Do your people remember their homeland? The Plane from which they first came? It is called Gaia, a massive and beautiful world, full of life and magic, a world of swords and spells and mystery and longed-for beauty. Or, at least, it was. Before the Cataclysm ended that pretty old song.
We are the survivors of that Cataclysm. We are Gaia's disparate children, sent haphazardly through the Rifts- magical gateways that led us from the world of Gaia to new homes. Each one went somewhere different, a different Plane of existence. Our people were spread across countless extraplanar realms, some living in worlds wreathed in flame and inhabited by demons, others finding themselves lost in great green forests. We were spread apart, disconnected from each other and our home.
Now, five hundred years later, the Rifts have reopened. And we are beginning to find one another.
Now, for me, the most interesting part about NRP has always been the interactions between different cultures. How does the warmonger react to the pacifists? What happens when a group of religious faithful meet a society of atheists?
As we have in Gateways, that's what I want to focus on in this RP. But instead of sci-fi, we're going fantasy this time around. We're going to each be playing as a roughly medieval nation, descended from the original settlers who were sent through the Rifts and into other Planes. The world we came from was the typical fantasy realm, where magic is real, and elves and dwarves probably hopped around. But when the Cataclysm happened, an apocalyptic event that caused the environment of Gaia to become uninhabitable, we were forced to open magical portals to other worlds and flee there instead. That's where your people have been living for 500 years.
Now think about what might have happened to them in this time. Did they land on a harsh plane, and used dark magic to survive? Are they ruled over by a ruthless tyrant? Have they made pacts with whatever creatures live there already? Or have they managed to stay true to some chivalrous, knight-like ideals? I want this to be heavily culture-focused, so your imagination is the limit. (As long as you don't break the medieval tech limits, don't be afraid to go somewhere that isn't typical fantasy.)
Now, for reasons unknown, the Rifts have reopened. All at once. For the first time in five centuries, our poor little countries will be sending their scouts into the Rifts and finding one another. And personally, I think it could be pretty fun to RP these early 'first contact' interactions. Seeing how our different people respond to one another. And as the RP goes on, I'm not opposed to anything; war, trade, diplomacy, or whatever else.
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How Do the Rifts Work?
Magically!
Alright, alright, more importantly, there are some rules that make this RP work. Like:
1.) All Rifts connect to all other Rifts The Rifts magically offer anyone who enters them a choice on where they want to go, so long as their desired location also has a Rift. This means that every Plane can get to every other Plane, so that none of us are prevented from interacting with one another because we're not close enough together on a map
2.) There's no way of traveling throughout the Planes other then the Rifts When you step into a Rift, it automatically (and magically) offers you a choice on where to go. As above, this means any other active Rift.
3.) Since the Cataclysm, the magic to create new Rifts has been lost. This is to prevent anyone from spreading out into new Planes, so that the focus stays on us interacting with each other rather than trying to expand throughout the extraplanar worlds :
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Magic and Technology:
This is a Medieval Fantasy RP. I'm imagining that the world of Gaia was in the Medieval Ages when we left for the rifts, probably around the equivalent of 12th century Europe. Hoooowever, what happened on the other side of those rifts is up to you. Maybe your people had an Enlightenment as soon as they got there. Or maybe the centuries of isolation have allowed them to forget much of what was once known, slipping them back into antiquity. As a result, I'm allowing tech levels to be from anywhere to the early Iron Age to the very start of the Renaissance. (Guns, however, are a banned tech.)
All that said, I'm just one man, and I can't reasonably research, debate and rule on every technology. So when you fill out your NS, you only need to give me a general idea of what they know. As long as you're not coming at me with machine guns and tanks, or with sticks and stones, it'll probably be chill.
With magic, I'm going to play it by ear.
You can go high or low, from fireballs to simple card tricks, when imagining the magic that your people use. It may be that your Plane lends itself to a particular kind of magic- perhaps you live in a place where there are new gods that empower your wizards in new ways? Or, perhaps, the whole of the Plane seems to make mysticism fizzle out and spells go awry. Maybe the only spell that works in your world is the one that summons pink frogs. Use your imagination and give us something interesting!
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The Crossroad and Gaia Now:
The first Rifts, the ones that our people fled into to find their refuge in new Planes, existed in different places all over the world of Gaia. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, which myriad peoples and races fled into. But, now that they've reopened, our nations will find that there's only one Rift left in Gaia. Any nation who steps into their Rift and sets course for Gaia will find themselves in the same place. Here many peoples will no doubt meet: we call it the Crossroad. A neutral ground. It is a stone courtyard in the midst of a grassy field, nothing else in sight but the hills and a distant forest.
Which is another odd thing, isn't it? The Cataclysm should have destroyed all life left, and yet, nature still remains. It makes one wonder what else they would find, if they ventured out from the Crossroad.
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On Joining and Leaving:
If someone wants to join after the game has already begun, I've decided I'll just say that the Rift leading to their plane has only now opened. Likewise, if someone leaves or goes MIA, we can say the their plane's Rift just shut down as mysteriously as it had reactivated. In this way, the NRP should be able to accept new players whenever, and survive losses without grinding to a halt. It has worked so far for Gateways; here's hoping it'll work here too.
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Interested?
Worry not, you don't need to have been in Gateways to play with us here. The NS is below!
Nation Name
(This is probably a good place to insert a flag or other representative image)
Government Form: (Monarchy? Caliphate? Anarcho-capitalist Republic? Whoever slays the most demons is in charge? Whoever summons the most demons is in charge? Or anything else you can think of.)
Demographics: Both humans and non-humans welcomed. Be snooty elves and grumpy dwarves if you want. Or throw out that tattered copy of Lord of the Rings you've got lying around and make up something more original.
Population: I'll admit, population size was hard to come up with in this. There's so many factors! I've decided to go fairly broad, on a rough scale of:
1 Million or Less: Small 2-5 Million: Normal 6-12 Million: Large 13 Million or More: Massive)
In cases where your population size is very important to your nation, I am willing to discuss making an exception. (Just not for your Sun Elves, Lady Lascivious.)
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Plane Description: (When your people escaped through the Rift, where did they end up? Is it a flaming inferno inhabited by demons? Is it an earth-like jungle, or a mountainous island chain? What's this place like, and does anything else live there? Let your imagination run wild here)
History: (What happened after you landed on your new plane of existence? This can be as brief or detailed as you like.)
Culture and Society: (How do they live? Anything from ritual cannibals, to matriarchal atheists, to a German-Chinese fusion culture. Religion also goes here!
This is my favorite section ^-^)
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Governance and Politics: (Like the government form field, but more room for detail. Tell me if your monarchy is slowly being subsumed by the merchant classes. Or, if your people are organized in such a way that they don't even have a government or politics anymore, then this is also a good place to talk about that.)
Technology and Magic: (Before you start, please read the Technology and Magic section up above. Done? Aight, go ahead and let your imagination run wild)
Military Overview: (This is the space to talk about any offensive/defensive capabilities you have. Now, keep in mind that our people have all been essentially isolated for 500 years. If you have a huge army, I want to know who it is that you've been fighting all this time to justify having a military that tough. If the answer is "Nobody" then, mis amigo, you shouldn't have the huge army.)
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
1.) No godmodding, or controlling other player's characters/nations A basic rule in any RP. You know it, you love it.
