Tales of the Dispute

Imperial Ulama

The network of universities and scholarly communities across the Empire Immemorial. The Ulama encompasses everything from vast universities in major cities, to monastic scholarly communities in obscure corners of the world.

The countless number of scholars of the Ulama study every conceivable subject. There are scholars who study matters so arcane, they are comprehensible only to themselves.

Academic disputes between the scholars of rival philosophical and historical theories can be fierce. Some rivalries have even descended into violence, with assassinations and campaigns of terrorism.

One such rivalry, a debate over the concept of Free Will, caused a brief civil war in an imperial city, causing it to be reduced to rubble. Both groups of philosophical scholars were later exterminated by Imperial Janissaries, and debates over Free Will are now forbidden across the Empire.

The bureaucracy of the Ulama is labyrinthine, but it is well funded. Many scholarly societies (or “houses”) can hire people to search out information and make discoveries. Many have started organizing expeditions in the Dispute.

House of Fatality

A somewhat disreputable scholarly organization in the Imperial Ulama. They are a group of scholars fascinated with death. They study the process of death itself, and attempt to discover what lies beyond, if anything.

It's known they experiment with various drugs and sorceries to temporarily end their lives, or as they put it: “sail forth from the shores of mortality”

Sometimes their necro-scholars fail to return to life. More rarely, they return, but bring back something with them.

The Explorers Valiant

In the popular mind, they are a guild of bold explorers going forth into the Dispute in search of wealth and glory. They've hired many artists and poets to laud their many supposed adventures.

In reality, they're a bit of a scam. They hire lowly adventurers as “apprentices”, and send them off into the Dispute on “training missions”. If the apprentices come back, the Valiant take the bulk of the valuables they find, and take all the credit for any discoveries they make. Any survivors will be sent out again with the promise of becoming full members of the Explorers Valiant.

This will never happen. The apprentices are merely guinea pigs used to test the safety of new routes into the Dispute.