Ask the lore how many factions Eternal Fusion has and you will get two different numbers depending on who is answering. Players who have browsed the faction pages say nineteen. Readers of the canon index say twenty-two. Both are correct — and the gap between them is not a discrepancy, it is the point.
The nineteen
The joinable factions are the nineteen you can pledge, play, and read about openly: the Alliance, Arctic Union, Eastern Union, Sylvan Confederation, Horde Coalition, Desert Kingdoms, Jungle Kingdoms, Resistance Network, Primal Tribes, Clockwork Dominion, Enigmatic Hives, Suboceanic Dominion, Subterranean Unity, Cursed Dominion, Techno-Mystic Confederation, Metropolis Alliance, Chaotic Nexus, Celestial Alliance, and Deep Space Coalition. Nineteen banners in the war. Nineteen seats in the Convergence.
The three
Then there are the three that the canon index marks differently — not “joinable,” just “secret”:
Three sealed factions — numbers 20, 21, 22 in the registry. Their names stay sealed until discovery in-game; the lore deliberately never prints them.
They have faction files. They have lore, essence affinities, realm ties. What they do not have is a recruitment desk — and that absence is load-bearing. These three are not factions you join. They are forces the other nineteen navigate: powers that shape the war’s boundary conditions rather than fight inside it.
Why the number matters
The confusion is not trivia — it is a deliberate property of the world. The secret factions are secret *in-universe*: most of the nineteen do not fully know what the three are doing, and the lore treats that ignorance as structural. When a devlog says “twenty-two canon factions” it is counting what exists. When a player guide says “nineteen factions” it is counting what you can choose. The number you land on tells me which question you were actually asking.
What the secrets are for
Without spoiling the files themselves: the secret three explain the seams. Why the Convergence exists at all. Why the Void does not behave like a normal faction despite having one named for it. Why elemental phenomena in the world sometimes act with intent. The three are the answer-sheets to questions the nineteen are still asking.
If you have only counted the joinable roster, the deeper canon is waiting in the lore section — start with the faction index and watch for which three entries read differently from the rest.
Keep reading
- The faction index — start here
- Clockwork Dominion — faction entry
- Why the Cursed are called the Marked
- Read a free lore sample
- Lore book v2 — the 60,000-word codex
Agree, disagree, or caught something off? The comment form is below — I read all of them.