2.) Cannot fully conquer other player's nations without permission. You can go to war with another player. But you will need the a-okay from them before I allow you to completely exterminate/assimilate/remove another nation from the game.
3.) If conflicts cannot be decided, the GM will arbitrate. This goes for IC and OOC conflicts. I always prefer for people to work things out mutually. Ideally, everyone can agree about who wins/loses wars, or who has the upper hand in trade, or so on. But if you can't, I'll step in to try playing judge fairly.
4.) When using concept art for your NS/posts, avoid anime pictures. I'll allow some! But I don't want the RP to feel too anime, so try to keep it light. (This one is less of a rule and more of a guideline.)
5.) No way to stop others from entering the Rift into your plane You can set up defenses around it, of course. But you can't actually prevent someone from entering their Rift and heading through to yours. You'll just have to stab them when they get there. (This is so that wars and other fun interactions don't just grind to a halt with a player saying "I'm closing my Rift!")
Paleskin is the collective term of a several brutish races. Grogar
Grobbet
Groll
Population: 3.8 million ---
Plane Description: Astoria is a land surrounded by endless, ravenous seas, any poor soul that dared ventured past the calm waters would be taken by the Hungry Sea. The land itself is a vast country greenery, from the great forests, to great grass plains and rolling hills, to mucky bogs and lastly, to the frigid northlands.
History: The foundation of Astoria as we know it is stuff out of legend and myth. It all began on the final days of Gaia, an inconspicuous man would receive vivid dreams, or visions from a being not of Gaia, telling him that salvation awaits the chosen few in a plane far from Gaia. At first, he sounded like a raving mad man, telling of a new paradise that awaits the faithful for a Goddess none have even heard of.
However, as Gaia’s twilight days approached, many became desperate and turned to the man they once scorned as mad, now their Savior. An untold number of people had amassed at the appointed location where salvation awaited them. The masses stood, waiting for a miracle, and within moments, their prayers were answered. A grand rift tore into the fabric of reality, revealing a land unlike their own. Without hesitation, the refugees all flooded through the rift, crossing over to their new home, Astoria.
The once mad prophet was now looked to as a leader in this strange new world as the humans battled and struggled against the peoples of this plane. Ranging from barbarian hordes, mad Mage-Kings, and forest-bound raiders. A particularly fierce battle would truly mark the Prophet as the Chosen One of the Goddess, as he led an army of ten thousand against a paleskin horde number triple the numbers, many had perished in the first phase of the battle.
Little did they known, a most holy shrine to the Goddess was near, and had called to the Prophet. Without warning, he had fled the battlefield, his troops following behind as they fled deep into the forests, where the Divine Sword of Excalibis waited. Within moments, the tide of battle turned once the Prophet claimed the sword, its power overwhelming the Paleskin horde as they fled. The Astorians fought many battles over the decades as they carved their kingdom under the rule of their Savior-King, Arthan the First, Chosen of the Goddess.
Centuries pass as the Kingdom of Astoria expanded its reach to all corners of the continent, halted by the Ravenous Seas. The rule of Warlords and Mage-Kings had long past, the Royal House of Arthan overcoming the odds. Although peace had finally been achieved four centuries after the Gaian’s arrival, it would be an uneasy one. Many paleskin clans still refuse to bow before the Royal House, and internal power struggles within the kingdom are a common occurrence among the nobility. Such power struggles would lead down a dark path that would tear the Kingdom in two.
The House of Mordran is one of several noble houses that claim a very distant relation with the Royal Family, and often are seen as the black sheep in the Kingdom. For decades, the Mordrani had long planned their ascension to the throne, using whatever plot and scheme they could claim it for themselves, until one final plan was set in motion.
The Mordrani had approached several Paleskin Warlords with a proposition, help them kill the King, and they will be granted their own kingdom to rule as they see fit. On that fateful night, a paleskin horde besieged the capital city of Loirimont. The battle would last several days, and in the chaos, Sebastian Mordran, House Patriarch, would himself lead a group of assassins to commit the final deed.
The throne room would be a gruesome sight as the Royal Family and their guard would be forced in a pitched battle against the Mordrani, the Queen and the children the first to fall victim, sending King Caulihem into a rage as he wielded his ancestor’s divine sword against the usurper.
It would unfortunately end in his death as Sebastian landed the final blow, ending the Divine Bloodline of the Savior-King. In his moment of Triumph, Sebastian Mordran took the sword from his cousin’s still body, claiming himself as King of all of Astoria, what came next would baffle the survivors. Excalibis had a mind of its own and outright rejected its new master, consuming him in a blinding light as the Usurper had disintegrated where he stood, the Sword vanishing shortly after.
Fifty years have passed since the battle, Astoria now torn in civil war between the Protected Realms and the Mordrani Domain. The Protected Realms are under the stewardship of the Lord Protector, who will guide the people in the King’s place, holding not hope that the royals may return one day. The Mordrani Domain consist of the western half of the kingdom, under the ironfisted rule of House Mordran, allied houses that joined their cause, and Paleskin Clans that swore to their new King.
Culture and Society: Astoria is both a feudal and savage land ruled under Noble Houses and Warlords alike. In more civilized parts, Astoria is made up of four classes of people, the Nobility, the Peasantry, the Merchants, and the Mages. Although it can be said there is not strict adherence to any sort of class system, often one can find themselves cross over. The lands both the Protected Realms and Mordrani Domain are managed by Noble Houses that can be trace back to the first Generals of the Founding Crusade, who became honored elders and eventually, were elevated to form the Nobility of the new Kingdom.
Mages can find themselves crossing over class lines at times, the gift of magic caring not for one’s social status. Knights are seen as the paragons of Astorian society, serving as her ever-resilient defenders against all that would bring ruin. Such admiration has given rise to the Chivalry code.
The Astorians are a pious people, the land filled with many different faiths and Gods. The one most revered by the Kingdom is Cliodhna, Goddess of the Cycle, of life and death. It was she who had come into contact with Arthan, helping establish the Kingdom of Astoria. As thanks, the Church of Cliodhna was founded. Along the centuries, the Savior-King had been elevated into a similar status as Cliodhna, seeing him as her First Prophet, the Messiah that led the lost herd into paradise.
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Governance and Politics: Protected Realms of Astoria: The Kingdom or the Protected Realms as it now is known, is currently under the stewardship of the Lord Protector under the faint hope that the Royal Family will somehow remerge from the jaws of oblivion. Under the Lord Protector is the House Assembly, a governing council made up of various heads of the Noble Houses that remain loyal to the Crown. The Assembly often handle the day to day matters of state sharing some responsibility with the Lord Protector, who in addition to such duties, also directs the military and defense.
Mordrani Domain The Mordrani Domain functions similarly to the Protected Realms. Lord Mordran ruling his House' territory with an ironfist, leaving daily administration duties to the Houses within their borders, the "Traitor Houses" as they've come to be called by the Protected Realms.
Paleskin Clans: Each of the Paleskin Clans are ruled by their respective Chieftains and their inner circle of lieutenants, the Chieftain's rule is absolute, their word and blade law. If the current-sitting Chieftain were to meet an unfortunate fate, the selection process of succession often is done so in two ways. If the Chieftain was slain in a duel of honor against his opponent, the challenger would then by right, become the new ruling chieftain. If the Chieftain was to die of natural causes, or slain in battle, the new ruling chieftain would then be decided in a grand fighting tournament, the best warriors of the Clan would gather to battle in fierce arena combat for the right to rule the Clan.
