The Corolean Empire is massive, approximately three times the size of Tencendor. Attached to Tencendor only by a small isthmus, the Corolean Empire stretches south for almost a thousand leagues, and east-west in a great bulge, sixteen hundred leagues at its widest point. Because it is so vast, the land varies from the great dry Haki Desert (occupying the western central portion of the land) to the frigid eastern Jai Alps that spear uninhabitable barren rock into the sky. Despite the extremes of alp and desert, the majority of the Empire is warm and humid and utterly flat. There are numerous rivers, plentiful swamps complete with swarms of noxious insects, and vast gloamy black plains that the Corolean slaves till to produce grain and fruits (only slaves till the gloamy plains because of the inevitability of footrot and ankle gangrene in the damp and warm soils). In the low hills surrounding the black plains farmers, barely free themselves, raise herds of goats and pigs (the main meat supply), keep a few thin cows for milk, and wonder if they shouldn't diversify into dates and sun-baked bricks to avoid falling into debt and the ignominies of slavery.

Corolean society is similar to, and yet different from, Tencendorian society. There is a single humanoid race (although rumours circulate about a race of shy swamp men) dominated by the noble caste. The Corolean nobility is of ancient lineage - and the bloodlines of the Forty-Four-Hundred First Families are kept rigorously free of any contamination from the lower castes. The Forty-Four-Hundred marry only among themselves, and they admit no new blood, no matter how wealthy some upstart trader has made himself on date-milk supply. They live in vast palace complexes on the airy ranges overlooking the major towns and cities of Coroleas, and spend the worst of the humid season in the cool foothills of the Jai Alps. They control all political and social power, appoint the High Priests from among themselves, and own the vast majority of the land. No one can own an armed band or a shipping vessel unless he be of the Forty-Four-Hundred.

Every ten years the male heads of each family gather to elect a new Emperor from among their own. This election process is complex and tiring - the Forty-Four-Hundred Heads remain in seclusion for months until it is completed, and not a few perish during this time from old age, poison, jewelled daggers in the gut, and from hopeless attempts to expend pent-up sexual energies at the boardgame of Fillip. Once a new Emperor is elected there is great relief, and some sadness at finding the old Emperor unexplainably dead in a bed tangled with blood-stained sheets. The new Emperor orders all games of contaminated and/or desecrated Fillip burned, and the Forty-Four-Hundred Heads are released from their incarceration.

The Thirty-Eight-Thousand Second Families are wealthy, educated and too intelligent for their own good, yet they share in none of the political, social and religious power of the Forty-Four-Hundred. Most of the Thirty-Eight-Thousand have made their fortunes at trade, either with Tencendor, or with the lands across the Widowmaker Sea. Some are slave traders of great wit, skill and deception. Despite their wealth, intelligence and lust for some say in how Coroleas is governed, the Thirty-Eight-Thousand wield almost no power. They are not allowed to own land unless the sale be approved by a committee of forty-four Heads from the Forty-Four-Hundred. None among the Thirty-Eight-Thousand Second Families can wear silk or fur, nor cloth of any weave that is dyed scarlet, ivory or gold, and they may not own or wear pearls or rubies. They may not play Fillip.

They may, however, man the bureaucracy, and the larger portion of Corolean administration is run by powerful men from the Thirty-Eight-Thousand who have grown bored with trade. Members of the Thirty-Eight-Thousand also provide the larger number of diplomats (although not ambassadors who come from the Forty-Four-Hundred) and officers in the large, potent and numerous Corolean armies (most of the Forty-Four-Hundred own at least one army). Most of the professions and the scholarly academies are manned by members of the Thirty-Eight-Thousand. Their daughters, if fortunate, may be chosen at the annual Rivermud Festival to become the toy of a Forty-Four-Hundred man for the space of a year (or however long she lives ... whichever ends first). Whenever there is an internal rebellion (and there are at least four or five of them each year), it is usually funded, if not led, by one of the Thirty-Eight-Thousand families intent on somehow toppling the Forty-Four-Hundred from their pinnacle of power. In twelve hundred years of trying the Thirty-Eight-Thousand have come no closer to penetrating the society of the Forty-Four-Hundred than they have come to purchasing a single board game of Fillip. They spend many nights talking of emigrating, but are too aware of their own privileges to actually do anything about it.

The Third is the general name given to the mass of men, women and children who work to serve the Forty-Four-Hundred and the Thirty-Eight-Thousand but who are not quite (not quite yet) slaves. They rent farming land for rates often beyond their means, run the river and sea boats (if not own them), man the markets, build and repair the homes of the upper castes, lay and dig the roads and the canals, slaughter - then skin and gut - the goats and pigs, fish the rivers, mow the lawns, glaze the roof tiles, keep the sewage pipes free of blockages ... in fact all the heavy and dirty work needed to keep the societies of the two upper Corolean castes merry and greased is done by the Third. The men of the Third provide the foot soldiers for the armies, the rowers for the war boats, and the means to stage grand tournaments and games for the two upper castes. The Third are massively unhappy with their lot, but know not how to improve it beyond staging futile rebellions during the humid and oppressive nights of the wet season. When not rebelling, they find release in breeding.

The lot of the slaves is almost beyond despair. They are the men and women who have fallen into such poverty they sell their bodies, wombs and souls to the highest bidder. Their bodies till the gloam plains until they rot and fall apart, their wombs are used by men from the free who need inexpensive bastards to clean their kitchens and stables, their souls are toyed with by the rich until their amusement dies along with the slave. And yet the lot of the slaves is revered by the Forty-Four-Hundred and the Thirty-Eight-Thousand who argue that a life of slavery is one to be envied for its freedom from political and financial duplicities. Nobles and scholars applaud the grind of slavery for its inherent nobleness ... and yet how few of the Forty-Four-Hundred or the Thirty-Eight-Thousand know the feel of the black soil eating for month after month at the skin of ankle and shin, or can comprehend the pain endured in breeding a bastard for the stables, or understand the screaming nightmares as High Priests finger the souls of those picked to pleasure the wealthy. Slaves live to die, and no-one knows that better than the slaves themselves.

Such is their despair they think not of revolt, but only of the release of the final obliteration.

 

The Forty-Four-Hundred, the Thirty-Eight-Thousand and the Third revere a multitude of bronze deities. Among the Third are a caste of bronze workers, strictly controlled by the bronze merchant guild of the Thirty-Eight-Thousand, who make small bronze figurines that form the outer shell of the god. These figurines can be worn about the body (generally hanging from a belt, but the very religious sometimes insert them into bodily cavities) or stood on shelves within the home. But the figurines are useless until they are given power. Each figurine is empowered by the soul of a man or women. Slaves provide the soul. Once a figurine is finished and purchased, then the buyer must also purchase a soul to inhabit the figurine and give it power. The younger the soul, the better. Newborn babies who have not yet taken suck are best of all, but so prohibitively expensive they can only be purchased by members of the Forty-Four-Hundred. When the life has been obtained, then the soul must be released from the body. This is generally done in as long a religious ceremony as possible, presided over by as high a Priest as possible, and with the most possible enjoyment by the onlookers. A Priest must be skilled enough to draw the soul from the living body it currently lives in with the greatest possible pain, for this gives the soul - and thus the bronze deity it is placed into - the greatest possible power. The soul can live in a bronze figurine for many centuries before its potency fades and it is cast out as scrap metal to be melted down and re-soulled.

Few foreigners understand or sympathise with the Corolean obsession with bronze deities and stolen souls, but the Coroleans care little for what outsiders think of them. What other use the soul of a slave, anyway?