Geba
The Imperial Heartland
Geba is the origin continent and the smallest inhabited landmass on the planet, and for six thousand years it has been the center of everything. Vaer'karesh welded the five nations that once divided it into the first empire, forcing one language and one identity by conquest, and though those nations are gone their bloodlines still run in every generation. The capital of Karesh was raised by Empress Vaer'yinda on ground she purged of all life as a gift to her father, and the imperial day itself begins and ends when Izhara passes over the continent.
It runs as a capitalist society with visible wealth classes and the strictest laws on the planet, though enforcement has limits the relay never shows. No syndicate operates openly here, yet the Jerhit Syndicate has threaded itself into the legitimate economy through constructed identities, and trafficking supply chains reach into the capital itself. Geba is where everyone with no further path but a will to earn comes: veterans, expedition mercenaries, Yuvaari hunters, Ngorrhali fighters, all converging on Karesh to make the most varens possible or to train the next generation of contractors.
The Rite House of He Who Allows is the official faith of the capital and the source of most planetary law, followed by billions here by default even though Veyan Thought is what most actually believe. Geba holds the largest Engineered population on the planet, around 320 million, living openly among natural-borns in the hubs and markets.
It is also the heart of the centralization question. The organized reformist movement is four-fifths imperial Geban, the people who most remember what a center felt like, even as the continent profits more than any other from the decentralized world it says it misses. A citizen can build a life here without turning to corruption, but it takes a rare kind of person to do it.
Kareshthe capital, and the center of the planet
Karesh is the gravitational center of Geba and, by extension, of the world. More than three in ten of the continent's people live within reach of its mega hub, imperial time is measured from it, and it enforces the strictest laws anywhere. It is the city everyone with nowhere left to climb comes to climb anyway, where Yuvaari hunters, Ngorrhali fighters, combat medics, and airship pilots all arrive to train the next generation and take the largest contracts the registry offers.
It carries the largest Engineered population on the planet, and it is normal to see them in the relay hubs and residential districts. The center of advanced medicine moved here from Jeyrha long ago, not because Karesh was more capable but because it simply had far more people who needed it.
Thalorynthe ruin that was never rebuilt
Thaloryn was the ancient financial power among the five nations and the first to ally with Vaer'karesh, and it sits half in ruins to this day, deliberately never rebuilt so the wars that forged the Empire could not be forgotten. It remains the global center of art and ethics, a role it inherited after the destruction of Midreach Lira.
The Thaloryn Wanderer, a figure out of pre-imperial folklore, is said to haunt its broken structures, and the old story has taken on a darker weight in the modern era as criminal groups adopt the Wanderer's likeness before carrying out violence.
Therikthe port everyone leaves through
Therik is the southern port, built around the continent's second mega relay, and it carries a staggering eight percent of all air and sea traffic on the planet. It descends from the hated nomad-trafficker nation of Therik, who joined the Empire last and only because its infrastructure let them leave the continent more easily. The nation that wanted nothing but to leave became the place everyone leaves through, working and transient and never still.
Varenaeverything that is not a city
Varena is the countryside, the whole rural body of the continent. If you are not near a hub, you are in Varena. It is the founding nation of builders and farmers who held the most land and the most people and never wanted a capital, and it was their descendants who raised the relay network and the capital itself. Southern Geba, part of Varena, holds more Jeyrhans than Gebans, drawn up from the south long before the Empire ever reached Jeyrha.
Midreach Lirathe martyred sacred state
Midreach Lira was the state built by Princess Lira, the first Seraveth Vessel of the imperial line, under separate governance because the centralized system was never enough for what she wanted: a place where the law served the population rather than the bloodline. The Church of the Infinite Maw destroyed it at the very onset of the Infinite Maw Conflict. It stands rebuilt now under the Church, a black spire marking the old capital, the single act that began the war.