From Isha, I have pieced together a rough picture of pale-aelvar society, the Vael’sarí, and I almost wish I had not. Their order is a kind of weaponized hierarchy. At the summit stands the Night Sovereign, their Emperor, a nigh-immortal priest-king, believed to be chosen directly by Du’Tariál and obeyed as both monarch and high priest. Beneath them are the great bloodlines, the High Houses, old warrior-mage clans who rule fortress-cities and spend their days in intrigue, proxy wars, and the hiring of assassins.
The Children of Shadow themselves stands somewhat aside from the formal castes: assassins taken young, trained relentlessly, and permitted to move above noble law so long as they serve the Goddess’s will; Isha believes the assassins are from where the current Night Sovereign originated from. Below these come scholars and ritualists, who read omens, conduct blood rites, and guard the secrets of “soul-binding” (creation of mages) and “curses;” then soldiers and enforcers, the mailed fist that keeps the rest in line; then the ordinary artisans, farmers, and laborers, “protected” only insofar as they remain useful and are not chosen as offerings.
At the base of it all lie thralls: slaves, mostly human and other non-pale-aelvar. Spent on labor, spectacle, or worse: ritual sacrifice. Isha would not tell me precisely where in this structure she once stood, only that she grew up in an orphanage (from her tone it seemed like no orphanage I could imagine) and that her skill with aether and a sword were the sole reasons she survived as long as she did.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
