Personal System Calendar: Year 00015, Day 1-28, Month VIII: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6859, 1st to 28th day of the 8th Month
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The Hundred Year Stabilization Effort
Six years had silently passed since the Empire of Elms-Arkanus liberated the eastern subcontinent, after it briefly fell into the hands of the Great Evil and its Dark Forces.
In those six years, infrastructure in the Helmas Region had truly progressed. Homes, walls, military outposts, agriculture, industry, and infrastructure of every kind had been built. Most of the old architecture that once stood here was gone now, especially anything too badly damaged to save, though some structures were deliberately kept to be preserved for their historical value, so the people here wouldn't forget where they'd come from. What couldn't be saved was cleared entirely, with new construction rising in its place.
The Empire, as the Emperor saw it, wasn't in the business of simply erasing cultures and technologies wherever they went. To him, that would have been a waste, and a disservice to the great people who'd built these places in the first place, people who had long been dead, with no way to speak for themselves or their legacy.
So wherever possible, he wanted a peaceful transition whenever the Empire occupied a new territory. That didn't mean mercy for their actual enemies; he'd ordered the slaughter of every remnant of the Fresco League of Kingdoms before, sparing no one, not even children who were old enough to have witnessed the war's brutality. He understood, plainly, that hatred bred more hatred, especially once you let it fester long enough, and that the cycle of violence only ever repeated itself when left unchecked.
But the situation in the east was different. Its people weren't the enemy, not in any real sense. They too had been victims of their own lords, who had been slowly corrupted and brainwashed into serving the Great Evil until there was nothing left of who they'd once been. There was no reason to punish an entire population, its culture, and its history for the sins of the leaders who'd sold them out.
Even now, the hunt for the Great Evil's remaining worshippers continued throughout the occupied regions, with public executions carried out once guilt was proven. The Empire didn't carry those executions out themselves. That task fell to the people, the original survivors of the disaster who'd lived through it and wanted their own justice with their own hands.
Especially so, given the current population of the entire Helmas SAR ran roughly 95% of the original East Arkanians, with the remaining 5% made up of migrants pulled in from across the rest of the Empire's territories.
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Governing the Eight Regions
Full autonomy hadn't been handed back to the population yet. For the next hundred years, administrative control over the region stayed with nobles from the Empire, appointed as Governors over each Special Administrative Region. It ensures proper stabilization, loyalty, and a foothold for the Empire here in the east, not just in the west and central subcontinents.
| Region | Zone Type | Governor |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northern Coastal | Admiral Marcus Stormwind (Royal Imperial Navy) |
| 2 | Highland Plateau | Lord Hadrian Forge |
| 3 | Central Agricultural | Lady Elara Greenthorn |
| 4 | Eastern Forest | Baron Eldrix Zick |
| 5 | Southern Industrial | Countess Helena Markova |
| 6 | Western Trade Corridor | Count Ali Ababa |
| 7 | Cultural Heritage | Scholar-Lord Tomas Preservation |
| 8 | Military Frontier | General Viktor Ironshield |
Each governor oversees one slice of the 175 million km² Helmas territory, roughly 21 to 23 million km² per region, managing the century-long reconstruction and taxation framework that followed the Empire's intervention against the Great Evil.
Since the east sits too far from the capital in the west to be governed directly, Helmas instead follows a structure closer to what the Empire already uses across the Central Subcontinent's 18 Imperial-controlled regions: a form of localized governance, its own elected leadership, kings, queens, or whatever title a region prefers, all answering upward to the Empire and bound by Imperial law.
The one thing none of these regions could get is a standing military of their own. That responsibility stays with the Imperial Royal Military alone, at least for now. Soldiers will eventually be recruited locally, once the Empire pulls its own forces out after the full hundred years is over, but they'll still train under the same basic standards used at the heart of the Empire, with only a few minor regional variations allowed where a specific territory's needs call for it. In every other respect, defense remains the Empire's responsibility across all its territories, not the region's own. Once that transition happens, these forces will be known as the Regional Imperial Army of the Helmas SAR, each carrying a coat of arms proportional to its own region, distinguishing them clearly from one another.
Right now, each region relies on the Imperial Royal Military forces originally sent to Region 8, who were mandated to protect the territory as a whole. That force has since been evenly distributed out to every region instead.
Right now, each region's entire population also remains concentrated in a single settlement, which then serves as that region's capital. It's inefficient, admittedly. With so few people and so much unclaimed land, the Helmas regions can't yet make full use of the resources sitting within their own borders. Expansion will come, but slowly, and only as the population and infrastructure allow for it.
