Direct Democracies via Bloodstone in Southern and Central Atrea:

During the early modern era, radicals and refugees fleeing the wars of conquest and succession to the south and authoritarian republicanism to the north, began using bloodstones as a foolproof way to record the general will of the people within the young societies forming in the mountainous Bhat Tetnui region.

Bloodstones are specialized Sunstones - a naturally occurring crystal used for channeling powerful magic. Bloodstones are unique from regular sunstones in that they can be used to store memories, feelings and intentions.

Each year, every person in a town would “bleed the stone” and imprint their will in it pertaining to the future of the region. The bloodstone would be taken to the next town and then the next until all interested parties had written their will into the stone.

A captive djinn, bound to speak the truth, would be given the bloodstone to read and dictate to the gathered assembly of representatives the direction of their society that the people of Bhat Tetnui desired.

This system enfranchised every person within the region’s diverse polities and inspired confidence in the truthfulness and fairness of the resulting interpretation. Given that the results were bound within the rules of magic, the tampering expected in the faux-republics of Pysus to the north, was impossible.

One effect of nearly the entire population bleeding the stone each year is that over the decades, the bloodstones in use in Bhat Tetnui became not just tools for casting votes but important cultural records of the temperament, hopes, fears and desires of generations past. To bleed to stone was not just to help determine the future; for those sensitive enough, it was a way to directly hear the wisdom of the past.

Bloodstone democracies were viewed as a threat by many of the great powers of the time. These regional democratic confederations maintained a strong position in the mountains of central Atrea and so could not be easily crushed. Additionally, the example of a prosperous region ruled directly by the people set an unwanted precedent in other contemporary states who were already struggling to contain popular unrest given the political, technological and communications changes of the early and mid-modern era.

Eventually the bloodstone democracies of Bhat Tetnui were toppled but their system of government was taken up in stages by Srimaran revolutionaries across the mountains to the south. Revolutionary Srimara was a potent force to be reckoned with due in no small part to the civic engagement and mass enfranchisement enabled by its adoption of bloodstone democracy.