Over the last twenty years, fourteen small but independent kingdoms had banded together to form one giant empire of semi-autonomous nations, to mount a better defense against the vampire courts. The royals of the house of Ashrai, the first to come up with the idea, served as Aluria’s figureheads, but the body politic was represented well enough at the Queen’s Council, where their most important lords converged at the start of each season like the world’s best-dressed mob.
