“I probably should have said this before but the Institute favours the destruction of the Supremes, the Bank supports the unanointed, the Corps only cares about conquering the Blessed Lands and the Bordello supports the Supremes, but only as a means to maintain peace and prevent inner conflict. Each faction’s standpoint has basically been decided by the standpoint of their Heads.” Kara explained.

“This is why it's simple for me to explain the structure of the Coalition by simply telling you about the Heads themselves.” Kara said as she met my eyes.

I understood what she was saying and indicated that I wanted her to continue.

“Now, that’s all I can say about Martus. That’s all that’s really known about him by the people at our level as he has kept his oath and remained isolated for centuries, fostering his hate and directing it into his research. A lot more can be said about the others though.”

From this point on, through Kara’s descriptions, did I get a rough outline of the political landscape of the Coalition, and the four Association Heads.

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Ellea “The Vault”, Head and Grandmaster of the Trade Association, was a bit different than the other Heads. Unlike the rest of them she rose up through the ranks from outside of the inner factions within the Coalition as an anointed found amongst the common people during her Selection.

I should have mentioned this sooner but the Selection is conducted by all Institute Side Branches every year for every child who turns 10 that year. Using some tools they developed they can identify if a child has enough of a mana signature to be inducted into the Coalition and if not then conduct tests to see if they are smart enough to do some of the menial office labour that they need doing.

But that’s besides the point.

Coming back to the main point, Ellea, a typical daughter of a fisherman, was an especially rare find 300 or so years ago on the southern coast of the Homeland continent. She had a very high magnetic affinity and could have easily elected herself to become a Sorcerer, however she decided against that and chose to become a Warrior instead. Rumour is that she grew up poor, looked down on and disliked by her surrounding supposed betters and didn’t have a good opinion of anyone who bore elitism, an as common feature as any for almost every Sorcerer it seems.

From her Selection she was accepted into an Institute training facility where she was given a cursory education in Cali, the Coalition history and makeup and a few other odds and ends but mostly spent her time training and progressing her mana assimilation through the Initiate stage. After a few short years she achieved the Adherent level and was then deployed to the frontlines to serve her time in the Corps to develop her own offensive abilities. After the customary service period she was presented with a choice, where she would like to commit herself and dedicate her life to within the Coalition out of the four associations. To the surprise of many, instead of the Institute where she was raised or the Corps where she fought side by side with her fellow Warriors, she instead joined the Bank.

The reason for this was quite unusually, a moral one.

Society throughout the world you see was certainly flourishing, but only for those who were anointed and walked the Paths. For everyone else, life was very hard and oftentimes very cruel.

Humanity and the Calzyn civilization at this point had stabilised. But what that stabilisation meant was that the members of the Coalition and the other kingdoms no longer needed new blood from the general populace. Of course if a talented individual like Ellea emerged they would bring her into the fold, but the generations of descendants that had intermingled with each inside the framework of the powers that be had elevated their descendents talent far above the general populace. This meant that they no longer relied on them for fresh blood and to sustain Coalition and royal societies.

The world this made, for the common people anyway, was that they were given laws and governance but no support whatsoever as all resources were funnelled into improving the Coalition's own strength, and it is exactly the same for the other kingdoms also. Hence, life could generally be pretty miserable and hopeless for those at the bottom.

Ellea, having grown up and seeing all of this, decided to do her best to change it, and the only way she thought this could be done was with the wealth and influence of the Trade Association.

Skip forward some time and Ellia rose to Grandmaster, became the head of the Bank and soon began redirecting the resources of the Bank into improving infrastructure, investing in businesses and overall improving society for the lower class of the unanointed.

Ironically enough, as the Head of the Bank, the greatest culmination of wealth in the world, she became the most stalwart champion of wealth distribution, equal opportunity and adherence to human rights Calzyn had ever seen.

From an Earth person’s perspective, very ironic indeed.

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Jorn “ The Barbarian '' is the Head of the Martial Association and is universally regarded as the most powerful person in all of Calzyn, with the possible exception of maybe the current Queen of Zhorrland.

He rules over the Corps as its commander and pseudo king with an iron fist and like any other tyrant, is obsessed with increasing his strength.

Jorn was unique in that not just him but also his father, grandfather and great grandfather were likewise Grandmasters and former Heads of the Martial Association. His lineage and legacy contends with Zhorr’s as the most powerful in all of Calzyn but is considered the greater due to one simple reason.

Jorn, and his entire family, are bloodthirsty.

For generations his family and the Martial Association under their rule have devoted themselves to only blood, war and conquest in their ongoing expansion of the Coalition’s territory. The only thing he and all of his followers care about is how to fight more, become more deadly and get even more powerful so they can do it all some more.

Jorn and all of his family members have manifested and embodied the life affinity of strength. This means that Jorn’s mana and power is purely physical, his mana affinity working towards amplifying a Warrior's already enormous strength and speed.

This has made Jorn faster and stronger than anyone else alive and with his complete mana crystallisation has made him invulnerable to any other mana attack, spell or strike regardless of affinity.

Nonetheless, Jorn wants more. His only ambition is the next stage of the Warriorhood Path and hopes to achieve this by taking over Blessed Lands to obtain Guardian flesh, convinced the way to break through the Grandmaster bottleneck lies within the power it contains. Besides his interest in war and conquest he cares nothing for the rest of society and who it contains whether they be Supreme or common beggar.

