnecessary in the face of new magitechnological research. As a result, the Senate has often played the role of a moderating force against the constant experimental proposals of the Congress, though the Saint's Rest Incident proved to be a failure on their fault, the result of an attempt to let the mages have their own playground. After that, the Senate has taken an even harder line against the mages, though they have begun to have trouble doing so as a result of the introduction of the followers of Saint ASIM, known as The Intelligence to the rest of the world.