Technology and Magic: Decades of civil war had accelerated minor and major technological development in Astoria, from metalworks, weapons, and armors that would be considered impossible centuries ago, the invention of the firepowder which gave birth to the Cannons known today. Magic in Astoria is a common occurrence, common enough that two major rivaling schools of magic were established throughout Astoria, from the Sacred Institute of Tymedus, which dealt in holy and elemental magics, to the Wizarding Towers of Darkwood, which dealt in more…questionable, but useful arts. In between there were minor schools that were more specialized and more easily accessible throughout Astoria.
Military Overview:
Ever since Astoria's founding, the Kingdom mainly relied upon drafted peasant levies and a small elite corps of Knights and Guardsmen as a means of defense and offense. However, the civil war had demanded extensive military restructuring. Although peasant levies were still present in some form, a professional standing army had slowly replaced them.
Mages also play a vital role within the military, many acting as field medics, others acting as mid-range artillery units, lobbing the elements against the enemy. In recent years, cannons had been introduced by both sides in the war, and although very effective, haven't completely phased out the more traditional siege weapons like the catapult as of yet.
The Knightly Orders of old still linger after the centuries, and now needed more than ever in theses dark times. The various Knightly Orders serve as heavy calvary and elite infantry, their very presence inspiring weary troops to press forward.
The forces of the Mordrani Domain had gone through a similar restructuring, phasing out levies in favor of a professionally trained and loyal army. Paleskin Clans that remained loyal to the Mordrani after their coup attempt make up the bulk of their forces, and are often supported or led by the Mordrani Legions, the combined Household Guards reorganized into a proper fighting force, directing the paleskin hordes with precision.
Recently, the Mordrani had become more open with dabbling with the dark arts, enlisting the aid of Necromancers to add Undead abominations into their ranks.
The Paleskin hordes are a disorganized rabble compared to the ordered and structured armies of more civilized kingdoms, the rank beyond Chieftain being meaningless. Paleskin warriors typically are organized into Warbands, said Warbands vastly differ depending on function, a Warband making up a dozen or so warriors, to hundreds or to thousands of warriors. Leaders of these Warbands are often hand-picked by the Chieftain himself or members of his Inner Circle.
Paleskin Shamans, like their more civilized counterparts, play vital roles within the Warbands, as healers, advisors, leaders or elite warriors.
The various beasts of Astoria, both mundane and monstruous, serve a multitude of roles within the Warbands, be it as beasts of burden, food, mounts or as living siege engines.
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
The actual name ‘Dinnin’ refers not to a single race or group of people, but to anyone that has taken on the Covenant agreed centuries ago between the first people to arrive in the plane and The Flame. This means that the Dinnin themselves are fairly diverse, especially due to their habits of slave-taking.
Lamia The second most numerous non-humans within the Dinnin, and considered to be The Flame’s chosen people. Lamias are half human, half serpent, with the upper half of a man, transitioning to a snake’s tail at the waist.
A typical adult lamia is anywhere from eight to ten feet when measured tip to tail-end, with reddish-black scales often arranged in sophisticated and unnatural patterns, each of which is unique to that lamia. In addition to their tails, lamias also sport long, curved fangs in their mouths, filled with potent venom. It would be a mistake to assume that just because one is out of bite range they are safe however, because lamias are capable of ‘spitting’ their venom out up to a distance of five meters. Although harmless when it comes into contact with unbroken skin, contact with the eyes can result in permanent blindness, whilst contact with cuts will envenom the victim as surely as a bite.
Lamias typically live anywhere from 80-120 years, with their childhoods and adolescents lasting a similar length to humans. Lamias give birth to live young (although the process is ovoviviparous, with eggs developing internally, and the young hatches shortly before birth.) Once born, snakelets are extremely vulnerable, especially to cold temperatures, requiring approximately a month of careful tending by their mothers to ensure their survival. Once this dangerous month has passed, the snakelet’s chances for survival improve drastically. Unlike human young, snakelets are capable of locomotion only a few months after birth, although more complicated types of movement may take them years to learn.
Lastly, lamias ‘run cold,’ in comparison to other members of the Dinnin. They are the most reliant on the warm desert sun to rouse them from their slumbers, and the most inactive when winter arrives. Equally speaking however, they are capable of operating in even baking heat for far longer than any other race in the Dinnin, traversing deserts and scaling to the very edge of sacred volcanos.
Lamias have a single distinctive and unnatural subspecies- the Echidna. Echidna are the children of Lamias and Ifreets- mysterious desert spirits the Dinnin believe to be living manifestations of the Flame. Echidnas are characterised by a forked tail, much darker colouration, a longer lifespan, and most peculiarly, the ability to bear not only Lamia, but also human children.
The Painted Folk The most numerous demihumans within the Dinnin, the Painted Folk (often just the Painted,) are both physically and culturally different than the lamias they reside alongside. Bipedal, digitigrade, typically no taller than 5’4”, and heavily resembling canines, the Painted Folk are so called because of the natural camouflage patterns that occur on their fur.
Whilst Lamia prefer to stick to the mountains and deepest deserts, the Painted Folk are far more at home at the fringes of the desert, where life can begin to creep back in and scraggy grasslands and savannahs provide food for enough wildlife to sustain their hypercarnivorous nature. The nature of the Covenant means that the Painted Folk have no permanent settlements and are instead constantly on the move throughout the year. This causes them to come into the contact with the Kaffin (non-Dinnin) more often than their Lamia counterparts, constantly testing the Painted in a struggle for both resources to survive and slave-taking.
Painted can live to the same ages as humans, but their rugged, difficult lifestyle and constant fighting cuts many Painted lives shorts. A painted over forty is considered old, and one over fifty is practically venerable. Those few who live out a full life to their seventies or eighties are considered blessed indeed. Painted have litters of 2-4 pups, who develop much quicker than human babies, going through puberty between eight to ten years and considered fully grown around fourteen.
Humans Dinnin humans are surprisingly common, outnumbering the Lamias comfortably. Although there are large quantities of enslaved humans within the Dinnin, (who are considered Kaffin automatically,) there are no small number of free individuals. The most numerous and important groups of Dinnin humans form the collectives known as the 'Great Clans,' mighty houses that have carved their homes out in the valleys of mountain ranges on the edges of the desert. Although the reason for this is poorly understood, the mountains prevent the desertification of the land outside of the cities, thus allowing for metropolitan centers to be build despite the Covenant. The nature of this arrangement- with its periphary farmers and city-dwellers, has lead to a familiar feudal system forming.
Population:
Approximately 3,000,000 people fall under the broad banner of the Dinnin people, although it would be extraordinarily difficult to mobilise their full population.
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Plane Description: Etalwid is a large, realm, resembling Gaia in many ways. It has fertile floodplains, lush forests, freezing tundras, wide oceans, towering mountain ranges and rolling deserts. All manner of races go about their lives in this realm, much as they do on Gaia, but for those seeking to truly understand Etalwid, it is the deserts and mountains that they must venture to, where the Dinnin have made their homes, and become effective masters of the center of the plane.
History: (What happened after you landed on your new plane of existence? This can be as brief or detailed as you like.)
