Human development is at a pre-renaissance level. (Swords and sails, not gunpowder and steam.) The campaign takes place in the Shattered Reach, a chaotic collection of geologically unusual islands. Islands vary in size and form, but their geography is usually dominated by dramatic dark cliffs and irregular crevasses, with no visible bedding in the rock.

The Shattered Reach is the only place in the known world where luminists’ pearls can be found. Pearl diving is as illegal as luminism itself, but some people will nevertheless search the rocky sea floor for pearls. Luminists pearls do not grow in mollusks but rather are found embedded in the submarine rocks, and have to be carefully chiseled away. Rarely, pearls can be found in above-ground rocks.

The Mandateum

The Shattered Reach is ruled by the Mandateum, a political empire that is far past the pinnacle of its power. Although the imperial core still has military strength, the empire is in a state of collapse: the notion of a shared identity is eroding in favor of increasingly local concerns. The imperial core has gone generations without a unifying and spiritually charged leader. Aristocratic nepotists and sophisticated political machines have entrenched themselves in politics and advanced their own agendas over unity. Factionalization and partisanship are on the rise, and although local administrators still pay lip service to imperial identity, in truth they are subservient to whichever political machine emplaced them.

In most cases, people deal with these local authorities, and each island is a country unto itself; imperial power is rarely invoked except as an empty threat.

However, in the rare cases that a location or event is unfortunate enough to attract imperial interest, it often arrives with enormous military strength.