The Ark

Before the Partage, the Ark was a Republic. It had a Senate, powerful families, and censors—Telus, Sylla, Crassus—whose names remain on the islands and peninsulas they once controlled. This was the Golden Age of Wizards. Sorcery gained ground against the old religions while corruption and struggles for power fractured the Republic. In the Central Ark, an eccentric hermit named Archon lived in seclusion, obsessed with his research and gathering his first disciples. No one expected him to become a god.

Then Archon activated his epic spell: the Partage. Thousands of innocents died. Among them was the family of Gérard Alois, who rebelled, left the Ark, and led his people to a distant island.

The Partage harvests the mana of every human in the Ark and gives it to Archon. That mana grants him the power of a god, and he claims the title.

For an ordinary person it arrives as weather. Every seventh day a chasing rain falls across the whole territory of the Ark. The water hunts down man, woman, and child; there is no roof and no altitude that stops it. It forces itself into the body through the mouth, the nostrils, the eyes, and for a few seconds the victim is drowning. Then it leaves, carrying off a quantity of blood and the whole of that person's magical potential. Mana returns on the morning of the next rain, and is taken again. Resisting is possible and pointless: the water gathers itself into elementals and fights for its share.

Seen closely, the Partage is not a tax. It is a ritual in which a person sacrifices both mana and life force to Archon or one of his servants in exchange for powers or blessings. A person can submit to Partage through a censor just as they can through the god. In Cerberus, the word itself is taboo. Archon converts this power into mana of his own design: divine mana, golden in appearance but transformed from human red mana. Three centuries of rule follow.

Divine mana is more stable and easier to wield than red mana. It heals directly, while the people of Cerberus must rely on alchemy. It supports fewer spells and functions poorly beyond the Ark's territory. Above all, it makes magic accessible to minds unsuited to study. A soldier of the Ark can wield a complex spell that a Cerberan wizard would need ten years to learn.

The cult has weapons of its own. Archon's priests favor the trident. A knight of the Ark marks targets with sanctified gloves, then calls Divine Judgment upon them. Water reserved for the god transforms the knight into an Emissary of the Ark, a gargantuan, winged version of themselves. A priest can inject that same water into an open wound, tear away an enemy's mana, and offer it to the god. A devotee may ask for a favor, though few are granted. Sanctified wells and fountains form a teleportation network.

The Rendered

Some of Archon's fanatics willingly sever a limb to demonstrate their complete obedience to the Partage. Divine water replaces the sacrificed limb. It is stronger than flesh in battle but remains a disability in nearly every other part of life. For a priest, who is not primarily a warrior, the exchange is rarely favorable. Most importantly, the limb stops working whenever its bearer is cut off from the Partage.

Archon dislikes the practice but tolerates it. The Ark punishes it because maintaining a limb of water consumes the Partage's power, while ordinary people receive no such privilege when they truly lose an arm or leg.

Some Clerics and knights may receive a water limb after an injury. Fanatics exploit this exception by mutilating themselves, then lying about the cause of the wound to obtain what the Partage would otherwise deny them.

These people are called the Rendered. This is neither an order nor a rank; the term describes anyone who has rendered part of their flesh unto Archon. Waterlimb is a colloquial and often less respectful alternative.

Archon grants blessings himself or delegates them to his censors, who remain the great lords of the archipelago under the god just as they were under the Republic. A paladin blessed by the god in person knows it and makes sure everyone else does too.

The clergy measures its hierarchy differently from magistrates. A title defines what one is responsible for, not what one is worth. The bearer carries bloodied water to the center. The pourer conducts the rite. The fountainkeeper maintains a well and the faithful who depend on it. The curator of waters answers for a temple, its channels, and its officiants. The network steward answers for a city's waters. Above them stands the censor—the only office the cult took from the Republic, still performing the same work: counting the people and judging the morals of a population that surrenders its blood.

Among themselves, the faithful do not speak of offices. One is thirsty while the Partage grants nothing, watered when a share arrives, irrigated when that share is comfortable, a confluence when redistributing it to others, and a source when the network supplies enough that others come to them as they would to a well. These terms are never written down and are often spoken behind people's backs.

A few high-ranking priests are not harvested. They retain their red mana and receive a single task: convert Cerberan spells into divine liturgies. The work takes years, sometimes an entire lifetime for one formula. Through it, the god's catalogue grew far beyond Archon's own knowledge. These priests are the last people in the Ark who still possess magic of their own, and they possess it only on loan so they can build magic for everyone else.

Archon did two other things whose cost the world would understand only after his death.

He sealed the plane. Powered by the Partage, his planar seal did more than block creatures from elsewhere like a wall. It detected them, seized them, and actively returned them to their home dimensions. While it held, the world remained closed.

He also divided himself. With Soul Odyssey, he created an avatar, Polymarch, and lived a second life among humanity without anyone knowing. The spell had the property Archon desired above all others: his avatar could travel back in time. He wanted to meet Manatar. A flaw prevented it. A being of his power was rejected by the world's memory as a body rejects an incompatible organ, and he had to abandon the dream.

To the Ark, Cerberus is not a country. It is a colony of traitors whose sons are as treacherous as their fathers.