Culture and Society:
At the core of the Dinnin people are the covenant they have made with the Flame, and the ways that their lives and culture have been impacted by this covenant.
The Flame is interpreted in two very different ways. The most prominent and accepted version is that the Flame is a primordial entity, that existed before even the water or the dirt. Burning upon every plane, the Flame created the heavens and the earths, each infusion of the Flame's power becoming its own manifestations. When the intelligent races were born, they knew of the true nature of the Flame, but in time forgot, and began worshipping the other manifestations equally. Although it was not incorrect to worship these other manifestations, by doing so these peoples, the Kaffin (Forgotten Ones) had lost something.
When the settlers that would become the Dinnin arrived in Etalwid, they were barraged by these manifestations. At first, they accepted them as equally righteous and true, but as the Kaffin drove the Dinnin back further and further into the unwanted parts of the world- the deserts, burning so hot as to be unbearable, the mountains so high as to be unbreathable, they began to turn to the Flame, and in doing so, began to realise its true nature.
With the Dinnin numbering fewer and fewer, they made a great pilgramage to the heights of the Jabal Ilah. There, they made a Covenant with the Flame, and the Dinnin were made righteous, true, and gifted new forms. These forms were scaled and cool, so as to resist the desert heat better. Their legs were changed to tails, so as to scale the dunes and clamber across the rocks quicker, and they were granted swiftness, strength, and wisdom. For all this, the Flame requested nothing but their unwavering faith, a price they were ecstatic to pay.
This is where the first of the Lamia were born, with those refusing to acknowledge the truth remaining Kaffin, whilst those who accepted it taking for themselves the name of Dinnin (Remembered/Chosen One.) However, as they would come to understand, they were not the first that had learnt of the true nature of the Flame. In savannahs and scrublands, the Painted people, wide-ranging and animalistic, had also understood that everything came from the same source.
To them though, it was not the Flame in the sky, burning down as what the Kaffin called the 'sun,' that was their source of power, but it was instead the Flame of life itself. Burning within every blade of grass, every wild beast, and every intelligent creature, the Flame thrummed. This Flame, they believed, was most potent in the earth, where all life drew its origins from, and in blood- the purest expression of the heat inside each individual. When the Painted and the Dinnin met, it was the Lamias who recognised this similarity, and although built on initially shaky ground, the relationship between the two flourished and bloomed, until the Painted were Dinnin, as resolutely as their snakelike cousins were.
Suddenly infused with new power and fresh allies, the Dinnin began to wage war anew with the Kaffin that had driven them so far back. As the Dinnin expanded outwards, they initially welcomed the opportunity to govern over more lush and fertile land, but within just a handful of years, these once fertile plains began to dry out. Riverbeds became sunbitten dirt, green grass wilted, replaced by blowing sand, and the desert itself would take over wherever the Dinnin settled.
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Governance and Politics:
Lamias: At the core of every lamia tribe is the matriarch, the most senior female snake, almost always a priestess of the Flame. Underneath these matriarchs are the rest of the tribe's heirachy, with one of the matriarch's husbands usually serving as the warmaster for that particular tribe. All Dinnin have equal standing in the tribe, regardless of species, and under them are the Kaffin slaves, who must obey their masters unquestioningly. Each matriarch is soverign over their own people, and when a large number of these tribes converge, they form a clan council, the pecking order of which is determined by a complicated web of family trees, alliances, tribe power and, of course, if the matriarch is an echidna or not.
The largest and most important of these clan councils is the Conclave, a collection of the matriarchs of the most powerful and august clans. The clans from whom the Conclave are drawn from all roam close to the the Jabal Ilah, and they are expected to meet at the sacred mountain every year. During this meeting, the Conclave will decide upon pressing issues, clarify previously-given rulings and instructions, and issue fatwa, binding religious mandates that are expected to be followed by all Dinnin. Iftā, the act of declaring these fatwa, is considered to be the Conclave speaking with the authority of the Flame itself, making these fatwa akin to a heavenly commandment.
Painted: The Painted have tribes, much like the Lamia, but unlike their snakelike cousins, the Painted's tribes are smaller, more compact, and rarely involve significant numbers of Kaffin. Painted 'tribes' are typically simply extended family units and are managed in a relatively democratic manner. When Kaffin are included, they're typically done so with the intention of including them within the family- Painted tribes are well-known for including adopted members of a wide variety of species and peoples.
Great Clans: The cities of the Great Clans are, broadly, feudal, but constructed in a way that might be unusual to more 'traditional' feudal systems. Each city may be broken down into the different Clans that live within it, with an individual's position in a clan determined by how close their bloodline is to that of the Clan's original founder. The firstborn child of the previous clan heirach assumes the head position, with their immediate family making up the highest positions. As the bloodlines diverge further and further, one's rank decreases, until at the very bottom are those who are not related to the Clan at all, but are instead the children and converts of Kaffins, Dinnin by right of being born or tasting the Flame, but with no heroic legacy.
The clan heirachs meet to collectively elect the head of the city-state, known as an Emir or Emira. Although an Emir's reign is for life, those foolish enough to consistently go against the wishes of the heirach's council will find their lives rapidly shortened by the sting of an assassin's blade.
Of all the Dinnin, it is the Great Clans who are most reliant on slave labor. The lowest farms and the highest estates float atop this living mass of Kaffin. The Great Clans are keenly aware of this, with the main duty of houseguards being to prevent slave dissent and revolt. In addition, the Great Clans are also the only of the three major Dinnin branches who routinely practice castration, both in order to prevent Kaffins from giving birth to Dinnin children, and because eunuchs are considered far more trustworthy than other Kaffin.
Technology and Magic: (Before you start, please read the Technology and Magic section up above. Done? Aight, go ahead and let your imagination run wild)
Military Overview:
Just as the Dinnin are a fragmented people, so too are their militaries fragmented. Despite this, their drive to control the mountains, deserts and their surroundings and the constant need to press ever outward in search of tribute and captives have built up the desert dwellers into several, quite distinct yet no less formidable forces.
The first, and most 'regular' force, are the house guards that the Great Clans muster when they need to go to war. Houseguards march in orderly formations, donning tough lamellar armour that resembles the scales of the Lamias that the settled clans so look up to. With spears, shields and maces, house guards represent the Dinnin's heavy infantry, professional soldiers with excellent morale and training. This toughened core is often supplemented by kaffin slaves, usually pressed into battle with little choice about the matter, given simple weapons and simpler armour, there to bolster numbers and bog down foes with numbers and a fierceness bourne from being more terrified of those driving you forward than the enemies you're being driven into.
Apart from their human forces, the Great Clans may also rely upon their Lamia betters in battle. Although usually preferring to fight on their own terms, it is hardly unusual for snake warriors to join the Great Clans in battle, bringing with them their magic, venom and skirmishing power.
In addition to infantry, the Great Clans also bring to bear several war machines, for when they need to break their enemies and crack their cities. Bombards, heavy, cumbersome machines, are hitched to chariots, decoupled, and then rain down fire onto those foolish enough to prevent their attack. Aside from carrying the bombards, war chariots also provide warriors with a method of rapidly entering battle- whilst the time of chariots crashing through infantry lines and carrying the day entirely by themselvs have died out, these fast-moving infantrymen are nonetheless a fearsome foe.
