Around 1200 years ago the War of Division erupted, turning brother against brother. The basis is speculation – was it religious, sorcerer versus wizard, a land or power struggle, or even just a casual insult?

The records that may provide insight to the cause have long been lost but it waged for a couple of hundreds of years until the Cataclysm! When the suns were blocked from the sky for weeks.

Then, the Summit and a surprisingly sudden end to the conflict. The land was split roughly down the middle, the Empire to the west, the New imperial Lands to the east. And the rebuilding commenced.

Friction between the old Empire and New Imperial Lands continued in a “cold” political war between them. Pokes and jabs continued in the political shadows with neither side pushing as far as to start an open conflict.

The millennium ‘peace’ birthday is reckoned to be next year. All the major cities are preparing for the festivities – Chuza included.

Talismonde is the capital on paper, and home to King Jothar DeLinden, but Chuza, under the ward of Lord Morden, is the principal city of the Empire.

Chuza is a working city before it is anything else – a port built around a harbour that never really stops moving, docks and warehouses along the water giving way to the tighter, older streets further in. The rooftops tell the city’s age better than any official history: salt-worn tile packed close over the newer quarters, laundry strung between chimneys, the dome of Kemer Lexi rising over all of it as the one skyline landmark nobody in the city needs pointed out.

The Empire’s formal capital is Talismonde, seat of King Jothar DeLinden on paper – but Chuza, under the ward of Lord Morden, is where the Empire’s actual business gets done. Sixteen Sections divide the city between them, each fiercely protective of its own jurisdiction; Section 18, the newest and last of them, covers the docks along the northeast side, and answers to Captain Brin.

Not every part of the city rebuilt evenly after the War of Division. Paraisopolis, the old town to the southwest, never came down when the new city rose around it – a walled, self-governing district of abandoned temples, tenements and workshops that the military patrols mostly leave to itself, so long as the drug lords and gang leaders running it keep paying their toll at the barbican gate. Its oldest, worst-smelling quarter, a natural drainage sump the storm drains empty into, has earned its own separate name over the years: the Abandonment – officially just a ruin, unofficially the site of something the Section House has kept quiet for over three decades.