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When you look at the equipment section of the premade archetypes’ Character Sheets, you will notice that most of them come with documents – this exact Passport pictured below.

This one simple paper is the primary tool by which the Asteanic high nobility controls its population.

Documents are needed for crossing borders (sometimes even for entering a city), engaging in any business activities, and occasionally, they must be shown to a samurai who suspects the person in something or just wants to know who they are.

Obtaining Documents

Documents are issued by samurai. The document templates are printed using a printing press. Although not every village samurai has the authority to issue documents, generally, there is a deputy magistrate samurai in every larger settlement whose job is to issue new documents. Usually, the rulers (or the samurai independently) charge around 10 SD as a document issuance fee.

People without documents are in a precarious situation, as without proof of their caste and rights, they are vulnerable to the whims of the samurai, who may suspect them of the worst.

Overview of the Caste System

Today’s Asteanic society is based on a rigid caste system, crucial for the survival of the ruling castes who use its restrictions to control the population. Strict boundaries precisely define what one can do or where one can go.

Only the old high aristocrats belonging to Asteanic House Bloodline, the patrician caste, and the high priests of the Temple of the Divine Ocean are free from these restrictions, all of whom meticulously enforce these boundaries with the help of their samurai.

The old high aristocracy’s interests lie in keeping society as static and thus as safe for them as possible. However, some concessions have already been made: new inventions have led to the creation of manufactures, and some crafts have slipped from the hands of old craft syndicates to nouveau rich productors caste. Similarly, the high nobility is being challenged by nouveau rich licensed merchants caste whose purchased rights to trade on the Ocean and compete for markets bring them fabulous riches without having to spend money on maintaining the state apparatus.

While there appears to be a movement towards improvement, a darker side reveals the exploitation of peasant tenants turned into serfs to replace slaves who are hard to get without the huge empire supporting the slave system. The numerous caste of samurai-bureaucrats monitors, keeps records, and collects taxes for the rulers caste

The advent of printing technology has expanded bureaucracy, becoming a tool for enforcing the caste system while illiteracy persists among lower castes.

The entire Asteanic society is divided into castes, each with clearly defined rights (privileges) and obligations. Although most people remain in the same caste from birth to death, moving between castes is neither forbidden nor impossible in the Asteanic World. In fact, for those who accumulate significant wealth, it is relatively straightforward, as one can essentially buy their way into most castes. Additionally, a person can belong to multiple castes simultaneously. For example, someone born into the caste of freemen can purchase a licence to join the caste of licensed wizards, thus gaining the right to practise magic.

Castes can be hereditary or non-hereditary.

Non-hereditary castes include licensed wizards, licensed merchants, and priests. Membership in these castes does not extend to the individual’s descendants, as their children may not follow the same profession. For instance, a wizard’s children are not automatically wizards, and a priest’s children are not necessarily priests. Individuals in non-hereditary castes always belong to a hereditary caste as well, usually the one they were born into.

Hereditary castes membership extends to the entire family and descendants, even if the individual buys their way into the caste or changes caste through other means.

Examples of some of the castes:

The ever-expanding Mist looms over the Asteanic World. As long as humans remember, it has always been there – albeit a bit smaller than now. The Mist expands by around 1km per year at present – but its growth is not consistent, seeming to accelerate as it enlarges. Nonetheless, the process is slow enough that amidst their internal conflicts, and the rise and fall of empires, people do not pay it too much attention. Thus, inhabitants of the Asteanic World find themselves in a situation today where a giant spot of emptiness stares back from the map – nearly as vast as Thefna Archipelago – yet surprisingly little is known about its nature and origins. In terms of the Asteanic cultural sphere, the Mist is distant – it has only reached the Ocean, traversed by Asteanic merchant ships, within the turbulent past few centuries. Consequently, Asteans allocate relatively little time and resources to its exploration – the nations and lands getting shrouded into the Mist are distant and inconsequential to them.