Perhaps the most terrifying thing that the Great Clans can bring to bear however are not machines made of iron or steel, but are instead their monstrous warbeasts. Deep within the territories the Dinnin control, there are beasts, as big as a house, with four legs each like tree trunks and a fearsomely long nose, capable of picking a man up and dashing him against the ground. How the Great Clans tame these monsters and bring them to bear against their foes is unknown, but when battle is joined, these fearsome creatures, known as 'Oliphaunts,' have great structures built upon their backs, from where Dinnin archers may rain their arrows down on any foolish enough to stand against a creature already capable of crushing a human underfoot.
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
The Rift through which the desperate column of refugees that would become Vershellen escaped led to a place quite unlike the old homeworld. The sky – luminous and lit with strange stars and streamers of incandescent energy that tugged and played with the mind – stretched off into sanity-twisting infinity. The land, by contrast, was reassuringly familiar, although shattered and scattered through the hostile heavens as though by some uncaring god’s hand.
Everything from lone mountains to continental landmasses, complete with cascading rivers, forests and rolling plains, all of it hanging suspended in the immaterial firmament. The air was full of raucous, alien calls and the land carpeted in unfamiliar plants.
More than that, though, magic roared through the plane. An endless torrent, a vast ocean needing but the faintest touch to leap to hand; every spellcaster found their power profoundly magnified. Spells that used to require days of ritual and many skilled participants giving their all now needed a word and flick of the hand from a mediocre practitioner, and wonders that previously defied conception were now within reach – if the refugee-colonists could survive long enough to make them.
Which was not at all a given; quite aside from the mind-bending luminous reaches of the endless sky that took more than one refugee into their endless grasp, sanity and reason erased by the poisonous light, practically every local life-form had some form of arcane power. Even the plants were infused with it, their powers and properties unlike anything the refugees had experienced. Gaia’s nature had been fecund and kindly, whereas their new home was an altogether wilder thing. Enslaver orchids, bloodroots, vampire thorns…and they were just some of the tamer flora the first unfortunate expeditions found. Even the more beneficial finds were, often as not, a double-edged sword, made so by the energy that infused them.
These days, the plane looks far different from that untamed wilderness – at least, in the nearer reaches. Skyships ply the trade lanes between vast and shielded island citadels, whilst the pleasure-palaces of the sorcerous aristocracy gleam, filigree-fragile, in the poisonous light. Cities bloom on the islands, the once-wild forests cut and coppiced into submission, and docks festoon the aerial coastlines.
Not all, though, is a triumphal sign of imperial prosperity though; in the far distance, visible on a good day from the Gate itself, a sullen abyssal wound bleeds purple, eye-searing unlight – the Black City. Once one of the most powerful and influential Principalities, back before the imperial unification, now an impossible ruin swallowed by the success – or failure – of their last experiment with Rift magic. Staring at the abyss for too long is unhealthy; it draws the eye in with tantalising glimpses – a spire here, windows ablaze with purple reflections, a colonnaded promenade there, a skyship dock with tyrian-scrawled pennons flying proud…enticing reminders of what the Black City once was, and drawing a perennial tithe of the young and the desperate to plunder the possible riches there.
None have ever returned.
Then, too, there are the arcane currents that rush through the endless sky; the squalling Rose-Wind, sweeping in from the western expanses, full of flowers and glass knives; the insidious Roaring Deeps that deafen with internal thunder, others.
History
Following their landing and the destabilization of the Gate which had brought them away from the Cataclysm, the refugee chain fractured into factions, each aligned with a sufficiently powerful sorcerer or sorceress able to protect them from the mind-twisting planar illumination and the magically-charged flora and fauna. Each group laid claim to an island of their own, and for a time there was the peace borne of a desperate need to survive.
The isles of Vershellen were, at that time, entirely wild and untamed. Forests of millennial growth dominated the largest islands, never having known the chop of an axe or the hum of a buzzsaw, nourished to truly gargantuan size by the plentiful mana. Lakes teemed with monstrous fish, the rivers ran wild and free, and powerful animals utterly unknown to the settlers roamed the plains and high mountain passes.
It was only through enormous effort and relentless application of arcane might that the settlers had any chance at all. Even the light of the plane was inimical, in time, the uncertain illumination of possible stars in the endless sky slowly warping unshielded minds to insanity and unprotected flesh to glass. Many of the oldest tombs in Vershellen are more like sculpture galleries than crypts, housing rank upon rank of exquisite glass statues.
Naturally, as the protectors and providers for the rest of the refugees, the mages rapidly assumed positions of power and prominence. Hard to gainsay the sorcerer whose power keeps you from vitrifying, after all. The islands, separate and isolated in the endless sea of stars, all went their own separate ways, raising stained-glass spires to the sky and digging deep into the flying bedrock. Towns and cities grew up under the glittering aegis of the mage towers, whole communities born and raised in service to their sorcerous overlords.
Magic flourished, too; more and more Vershellese developed the talent as time wore on and births began in a plane saturated by it. Many took up service with the princely Houses founded by the original magi, forming the start of the middle classes of Vershellen, but others found their skill and ambition too great to be satisfied with mere service.
There were plenty of other islands, new territories to be conquered and jealously defended; waves of explorers left the first isles on rudimentary skyships, heading for distant lands to raise their own banners, their own Houses.
Although the plane itself appeared infinite, no-one wanted to venture too far from the safe havens of established islands, too far out where skyships could fall prey to the myriad and undocumented horrors of the Deep Sky. Thus came the first true conflicts, first between pioneers claiming the same piece of floating rock and then, later and more seriously, between lesser scions of princely Houses seeking to expand their House’s power and prestige.
Thus did Vershellen settle into its Principalities; vast constellations of islands bound together and moved by magic, all under the rule of a sorcerous House. Each warred against the other, as often as not, with words and trade embargoes and sabotage, espionage, all-out warfare with skyships and landing marines and, at the last, with magic enough to split the skies and rip whole islands apart. Proud and fiercely independent, it seemed as though the seething, simmering cauldron of rivalry and splendid isolation would last forever, the Principalities expanding endlessly through an infinite sky, each one jealously hoarding secrets and lore, sorcerer-lords and ladies sniping with one another over arcane minutiae whilst their oathbound lessers spilled blood and treasure in their name.
No lore too dangerous, no arcana too forbidden; in the bright, mad heavens the ancient magi soared to dizzying heights and plumbed the very darkest depths. The catalyst for empire arose out of the internecine warring between the Principalities; the proud island-citadel of Scintillance, home and fortress since time out of mind for House Hellebore was assaulted by their enemies in a particularly brutal clash. For five days the colossal landmass wore a corona of weeping flame as the cities burned and the proud spires melted like candles in a furnace. Hurricanes of razor-glass butterflies scythed through the city streets, turning them into charnel ruin as hordes of summoned and bound monstrosities rampaged as they willed, wrecking years of painstaking spellwork in moments and letting the poison light pour down, untrammelled and untamed onto unprotected Hellebore citizenry. Skyships bristling with cannon and mortar tumbled aflame from blazing Hellebore docks, and in five Red Days the heart of the ancient and princely House of Hellebore was left a tumbling wreck. The other princely Houses – even those entirely uninvolved in the attack – were quick to capitalise on weakness, vassalizing and taking by main force what they willed even as Hellebore reeled in shock.