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How the Regions Have Grown
Each region grows in two ways: naturally, through births, and through resettlement, migrants and displaced Eastern Arkanians choosing to return or relocate into Helmas once they accept Imperial rule and formal citizenship. Natural growth runs somewhere between 2% and 5% a year, encouraged especially during the tax-free first decade, though never mandated. Family size stays a private matter, not an Imperial order. Resettlement runs separately, capped at 5% of a region's population per year regardless of demand, a limit that exists because the region's agricultural capacity and shattered infrastructure simply couldn't absorb newcomers any faster.
Together, those two channels give a theoretical combined ceiling of 10% growth a year, though in practice no region has ever sustained that pace for long. Pure natural growth tops out closer to 3.5% or 4% even under the best conditions, and a full decade of 10% combined growth has no real precedent outside short-lived frontier boomtowns.
What the Empire's own demographic planners expect instead is a tapering curve: growth runs closest to that theoretical ceiling in a region's earliest years, when fresh Imperial investment and pent-up resettlement demand both run highest, then eases back toward the natural-growth floor as available farmland and housing fill in and the pace of expansion gets throttled by whatever the recovering infrastructure can actually support.
That's exactly the pattern Helmas has followed since the project's first year. When the Partition began in 6853, Helmas started from a devastated survivor population rather than any meaningful fraction of its pre-war numbers, roughly 0.5% of each region's original population, regrouped under Imperial protection, totaling 1,075,000 people across all eight regions combined. Growth ran hottest in that first stretch and has cooled steadily since: 10% in the second year, then 9%, 7.5%, 6%, 4.5%, and 3.5% in the most recent year, carrying the total from that original 1,075,000 up to roughly 1,588,542 as of today, six years into the project.
Broken down by region, the numbers tell their own story about what each territory was built to become, and how far it still has left to go:
| Region | Territory (km²) | Pre-War Population | Year 1 Survivors (6853) | Current Population (6859) | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 22M | 29M | 145,000 | 214,268 | Maritime and Naval |
| 2 | 21M | 13M | 65,000 | 96,051 | Mining |
| 3 | 23M | 45M | 225,000 | 332,485 | Agriculture |
| 4 | 22M | 18M | 90,000 | 132,994 | Forestry |
| 5 | 21M | 50M | 250,000 | 369,428 | Industrial |
| 6 | 22M | 25M | 125,000 | 184,714 | Trade |
| 7 | 21M | 20M | 100,000 | 147,771 | Cultural |
| 8 | 23M | 15M | 75,000 | 110,828 | Military |
Taken together, that's 175 million km² and a pre-war population of 215 million reduced to just 1,075,000 survivors at the project's outset, a loss of roughly 99.5%.
Six years of steady, if slowing, growth has brought that number up to 1,588,542, still some 99.3% below what the region once held before the Great Evil ever touched it. It's real progress, but the numbers make plain just how much the east lost, and how long the road back will actually be.
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The Eastern Fleet Command
Region 8's military has since been distributed out to the other seven regions, roughly 150,000 personnel sent out from the western subcontinent and spread evenly across all eight regions.
Region 1's navy, meanwhile, has taken up patrol duty along the entire eastern coastline, wherever the Helmas territory meets the sea. That fleet currently runs 350,000 marines, sailors, and support staff, backed by 100 grand vessels of war and 200 smaller patrol vessels.
Grand Vessels of War — 100 ships, each 500 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 30 feet high, carrying 1,500 soldiers or marines, 500 support personnel, and 210 sailors apiece. Built for major naval engagements and projecting Imperial power along the coast and open sea.
Smaller Patrol Vessels — 200 ships, each 200 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 20 feet high, carrying 300 soldiers or marines, 200 support personnel, and 120 sailors apiece. Built for coastal and river patrol, and for responding quickly wherever trouble surfaces.
Between the two classes, the fleet's total shipboard capacity comes to 345,000 personnel, with another 5,000 held in active reserve on land, admiralty staff, logistics, base personnel, and everything else that keeps a fleet this size actually running.
It's a modest force compared to the Empire's true strength elsewhere, but it's only the beginning. The plan calls for a full million personnel and a thousand ships stationed here eventually, which is exactly why Region 1 was developed first. Not just to give the Empire a naval foothold, but to give that foothold somewhere capable of actually supplying and servicing a fleet that size, docks included. Once built out, it could also land troops directly to reinforce Region 8, currently the only region actively holding the land border, with marines helping secure it in the meantime. The full buildout is expected to take another twenty years.
At that eventual scale, the fleet would run 200 grand vessels of war and 800 smaller patrol vessels, a combined shipboard capacity of 938,000 personnel, with roughly 62,000 more in reserve, admiralty command, shipyards, intelligence, training, and coastal defense infrastructure supporting the whole operation from shore.
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Connecting the East: Portals and Highways
As part of the reconstruction, the Empire has ordered all eight Helmas regions to integrate their industries with one another instead of developing in isolation. Imperial engineers are already being sent out to build highways linking all eight regions together, the same connective approach the Empire has used everywhere else it's expanded. Each region will also receive its own Imperial Warp Portal, tying Helmas into the wider Imperial Warp Portal Network for the first time since the Partition of the Eastern Subcontinent.
