Treaty of Cataphon

The Treaty of Cataphon was promulgated by the Convention of Civilised Powers on Ascesian Affairs that took place in Cataphon, Serovia (in eastern Adorac) in 1892, in order to settle and reorganise interordinate dealings between powers of the Civilised World in Ascesia. The treaty was largely dictated by Siurskeyti, which had expelled Agamar from western Adorac in the 1860s, Tassedar and its colony Dimaja from the east in the Gate War of 1882–7, and Savam from southern Serovia just recently taking advantage of the Embute War, becoming hegemon over Adorac. Already dominant in northern Serrinea, the Siursk boldly set out to order the rest of the continent through the treaty. The outcome was the Cataphon system which dominated central and eastern Ascesia for most of the 20th century.

In Adorac, the Siursk resurrected and appropriated the Servitors of the Gate of Light, who date from the era of the Combination of Dreams, to represent the region as a single unit at the level of interordinate law, nominally through their traditional ceremonial investiture of Combination-era and post-Combination Adoracine rulers. Foreign dealings in the region were mediated by the Messenian-dominated 'Adorac Board' who served civilised interests, not the Servitors, local rulers, or any particular power. Adorac would be turned into a free trade zone with unfettered foreign commercial access only loosely supervised by the Adorac Board, which mainly focused on preventing foreign military presence or attempts to establish unfair commercial exclusivism in the region, as well as pacifying large local conflicts; these were almost always enforced by Siursk military strength. Importantly, trade with Adorac was to be dealt in gold; this secured it, and thus an important position in the global economy, for the gold-backed Siursk reylur, which in 1903 was easily made a formal currency for Ascesian exchange.

For the rest of Ascesia, the Treaty first recognised important Messeno-Joriscian powers with stakes in the region that would in theory be regularly invited to all major decisions regarding the continent, creating one of the earliest formal rosters of Great Powers. Secondly it established ut possideatur as convention for the creation of polities with diplomatic recognition by Civilised powers in Ascesia. Matters relating to delineating spheres of influence were also dealt with. In these aspects, the Treaty provided much of the basis for the later Lestria Directives.