It was not a common fate, to be sure, but hardly unheard of in the Principalities. The older and larger realms had a gentleman’s agreement – now lying in tatters – but such upsets had occurred before, and life carried on as usual after a period of adjustment. However, the young ruler of House Hellebore was a sorceress of uncommon talent even amongst the Vershellese sorcerer-lords, and had no intention of taking the attempted extermination of her House lying down. From a hidden border citadel, she laid her plots and plans, carefully hoarding and husbanding her power and her intentions, all the while forming alliances, pacts, oaths of assistance and internal networks that spread all throughout the domains of the very Houses that had laid her own so low.
The final spark to the catalyst was an event as perplexing as it was catastrophic. It may, perhaps – and the imperial archives remain stoically silent on this – have been the result of a Hellebore saboteur, an infiltrating agent seizing their chance, but whatever the impetus the final result was undeniable. Megara was one of the original Principalities, ancient and vast and glutted with centuries of accumulated wealth. Its sorcerers were skilled, very skilled, and had for near a century turned their bright gazes towards the inactive Gate, working diligently at unravelling the mystery of mysteries – for the grand sorcery which had forged them and in so doing had brought an escape from their doomed world had been lost in the chaos of the evacuation. However expansive a cage – and to all intents and purposes, Vershellen was infinite – it was still a cage, and the lordly rulers of Megara could countenance no shackle or limit to their ambition. Thus, their mages laboured in libraries and laboratories throughout the great city-continent, working to unpick a dimensional puzzle few could even wrap their heads around.
Megara – and the loose association of Principalities it led, by default if nothing else – had been the primary instigators of the attack on House Hellebore. What the hypothetical infiltrator did – or whether it was supremely unfortunate coincidence – no-one can say, but one day the entire island conurbation…twisted. Millions of tons of rock and metal and glass shrieked a dreadful death-cry as blackness ripped its way into existence across the luminous sky, a voracious and hungry abyss that consumed the ancient Principality – and many of its closest attendant vassals – whole. The wound and the ruin – the Black City – remain to this day, a visible reminder of the dangers of Gate magic gone wrong (or worse, horribly right).
Into this power vacuum stepped the resurgent House of Hellebore. It wasn’t enough to regain their former status, oh no. Hellebore skyships were suddenly everywhere, and their immaculate envoys negotiated ceasefires, trade deals, alliances, sweeping up lesser Houses in a new and building movement. It wasn’t plain sailing; many and proud were the Principalities who wanted nothing to do with the frightening new thing the House of Hellebore was becoming. Those – with the characteristic ruthlessness of a Vershellen magister – were made examples of.
Skyships turned lesser strongholds to burning rubble with their cannons and spells, whilst the greater ones found themselves fighting an unending tide of metal. Golems, cast and sculpted like humans writ large, engraved with spelleater wards, unfeeling and unflinching and unaffected by the poison light. And all, to a perfectly-formed legionnaire, loyal to Hellebore and her dogs. Still worse were her spells, shatteringly powerful and breaking even the most potent shields like glass.
Before such puissance, the Principalities bowed or were destroyed, one by one.
At the end, from the smoking husk of the Vershellen Principalities, the empire was born, and has so far endured for two centuries.
Culture and Society
Vershellese society is defined by magic. Their home plane is almost explosive with it, the air and water and land all saturated with mana. Much of it was inimical to life as the refugees knew it, or at best indifferent when they first arrived, exhausted and afraid. The spellcasters who fled through the Gate, though, found their powers magnified manyfold. They were able to beat back the monsters and pacify the land with their arcane knowledge and, when that failed, through prodigious application of spellfire. Thus, the expedition coalesced around them, the first leaders who would go on to become the first sorcerer-lords and ladies.
Traditional lines of authority quickly eroded; old power and nobility and a line stretching back a thousand years didn’t matter, only the ability to shield against the invidious radiance that permeated the plane, and the powerful monsters glutted on unheard-of amounts of mana did. Those with the power and skill to do so were few and far between, prideful and insular in many cases; there was no one overarching authority that all acknowledged. The flying islands of the plane only enhanced that tendency to insularity; each wizard-lord and lady gathered to themselves a retinue of loyal – and terrified – retainers from the refugee train and struck out for the nearby islands in the sky.
Over time, each settled land developed into the personal demesne of a powerful mage. Spires soared up to the maddening heavens, even as castles and walls and defensive bastions were chiselled out of the living rock of the islands, along with colossal defensive wards and other ritual spellwork, channelling and amplifying the power of the attuned mage. Those first spellcasters founded the princely Houses of a sorcerous aristocracy, usurping within a single generation the powers and privileges of the nobility and elevating their power and control over their subjects to a degree undreamt-of. After all, they were the only ones capable of powering the wards and defences that leached the starry poison from the light and vaporised the monsters that regularly assailed the fledgling settlements.
In Vershellen, then, magic is everything. The overwhelming majority of the citizens have some ability to work it, to take the currents of mana which rampage through their plane and cast a good few spells, even without the centuries of arcane infrastructure which have been developed there.
The greater the ability to cast, or the greater the affinity for difficult forms of magic, the higher their status in Vershellese society. Indeed, to compare the regular citizen of Vershellen to one of the sorcerer-lords is akin to comparing a candle to the sun. Where the average resident might dabble in the arcane, the aristocracy positively swims in it, the planar magic changing them as much as they change the plane itself. Generations of people have spent their lives sheltering under the protective aegis of one magister or another; many Vershellese still think of themselves as sept to a particular House and Principality first, and a citizen of their empire second.
Magic both stratifies and levels Vershellese society; if you have powerful magic in Vershellen, you matter, no matter what background you have, and magic doesn’t seem to care about gender or sexuality either. If you have a mere dribble of talent, though, better learn some other useful skill and make yourself useful to a true magister.
The strange properties of the plane also influence their society in more subtle ways; magic is the sovereign defence against the sanity-stealing light and its poison glassy touch, of course, and so it is a badge of status in Vershellen to wear as little as is safe. Citizens and common mages may – and do – cover and cloak themselves, and vie for power and position in their own shadow-games that ape those of their betters through volume and colour and cut, but for the aristocracy nothing whispers power and wealth louder than skin bared to the poison light with no ill effects. What they do wear is fine, to be sure, rich and sumptuous and with all the decadence befitting their station, but no magister worth their title would ever stoop to cloaks and capes, to ermine robes and multi-layered ballgowns, to all the trappings of rank in other lands.
Governance and Politics
The Empire of Vershellen is ruled from the glittering stained-glass spires of the Whisper Palace in the grand city of Cynosure. The Court of Days dances attendance at the foot of the Constellation Throne whilst shadow wars play out between the House of Blood and the House of Commons in the opulent Parliament.
All bend the knee to the imperial throne; golems and skyships and island-shattering spellpower make sure of that, at least on the surface, but below the serene shallows the cutthroat political engine of Vershellen roars away unabated, oiled with blood and watered with tears. Princely Houses vie for position and power, new-minted magisters strike out across the infinite skies for pastures new, and everywhere the mages plumb the depths of the universe for knowledge.
Her Imperial Majesty Maia, of the House of Hellebore, Warden of the Heavens and Queen of Days, the effulgent Empress of Vershellen and her Principalities. Also called the Winter Empress, as much for the snows and blizzards driving in from the Deep Sky at her coronation as for her appearance. She looks like a young woman in the first flower of adulthood, and, unusually in this plane of fiercely abundant light, bears skin the colour of snow and hair a bare shade or two darker.
