In the distant future, there are only three large habitable regions on Earth: the Impæriyan Bureaucracy at the North Pole, the Antarkian Commonwealths at the South Pole, and the Ecclesiastical Sovranty of Afrika Minor in the Green Sahara. The basic law governing the complex relationships between these three civilisations is the Concordat. The lingua franca is late neo-ancient Ænglisk. The hot and arid region known as the Wilderness, which covers eighty per cent of the planet's land surface, is inhabited only by the Kinvolk. The global population is just over three hundred million.