The Second Life chronicles of the Rookery Isles are the old world. This is what happened when those houses invaded ArcheAge, planted their banners on Nuia, Haranya, and Auroria, and started the game again on someone else's map.
Table of Contents
- The Short Version
- Two Worlds, Same Bones
- What Erenor Remembers
- What the Isles Remember
- The Mirror
- Why They Crossed
- The Storm Gates Open
- How the Realm Is Ruled
- The Partition: Every House Takes Land
- The Crown
- House Sunflare
- House Emberwave of Thaloria
- House Darkcliff of Marinia
- House Seaquill of Sylvaria
- House Dawnstar of Skjaldor
- House Sunpeak of Valoria
- House Skyrider of Drakoria
- House Mudae of Elaria
- House Sandstinger of Azura
- House Greenscale of Zandara
- What Was Not Granted
- How Land, Tax, and Steel Make It Real
- The Seats That Sit Empty
- On Rookery Isles
The Short Version
Rookery Isles did not spawn into ArcheAge as a reskin. The houses came through the Storm Gates as an invading court, and they took the world the way a hungry kingdom takes a neighbor: by banner, by harvest, by port, and by blood.
Ashley Love, the Eternal Phoenix, and Trystane Love, the Eternal Tempest, sit above every mortal office. They do not play the daily game. They watch it. Beneath them the Regent governs the new world from Marianople, the Hand guards it and commands House Sunflare, and every Prince holds a bloc of real ArcheAge zones for their house. Lose the zone in open world war and you lose the tax. Keep it and you feed knights, spies, and the next campaign.
That is the whole loop. Game of Thrones at court. ArcheAge in the field. Same houses you already know from the Second Life realm, planted on Nuia, Haranya, and Auroria.
The rest of this article is the why, the comparison to Erenor's own gods, and the land grant for every house.
Two Worlds, Same Bones
The Second Life chronicles and ArcheAge's Erenor were never written as one book. They rhyme anyway.
Both worlds begin with a garden of raw magic and a mother source that mortals were not meant to hold. Both worlds produce gods who used to be people. Both worlds split into a west and an east after a catastrophe in the north. Both worlds have fae who do not answer to mortal courts. Both worlds have a burned homeland that everyone still wants.
The difference is what they did with the lesson.
In Erenor, twelve companions walked into the Garden, came back as gods, and tore Auroria apart. Nui opened a gate through the Hereafter so the survivors could flee. Two thousand years later the children of that flight are still fighting each other on Nuia and Haranya, and Auroria is a lawless grave they have only just been allowed to loot.
In the Rookery Isles, a dragon emperor named Rhaenor Mudae tried the same trick with fire instead of godhood. Ten years of burning. Forty seven cities gone. A third of the living dead. Then two Celestials descended, killed the tyrant, and built a court that was designed so no single mortal could ever become that again.
Three years later the Isles were still starving on ash. The veil at the Mystic's Vale went thin. The Storm Gates, which had always faced inward to keep the Isles, turned around.
On the other side was Erenor: a world whose own gods had already failed, sitting on harvests the Isles no longer had.
The Celestials did not ask permission.
What Erenor Remembers
This is canonical ArcheAge, the world the houses walked into. Rookery does not rewrite it. The Claim sits on top of it.
The Garden. The mother goddess Thiol made Erenor by pouring magic out of a place called the Garden, the navel of the world, the birthplace of magic. Faeries ruled that Garden. Thiol condemned them. Mortals spent ages trying to find the source.
The twelve. Roughly five hundred years before the Exodus, twelve companions left the Great Library of Delphinad, capital of Auroria, and found the Garden. They were gone for centuries. They came back wearing the faces of gods. Gene Evernight became Kyrios, god of destruction. Eanna Nimush became Nui, goddess of the Hereafter. Others merged with Shatigon, Haje, Tahyang, and the rest of the old pantheon. They had the power of children holding a forge.
The Fall. Kyrios's war unmade Auroria. Nui's last act was a sacrifice: she opened a gate through death itself so the living could walk the Hereafter and come out the other side. West, they named the new land Nuia after her. East, the defeated settled Haranya. The original continent was abandoned. Two thousand years of faction war followed. Elves, Nuians, and Dwarves on the west. Harani, Firran, and Warborn on the east. Auroria sealed, then reopened as a prize.
