World & Society

Geography — Nodes and Substrate

47 known subterranean magical reservoirs are distributed across the world, connected by underground channels. Nodes are not uniformly distributed — their concentration in certain regions makes those regions the centers of magical infrastructure, political power, and institutional competition. Node output determines regional magical intensity. The Story Spine Validator uses six proximity categories (none, distant, regional, local, active, accelerating) as mechanically deterministic constraints, not atmospheric description.

Substrate is the biological and geological structure that holds magical channels. Properties are not uniform across the world: channels degrade under surge; deep channels survive longer than surface channels; stabilization ceilings shift as node output increases. A region that was safe last season may not be safe after a node surge. The ground itself is a medical variable.

Biomes

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Population — States, Cultures, Ethnicities

Twenty states organize political authority across the world. Thirteen cultures shape language, architecture, and custom — each mapping loosely to Earth medieval analogs but produced by the node geography and institutional history of Terheia, not imported wholesale. The full state and culture enumeration is in the Data Reference.

Six primary ethnicities are recognized: Menneske (northern cultures), Renlei (eastern cultures), Umutu (equatorial cultures), Tangata (oceanic cultures), Yamana (southern cultures), and Unsaan (mountain cultures). Mixed and unspecified are also valid Story Spine Validator values. Ethnicity diversity is a canon compliance check — stories that fail to represent the world's population composition are flagged.

Nine wealth strata span from prestige elite through peripheral subsistence. Wealth strata influence the object generation cascade (Layer 6) and character construction — the visual silhouette, material choices, and institutional access that define how a character appears in scenes.

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Institutions

Three major institutions structure magical society. Each believes it is right. Each is institutionally constrained from perceiving the full picture. A fourth institution — the Hexe Bound — operates independently of the three.

The Accord (Azure Accord)

Belief: knowledge must be controlled. Responsibilities: magical research, infrastructure maintenance, archival secrecy, and — critically — classification authority over magical schools and tiers. The Accord's classification authority is the mechanism by which the Psionic school remains unrecognized. The institution that determines truth is staffed primarily by Rationalists, who perceive truth as mathematical structure. What cannot be measured tends to be classified as anecdotal. This structural bias cannot self-diagnose.

The Crown (Oathbound Crown)

Belief: truth must be simplified and enforced. Responsibilities: law, military, and public narrative. The Crown exploits Psionic practitioners operationally while the Devout faction publicly denounces the school's legitimacy — a double bind that makes Psionic casters the most institutionally vulnerable population in the world. The Pragmatists use faith as a political instrument. The Militarists build capability through force. The Devout assert interpretive authority over all five moons, a claim no other faction recognizes.

The Reverie (Verdant Reverie)

Belief: knowledge belongs to communities. Responsibilities: cultural continuity, ecological stewardship, and decentralized governance. The Reverie integrates its factions — they share ethos and differ in practice, unlike the Accord and Crown where factions are institutionally hostile. The Reverie's decentralization is both its strength and its structural limit: it cannot produce the consolidated response that crises require.

The Hexe Bound

Independent. Philosophy: knowledge belongs to the dead. A practitioner academy operating at the death boundary — the domain of the Necrotic tradition. Tolerated by all three institutions. Trusted by none. The Hexe Bound is the sole reliable detector of Psionic residue, which requires attunement to the death boundary to perceive. This gives the Hexe Bound an information advantage that the Accord cannot replicate through its classification authority.

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Factions

Eleven factions operate across the three major institutions. Each faction is oriented to one or more moons. Factions map one-to-many to ethos. Integration rules differ by institution: the Reverie integrates; the Accord and Crown do not — their factions are institutionally hostile and compete for dominance.

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Moon Clustering and Cross-Institutional Tension

Moon orientation creates tension that cuts across institutional boundaries. Factions that share a moon often compete more directly than factions that don't — because they are making incompatible claims about the same source of authority.

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Faction Affiliation Matrix

Cross-institutional pairings with documented alignment type and threat level to the institutions involved.