Teshari Federation

A merchant confederation governed by a Grand Council in the city of Teshar, marked by the three intertwined currents of the Knot of Life. Its colours are blue, silver and dark green; its philosophy, the Path; its creed, "Everything finds its place."

The Teshari Federation wears the face of balance, trade and coexistence, but beneath it lies a loose alliance of merchant houses, city-states and trading dynasties forever circling one another for wealth. It rarely conquers outright. Instead it plants trade outposts, corners resources, bankrolls local rulers, and quietly turns whole lands into debtors.

Power belongs to the merchant families, guilds, navigators and caravan houses; common folk are freer than under Arken — bondage here comes of war-capture, debt or crime, a sentence and not a birthright — yet wealth still decides which doors open, and whole regions can owe Teshari financiers for generations. The Path preaches adaptation and acceptance — "a stone sinks because it is its nature" — a teaching often bent to excuse the lot of the poor.

It presses on Garuun from the east: past the mountains lies Rakka, an arid borderland worked by the vassal Rakkai and governed from Kesh Vael, and at the valley's mouth sits the trading town of Ishmafan — the Far Gate, or Coin's End. It prizes stability not from kindness but because unrest is bad for trade. To the Teshari, nations and cities are merely currents to be redirected.