This world is a shadow of a greater world, where every blade of grass is greener, every eel swims more freely, and there is divinity in all the wind.

- Itztepex, the Sting of Clarity, living god of Endring.

So much of this world remains cut off from the future, clinging to ignorance and worn-out patterns. I gave them so much, and for what?

- Reported last words of Mayton, first king of Mayton Greynes.

Chronicle depicts four polities: the city-states of Mayton Greynes and the Archive in the north-western continent of Dyzia (pronounced “dizzier”), the larger nation of Endring on the south-eastern continent of Ystokia (pronounced “is-TOK-ier”), and the Nemeus (pronounced “ne-MAY-us”) Archipelago that lies in the ocean between them. These are snapshots of a wider world, although for out-of-character ease player characters are only permitted to come from the defined regions. These regions are fairly widely dispersed: travel times (by boat, and in Archival seasons) are given below.

Where Style and Tone lays out the central themes Chronicle is seeking to convey and the experience of play, this page gives an overview of the core in-character features of the setting.

The level of technology in Chronicle is roughly comparable to our own world, but the level of state and market centralisation is not.

Power in the world of Chronicle is measured through charismatic persuasion and the control of ideas, information, resources and infrastructure rather than physical violence. None of the major polities have prison systems, police forces or standing armies, let alone the death penalty. See Style and Tone for more on this.

Unlike in our world, the internet emerged earlier than factory-based mass production; the former emerged in the Archive, the latter in Mayton Greynes, although Mayton Greynes now provides the infrastructure underwriting the internet. See The Internet for more.

By keeping much of the knowledge of how to make its technology a corporate secret, the corporations and government of Mayton Greynes have gained significant economic influence on other polities. This influence is strongly felt in Nemeus, but even stretches to Endring.

All technology in this world is powered with varieties of green energy.

The existence of gods and the ‘supernatural’ is denied by most in the Archive and Mayton Greynes, who do not believe there is empirical evidence to support it, and embraced by most in Endring and the Nemeus Archipelago.

Endringians generally argue for a transcendental gulf, a split between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds, with the latter being the invisible power that animates and sometimes intrudes explicitly into the former. Everything in this world is linked to a divine power, but the divine power itself exists outside.

People in Nemeus are generally more sceptical of this idea of a layered distinction, seeing their gods as immanent in the places around them. Gods are inherent in the islands, the sea, the stars…

Most (but not all) in the Archive are curious rather than condemnatory towards beliefs different from their own, and those of Endringian or Nemean background often produce a synthesis of their beliefs and the Archival scholarly apparatus of detached, sceptical suspension of judgement.

For those in authority in Mayton Greynes, almost all worthwhile knowledge is new, derived from rigorous testing rather than tradition, and to claim otherwise is foolish.¹⁾ Nonetheless, people appreciate the story and artefactuality of history, resulting in a few museums and a moderate amount of artefact trading.

Chronicle's four focal polities are coming to occupy distinct economic and political niches in an increasingly connected world.

The Archive

The Archive is the most powerful polity in the world in terms of controlling the flow of knowledge and information, following its rise to prominence three centuries ago.

The Archive is a sprawling, labyrinthine city, at the epicentre of the game’s themes of the accumulation and categorisation of knowledge.

It centrally explores themes of time and place, and the attempt to condense their vast scope into one city.

Relatedly, it explores themes of work-life balance and academic frustration.

All player characters are affiliated with the Archive, but not all of them live there or spend much time there physically (although the winding paths of its online infrastructure often seem to echo its physical reality).

The internet was originally the Archive's creation and built around its databases, although Mayton Greynes has subsequently expanded and commercialised its use.

The Archive's stock in trade and source of influence remains information rather than material wealth.

Mayton Greynes

The technocratic monarchical city state of Mayton Greynes is a global hub for new research (especially in STEM), rather than the accumulation of existing information.

Mayton Greynes has been central to the last few centuries' boom in scientific and technological discoveries, and has long presented itself as beneficently sharing its fruits (though always, for a price). The monarchy has always claimed to be pursuing a utopian project.

It has additionally become central to promoting ideas such as corporations, advertising and an interlinked monetary economy.

Mayton Greynes's transformation into its current state of ‘enlightened monarchy’ seems to have been influenced by the the Archive, which inhabits the same continent and pre-existed it.

Through tight control of technological knowledge, it controls a significant amount of the world’s infrastructure (especially transport and cheap goods production), giving their corporations an increasingly disproportionate influence.

Some of the blueprints and methods underwriting technological or scientific discoveries are produced in Lutown University in Mayton Greynes. These are, after a waiting period during which the corporations who funded the research gain a head start, then sent to the Archive for preservation. Discoveries made in-house by corporations are generally kept from the Archive.

Endring

Endring is one of the largest polities in the world, and one of the richest in material resources.

