New page, added 2026-08-22 — not one of the four theopires from the original 2023 worldbuilding sessions (see Thaer's "Post-Yawning blocs" section for that provenance). Surfaced instead while extending the Dreikronerreich Kingdom Map east into real Persia/Afghanistan territory: Qajar Persia is genuinely, distinctly Twelver Shia — Safavid state religion since the 16th century — and doesn't belong lumped in with the Sunni Caliphate the way Afghanistan or the Ottoman core reasonably do. Real historical basis, not GPT-log lore; capital, leadership, and internal politics are wide open.
Resolved 2026-08-22: Sunni Caliphate's "Open" section used to carry a pinned, unresolved question here — the sourced 2023 lore describes a messianic Caliph who resolved the Sunni/Shia succession dispute entirely as part of the Yawning's founding myth, implying one unified Caliphate with no live distinction, while the world map's separate Shia Bloc directly contradicted that. The author's call: keep them separate on purpose. The messianic Caliph's unification is a claim, not an accomplished fact on the ground — Sunni Caliphate and Shia Bloc are a confederation of competing interests, not one institution. This page's existence is now settled, not provisional.
Shia Bloc
- Theopire
- Shia Bloc
- Core
- Persia (Qajar dynasty)
- Real basis
- Twelver Shia state religion since the Safavids converted the country by force in the 16th century — genuinely, theologically distinct from its Sunni neighbors, not the same bloc
- Neighbors
- Bordered by Ottoman Sunni Caliphate territory, Afghanistan, and the Russian Orthodox Empire — a real geographic hinge point between three theopires
The newest of the five real-world-grounded blocs on the Thaer map, surfaced while extending the Dreikronerreich Kingdom Map east past Europe. Where the Sunni Caliphate federates a real patchwork of separate Sunni states under a shared legal/theological tradition, the Shia Bloc is currently just one real polity — Qajar Persia — because that's genuinely how the religious map looked in 1815: Twelver Shia Islam was, and still is, a minority tradition within the wider Muslim world, concentrated almost entirely in Persia itself after the Safavids made it the state religion by force in the 16th century.
That singularity is worth taking seriously rather than papering over. Persia isn't a smaller version of the Sunni Caliphate's structure — it's a genuinely different kind of bloc: one state carrying an entire distinct sectarian identity on its own, wedged geographically between the Ottoman-led Sunni world to its west, Sunni Afghanistan to its east, and Orthodox Russia to its north. Real history gave this exact spot a lot of friction for exactly that reason.
Open
- No capital, named shah/ruler, or internal court structure yet — the real Qajar dynasty is the obvious placeholder if this gets developed further.
- Whether the bloc stays a single country or grows: real history doesn't hand this setting an easy second Shia-majority state the way Sunni Islam's spread gives the Caliphate its federated cast — any expansion here would need real justification, not just added for symmetry with the other four.
- Relationship to the Sunni Caliphate specifically — real Ottoman-Persian rivalry ran for centuries and would be a natural throughline if this bloc gets a fuller writeup.
Related
- Thaer — full Post-Yawning blocs breakdown and sourcing.
- Sunni Caliphate — the much larger, federated neighbor this bloc is deliberately not merged into.
- Orthodox Empire — the other real neighbor sharing a border with Persia. #thaer #fantasy #dnd