What Erenor is now. Three continents and the lawless sea between them. Nuia and Haranya still hate each other on a timer. Auroria is permanently free PvP. Archeum is crystallized divine power lying in the dirt. The old gods are memory, cult, and weapon. Nobody is coming to save this world. They already had their chance.
For the real zone list, level bands, and peace or war flags, read the World Atlas. This article is the story of who claims those zones, not a second atlas.
What the Isles Remember
This is the Second Life canon, carried over unchanged. It is the old world the houses came from.
Origin. The Rookery Isles rose from the Eternal Sea in the wake of a phoenix. Magic sat in the ground the way water sits in a well. Dragons were not livestock. They were the weather. The Eternal Flame still burns in Phoenixheart. The Storm Gates wreathed the entrance in perpetual storm. The Mystic's Vale was the place the veil between worlds went thin.
The Firstborn. House Dawnstar and House Emberwave are the oldest mortal bloodlines. They arrived on the same fleet from lands "now lost to history," then split: one house took green valleys, the other took highland stone. That crossing has a name in their own mouths. They call it the Old Crossing. They have never agreed on where they crossed from.
House Mudae. Dragon elves, not native. Their ancestors fled a Cataclysm that destroyed a dragon empire across the sea, arrived with wyrms and a vow: shield, not sword. For centuries they kept it. Then Rhaenor Mudae asked the question that ends empires: why protect when we could rule?
The Dark Age. Ten years. Dragon Emperor. The Golden Fields of Thaloria burned into the Ashen Plains. Frosthold of Skjaldor held three years and fell anyway. Half of Marinia's fleet died in one night. Azura raised a barrier and left everyone outside it to burn. Skyrider druids were forced into breeding horrors. Resistance was slow and mostly fatal.
The Celestials. Ashley Love, the Eternal Phoenix, celestial in origin, older than the Isles. Trystane Love, the Eternal Tempest, called the Elemental King in the old world, a being of primordial chaos who learned mortality the long way. Archangel Cedric Gabriel, the Silent Guardian. They united the houses, took Dragonspine, and ended Rhaenor. Prince Liram Mudae fought his own father and lost an eye doing it. House Mudae was shattered, then controversially reinstated.
The new order, three years old. For most of history the Isles had no central government. Nations ruled themselves. After the fire, Ashley and Trystane built a court that had never existed: Celestials above, a mortal Regent to govern, a Hand to guard, a Small Council to elect and advise, House Sunflare as the only force neither Prince nor Regent can command. The point of the machine is that no one can become Rhaenor again.
The old world is still standing. Suncoast still has a throne. The war there ended three years ago. The invasion of Erenor is not a replacement of that history. It is what a starving, newly unified realm does when it finds a door.
Read the old world house pages at Second Life Houses, the Timeline, and the Celestial Court.
The Mirror
Chroniclers in both worlds argue about whether this is coincidence, prophecy, or a door that has opened before. The Celestials have not settled the argument. That is deliberate.
| The Isles | Erenor |
|---|---|
| The Eternal Flame, a phoenix that made the land | Thiol's Garden, the birthplace of magic |
| The Storm Gates and the Mystic's Vale | Nui's gate through the Hereafter |
| Rhaenor Mudae, a mortal who tried to become a god of fire | Gene Evernight / Kyrios, a mortal who became the god of destruction |
| Ashley, Eternal Phoenix: rebirth, restraint, the end of night | Nui: death, the Hereafter, the sacrifice that saved a people |
| Trystane, Eternal Tempest: storm, trial, memory of every debt | Tahyang the wind, Dahuta the sea and change; the weather that does not forgive |
| Solara in the west, Galendor in the east | Nuia in the west, Haranya in the east |
| Dragonspine ruined, Elaria in shame | Auroria abandoned, Delphinad a library of ghosts |
| The Fae Courts, Summer and Winter, outside mortal law | The condemned Faeries of the Garden, the Queen of Ynys |
| Ten years of dragon fire | The Final War and the Great Migration |
| Three years of a new court | Two thousand years of Nuian against Harani |
| House bloodline magic, dragon bonds, ley lines | Archeum, Hiram relics, crystallized god stuff in the soil |
| A court built so no mortal holds unchecked power | A world whose gods held too much and used it |
The most dangerous rhyme is this: Erenor already had its Rhaenor, and he won. Kyrios got to finish the job. The survivors have been living in the wreckage for two millennia, still fighting the wrong war. The Rookery houses look at Nuia and Haranya the way a veteran looks at two street gangs arguing over a burned city. They do not pick a faction. They take the map.
