Magica Superior
The Reich is located on the Primary Realm in the Middle Lands of the Terra Magica/Luxor system - equivalent to Amber in a more standard ADRPG-based game. The Fatherland calls this world Magica Superior, and is located on the Eastern Continent of the Northern Hemisphere. Whereas the Kingdom of Sable itself has the aspect of 1920s England, the Reich is akin to Nazi Germany.
Magica Superior (RY 154) Return to Top
The Fatherland
The Fatherland is a huge country, more than 4,000 miles across, surrounded by a protective zone, known as the Sudetenland (population 200m), which effectively extends its borders by another 1,000 miles or thereabouts to both the east and the west. Beyond that, again, the Reich has conquered large swathes of territory in the neighbouring countries, and is fighting over much of the rest of the continent, with the exception of the Sable mountains, which are inaccessible to them.
The country is sufficiently large that it is split into ten Provinces, all of which also have their own regional capitals and councils (see Politics). The Sudetenland defensive zone is itself administered in three Military Governerships (East, South and West), and has its own capital at Hamburg (pop. 6m).
The Reich capital (the Reichshauptstadt) is Berlin (pop. 8m), roughly in the centre of the Fatherland.
The war between Sable and the Reich is spread across the Shadows of the Sable system, albeit that much of the struggle is well beyond the bounds of the Commonwealth. At some times it is more active than at others, but both the Reich and Sable have forces deep in Shadow who continue to fight the war, and on any given day there will be at least one battleground between them. There has never been any sign of an ending of hostilities between the two realms: a fact which has caused some concern and surprise on both sides. However, at the heart of the matter appears to be the inability to compromise between two such diametrically opposed systems.
That said, the only time the war seems to have come home to Magica Superior was in SY124, when the city of Danzig was destroyed utterly, with the loss of one million lives: the historians are still out on whether or not this was an intentional act of mass destruction on the part of Sable's forces, or a tragic accident.
Transport Around the Reich
As in Sable, the primary methods of private transport are horseback and horse-drawn vehicles. There are steam-driven cars on the road, although the vast majority of these are owned by Reich officials, the armed forces, and the powerful industrialists and landowners who support the regime. There are also a handful of other private cars, which do not appear to be steam driven. These are produced to order by Mahler Arbeitsgemeinschaft, under the Mercedes marque, and are mainly affordable by the very highest echelons of the Reich: the Imperial Family, the Party Chairman, the Reichsführer-SS and other such notables.
For public transport, there is an extensive steam railway network on both the Eastern and Western Continents. In the Reich and the Sudentenland, plus the Reich-dominated and disputed territories surrounding them, this network is state controlled (and yes, it does run on time). However, in the non-Reich territories on the Eastern Continent there are also privately-owned railways, and on the Western Continent, private railways predominate, in keeping with the capitalist ethics driving the three Western countries.
Within the major cities, there will normally also be either trams or omnibuses, both almost always steam-driven, rather than horse-drawn, as well as extensive local overland railway networks.
A recent addition to the Reich transport infrastructure system is the advent of access to the Aurellis Transportation System, a station for which
has been opened in Berlin, although it is currently an expensive and limited form of transport. The nascent Reich Pilots' Guild is run by Arndt
Friedemann, a former soldier who was recently appointed to establish a formal Reich Guild.
The final lap of luxury in transport is provided by zeppelins which ply the airways around the Fatherland and the occupied territories, as well as following the Shadow paths into the Aussenhandel Shadows. While not the fastest method of transport, the magically propelled dirigibles and their cruise-liner style passenger cabins, are a popular form of transport for those who wish to be 'seen'.