The Dominion
Where power is seized, not given, and twenty warlords vie for control
Three great lakes define the Dominion's heart: Koran in the west, Honta in the north, Gwayo in the distant east. Twenty warlords govern from fortress cities scattered across mountain and marsh, their alliances forged and broken with the seasons.
At the center of it all rises Caer Luthar, a mountain transformed into a city, where General Kael Thorne commands the Dominion's armies.
Key Locations
Every merchant traveling between the eastern territories and the Aureate Coast must pass through one city. There is no alternative. The mathematics are simple. Paying the tariffs is cheaper than the weeks-long detour.
Mercato controls the eastern shore of Lake Koran, with extensive dock districts, warehouse zones, and merchant quarters built for one purpose. Efficiency. The city sits at a geographic bottleneck where the overland route to the capital meets the hundred-mile lake crossing to Port Aureate. Over two hundred ships pass through every week during peak season. Thousands of tons of goods move monthly. And every last crate, barrel, and bolt of cloth is inspected, taxed, and documented.
Every warehouse is numbered. Every dock follows identical procedures. Every tariff form uses the same format. The city works perfectly, but nothing in it has warmth. There are no grand festivals. No artistic traditions. No cultural identity beyond commerce. Mercato is possibly the single greatest revenue generator in the Dominion, potentially wealthier than the capital itself, and it has achieved this by eliminating every inefficiency its lord could find.
The result is a city that functions like a machine. Boring. Predictable. Incredibly profitable.
Varric seized Mercato through legal maneuvering and blood duels fifteen years ago. Not conquest. Not inheritance. Contracts and killing, in that order.
They call him The Hollow Brother, and the name fits in ways most people do not fully understand. He has turned Mercato into a monument to pure commerce, stripped of everything that does not generate revenue. Whether that says more about the city or about the man who built it depends on who you ask. His Harbor Master Council, his Warehouse Guild, and his trade magistrates run the tightest operation in the Dominion. And Varric watches all of it with the patient attention of a man who knows exactly what everything costs.
On the southern shore of Lake Koran, the massive freshwater inland sea that dominates the western territories, a fortified port city climbs terraced hillsides above enormous docks built to handle something far more dangerous than merchant ships.
Freson is a city that hunts monsters.
Lake Koran is connected to the ocean through a western channel near Port Aureate, and the things that swim in from the open sea are nightmares. Leviathans. Massive, salt-and-freshwater predators that follow prey inland and hunt the lake's shallow waters with terrifying efficiency. In a lake where the deepest channels reach only a hundred or two hundred feet, there is nowhere these creatures cannot reach you.
The Southern Marches built their entire military identity around killing them. Elite leviathan-hunting crews operate specialized vessels designed to track, engage, and bring down creatures that most sailors pray they never see. The materials they harvest are worth fortunes. Leviathan scales make armor that no forge can replicate. Monster bones become weapons found nowhere else in the Dominion.
The territory spans three provinces. Freson proper serves as the capital. The southern lakeshore territories control critical trade routes along the coast. And the treacherous marsh lowlands, where the lake spreads into vast shallow wetlands, require year-round military patrols by elite marsh wardens.
Over twelve thousand troops serve the Southern Marches, divided into lakeshore defenders, naval forces, and the legendary hunting crews. They are known for amphibious warfare tactics and brutal efficiency.
Before Thren was lord of the Southern Marches, he was a leviathan-slayer who came up through the coastal defense forces. He consolidated power through military conquest, strategic blackmail, and the kind of battlefield charisma that turns soldiers into believers.
They call him The Tide-Breaker, and across the lake territories, the name carries weight. His forces are among the most battle-hardened in the Dominion, forged not in wars against other warlords but in the far more unforgiving war against the deep.
Fifteen miles north of ruins swallowed by water and time, a walled city rises from the desert in concentric rings of red stone, brass, and eternal flame.
At the city's center stands a massive temple complex, ancient beyond memory. Flame-towers burn day and night, visible for miles across the sand, guiding pilgrims and warning enemies in equal measure. La Gas is the sacred capital and seat of power for the Flame Circle, the most powerful religious organization in the Dominion.
The Flame Circle's doctrine is simple. When the world burned, divine fire saved humanity. Survival requires divine power controlled through proper religious authority. Chaos and unchecked divine force lead to destruction. The ruins to the south, submerged beneath the water, stand as proof.
From La Gas, the Flame Circle's influence extends across the entire Dominion. Branch temples operate in every major city, staffed by priestesses who investigate corruption, enforce moral codes, and provide or withdraw legitimacy from rulers. They maintain an army of religious zealots. They hold one of twenty seats on the Crown Council, the governing body of warlords.
And they answer to one woman.
Lady Elaran burned her predecessor alive to claim her seat.