Some Firstborn priests say the Old Crossing was Nui's third gate: not west, not east, but through storm into the Eternal Sea. Some Mudae exiles say their Cataclysm was Auroria. If either is true, the Claim is not an invasion. It is a homecoming with swords. If neither is true, it is conquest, and the Celestials are a foreign pantheon walking into a graveyard that already has gods in it.
Court doctrine is simpler than either story: the Isles need land, Erenor has land, and the houses will hold what they can keep.
Why They Crossed
The official reason is mercy. The unofficial reason is hunger. Both are true.
Thaloria's breadbasket is still ash. Skjaldor's walls are still black. Marinia is still counting ships that will never come home. Children born after the war are already three years old and they have never seen the Golden Fields, because the Golden Fields are a grave. A unified court sitting on a burned archipelago is not a triumph. It is a problem with a crown on it.
The Celestials could have fed the Isles by miracle. They did not. Same rule as always: mortals solve mortal problems. Finding a second world full of unclaimed harvest, empty Aurorian castles, and two factions too busy killing each other to notice a third banner, that counts as a mortal problem.
There is a celestial reason too, and it is not kind. Ashley and Trystane watched Rhaenor for ten years and then built a machine to make sure it never happens again. Then they opened a door onto a world where it already happened, where the god of destruction got all the way through the job, and where the children of the survivors are still reenacting the war. Leaving that door shut would have been a choice. They did not make it.
So the Claim is both things at once: a land grab by starving houses, and a second test of the court they built. If the machine works, Erenor gets a Regent, a Hand, and princes who can be pulled down. If the machine fails, this world gets another Kyrios, and this time the Celestials will have walked him in.
The Storm Gates Open
The crossing was not a fleet in the mortal sense. The Storm Gates had always faced the Eternal Sea. When the veil tore, they faced through.
What came out on the Erenor side did not arrive in one place. That is the insult. A normal invasion hits a beach. This one hit the political map.
- The Crown stepped into both capitals at once: Marianople on Nuia, Solis Headlands on Haranya. A court that sits one faction's throne is a faction. A court that sits both is a claim on the world.
- Each house was granted the land that rhymed with the nation it had been. Breadbasket to breadbasket. Desert to desert. Mountain to mountain. Port to sea. The Partition below is that grant, zone by zone, as it stands in the realm.
- House Sunflare did not take a palace. They took the war zones. Someone has to hold the line while princes argue about wine.
- The Fae Courts took nothing. They were already here. The Garden was theirs before Thiol condemned them, and they do not ask Celestials for permission to walk their own rooms.
- Pirates were not granted a seat. They took Stormraw Sound the way pirates take anything, by being there first and killing the argument.
Nuian and Harani garrisons still fly their old colors. The peace and war timers still tick. The engine of Erenor did not convert to the Rookery overnight. What changed is who the land answers to when the tax is counted, when a Prince calls banners, and when a zone changes hands.
The locals call it occupation. The houses call it the Claim. The Celestials call it Tuesday.
How the Realm Is Ruled
This is the Game of Thrones layer. It is the same machine the Celestials built after Rhaenor, transplanted onto Erenor so the same failure cannot happen twice. Every piece checks every other piece. The PvP is what happens when the checking is done with steel.
The ladder
1. The Celestials. Ashley Love, the Eternal Phoenix. Trystane Love, the Eternal Tempest. Absolute authority, almost never used. They intervene for existential threats, cosmic law, and houses falling into the kind of darkness that ate Rhaenor. Everything else is mortal business: the scheming, the marriages, the knives, the zone fights. That is the point. 2. The Regent. Highest mortal office in the new world. Seat: Marianople. Governs policy, mediates house disputes, commands campaigns, controls trade, distributes Crown resources. Cannot command the Hand. Cannot direct House Sunflare. Raised by Council politics and celestial anointing; a vote of no confidence still has to be accepted by the Throne. 3. The Hand. Appointed by the Celestials, answerable only to them. Runs court. Speaks with celestial voice on celestial matters. Commands House Sunflare and no one else does. Does not set tax policy. Does not rule the realm. The Regent governs. The Hand guards. When they agree, the world moves. When they do not, the game is on. 4. The Realm Council. Marshal, Spymaster, Seneschal, Grand Seer, Lord Treasurer, Lord Chancellor, Lord Admiral, Court Herald. These seats elect, advise, and make a Regent possible. Houses will kill (politely, in public) to place a friend in one of them. 5. The Prince (or Princess) of each House. Head of house. Guild General in the engine. Rules the house, appoints every title beneath, holds the land grant, spends the treasury. This is the person your knights actually die for. 6. Royal Consort, High Council, Counts, Barons, Knights. The rest of the feudal machine. Consort holds the house when the Prince is in the field. Marshal, Treasurer, Chamberlain, Spymaster, Magister sit the house council. Counts hold zones. Knights draw salary from the tax those zones produce.