In the early 16th century, the Mist engulfed the small Forestside tsardom in Tserkeššia. Adventurous Asteans from Nileen conducted the evacuation of the Forestside people, but they had their own more sinister motives. Subsequently, the Forestside tsar and his warriors were drawn into the La Mepho-Delagrua’n Asteanic Empire’s civil war as mercenaries, while the remaining populace was abandoned in the outskirts of Ehnation – expanding one of its slums – Strugglefield, as a result.

The Mist – What Do We Know?

However, not everything is entirely mysterious, and the peoples around the Mist actually know quite a bit about its workings and how to avoid it – to be fair, it’s not that difficult – just don’t walk into it.

The Mist merges the Otherworld and the human world into one; in areas covered with Mist, there is no separate Otherworld, and astral travellers cannot journey there. In the rest of the world, there exists some form of Otherworld everywhere, but not in Mist-covered areas. Just as the Mist consumes the human world, it also devours pockets of the Otherworld – melding them with the human realm or erasing them completely. This has a side effect – areas surrounding the Mist are teeming with all sorts of Otherworldlings, as they too must retreat from the Mist.

As the Mist is essentially the Otherworld, the laws of the Otherworld apply there too – nature cannot thrive in the Otherworld. Plants wither upon contact with the Mist, gradually replaced by Otherworldly flora over time – a grotesque distortion of the natural world, in which fruits neither nourish nor quench thirst. This makes navigating the vast area filled with the Creatures of the Mist and poor visibility (due to the mist!) even more challenging, as all provisions must be brought along.

Those who perish in the Mist meet a dreadful fate – since their souls have nowhere to go (no separate Otherworld!), they remain trapped in the Mist and transform into terrifying Creatures of the Mist that loathe all living beings.

With Mist, the boundary between the human world and the Otherworld is clearly visible to the naked eye – a colossal wall of mist. Like the Otherworld, it also contains the creatures within itself. It is impossible for the Creatures of the Mist to simply walk out from it – they will only end up on the other side of the Mist or in another smaller Mist pocket. The Mist and its pockets are akin to a separate plane of existence – but only for the creatures of the Otherworld. Humans and animals can traverse this otherworldly border at will.

If a Mistdruid summons a pocket of Mist, they can call Mist creatures into it, even if the real Mist is hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. Only when such a temporary Mist created by a Mistdruid dissipates can Creatures of Mist enter the human world, as they do not disperse anywhere.

The Mist and the Taurics

Tauric people have always lived next to the Mist and have lost countless kingdoms to it over centuries. Therefore, the Mist has a significant influence on Tauric culture.

Taurics understand very clearly that the Mist expands and there is nothing to stop it. This means that inevitably, at one moment, the Mist will cover the entire world, and the entire human world, as well as the Otherworld, will come to an end – only the Mist will remain.

This inevitable predestination makes Tauric culture highly fatalistic, and Taurics believe in predestination in other aspects of the world as well. In the Tauric religion, there is also a significant role for the end-of-the-world gods, aka the Mist Gods – deities who, according to the Taurics, reside within the Mist and have become Mist deities because their Otherworldly domains have fallen under the influence of the Mist. These Mist Gods grant their Mistdruids the ability to summon Mist wherever they please, thereby calling forth Creatures of Mist – a hazardous power – even for the Mistdruids themselves.

The Mist Gods are revered for their other aspects:

• Lugh is the god of divination and the weaver of fate.
• Maat is the ruler of the Otherworld and the commander of banshees – clan spirits that can warn against misfortune.
• Only Grybrog, the god of winter, death, and all things evil, generally finds no worshippers among anyone, unless someone truly wishes evil upon another.

The next among the gods destined to fall under the Mist is the war goddess Morrigan, upsetting the balance as Mist Gods outnumber the benevolent ones. This sets the world on a path towards its end, with the Mist rapidly expanding across the land, unleashing all the terrifying creatures hidden within.

Although the Mist Gods are somewhat revered, Mistdruids are not – they are feared and seen as a cult of doom-bringers who physically invoke it. This fear has grown into paranoia. In Ehnaiton – the northernmost metropolis of the Asteans, whose inhabitants are largely Taurics – a plethora of conspiracy theories circulate about how Mistdruids are behind all the evil that happens – a scapegoat that even PCs may find useful or, conversely, they are accused of being Mistdruids themselves.