The Interior Ecology Council

The Interior Ecology Council governs Aster Vale’s habitat and protected biomes under an Aurelian charter. It decides what may live in the enclosed valleys, what is planted or culled, which damaged systems are restored, and what may be allowed to fail before work begins again. Its authority covers the reserve’s interior. External legal acts remain in Aurel’s name.

That jurisdiction ends when restoration stock leaves Aster Vale. Aurel financed the structural works and controls access to material exported beyond the reserve. The Council may cultivate, preserve, and use the stock internally, but it cannot release it into external trade on its own terms. Nothing living inside the reserve is sold away, and Aurel has never required that it should be.

The Council publishes detailed accounts of restored forests, watersheds, and habitats. It says much less about the systems that keep those successes possible. Reclaimers perform the visible restoration work and appear in annual reports. Abiders maintain seed vaults, concealed service galleries, and the deep machinery sustaining the interior environment, but do not appear in those reports.

The Council treats that omission as a distinction between restoration and support rather than a false account. The recovered ecology is real, and the hidden systems are the means by which it survives. The emphasis also suits an Aurelian patron interested in restoration stock and measurable results. The Council preserves its internal discretion by reporting what the reserve can restore while keeping the machinery of preservation outside public presentation.