​​Politics

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In the Argent Kingdom, power is like metal: it must be mined, refined, and tempered.

The kingdom's political system is built on a foundation of silver-blooded nobility, tempered merit, and unyielding law, much like the blades and ornaments crafted in its ancient forges.

Every leader is tested in the fires of challenge, and only those who prove both resilience and brilliance earn their place in the hierarchy.​

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Government

The High Regent

At the summit of the political hierarchy stands the High Regent of Ingvald, seated upon the Argent Throne: a masterwork of silver, iron, and obsidian, a symbol of unity between the harsh desert and the enduring mountain.

• The High Regent is not born to power but cast and chosen, selected from among the Silverbound Clans (the three Royal Bloodlines) and tempered through trial and council.

• Their reign is for life, unless shattered by a "Fracture Vote": a rare act by the Council of the Argent Halberd requiring two-thirds consensus.

• The High Regent wears the Crown of Moonstone: a ceremonial circlet containing a shard of Moonstone, a rare metal fallen from the shattered moon and tempered during atmospheric entry, giving it an otherwordly ethereal glow.

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Council of the Argent Halberd

The Council of the Argent Halberd acts as the kingdom’s crucible of governance, where conflicting ambitions are smelted into policy and law.

It is comprised of:

• The Three Silverbound Clans: Noble families whose bloodlines have governed since the kingdom’s forging. Each controls vital forges, mines, cities, or water veins. The current Three Silverbound Clans are Silver Sun (Royal bloodline); Aurum Stella (Royal Army) and TBD (Royal Guard). Roughly every 200 years a new monarch is chosen from these bloodlines, earlier if a Fracture Vote is passed.

• Three Forged Voices: Commoners elevated through deeds of renown in battle, craft, or service. Known as the Forged, they represent the strength of merit.

• The Hammer of the People: A single elected envoy from the city-forges and merchant guilds of Ingvald, chosen once every decade during the Voting of the Anvil.

The Council drafts decrees, levies wartime commands, and serves as the only force able to temper the Regent’s will.

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The Silverbound Clans

These three clans are like alloys: each bringing a different strength to the kingdom. Though united under the Regent, their rivalries, alliances, and ambitions shape much of the realm’s fate.

• The Spear (Clan Silver Sun): The Royal Bloodline, masters of politics and state affairs, with a penchant for combining arcane knowledge with elemental knowledge, giving them an air of misticism.

• The Right Blade (Clan Aurum Stella): Revered warriors and masters of martial metallurgy, masters of statecraft and guardians of the Argent Throne

• The Left Blade (Clan TBD): TBD

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Each clan’s crest features an alloy or metal unique to their holdings, and their lineages are meticulously recorded on etched Silver Slates displayed in the Halls of Oaths in Ingvald.

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Internal Politics

Despite its gleaming exterior, the Argent Kingdom's political alloy is brittle in places:

• Trade Wars with Valmora over rare ore veins have stoked tensions along the eastern border.

• The Forged Voices, a mystical organization of fanatics that worship the old ways of war and trials by blood to forge stronger individuals, are gaining popularity, unsettling the Silverbound who see their more pacifist methods and influence diluted.

• Control over Aquasilver Wells (deep, magically sustained water sources) sparks silent feuds between Clans.

• Merchant guilds in Traders' Bay and Algûn Creek are lobbying for metal minting rights: a threat to the royal coining monopoly.

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The kingdom remains strong, but like any blade, must be retempered when cracks form.

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Justice & Laws

Justice in the Argent Kingdom follows the Tempered Code, a set of laws inscribed upon platinum tablets and updated through centuries of trial and tradition.

• Local disputes are settled by Ironhand Judges, appointees of each Silverbound Clan.

• Crimes against the realm, such as treason, forbidden alchemy, or ore theft, are judged in The Crucible Court in Ingvald.

• Sentences often include exile to the Ardent Dunes, years of servitude in the Silver Depths, or in rare cases, public Unforging: a ceremonial execution by blade or flame, symbolizing the breaking of one's legacy.

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Allies

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The Argent-Nature Accord

Among the most whispered arrangements in the known realms, few alliances stir as much curiosity and unease as the quiet, enduring friendship between the Argent Dragons of the Aldrûni Range and the Nature Dragons of the Verdant South, beyond the searing veil of the Ardent Dunes.

This bond, known formally as the Silver-Green Concord, is viewed by some as a bridge of wisdom, by others as a crack in the elemental balance and order.

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A Clash of Alignments

To understand the controversy, one must understand first the chasm between Nether and Aether: not just as elements, but as philosophies.

Nether-aligned dragons, like those of Argent, descend from the Nether god himself, Althyon.
Aether-aligned dragons, like those of Nature, are descendants of the Aether goddess, Athyna.

And although the Gods are a divine pair, bonded opposites, their elemental children have rarely followed suit: many Aether-aligned factions still harbor distrust for Nether-kind, fueled by the blame for the Entity's rise: a massive, star-born corruption that nearly devoured the world. While false, this accusation lingers like rust in the roots of diplomacy... And yet, the Argent dragons defy that legacy, signing the first Aether-Nether Concord in recorded history.
 

The elemental world watches this union with wariness:

Aether circles mutter of betrayal and the taint of industry and dishonor for the sake of profit.

Nether strongholds grumble about softness and appeasement.

Diplomats fear that too much closeness between the alignments may destabilize the delicate council of elemental dominions.

But the Argent dragons remain unmoved: in their minds, profit polishes prejudice, and shared purpose reforges old wounds. They see no contradiction in their alliance, only value, efficiency, and evolution.