Her eyes are the clue that not all is quite as it seems; in an almost childlike and unlined face they sit, ancient, the pale and distant grey of a glacier, cool and calculating and remotely ruthless. Her smile, though, is bright with all the promise of summer and her body inviting, and that is enough for many, even those who really should know better.
She is, as with all the high aristocracy of Vershellen, a powerful sorceress. Long immersion in the torrent of magic which roars through the plane – and judicious use of the Days refined in the far reaches of her domains – have preserved her youth and beauty long past the natural human lifespan; quite how long it can be extended is one of the many unknowns. She is known to be skilled in the creation and use of golems, and is a particularly talented glassmage, too. She sponsors many types of arcane research in the universities and laboratories of her domain, too – not all of them under the aegis of House Hellebore.
Technology and Magic
Vershellen’s magic – and its princely magisters – is perhaps its most defining feature. It’s woven into the very fabric of their plane, their infrastructure wholly entwined with it; essence mills churn at every endless waterfall and mana collectors gleam on every suns-drenched hilltop, funnelling the raw possibility of creation into their owners’ grand workings. Miles of sorcerous ritual anchors honeycomb the great island citadels, crackling and snapping with cold fire as the ambient magic of the plane surges through them, hundreds of magical effects propagating from each enormous array.
Magic is as much a tool of peace as war; ploughshares draw life and nourishment through the soil as they go, whilst forges blaze to white heat at a whispered word, suckling greedily at the essence grid for the raw power to convert into flame. None of which is to say the mages of Vershellen have neglected violence, oh no. Some – like the empress – delight in golem legions, or armies of oath-bound servitors. Others, sheer arcane might manifest as the elemental forces of nature skewed to extreme violence, and every shade in between. Enchanters press skeins of power into the very artifacts they imbue; cannons roar with volcanic fury and spew magma in luminous torrents and swivel-mounted carronades scythe decks clear with barrages of razored glass.
Skyships.
Military Overview
Golems are one of the Empire’s greatest assets. Tireless workers, they toil in foundry crucibles in temperatures that would kill a human instantly. They labour wreathed in poison clouds, on new islands exposed to the venomous glassing light of the plane, in places where the tempo of production must never, ever cease. More than that, though, golems carved with spelleater wards and chains are one of the primary methods of warfare between the magisters of Vershellen.
There are as many varieties of golem as there are stars in Vershellen’s endless skies, of course, but the empire, at least, as part of an effort to simplify their own logistics, tends to a few archetypes rather than a dazzling specialist panoply of different variants.
The best and most enduring are the Brass Legionnaires, ensorcelled steel creations aping the human form, appearing as plate-armoured knights dipped in sorcerous brass, for better protection against the vitrifying glare of the plane. They are graceful and quick, belying their sheer mass, well-armed and supremely well-armoured, lavishly ornamented with scintillant arcane sigils. Forged in the great presses of Vershellen’s arsenals, the Brass Legionnaires are implacable, loyal defenders of the empire. Attended upon their creation by skilled animators - a well-respected and well-paid profession in Vershellen, ensuring the engines of industry thunder ceaselessly - they are fluid and adaptable and tireless, machines honed and improved down the centuries for slaughter. The Brass Legionnaires are the front-line soldiers of many an imperial island, fighting back the tide of arcane horrors birthed from abundant and untapped places of power and making sure that even the most humble Vershellese citizen sleeps safely in their bed at night.
The standard-pattern Legionnaire is armed with an enchanted longsword and a thick steel heater shield, emblazoned with either a princely or imperial coat of arms and impressed with enchantments for strength and protection both.
Legionnaires patterned for long-distance warfare, meanwhile, have superior vision and are more dextrous than their imposing forms might suggest, and can be found wielding a wide variety of ranged weapons. A favourite – beyond the standard crossbows – are shardstaffs, long polearms that project bursts of vitrifying radiance.
Some few Legionnaires are patterned for siege warfare, too; something of a rarity in Vershellen, where skyships and magisters can lay waste to an island in minutes. On occasion, though, such wholesale destruction is deemed unwarranted; perhaps there exist priceless relics or archives of lore whose destruction cannot be countenanced, or the island-citadel in question is desired as a strategic base. In those instances, Vershellen calls upon its siege golems.
Colossal in size, many times the height and bulk of a man, they are blasted out of the obdurate white granite so common to the isles, their forms refined and honed through flaying magic until a perfect colossus strides free of the quarry, shaking the dust of its creation from its enormous feet. Many bear catapults and ballistae on their broad shoulders, the pauldron facsimiles large enough to handle such weapon emplacements with ease, whilst others heft gargantuan battering rams or rely on the crushing power of their fists.
By far the vast majority of Vershellen’s skyships are traders, pot-bellied hulls of buoyant lufwood and spun-light sails, built as large as economics dictates to haul as much as possible through the skies between princely ports. Tea and spices, arcane reagents, sky-silver, gems, ore…the number and variety of cargoes is staggering.
Many of the rest are pleasure craft, toys of the nobility, elegantly crafted yachts of spun glass and crystal, fast and opulent. There can be no standardization of these vessels, not when lavished with magisterial attention, but they are vessels of pleasure and not of war. Reinforced and shielded they might be, to guard against opportunistic assassination, but they are no purpose-built engines of war.
Those that are are by far the rarest. Layer upon layer of brass and bronze-dipped steel, glittering with runework and reflected light. Slab-sided mountains of reinforced metal, scrollworked cannonry bristling at every opportunity, sailing the littoral of light as a potent reminder of just what power Vershellen can bring to bear, should it be necessary. The most powerful princely Houses have their war-cruiser squadrons, to show their flag and enforce their will on their far-flung holdings, but only the empress can afford the expenditure, both arcane and mundane, for a true sky dreadnought. The nascent Imperial Armada has each and every one of the bare handful completed so far, the empress’s mailed fist championed by the dreadnought Her Majesty’s Displeasure; an apposite name if ever there was one.
Maia is far older than she appears. Most of the aristocracy and some of the middle classes are.
Vershellen mines Days in the far reaches of their plane, where Time gets funny. This is not a fun profession.
Also, @Irredeemable and @Timemaster are my co-GMs. Timemaster first voiced the idea of a fantasy spin-off of Gateways, and Irredeemable is just an unfairly good NRPer who's co-GM'd with me before.
(@Lady Lascivious Also had a lot to do with this RP coming into existence and is a good sounding board, but there's only two co-GM slots, so she's... idk. Honored Elder? The Lady of the RP?)
Main species - Dragons are majestic creatures known for their great size, long wings and of course, love of anything precious. Sae’senthe’ssis dragons are different from their brethren in most regards, a Sae’senthe’ssis dragon will grow up to 3 metres tall and 2 wide with tails that can range between 50cm to 1 metre. Almost always, Sae’senthe’ssis dragons have 4 legs with claws and 2 wings. They also have very long life spans with the oldest Sae'senthe'ssis dragon being 499 years old.
If it weren't for the Rifts, which eliminated many of the great Azure Dragons, the oldest one could've potentially remember the founding of Gaia.