Archangel Cedric Gabriel is not on the ladder. He is the reason the ladder still has a top. If you need him explained, you have already made a mistake.
The two pillars
The genius of the system, if it can be called genius and not simply two gods who have met mortals, is the split.
- The Regent has the realm and not the royal guard.
- The Hand has the royal guard and not the realm.
- The Council makes a Regent and serves at celestial pleasure.
- The Princes hold land that can be taken.
- The Celestials could end any of this before breakfast, and everyone knows they would rather watch you try.
No single house can become the Dragon Emperor. They can only become the house that almost did, which is where the stories live.
How this maps to the guild window
ArcheAge only has five guild ranks. Rookery relabels them. The engine role is what actually has permissions. The title is the roleplay. Full mechanical detail lives in Guild System and Taxes.
| Engine role | Crown | A princely house | What it actually does |
|---|---|---|---|
| General | Eternal Phoenix | Prince of the House | Full control. Treasury, policy, promote, remove. |
| Commander | The Regent | Royal Consort | Portal access. Invite and expel. |
| Officer | The Hand | High Council | Invite. |
| Member | Crown Council | Knight | Sworn. Eligible for salary. |
| Apprentice | Crown Citizen | House Resident | Newest. Full benefits, no command. |
You do not found a guild on Rookery. You join a House. Switching is allowed and treated as what it is: changing your banner in a war.
The Partition: Every House Takes Land
The grant is not flavor text. It is data/houses.json, the same file the website, the atlas overlays, and the tax attribution all read. When a zone is listed under a house, that house takes the housing tax generated there. When the Crown moves a zone after war or treaty, future tax follows the new banner. Old treasury stays with the loser. Losing land cuts income. It does not seize savings.
The rhyme of the Partition is always the same: take the land that looks like home, then make it pay.
What follows is the in world justification for each grant. Zone names are real ArcheAge 3.0 geography. Nation names (Suncoast, Thaloria, Skjaldor) are Rookery canon. You will not find Thaloria on the in game map. You will find Two Crowns, and Emberwave holds it.
The Crown
Old world: Suncoast. Desert coastal capital. Radiant Palace. Celestial Throne above, Regent's Court below. Motto of the city: Rebirth and Eternity.
The grant: Marianople, Solis Headlands, Mirage Isle.
A lesser court would have picked a side. Nuia has Marianople. Haranya has the Solis Headlands. The Crown took both, plus the island in between, and called it the new Suncoast. The Regent's seat is Marianople because someone has to sit where the Nuians already understood the word capital. Solis Headlands is the matching insult on the other continent: your starter coast is now a celestial province. Mirage Isle is the water garden, the place you cannot march an army without a fleet, which is the point.
The Nuian Alliance and the Haranya Alliance still think this is their war. The Crown is willing to let them think that right up until the tribute is late.
Head of house: the Regent (mortal). The Celestials do not hold a princely seat. They hold the sky.
House Sunflare
Old world: not a nation, not a bloodline. A choice. Royal Guard and Adventurer's Guild. Motto: Merit Over Bloodline. Commanded only by the Hand.
The grant: Halcyona, Mistmerrow, Lilyut Hills.
Sunflare does not take palaces. Palaces are where princes get fat. Halcyona is Nuia's great contested war zone. Mistmerrow is Auroria's war event ground, lawless, after the level cap, the kind of place a "heroes guild" either earns the name or stops using it. Lilyut Hills is the western proving ground, close enough to the Nuian start that new blood can find the banner before they find a grave.
If you want to be a knight without being someone's cousin, this is the house. If you want land to farm in peace, pick almost any other banner. Sunflare's income is the tax of battlefields. That is not an accident.
Head of house: the Hand.