Distance still sets a hard limit on how far any single jump can carry a traveler. Getting from the Imperial Capital to Helmas Reg takes a minimum of two jumps: first to a Central Subcontinent station, ideally one on the Central-East side, given how Helmas sits relative to the rest of the continent, then one final jump east into Helmas territory itself. It's the same multi-leg relay pattern the network already uses everywhere else, just extended a little further this time.
A New Class of Portal
The standard Warp Portal frame, fifty feet high and twenty feet wide, was never built to move a large crowd. It's a doorway, not a chamber, and even packed shoulder to shoulder, it tops out somewhere in the low hundreds of people per activation, nowhere close to what a military deployment or a mass resettlement effort actually needs.
That's where the Imperial Bulk Portal Transit Platform comes in, a different class of installation entirely. Where the standard frame is something you step through, the Bulk Transit Platform is a full 150-foot diameter circular floor you stand on, its edge ringed in the same light-absorbing, rune-covered material as a standard frame, glowing with that same pulsing blue light. The entire platform activates as one, moving everyone standing on it in a single jump, regulated at 2,500 passengers per activation, with a true hard maximum of 5,000.
That maximum isn't arbitrary either. The platform's floor works out to roughly 1,642 square meters of usable space. At a packed but organized standing density, close to three people per square meter, tight enough to feel like real mass transit, loose enough to leave room for a traveler's bag, that floor comfortably holds somewhere between 4,900 and 5,000 people, landing almost exactly on the platform's stated true maximum. The Bulk Portal Transit Platforms sit inside the same Imperial Garrisons as standard portals, sharing their security, screening, and the same protective mana bubble shield. Cargo, though, remains firmly out of scope. The technology moves people, not freight, so bulk goods still travel the old way, by highway and by river.
Powering the Jump
Each portal station, standard or bulk, draws its power from a bank of fifty Mana Battery Cells buried in bunkers beneath the garrison, physically separate from the platform floor above. Only ten of those fifty stay in regular rotation; the remaining forty sit in reserve, held back for emergencies or full military mobilization. Every cell recharges passively, continuously absorbing ambient mana even while sitting idle. A regulated jump drains a cell to half charge, moving 2,500 people, while a maximum jump drains it fully, moving the full 5,000.
The reason it costs this much energy in the first place traces back to the technology itself. Imperial Warp Portals, as of now, were reverse-engineered from something much older and considerably more advanced, and that reconstruction was never fully completed. Materializing a traveler between one point and another simply burns enormous energy as a result, a flaw baked into the design rather than a symptom of poor upkeep. Every jump gets billed against exactly how much energy it actually cost to move that jump's passengers, which is why smaller, everyday trips end up costing travelers far less than a full bulk deployment does.
Who Runs the Gate
Imperial Gatekeepers hold full discretionary authority over how their station's batteries get used, and the Empire has never standardized that discretion across stations. Left to their own judgment, most Gatekeepers run conservatively: half-drain jumps only, three per day, since fully cycling the reserve batteries takes real time and effort most Gatekeepers would rather not authorize unless ordered to.
That discretion only gets overridden during total mobilization, when direct Imperial Army orders compel a station to cycle through its reserve cells and run at full capacity, six to eight jumps in a single day. The Dragonguard, too, can override the normal chain of command here, their standing as the Emperor's own sword, spear, and shield granting them that authority and privilege over the gates.
Under regular operation, that comes to roughly 7,500 people moved per day. Under emergency mobilization, that number jumps to 30,000 to 40,000. The gap between the two isn't accidental. The system is built to run comfortably under its true ceiling by default, with that ceiling held in reserve for exactly the kind of crisis that would actually demand it.
A used cell needs six to eight hours to cool before it can fire again, driven by heat rather than charge level alone, though that same window doubles as recovery time, since the cell passively recaptures mana while it cools. Centuury's day runs 48 hours, split into a 30-hour stretch of daylight and 18 hours of darkness. Three regulated jumps fit comfortably within that window with room to spare. Six to eight emergency jumps push right up against the full 48 hours, which is exactly why that pace stays reserved for true emergencies rather than becoming the norm.
Each station keeps at least five Gatekeepers on duty at all times: a Captain of the Gatekeepers, who decides how many jumps run each day, and four assistants, each holding a unique key signature tied to their own mana, so that only they can activate it. Alongside them sits the Imperial Magical Engineering Corps' Magic Portal Division, responsible for keeping the whole system running, the portals themselves, the battery cells, and the mana-capture devices feeding them. Roughly twenty engineers are assigned per battery, with a full station's technical staff running somewhere between 100 and 200 people in total, servicing both the Warp Portals and the Bulk Portal Transit Platforms alike.