MicrasWiki:Featured/May, 2021

The Empire of Minarboria was the final coagulation of the varied royal posessions accumulated across Micras by the House of Rossheim. It was administered from a core territory in southwest Benacia known as the Imperial Shrublands, populated by migrants who had befome politically disenfranchised in Shireroth in the tumultuous aftermath of the Kildari secession. Most notable among this exodus were the noble houses of Rossheim, Mortis and Yastreb which would go on to dominate the leadership of the empire.

Minarboria's most salient characteristic was the prevalence of the Deep Singers and undead liches in its halls of church and state respectively. Being blessed with infinite lifespans, this 'post-human' élite were able to leverage their formidable erudition into such power over the empire's unmodified classes - known somewhat disparagingly as 'breathers' - that their perception as agents of some divine force persists to this day. However the liches, and to a lesser extent the Deep Singers, were fatally dependent upon the arcane chanelling of telluric energies to provide their animating force and the total carrying capacity of these energies was little understood. A series of territorial expansions and the growth of a posthuman middle class in Minarboria is thought to have drained their animating power faster than it could be recharged, resulting in a catastrophic period of bodily torpor across the entire leadership stratum of the empire and precipitating its rapid collapse. More...