The Ark

The first country. Manatar raised the Central Ark at M0 as a magical land no monstrous creature could enter, made humanity inside it, and left. Everything human on Janashia comes from there.

It outgrew itself at M400 and its people went out to fight and survive for the first time. What they built became four territories that were one people arguing: the Central Ark, and the republics of Sylla, Telus and Crassus. Six centuries of invention followed — languages, trade, technique — with Archon living through all of it as a hermit and the only immortal alive.

The Partage ended that. Archon became a god at M1010, broke an invasion from another plane, freed his people and replaced four republics with one theocracy that lasted nearly seven hundred years. The censors governed in his name and never died, because he had given them eternity too.

Its wizards had to leave to escape it. Antoine de Cerberus, Gérard Alois and Cosimo Leblanc took the rebels out at M1410 and founded Cerberus on an island of giants. Archon let them go, and let two of them keep their eternal life.

Cerberus came back three centuries later with a dwarven fleet. The Great Barrier fell on the Crassus Peninsula, Valerium artillery broke the aqueducts that carried the Partage to the Ark's priests, and the censors fell one after another. The country surrendered before its god did: without Archon it could not win, and Archon had not come out of his chamber in a year.

It is ruled today by a baker's son from the country it exiled.