House Emberwave of Thaloria
Old world: Firstborn. Breadbasket. Gryphon riding knights. Old money. Motto: A Knight Always Pays His Debts. The Golden Fields are now the Ashen Plains. They remember every sack of grain the fire ate.
The grant: Two Crowns, Dewstone Plains, White Arden, Aubre Cradle.
This is the cruelest rhyme on the map, and Emberwave knows it.
White Arden is where Nui's survivors crawled out of the Hereafter and named a continent after the goddess who died to get them there. Emberwave takes the land of first breath as if it were a vacant farm. Two Crowns is Nuia's heartland castle country. Dewstone Plains is grain. Aubre Cradle is the contested edge of that grain. Thaloria lost a breadbasket. It was given someone else's.
They will feed the realm. They will send gryphons. They will collect. House Darkcliff exists because Emberwave once taught a pack of sailors how to be a noble house; that debt is still on the books, and Erenor's seas are a fine place to keep collecting it. Other houses call them old fashioned. Other houses eat.
Head of house: Prince of Thaloria.
House Darkcliff of Marinia
Old world: the trade house. Every route ran through their ports. They sold to the resistance and to the tyrant, and when the war ended everyone owed them. Motto: Fortune Favors the Bold.
The grant: Halcyona Gulf, Shattered Sea, Arcadian Sea, Ynystere.
Gold moves on water. Darkcliff took the water.
The Arcadian Sea is the crossing between continents. The Halcyona Gulf and the Shattered Sea are the approaches. Ynystere is the high level contested prize on the Haranya side, a place you only hold if you can supply it by ship. During the old war they were called opportunists. The word they use is survivors. A house that traded with both sides of a dragon war is not going to develop a conscience about Nuian against Harani.
If your pack is on the ocean, you are in their conversation whether you joined their house or not.
Head of house: Prince of Marinia.
House Seaquill of Sylvaria
Old world: ancient elves. Trees that remember fallen empires. Healers, scholars, archers. They were old when House Mudae first rose. Motto: Wisdom Through the Ages.
The grant: Gweonid Forest, Ancient Ezna, Falcorth Plains.
Elves do not recognize a continent the way humans do. Gweonid is Nuia's forest. Falcorth is Haranya's. Ancient Ezna is the memory in between. Seaquill took all three because a people who measure time in empires do not pick a faction war that is two thousand years old and call it relevant.
They will heal you. They will remember what you did. Those are not the same kindness.
Head of house: Prince of Sylvaria.
House Dawnstar of Skjaldor
Old world: Firstborn of the hard ground. Frosthold. Dawnstar steel. Five (now eight) vassal houses. Never bent the knee to Rhaenor, and paid for it in a three year siege and a city of scars. Motto: Strength Through Endurance. They united with Emberwave as the Horde of the North because the Celestials made them. It won the war. It was deeply uncomfortable.
The grant: Miroir Tundra, Karkasse Ridgelands, Airain Rock.
They took the cold again. Of course they did.
Miroir Tundra is the far west ice. Airain Rock is contested stone. Karkasse Ridgelands is the Nuian zone that is also flagged lawless, pirate rules, the exception everyone is told to treat like Auroria. Dawnstar did not want a garden. Dawnstar wants ground that fights back, ore that becomes steel, and a border that lets them remember they are still at war with anyone who flew a dragon over Frosthold.
Skjaldor debates nothing about House Mudae's reinstatement. Their dead are too recent. Their grant puts them on the kind of map where that memory can be spent.
Head of house: Prince of Skjaldor.
House Sunpeak of Valoria
Old world: industrial republic. Ironclad warships, steam, foundries. Progress that other houses call a crime against the trees. Motto: The World Must Evolve to Survive.
The grant: Solzreed Peninsula, Hellswamp, Sunspeck Sea, Boiling Sea.
Solzreed is Nuia's starter peninsula, which means it is also a shipyard, a harbor, and the first thing a western adventurer sees. Sunpeak took the tutorial and turned it into a factory. Hellswamp is the dirty inland foundry. The Sunspeck and the Boiling Sea are the steam and the testing range. While Dawnstar forges by tradition and Seaquill objects on principle, Sunpeak builds the hull that makes the objection irrelevant.
They will strip a forest to plate a warship and call it the survival of the realm. On a server where naval combat is lawless at all times, that argument has a body count.
Head of house: Prince of Valoria.