It lies in a highly fertile region, and so produces a large amount of food, as well as craft goods. The goods it produces tend to be high-quality and painstakingly crafted, using traditional techniques full of religious significance. Everything is seen as divinely charged; every action is seen as prayer.

Endring is structured around a form of religious guild socialism, with temples the central units of production and distribution, theoretically providing a melding of religious experience, meaningful work and guaranteed subsistence to the population.

Endring's central themes are utopian religion, the search for transcendent models of meaning, and their relationship to the complexities of daily reality. Priesthoods tend to be led by charismatic priests who incarnate the gods in human form. Hierarchies of knowledge and information exist, despite the relative socio-economic equality, with progressive levels of trade secrets and esoteric religious mysteries revealed as temple members rise through the ranks. It sees itself as a utopia, but it is not a place where certain questions can be asked.

Some of Endring's gods (especially Liria) are loudly opposed to Mayton Greynes’ hoarding of the knowledge of how to work its technology in order to achieve economic domination over other societies. What action so distant a polity can take on this front remains unclear. However, it is divided on whether greater access to the concealed technological knowledge would help liberate its people, or whether mechanisation would undermine the meaning-laden nature of their labour (the god Kleiops is loudly in favour of the latter position).

Greynesian corporations are prohibited from trading with or operating within Endring. It carries on a significant trade with Nemeus, from which the inhabitants of the Island of Alaxus emerged (see The Nemeus Archipelago), and a significant cultural exchange with the Archive. It is connected to the Archival internet, but not the Greynesian corporate internet.

Nemeus

The Nemeus Archipelago is also rich in resources, as well as the relics and resonances of a powerful past.

Having relatively recently opened its borders to the world after a period of isolationism, Nemeans have become increasingly influenced by foreign businesses (especially Greynesian), who are increasingly extracting the islands' natural materials through contracts with its elite.

A dominant merchant class controls this dissemination of raw materials and the growing industry of tourism. Tourists are particularly interested in the festivals at the Arkhē, which alternate between the islands year by year, based on the shifting of the planets in the sky, and are run by influential merchants. (See Time and Date).

Much of Nemeus's populace are increasingly uncertain in their understanding of their history, as the commercialised economy and culture promoted by Mayton Greynes spreads across the islands.

The merchant houses are grappling with their power crumbling around them to make way for larger enterprises, while ancient relics become susceptible to extraction for either archaeological or financial purposes.

The Nemeus Archipelago is primarily concerned with the themes of memory and the transformation of popular culture. It focuses on the way the past inheres in objects and places. With the ways communities keep it alive, and the way it shifts under the influence of internal and external power. It is also concerned with the way these meanings dissipate through the permeation of internal and external power: themes of cultural and economic colonialism are most prominent here.

Where Endring's story focuses on religious and ideological commitment, Nemeus's focuses on ambiguous cultural shifts. On the grasping at traces of the meanings inscribed in the past, rather than their confident assertion in the present.

The Archive divides the history of each polity into a few key periods, for ease of study. These are widely accepted, although individuals will of course have their own views on their validity. These map onto the major departmental sub-divisions of the Archive, which is not organised around methodology or academic discipline, but time and place. The research-based channels of the Archive's discussion forum are also based around these categories.²⁾ They are:

• The Archive:
  • Pre-Archive: counted backwards from the Archive's date of foundation. Fragments remain from the time before.
  • Contemporary Archive: we are currently 354 years since the Archive's foundation (this time is counted forwards).
• Endring:
  • Pre-Endring: the cruel and bloody regime that reigned before Endring gained its name had most of its records destroyed during the revolution. Even fewer sources remain from the distant time before it.
  • Revolutionary Endring: unknown duration. There is significant textual documentation about about this period of transformation. Some sources have been rigorously maintained in Temples since the events themselves. Others come from the mouths of the gods and were composed far later, relying on the memories of these divine participants.
  • Contemporary Endring: in the Endringian view, it has been 1397 years since the victory of the gods transformed time into something measurable. They and the Archive measure their years differently, though: see Time and Date.
• Mayton Greynes:
  • Pre-Mayton Greynes: Greynesians have traditionally not considered anything that happened before the advent of Mayton significant, and so much valuable material has been drowned in concrete.
  • Contemporary Mayton Greynes: in Archival years, it has existed for 200 years precisely. Festivities are being considered.
• Nemeus:
  • Pre-Isolation Nemeus: Nemeus has the best-preserved relics of truly ancient times in the world, dating back to a time significantly before Endring's founding.
  • Isolated Nemeus: for about a thousand years, from soon after Endring's revolution until about 234 years ago, Nemeus was cut off from the world. The material culture of this period has left fewer traces than that which preceded it.
  • Contemporary Nemeus: 234 years ago in Archival time (Nemeus does not possess a linear counting of the years), Nemeus's merchants opened it to the world again.