In a world still haunted by the lies of the past and the scars of elemental division, the Argent-Nature alliance stands as a quiet rebellion, not of war, but of co-operation, commerce, craft, and curiosity. It is a living alloy, untested by time, gleaming with promise... and threat.

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The Silver-Green Concord

The Argent dragons, masters of metallurgy and wealth, have long rejected the animosity between alignments: in the Nature dragons, they see don't see chaos, but complement: where Argent shapes ore, Nature bears it; where Argent refines, Nature reveals.

The lands beyond the Ardent Dunes are rich in living stone, gem-rooted trees, crystalline springs, and organic alloys only found where wild magic has shaped the land. The Nature dragons guard these wonders fiercely, but the Argents approached not as conquerors, but as craftsfolk, traders, and equals.

In time, they forged a pact:

• Argent dragons would share refined metalwork, forging tools, and knowledge of alloy tempering.

• Nature dragons would offer raw materials, living minerals, and sacred seeds from trees that grow ore-filled fruit.

• Together, they created a trade route beneath the dunes, known as the Verdant Vein: an underground highway of vine-covered ore caverns and root-stabilized tunnels, kept secret from most of the world.

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Profit, Not Piety

What makes the alliance especially controversial is its unapologetic pragmatism: to the Argent dragons, trade is sacred, not ideology. They care little for grudges or the suspicions of other elemental kin. 
They see Nature dragons not as ideological enemies, but as vital business partners with a mutual respect for the raw and rare.
Their partnership has resulted in the creation of living alloys: metals that respond to life essence, and breathing forges powered by sap-fire and natural heat vents. Further allowing them to independentize from co-operation with the Solar Kingdom when fire was necessary to further expand and develop the manipulation of their element.
These innovations, though revolutionary, only deepened the distrust among the more rigid factions of both Aether and Nether, and initially drew the ire of the Solar domain, who saw the alliance sever the Argent dragons’ reliance on their firecraft and, more critically: a diversion of profits once earned through their monopoly on flame-forged metal, something only they could provide due to their mastery over fire.

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Enemies

The Gilded Rift

Where fire meets ore, and pride runs hotter than the sun.

Few rivalries burn as steadily, or as profitably, as that between the Argent Dragons of the Aldrûni Range and the Solar Kingdom of the Igneous Lands.

Though no war has officially been declared between the two powers in over a century, the tension is a forge constantly stoked: driven not by blood, but by commerce, pride, and fire itself.

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The Sun's Former Glory

The Solar Kingdom, radiant and proud, claims divine descent from the goddess Athyna the loudest of all Aether-born elements, their dragons are born in magma cradles, their cities shaped from obsidian and gold, and their culture revolving around dominion, radiance, and the sanctity of flame.
For centuries, the Solar Kingdom held dominance over firecraft in the western hemisphere: their Sunforges were unrivaled, their pyromantic rituals essential to the ignition of great forges across Nether-aligned realms, including those in the Argent Kingdom.
To the Solar court, the Argent dragons were useful clients, even respectable artisans, but ultimately dependent: fire is the breath of the forge, and the Argent Kingdom needed it.
This dependence gave the Solar Kingdom leverage: and it paid in tithes, trade taxes, and political sway.

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The Breaking of the Flaming Chains

Then came the Silver-Green Concord with the Nature dragons, and with it, the arrival of sap-fire: thermal root-vents, and living heat sources drawn from deep beneath the Ardent Dunes. These new, nature-bound sources of forge-power, while slower and more delicate to control, offered something revolutionary: independence from Solar flame.

The Argent dragons, pragmatic, logical and shrewd, embraced these new methods not out of rebellion, but efficiency. But to the Solar Kingdom, the shift was nothing short of betrayal.

They saw it as the shattering of a sacred hierarchy, and more grievously: a severance of lucrative ties that once bound the Argent forges to the sunlit empire of Sol’darien.

"Ore does not forget the fire that first shaped it, and yet these metalborn dragons douse our legacy in root-sap and shadow!" declared Prince Solvitar, the first royal to speak against it.

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Pride Against Pragmatism

Where the Argent dragons value precision, resourcefulness, and quiet mastery, the Solar dragons revel in spectacle, dominion, and divine right. Their clash is not just elemental, it is ideological:

• The Solar Kingdom sees the Argent Kingdom’s trade-focused neutrality as cowardice.

• The Argent dragons see the Solar dragons' posturing as wasteful vanity.

• The Solar elite believe fire is sacred.

• The Argent elite crafters believe fire is a tool, and tools evolve.

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The Cold War of Embers

Though no open war rages between them, the rivalry plays out in a thousand small ways:

• Trade embargos on fire salts and volcanic ash.

• Sabotage of forge-caravans suspected to use Nature-powered furnaces.

• Diplomatic friction in the Heartlands' Coucil, during Royal Summits, where the Solar delegation often opposes Argent motions.

• Competing forge festivals and crafting duels, each more theatrical and expensive than the last.

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The Solar Kingdom insists it is merely protecting tradition.

The Argent reply with a saying etched above every forge door in Ingvald: “Tradition rusts. Craft endures.”

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An Unquenched Flame

Despite the rivalry, the two powers remain ironically intertwined.
The Solar Kingdom still provides unique materials: sunsteel, lava-glass, and combustion gems, that even the Nature alliance cannot replace.
And the Argent Kingdom still sells silvered alloys and precise mechanisms that power the Solar court’s Sunspyre towers and ceremonial armaments.

In this, their rivalry is less like a war and more like a smoldering forge: never extinguished, never uncontrolled, and always ready to ignite.

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Notable Clans

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Example - Description

TBD

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