Nation Name: The Consanguinity of the Dratha Flag Government: Clan Confederation/Feudal Military Dictatorship Economy: mainly agrarian/feudal, with pre-modern industries centered in the cities. Leaders/Important People: The Court of the Moon: A council of priestess residing in the Palace of the Moon and Stars, they are considered the representatives of the Heavenly Court and have extensive ceremonial and political functions. Vaos daz Nagath, the Foremost Dictator, Commander of the Lesser Commanders, the Sword of Heaven: The Foremost Dictator is head of state, nominally elected by a council of Clan Fathers and confirmed by the Court of the Moon. In practice the Dictatorship has remained in the hands of the most powerful clan for as long as they have been able to inspire loyalty and fear. The Dictatorship was previously held for two stable centuries by the reactionary Odros Clan, who were overthrown by the Nagath Clan and its allies in a recent civil war known as the Necessary Reorientation. Vaos daz Nagath is a modernizer, a deft political operator, and a ruthless warlord. Onas daz Yen, the Second Greatest Dictator: the head of the Consanguinity's internal spying/police apparatus, known as the Subtle Office. Responsible for domestic policing and internal espionage, anti-corruption measures, and monitoring foreign influences. Vo daz Sygo, the Least of the Several Dictators: directs economic policy and is responsible for collecting taxes from the Clan Fathers. Ixus Zo, Greatest of the Lesser Commanders: commoner raised to high office, Zo is a talented general and military modernizer. Colonel Gerholt Augustin Ramlacht Odlesmann von Unglestrab-Lingen, Tolerated Outlander In Recognized Service to the Foremost Dictator: Renowned Old World adventurer, mercenary, and drunk, formerly a colonel in the [insert old world army! any takers?]. Currently in the service of the Foremost Dictator, training the Drathan Army in the use of modern weapons and tactics. He also leads a large contingent of Old World mercenaries now working for the Drathans. Mister Caractacus Fysh, Esq. Tolerated Outlander In Recognized Service to the Foremost Dictator: the representative of the immensely powerful, international, old world financial house of Barrow & White in the Drathan Union. He is working with the Foremost Dictator to modernize the Consanguinity's economy and infrastructure and attract foreign investment and trade. Barrow & White wields immense influence among the elites of the otherwise famously xenophobic Consanguinity, and Fysh is referred to by many in the Old World as the 'King of the Drathans'. Desired Map location: [Southwest corner of southern continent, with the Chee to the north.] Important Locations: Zar Dratha: Capital city, hugely populated trade center near the coast, situated on the Ovos River. Zar Dratha has long outgrown its crumbling walls, with the upper castes living in the Old City, a dense conglomeration of ancient pagodas and towers dominated by the Dictator's Fortress, while the Outworks are a sprawl of clay and plaster dwellings stretching out from the Ovos river in all directions, eventually petering out into rice paddies and fungus beds. Non-Drathans are confined to the city's famous Foreign Quarter, an overcrowded center of the world-wide black market, filled with ex-patriots, exiles and lowlifes from every corner of the Old World. Zar Pellos Zar Aryon Zar Uln: major port city on the isle of Uln, controlled by the powerful Sygo Clan. Zar Uln is the second most populated and the most 'modernized' city in the Consanguinity, with a large foreign presence and Barrow & White factories springing up among its pagodas and clay-brick slums. Outside the metropolis, mining and drilling operations are being set up by Barrow & White personal amid the terrace farms and wayside shrines of the countryside. Palace of the Moon and Stars Cultural Overview: The Consanguinity is composed primarily of Drathans, a sub-species of humanity physiologically altered by its prolonged exposure to the large liquefied elan deposits just beneath the surface of their ancestral lands. Elan, called 'Ichor' by the Drathans, is omnipresent in their society- used in medicine, liquors, and to power various ingenious mechanical devices. The local water supply is heavily contaminated with elan residue, and most non-Drathans find the taste alarming, though they can drink it without harm. Drathans, in contrast to other humans, have dusky, bluish skin of a variety of hues and generally have dark eyes and hair. The products of an ancient culture, they tend to be conservative and highly xenophobic. Drathan religion is a messy combination of folk ancestral worship, astrological veneration of the moon and stars as deities, and sophisticated philosophy and metaphysics translated in various ways into religious parlance. Drathan worship, therefore, is not particularly unified nor consistent, especially given the steep class divides within their society: local shrines to ancestral figures and historical heroes and sages do the country side, while in larger towns and cities elaborate temple-based liturgies to the celestial deities take place for the moneyed castes. At universities, a sophisticated and ancient tradition of speculation is encouraged on the nature of causality, rationality, and the divine. Drathan society is highly stratified, with the vast majority of the population living as serfs cultivating crop paddies, fungus farms, and livestock. The warrior-aristocracy generally occupy castles and fortified estates on their land holdings. The Consanguinity's territories range from arid to tropical, with dense jungles and mangroves along the coast, and local cultures and practices vary across the extensive dominions governed by the Foremost Dictator. Technology Overview: While very few of the richest and most powerful members of the Consanguinity possess some Old World technology, the Dratha as a whole are technologically backwards. While they possess sophisticated [medieval and renaissance era] machinery, building techniques and agricultural methods, they almost totally lack the mass-productive steam-technology that characterizes the Old World. For the most part the conservative Dratha view such innovations with suspicion and hostility. Military Overview: The Consanguinity can call a very large number of soldiers to arms. Unfortunately, those arms mostly consist of spears, swords, crossbows and flintlocks. Centuries of internecine clan warfare and battles with the Chee have made the Drathans into formidable warriors, and the Foremost Dictator commands a sizable professional fighting force permanently under arms. The Foremost Dictator is scrambling to import modern weapons and train his men in their use before the Old World powers descend on his elan-rich nation, but the lack of an industrial base and native hostility to dishonorable innovations makes even most modest modernization efforts difficult. The Dratha have a fairly large navy of cannon-armed junks and galleons, almost totally useless against modern navies.