He has indoctrinated his troops and followers with this same bloodthirsty ideology and so the Martial Association under his rule only cares about the evergoing conquest, generally leaving the rest of the world to its own devices as long as they don’t get in his way.

A bloodthirsty general and barbarian to the core is what Jorn is, hence the reason for his moniker.

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Selene, the Head and Grandmaster of the Pleasure Association is probably the most interesting of all the Grandmasters and Association Heads because though she is at the peak at the Warrior Path, she is sorely lacking in any offensive abilities.

But this is natural. Because she is, afterall, essentially a prostitute.

But she’s also a lot more than that.

Selene grew up within the Bordello and like her mother, aunts, sisters, cousins and all her other friends, fell into the family business which she had lived around all her life. From what I could gather, despite Kara’s distaste of the Bordello, the ladies of the Pleasure Association held no shame in their livelihood but instead had a rather strong pride for it. They embraced their roles in the Coalition, seeing themselves as the ones responsible for raising the Coalition's strength and talent across time as well as maintaining the peace of the Calzyn society.

All of which… actually checks out.

The only reason the people of Calzyn are even still around today is because the Bordello worked their bodies to the bone distracting and placating the enraged leaders of the Coalition during the brewing civil war before Zhorr’s emergence, and then after that, maintaining the Coalition population and increasing the quality of the following generations in the face of thousands of years of conflict, loss and battle again and again.

All things considered, they had earned their pride.

But that’s not to say that things haven’t changed. Over time the world’s population naturally grew and war became more stable. Naturally losses decreased as a result and Warriors gained the breathing room and mentality to go about having families, whose wives would by no means allow them to spend their free time in the Bordello.

All this has led to a reduction in influence for the Bordello amongst the other associations, but instead of facing a decline, they soon found a way to maintain their power and standing.

This new influence comes from the fact that the Institute points all its focus towards its research, the Bank to the flow of resources and improvement of society and the Corps to the battles on the Borders of the Blessed Lands.

Meanwhile, there is one other facet of the world that is also of great importance to the Coalition, which the Pleasure Association took up the mantle of handling and managing.

This being… the Supremes and their kingdoms.

While a significant amount of Coalition members still place their… efforts… into the Bordello, their main patrons are in fact Sorcerers from the magical kingdoms. With this the Bordello has a direct connection to all the kingdoms and their powerful sorcerers, and can thereby act as the intermediary between the Supreme dynasties and the powers of the Coalition so that no internal wars have or will ever break out.

The reason for the high Sorcerer patronage is that these kingdoms, though powerful, do not have the foundation or populations to produce consistently talented individuals that have significant hope of becoming Sorcerers. The ladies of the Bordello, while being devastatingly beautiful and… skillful… are also the most talented at producing strongly talented heirs for these Sorcerer’s if they find themselves lacking in that area.

It is here where Selene “The Temptress” achieves her status as though she is in no way the most powerful, she is by far the most untouchable.

The reason being that she has given powerful heirs to not only Jorn the Barbarian but also all of the male Supremes, the most of whom have the best chance in their kingdom’s of becoming Supremes themselves, and one of which already has.

Due to her familial relations with the Supreme kingdoms she has their backing and also their best interests at heart and in fact acts as the most diplomatic and politically inclined member of the Coalition to serve the interests of world peace.

Despite or maybe because of her Warrior techniques being for the bedroom, she is in fact the most influential person in all of Calzyn.

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“...and that’s basically how the Coalition heads dictate the inner workings of the Coalition” Kara said before taking a sip from her teacup.

We had spent the whole day over pots of tea, engrossed in our discussion about the politics and inner workings of the Coalition of which Kara had been enjoying chatting so much that she let me go the whole day without letting me get to my work.

“So, to sum up.” she continued “The Scholar and Pleasure Associations are constantly at loggerheads trying to oppress the other, all the while the Trade Association takes advantage of this to sell their own support to them to try and temper the greed of the Martial Association so they can hold off resources that they can then direct to the common people, to put it simply” Kara concludes.

We had talked for almost twelve hours and during that time I had gotten a description of the Associations Heads and other prominent figures and how they all generally interacted with each other and had learnt a hell of lot more than I would have from the books in the library. But there was still something I was strongly curious about.

“But then, what about the kingdoms and the Supremes? How do they all interact with each other? Also how…”I start.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop you there boy. It’s late, far too late for an old woman like myself. Besides, I know nothing much about that anyway, living all the way out here on this small island far away from the Homeland. Best you consult the actual books about that topic.” She told me after her interruption.

With that she bade me good night and went off to bed. But unlike Kara, I was still full of energy and still left with burning questions. So I took a lamp and started going through the politics section to find books on the Supreme kingdoms. It only took me ten minutes until I found The Complete Compendium of the Noble Magic Houses and from there took it up to my room to start browsing through.

Sitting at my desk I started reading, and it wasn’t long until my enthusiastic mood plummeted into my stomach, transforming there into anxiety and cold sweats.

Until I came upon a description for the Albert family.

The Supreme dynasty of the Hourglass.