The Luminarchate

In modern usage, “the Luminarchate” refers to the organised clergy that serves the Pantheon of the Gods across Rhaedwyn, with its High Luminarch seated in the Temple of the Luminarchy, an independent Temple-City that is considered neutral ground for all states in Rhaedwyn. This institution is administrative, liturgical and advisory, and it claims continuity with a far older body that once ruled the continent. How much of that claim is truth and how much is prestige is still debated in serious circles.

Origins in the Age of Magic

The first Luminarchate as a political entity took shape in the early Age of Magic, in the centuries following the singing of Mythrael at the Shardspire. Surviving fragments describe not a single sudden founding, but a slow knitting together of powerful city-states whose rulers wielded both secular authority and High Sorcery. These rulers would later be remembered as the Sorcerer-Kings, with Sorcerer-King Walkyrion usually named as the first among them to press for a continent-spanning order.

Most early records were destroyed during the wars and chaos of the early Age of Shadows, so what little we have is second-hand. The common view among scholars is that the “Luminarchate” originally meant the loose confederation of cities and kingdoms whose rulers accepted Mythrael’s authority and the oversight of his priesthood. Only later, as its institutions hardened, did it become an elective monarchy in the stricter sense.

Government and structure

By the middle of the Age of Magic, the Luminarchate had settled into something we would recognise as an elective monarchy. A High Luminarch, chosen from among the most powerful Sorcerer-Kings and supported by the priesthood of Mythrael, stood at the centre. Around him sat a council of rulers and high magi who directed continental policy: regulation of magical practice, arbitration in disputes between member states, and coordination of major works.

Membership was never universal. Some peripheral realms paid lip service and little else. Others, notably among the early coastal kingdoms and several Dwarven communities, negotiated special status. Still, the Luminarchate provided a shared legal and magical framework. Spells of large scale, such as region-wide wards and long-distance gates, were often bound under its seals, and many of the artefacts now labelled Aethercraft bear marks associated with Luminarchate workshops.

Decline in the Age of Shadows

With the corruption of Sorcerer-King Virulan into the service of the Endless Night, the Luminarchate’s own architecture became its weakness. A structure built around concentrated magical authority could not easily survive when that authority turned inward and corrupted. The early Age of Shadows sees the Luminarchate hollowed from within by the Darksworn, local rulers breaking away, and its central councils paralysed.

By the time the major wars of the Age of Shadows crest, the Luminarchate as a unified political body is gone. Some city-states continue to use the title “Luminarch” or “High Luminarch” in a local sense, either out of habit or deliberate propaganda, but there is no longer a working confederation. Institutions decay, archives burn, and many of the more advanced schools of High Sorcery are scattered or destroyed, either by the Darksworn or by those who fear a second Virulan.

Ironically, our sources for this period are richer than for the early Age of Magic, but they are bitter and partisan. Most surviving texts about the Luminarchate are either condemnations written in the aftermath of its fall or nostalgic fragments that gloss over its excesses.