House Skyrider of Drakoria
Old world: druidic beastmasters. Hippogriffs, wyverns, manticores, the high places. Forced, under Rhaenor, to help twist dragons into things that should not exist. Some want redemption. Some call it survival. Motto: Nature's Voice, Blood on Our Hands.
The grant: Mistsong Summit, Tigerspine Mountains, Rokhala Mountains.
The roof of Erenor. Mistsong on Auroria, Tigerspine and Rokhala on Haranya. Aeries, passes, the kind of land you hold with wings or you do not hold. Skyrider was given the sky House Mudae used to own, which is a political sentence as much as a geographic one. The dragon elves lost the air. The beastmasters who were conscripted to desecrate it were given the mountains to keep.
Bring a griffon. Bring a conscience if you have one left. The peaks do not care which.
Head of house: Prince of Drakoria.
House Mudae of Elaria
Old world: fallen house, controversially reinstated. Dragon elves. Motto: Fire and Blood, Shield Not Sword. Prince Liram wears the scar of the fight with his father. Most of the Isles would rather see the name die. The Celestials said no.
The grant: Silent Forest, Ahnimar, Mahadevi, Rookborne Basin.
They did not get the sky. They got the haunted ground.
Silent Forest is Haranya's quiet wood, the kind of place that remembers. Mahadevi is jungle and temple. Ahnimar is the far west contested edge of Nuia. Rookborne Basin already had the Rook in its name before the houses arrived, which either means the map was waiting for them or the Celestials have a sense of humor. Sacred Daru ground, dragon touched woods, a basin that sounds like a homecoming. A house in shame was given land that can prove a shield, or prove a sword, and everyone will be watching to see which.
Dawnstar will not forgive them for holding anything. That is not a secret. That is the game.
Head of house: Prince of Elaria.
House Sandstinger of Azura
Old world: Magi Council. Ley lines, prophecy, possible Fae blood. They raised a barrier in the war and let the outside burn. They do not apologize for surviving. Motto: Knowledge is Power Eternal.
The grant: Sanddeep, Sunbite Wilds, Perinoor Ruins, Golden Ruins, Marcala.
Every sand locked academy and every ruin that still hums. Sanddeep on Nuia, Sunbite and Perinoor on Haranya, Golden Ruins and Marcala on Auroria. Five seats, two continents, and the endgame desert. The Magi Council convenes wherever the old world's magic pooled and died, because that is where you study a god wound without asking the god.
They will trade you a prophecy. Read the contract. The house elf oaths from the old world followed them through the Gates, and Erenor has opinions about that which Sandstinger does not share.
Head of house: Prince of Azura.
House Greenscale of Zandara
Old world: the festival nation. Bards, courtesans, a Senate that votes as a bloc in Regent elections. They played both sides of the war and walked out owed more favors than anyone. Motto: Joy and Influence.
The grant: Villanelle, Calmlands, Arcum Iris, Windscour Savannah, Hasla.
Beauty, wine, and the one zone nobody can avoid.
Arcum Iris is a Harani start. Villanelle is the pretty interior. Windscour is the savannah people cross whether they want to or not. Calmlands is Auroria with a softer name than it deserves. Hasla is the classic gear grind, contested and lawless, the place you go when you need power and are willing to bleed for it. Greenscale took the festival and the grind in the same breath, because influence is a room that everyone has to walk through.
They will host you. They will hear you. They will vote as one when the Regent's seat is on the table. Underestimate the dancers at your own funeral.
Head of house: Prince of Zandara.
What Was Not Granted
The Violent Maelstrom sits in the realm files as Unassigned / Wild. No Prince. No tribute. The storm keeps it. If you want a place the court does not pretend to own, that is the honest one.
Stormraw Sound and Growlgate Isle are pirate home waters in the base game and they stay that way. The Pirates are the outlaw house in the guild article: no Prince, no tribute to the Crown, a banner you join when you are done kneeling. Darkcliff will tell you the sea is theirs. The pirates will tell Darkcliff to come collect.
The Fae Courts took no zone in the Partition. Summer and Winter do not hold scarecrows. They hold bargains. In Erenor the Garden's fae were condemned by Thiol herself; in the Isles the Courts already lived outside mortal law and acknowledged the Celestials the way a cat acknowledges furniture. They are the same kind of problem. Be careful what you wish for. Be careful what you promise. A Fae debt will outlast the Prince who signed it and the house that inherited it.