That single fact tells you nearly everything you need to know about the woman who leads the most far-reaching religious order in the known world. The Flame Circle operates semi-independently from the Crown Council, investigating and judging even the warlords themselves. Its priestesses are not women who accept defiance. And at their head sits Elaran, whose ambitions reach further than anyone suspects.
Between two vast lakes, a narrow passage of roughly thirty miles is the only practical east-west route across the continent. Mountains force all traffic through a single point. And at that point sits a city with two harbors, a sacred shrine, and a lord who has turned geography into gold.
Sentinel Gate controls everything. North Harbor handles Lake Honta traffic. South Harbor handles Lake Batus. The Central Passage funnels every caravan, army, and pilgrim through gates where toll collectors wait with the patience of predators. Over five hundred travelers pass through daily during peak season. Hundreds of caravans monthly. Every major trade good moving between the eastern and western territories crosses this ground.
The city has a split personality. On one side, the Passage districts run with cold commercial efficiency. Tolls, inspections, warehouses. On the other side, the Temple Quarter thrums with religious fervor, built around the Hollow Shrine, an ancient sacred site in the nearby foothills that has drawn pilgrims and scholars for as long as anyone can remember. No one agrees on what the Hollow actually is. The devout believe prayers spoken there are more likely to be answered. Skeptics call it superstition. Everyone pays to find out for themselves.
Both sides pay the same tolls.
Born to minor nobility, Brannis clawed his way to power through a calculated combination of marriage, murder, and mercenary forces twenty years ago. He recognized what no previous ruler had. The city's true wealth came not from production or resources but from its position.
They call him The Gilded Bastard, and he has taught an entire city that everything can be bought, sold, or traded. Even sacred sites. He keeps his fees just below the cost of the alternative routes, maximizing profit while preventing rebellion. His Toll Collectors Guild is feared and hated in equal measure. And Brannis himself smiles through every transaction.
On the western shore of the great inland sea called Lake Koran, a prosperous city rises on hills overlooking both freshwater and the distant ocean. Port Aureate sits at the nexus of three critical trade routes, and it trades in something no other territory can offer, prophecy.
Oracle temples line the terraced streets. Prophecy markets bustle with seers, dream-interpreters, and information brokers who sell visions as readily as silk and spices. The city's wealth flows from controlling the passage between the isolated western coast and the inland territories, but its true power comes from knowing things before they happen.
For most of recorded history, the western coast was cut off from the rest of the Dominion. Coastal mountain ranges formed a near-impassable barrier, and the few who crossed them rarely returned. Roughly a thousand years ago, during a period of brutal warfare, military forces and refugees seeking defensible territory pushed through the passes and discovered a habitable coastal region protected by mountains to the east and ocean to the west. Over centuries, the isolated communities they built developed powerful oracle traditions and a distinct culture of secrecy and foresight.
The city was once called the Ember Coast. It was renamed by the woman who seized it.
They called her the High Oracle once. Now they call her The Oracle-Killer, and she rules the Aureate Coast with an information empire built on prophecy networks and shadow operatives.
Samara maintains the smallest standing army of any major warlord, roughly eight thousand soldiers. She does not need more. Her forces specialize in guerrilla tactics using mountain terrain, and her intelligence networks know enemy movements before the enemies themselves do. In Port Aureate, information is the deadliest weapon. And Samara controls the supply.
Imagine a city built around a crater so ancient that no one remembers what made it. Now imagine that crater filled with sand, terraced with stone seating, and packed with tens of thousands of screaming spectators watching two fighters decide who lives and who dies.
Rising from the southern shore of Lake Gwayo, Red Spire is carved from iron-rich stone that bleeds color into everything it touches. The buildings glow a deep, bruised red at sunset. The harbor fills daily with ships carrying wealthy visitors, ambitious fighters, and merchants hungry for profit. And at the heart of it all stands the Grand Arena, the largest structure of its kind in the known world, rising from that ancient crater like a monument to violence.
No one in Red Spire asks how the crater got there. They care about the fights.
The arena system runs on structured violence. Volunteers sign contracts for glory and coin. Condemned criminals are thrown in to die entertainingly. Slaves fight for the chance to earn freedom through sustained victory. Match types range from first-blood bouts to death matches where surrender is forbidden. Specialized fighting styles have evolved over millennia, each with devoted followers and legendary champions. Fortunes are wagered on every swing of a blade.
But Red Spire does not pretend any of this serves a higher purpose. There is no religious meaning here and no noble cause. Just spectacle and profit. The city is remarkably honest about what humans are willing to do for entertainment.
Every warlord in the Dominion inherited power, married into it, or seized it through politics. Hestien Merrow earned his in the arena sand.
He rose from pit fighter to lord of an entire territory, and the story of how he did it is one Red Spire still tells in taverns and training halls. They call him The Smiling Thorn because the more dangerous a conversation becomes, the wider his grin gets. His court has learned to follow his example. In Red Spire, charm and threat are inseparable.