Morvaren | Riftmoor

Morvaren, one of the 8 Nations

Medu, Arzu’s brother and the second of the original dominion heads, saw no future in the Imperial Contest of Wills. Instead, he pursued forbidden knowledge, convinced that creating and mastering a power equal to the Wardens would prove his worthiness beyond question. He believed that knowledge and power should be stewarded by only the wisest. This stewardship drove the pursuit of knowledge, preservation, and mastery of dangerous truths. At its worst, the desire to preserve became the desire to hold every secret and every advantage. The Raven, Octopus, and Spider became synonymous with scholars, arcanists, wizards, and forbidden researchers.

Among all the Wardens, none pursued knowledge more relentlessly than these. Unlike most Wardens, the Ravens regarded gifted mortal wizards as collaborators rather than mere servants. Together they pursued questions the other Wardens considered reckless, believing that knowledge itself carried no moral weight.

As their experiments grew increasingly dangerous, they withdrew from the great centers of civilization into isolated lands beyond imperial oversight. There they established hidden laboratories where ethics yielded to discovery.

They were known to use the massive ground elementals as the protectors and sentinels of their remote cities.

Their greatest ambition was not to overthrow the Wardens, but to level the playing field between themselves and the wardens that sat on the throne.

If a common heir could be made powerful enough to stand beside a Warden in battle, there would be nothing to stop the raven wardens from becoming the permanent rulers of Riftmoor.

The Raven

The Raven believe knowledge belongs only in worthy hands. They are the founders of Morvaren and the tireless stewards of its vast libraries, laboratories, and observatories, preserving discoveries that the outside world will never be permitted to see. High atop lonely mountain peaks, their immense observatories study the eternal Rift Scar, patiently recording its rhythms and mysteries over centuries. From these halls came many of the world's greatest discoveries, including the first Rift Crystals and the full understanding of the elemental domains. Their secluded academies are watched over not only by vigilant scholars but by tireless stone elementals, the first autonomous magical constructs ever created, whose silent forms patrol laboratories and archives without fatigue or distraction. Raven scholars collect forgotten histories, recover ancient relics, and quietly purchase or confiscate dangerous texts before others can study them. To them, every secret entrusted to Morvaren is another advantage preserved, and every secret shared is power forever lost.

The Octopus

The Octopus believe there is no such thing as forbidden knowledge, only questions waiting for someone bold enough to answer them. Restless explorers, arcane researchers, bioweavers, and master artificers, they pursue mysteries wherever they lie, whether beneath forgotten ruins, beneath the sea, or beyond the ethical boundaries respectable scholars refuse to cross. Within their hidden and vast underwater laboratories, enchanted submersibles return from impossible expeditions carrying ancient relics, strange specimens, and forgotten secrets into halls illuminated by Rift Crystals and tireless thralls. There, researchers investigate subjects most civilizations abandoned centuries ago: necromancy, advanced Bioweaving, the infusion of heir essence into Rift Crystals, and countless other experiments whose consequences few would willingly accept. Every expedition returns with another impossible discovery, another unsettling experiment, or another breakthrough that forever reshapes magical understanding. The Octopus acknowledge no intellectual boundaries, believing that ignorance—not curiosity—is the world's greatest danger.

The Spider

The Spider understand that knowledge achieves its greatest value only when it reshapes the world. They are master designers, architects of civilizations rather than buildings, patiently weaving networks of influence that stretch across kingdoms like strands of an invisible web. Rather than hoarding discoveries for their own sake, they decide where those discoveries should appear, when they should emerge, and who should receive them. Through carefully chosen allies they distribute revolutionary weapons, new Bioweaving techniques, and newly re-engineered peoples, subtly altering the balance of power across entire continents. Their laboratories produced many of the world's newer races during the Second Shaping, changing countless mortal volunteers as expendable steps toward greater designs. Wars, alliances, and political upheavals become opportunities to strengthen one strand of the web while weakening another. Rarely do the Spider rule openly. They simply ensure the world develops exactly as they intended long before anyone realizes whose design they have been living within.