Cinderstone Moor, Diamond Shores, Sungold Fields, Reedwind, Heedmar, Nuimari, Exeloch, Epherium, and a handful of other zones are not in the current grant. That is not an oversight you should assume is permanent. Unassigned land on a map like this is an invitation. Houses that want more than they were given know where to look. Auroria in particular was the original homeland of Erenor. Leaving pieces of it unbranded is how you keep the princes hungry.
How Land, Tax, and Steel Make It Real
The lore is the banner. The loop is the game.
1. You join a House. One guild per character. The Prince (or an officer) invites you. Your name sits under that banner. 2. You live on the map. Build, farm, run packs, fight. Housing tax is still the base game copper and certificate system. Rookery does not change those numbers. See Housing and Land. 3. The zone decides who gets paid. Whatever house currently controls the zone is credited with that tax in the realm treasury. Build in a rival's grant and you are funding them. Some people do that on purpose: merchants, spies, relatives by marriage, idiots. 4. Tribute goes up. A Crown set percentage of each house's take flows to the Celestials' purse as royal tribute. The Crown does not pay tribute to itself. The rate is a political weapon, not a physics constant. 5. Princes spend it. Knight salaries, noble stipends, mercenary contracts, festivals, the next war. Pay arrives as in game mail. A Prince who loots the treasury and runs is making a roleplay choice with a ledger attached. 6. Land moves. Open world war, treaty, or storyline. When a zone changes house, future tax follows the new banner. Past savings do not. Full rules in Guild System and Taxes. 7. The fighting has a geography. Faction protected zones stay "safe" in the engine. Contested zones flip on a peace and war timer. All of Auroria and every open sea are lawless all the time. The Partition did not turn Halcyona into a picnic. It turned Halcyona into Sunflare's picnic, with knives. See PvP and Arenas.
Court is where you scheme for the Regent, the Hand's favor, a Council seat, a marriage, a debt. The field is where you take a zone away from a Prince who thought the grant was permanent. Both are the same war. One of them just has better wine.
The Seats That Sit Empty
The old world still has its offices. Suncoast still knows how to say Regent. The Second Life chronicles even name a sitting court: Beric Emberwave as Regent, Kiyana Amin as Hand. That court did not automatically extend through the Gates.
The new world's mortal seats opened empty.
That is the first crisis of the Claim, and it is the one the Celestials will not solve for you. Does Beric's writ run in Marianople, or only in Suncoast? Does the Hand of the old world command Sunflare in Halcyona, or does Erenor require its own Hand? Can one mortal hold both boards, or is that how you accidentally build a Dragon Emperor with extra steps?
Every ambitious lord in the Partition has an answer that puts them closer to Marianople. Every cautious one has an answer that keeps the two worlds' courts from collapsing into a single throat. The Celestials will anoint whoever the game produces. They will not play it for you.
Until a name sits those chairs, the houses hold their grants the way Firstborn held the original Isles: by presence, by steel, and by the hope that the neighbors are hungrier than they are organized.
The war in the old world is over. The fire there has faded. The embers that blew through the Storm Gates are this. What rises on Nuia, Haranya, and Auroria is the next chapter of the same houses, on a board that already knew how to kill gods.
Welcome to the Claim. Pick a banner. Try to keep it.
On Rookery Isles
This article is Rookery realm canon for the ArcheAge 3.0 server. It does two jobs at once and it is honest about both.
- The Second Life chronicles are the old world. House names, mottos, the Great War, Rhaenor, the Celestials, the Regent and the Hand as a split pillar, the Fae Courts: all of that is already written in the SL section and is not being replaced. This article is the sequel, not a rewrite.
- Erenor's lore is left standing. Thiol, the Garden, the twelve companions, Kyrios, Nui's sacrifice, the Exodus, Nuia, Haranya, Auroria: that is ArcheAge. Rookery does not claim those gods were secretly Ashley. The Claim is an invasion into that history.
- The land grants are live data. House to zone mapping is maintained in the realm CMS (
data/houses.json) and rendered on Houses and the World Atlas. If a grant on this page disagrees with those two, those two win, and this page should be updated. - The tax and guild rules are the other article. Copper tax, heavy tax, Lord's Coin, royal tribute, salaries: Guild System and Taxes. Do not quote a tribute percentage from memory. It is a Crown setting.
- Nation names are not zone names. You will not find Suncoast, Thaloria, or Skjaldor in the client. You will find Marianople, Two Crowns, and Miroir Tundra. Use the atlas names to travel. Use the house names to swear.