The Marcati are descendants of the ancient Marcians who long ago crossed the treacherous Sea of Beasts to settle the cold and wind-beaten northern isles of Albain. Hardened by isolation and unforgiving seas, they forged a distinct culture of their own while still preserving much of their ancestral Marcian identity.

Since the ascension of Queen Ignala, however, the Marcati Isles have been consumed by a brutal and unrelenting civil war. The conflict divides the population between two bitter rivals: the Queen’s Loyalists, who uphold Ignala’s claim to the throne, and the militant Black Cat Royalists, who reject both her authority and her right to rule.

Though both factions retain many of the old Marcian traditions, centuries of contact with neighbouring peoples have reshaped them in different ways. The influence of the peaceful and spiritual Traysians softened some customs among the Loyalists, while the harsher martial philosophies of the Dajeians found fertile ground among the Black Cats, whose culture increasingly glorifies warfare, conquest, and rigid hierarchy.

Among the Marcati, the red rose is regarded as a sacred symbol, believed to carry the souls of the dead within its petals and roots. The flower became the emblem of the Queen’s Loyalists, who see Ignala as the rightful guardian of the isles and of their people’s future.

The Black Cat Royalists, however, scorn such ideals. Influenced heavily by Dajeian doctrine, they maintain that rulership belongs solely to men and regard Ignala’s reign as an affront to natural order. Their banner bears the image of a black cat—a symbol of death and ill omen—and they mock their enemies as “rats”, vermin they claim must be hunted and exterminated.

Yet for all their rhetoric and bloodshed, the Black Cats have achieved little beyond devastation. The war has dragged on for more than a decade, reducing towns to ruins and thinning the populations of both isles through endless attrition. Fields lie abandoned, generations have been lost to battle, and no clear victor has emerged from the carnage.

In the eyes of many weary Marcati, the conflict has become less a war for the future and more a slow death for the isles themselves.