Europa

“We cast out our kings. Then we inherited their debts…”

Europa is a nation born of betrayal and arcanotech revolution. Once fractured into crowns, duchies, and petty empires, it did not fall to invasion or divine wrath, but to extraction. Shardisite wealth hollowed the continent from within. Monarchies collapsed under debt. Corporations rose in their place, ruling cities as balance sheets and people as liabilities.

The revolution that followed came from miners, labor guilds, and soldiers who realized the war would never end while profit dictated survival. The old crowns were torn down. The corporations were burned out or absorbed. What emerged was not unity, but a shared refusal to be exploited.

Europa today is a federation of city-states bound together by the Directorate of the People, seated in Dresden. Each city governs itself fiercely. All agree on one thing: no crown, no corporation, and no foreign power will ever again claim ownership of the continent. That conviction has shaped everything that followed.

Europa is dense, industrial, and crowded. True wilderness is a memory preserved in paintings and stained glass. Rail lines, smog-choked industrial sectors, and vast swaths of industrial waste sites link cities so tightly that travelers often cross borders without realizing it. Arable land exists only where the greedy have not yet devoured it, and even there the soil still carries the scars of exploitation.

Europa no longer exports raw Shardisite in any meaningful amount. What remains is refined under heavy scrutiny, regulated by guilds and charters laid down after the revolution. The people remember what uncontrolled profit did to them. Every refinery is watched. Every ledger is audited. Corruption still exists, but it no longer wears a crown or wears a company logo. Elections happen. Power shifts. But slowly, and always within acceptable bounds.

Adventurers find opportunity in Europa not in wilderness, but in density. Political intrigue. Industrial sabotage. Urban folklore. Guild wars fought in alleys and courtrooms alike. Every city is a dungeon layered vertically, socially, and ideologically. And for a continent that once sold itself piece by piece, those layers matter.

Europa is governed by the Directorate of the People, a parliamentary assembly of delegates drawn from city councils, guild federations, labor unions, and provincial representatives. At its head sits the Chancellor, elected in theory and sustained in practice by coalition, leverage, and fear of instability.

Law is revolutionary and symbolic. Justice is meant to remind citizens who holds authority now, and why. Internal security is extensive and efficient. Counter-revolution is crushed publicly and any entity that even hints at becoming a monopoly or a crown is swiftly fractured.

The Directorate insists it exists to prevent tyranny from reclaiming Europa. Many citizens believe this to be true, but there are those who insist they have simply learned how to wear legitimacy like a mask.

Europa’s greatest contradiction is that it is both brutally modern and deeply haunted by its ancient roots. Shardisite-powered industry dominates daily life, but on closer inspection, the legends of old can be seen walking in its streets. Vampires lurk among the low in fog-laden and shadowy districts. Ancient generals rise from their graves in places where wars ended badly. Golems and automata patrol districts abandoned by governance but not by threat.

Europa does not deny these things. It regulates them. Non-standard sentience often requires license by the Directorate or it is outright banished. In Europa folklore and manufactured arcana are not superstition or rumor. They are woven into the very fabric of its history. History that refuses to be left behind.

Religious power in Europa exists, but it is constrained. The Choir is acknowledged, studied, and permitted within strict boundaries. Miracles are recorded, audited, and debated. Faith is allowed, but never above the authority of the people.

Legion doctrine is treated with suspicion, tolerated only where it aligns with discipline and defense. Anything that smells of divine mandate over mortal governance is crushed quickly and publicly. Europa remembers too clearly what it cost to kneel.