> [!infobox|wikipedia] > # Seraphon > [![[Seraphon_small.webp|cover hsmall]]](Seraphon.webp) > ###### Location Information > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Type | Continent | > World | [[Elandis\|Elandis]] | > Defining Feature | The oldest cultures of the world, and the seat of its arcane authority | > ###### Status > Attribute | Details | > ---|---| > Status | Active | Seraphon is the smaller northern continent of [[Elandis]] — a cold land of long winters that holds the oldest surviving cultures in the world and, with them, the world's arcane heart. Set further north than any of the other three continents, and furthest of all from the epicentre of [[The Shattering]], it was the slowest place on Elandis to forget the age that came before. Old traditions endure here that the rest of the world has abandoned, old faiths still hold ground that the [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]] never fully claimed, and one of Seraphon's cities draws the most powerful mages in the world to the institution that, alone among the powers of Elandis, tries to govern magic itself. ## Geography & Landscape Seraphon lies in the far north of [[Elandis]], the northernmost and smallest of the four continents. Its high latitude defines it: the winters here are long and hard, far longer than those of the lands to the south, and the rhythm of life is set by the cold. It is a continent of northern country — snowbound for much of the year, its character shaped by endurance and age rather than abundance. Its position also sets it apart from the rest of the world's history. Of all the inhabited continents, Seraphon sits furthest from [[Aetheris]] and the epicentre of the Shattering, and it shows: this is the least-scarred and most continuous land on Elandis, where the thread back to the deep past was never fully cut. ## History Seraphon's claim is age. Its peoples are reckoned the oldest on Elandis — cultures whose traditions reach back furthest of any in the world, in some cases to before [[The Shattering]] itself. Where the rest of Elandis was knocked back to nothing by the Shattering and the [[Chaos Wars]] and rebuilt from the wreckage with its history lost, Seraphon's distance from the catastrophe let more survive. The continuity is never complete — no part of the world escaped the Chaos Wars entirely — but on Seraphon the past lies closer to the surface than anywhere else, preserved in cultures old enough to remember fragments the rest of the world forgot. ## Peoples & Powers Seraphon's peoples are old, and so are their gods. The faith of the [[The Pantheon|Seven Divines]], near-universal across the rest of Elandis, has shallower roots here. Older cults that the wider world has long since abandoned still hold ground on the northern continent, and some of Seraphon's most enduring communities openly worship the old gods rather than the Seven — a practice regarded elsewhere as a forgotten relic, but living tradition here. The continent's other great power is arcane. Somewhere on Seraphon stands a city that draws the most gifted and powerful mages in the world, and seated there is an institution of global reach: a body that seeks to be the regulating force on the practice of magic across all four continents. It is the closest thing Elandis has to a single authority over the arcane, and its writ — in ambition, at least — runs far beyond Seraphon's shores. ## Significance Seraphon is the continent where Elandis comes closest to remembering itself. Its oldest cultures preserve fragments of the world before the Shattering that nowhere else retains; its surviving old-god worship keeps alive a faith the rest of the world has buried; and its arcane institution makes it the one place from which anyone attempts to hold the practice of magic to a single standard. For a world defined by how much it has forgotten, Seraphon is where the most was kept. ## Trivia - Seraphon is the continent least changed by the Shattering and the Chaos Wars — a distinction owed less to any strength of its own than to the simple accident of sitting furthest away from where it all began.