Sae’senthe’ssis dragons will grow feathers, scales or fur depending on the type of dragon they are. Their color can range anywhere on the RGB spectrum but there are main types of dragon which is what determines their greatest weapon, their breath.
White Dragons - They are the most magically inclined of the Sae’senthe’ssis dragons. They are smarter, faster with no breath weapon of their own. Magic is what they choose to attack with when stalking for prey.
Black Dragons - They’re the biggest dragons of the Sae’senthe’ssis species. They can exceed 3 metres and grow up to 6 metres tall with very durable scales. Their breath sucks the life out of any caught in it’s blast if the target is organic in nature. Being very reclusive, it is not known how many they are.
Red Dragons - Medium sized for Sae’senthe’ssis, their greatest strength is their fiery breath which can burn up to 3000°C. Their claws are sharp and can easily pierce iron.
Blue Dragons - The benevolent dragons as they are called are known to live in water, feeding on fish solely. They can easily hold up to 500litres of water in special compartments in their throats while they can shoot with amazing speed at targets.
Drakes are a sub-Sae’senthe’ssis dragon species which appeared shortly after the Rifts opened. They are smaller, ranging between 1.7 and 2 metres tall with four legs but no wings. They also retain the long tails of the Sae’senthe’ssis dragons but with added mobility of said tail.
Population: 198k Sae’senthe’ssis dragons and 600k drakes.
Plane Description: Therm, the plane’s name, is a pretty standard plane (similar to pre-Rift Gaia) in many ways. Big land masses full of red grass, deep oceans full of fish and mountains. The size of everything in Therm is massive, a normal flower will can grow up to 10 meters tall and trees can easily reach 50 meters.
The main difference is that due to the magical energies of the plane, there are certain stones which levitate. This effect causes the existence of floating land masses or even full-on mountain ranges which levitate in the sky.
History: The Sae’senthe’ssis are the descendants of the great Azure Dragons of Gaia. When the Rift first opened, a couple of Azure Dragons were sucked in the Rift and brought to Therm where they’ve proven themselves as the Apex Predators. Over time, they’ve started breeding with the local populace of dragons and their offspring slowly became the Sae’senthe’ssis dragons.
With the apparition of different types of dragon, things turned bloody very fast, every type vying for dominance over the others, their food or their territory. Something had to be done and it took one White Dragon, a direct descendant of the Azure dragons to unite all the tribes. She took a challenge from all the types, her brethren included, with a promise struck by magic that if she wins, she will be their leader for eternity.
With her magic and her wits, she overcame all the challenges and took control of all the Therm Sae’senthe’ssis tribes.
400 years passed from that point and the Dragon Queen’s rule is supreme. None question her decrees, none question her rule and if one does, they are swifly dealt with.
Culture and Society: Sae’senthe’ssis dragons live in massive cave systems, forests, oceans and pretty much anywhere they wish to settle depending on their type. Most Sae’senthe’ssisans prefer to live close together with their kin. Their lairs are full of diamonds, gold and other materials they consider precious and depending on the type of the dragon, might mean the social status of one.
On the other end, the drakes submit to the will of the Sae’senthe’ssis and act as servants of their respective types. They are known to build nests, where at least 20 of them live together in close proximity, using whatever materials they can find.
One thing is valued more than most, family. A dragon's kin is everything for Sae’senthe’ssisan, a blood debt for a killed dragon can be carried over centuries.
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Governance and Politics: Sae’senthe’ssisans dragons are ruled by vassals of the Dragon Queen; each vassal chooses their own way of leadership as long as it follows the decrees of the Dragon Queen. How a leader is chosen depends on their type, from the Red Challenge where one has to fight the current leader to death to the White Challenge which involves a series of riddles.
The Dragon Queen is chosen via a contest of all Sae’senthe’ssis dragons, including the reclusive black dragons. Each type poses an impossible challenge to the pretender to the throne, be it a test of cunning, strength, dexterity or honour.
Technology and Magic: Technology wise, the Sae’senthe’ssis aren’t very advanced with no natural predators on the new plane, they’ve grown to rely on their hunting and investigation skills as the native creatures of the plane have long learned to hide from the Sae’senthe’ssis.
Magic flows within all Sae’senthe’ssisans but more in some than in others. The most magical active of all Sae’senthe’ssis are the White Dragons which are said to have inherited all the magical powers of the Azure dragons. Their magic is a combination of their natural breath and words of power. Each word releases huge magical energy within the Sae’senthe’ssisan which then he/she can chanell into an effect that they desire.
The most secret and sacred magical ritual that can take place between the Sae’senthe’ssis dragons is the Traehnogard in which two dragons give a part of their heart to the other, permanently linking one to another. Their magical power is doubled up but what one consumes, the other endures. If one dies, the other will as well.
Military Overview: Sae’senthe’ssisans have the status of Apex Predators on Therm and as such have grown complacent. The wars that plagued their society have long been terminated and the occasional border fight is considered to be training by most. Only the Red dragons are known to keep an active platoon of Sae’senthe’ssisans that circle their territory.
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Additional Info: One of the most common "animal" on Therm are the great Twilight worms. They were before the arrival of the Sae’senthe’ssis dragons the apex predators of the plane. They have since then been hunted almost to extinction as their gigantic bodies that can get up to 50 meters wide and 60 meters tall, are full of meat. Currently, most Twilight worms live deep underground towards the plane's core.
Ported it over. @tortoise with the changed thingy that we talked about.
Demographics: As of now, Vivesper's sapient population is completely human. Though elves existed earlier in the area's history, there was a long history of mutual bad blood between the two species, and elves were wiped out to the very last in the final stages of the Vivesperian Empire consolidating control of the realm.
Population: Approximately 14 million humans
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Plane Description: As of now, the overall appearance of the plane differs drastically between areas near settlements and more isolated areas. Most of the land was initially barren, but, through a combination of land development and magical advances, the general fertility of many areas was increased. Fortunately, the weather provides for plenty of precipitation, and droughts are rare. This precipitation is most notable in the winter season. In addition to the more regular snowstorms, blizzards are common, and have often ground military actions to a halt throughout Vivesper's history. Much of the infrastructure of cities is designed around resisting blizzards. Phoenixes are a species hunted for their feathers and ashes, often dwelling in the harsher environments. The land has a wealth of mineral resources, most notably high-quality iron. Though this includes a high supply of precious metals, there has not been much effort previously to excavate them due to the lack of parties who would give them significant value. As the Empire has stabilized, there has been some growing interest in precious metals.
History: Though the population of Vivesper is much than its lowest point, it's drastically lower than it was after going through the portal. In addition to humans, the population initially included the less populous elves. The land was initially named Vacacia, so barren was it at the time. Many people died of starvation, and the previously unified people fragmented as they sought out the most survivable areas. With elves already having a strong reputation for arrogance and bigotry among humans, they split up into their own groups Fighting for resources was a way of life initially. As people split up more and stabilized, however, war didn't become less frequent so much as it became more organized. After awhile, various major territories were established, and two eventually developed into kingdoms. Though the two kingdoms were at a stalemate for awhile, one eventually conquered the other through major breakthroughs in technology and magic. Those advancements were the development of phoenix steel, a steel alloy which, contrary to most metals, insulated against heat, cold, and electricity, rendering knights virtually invulnerable to most opposing offensive magic; and major improvements in tunneling magic, which permitted larger, deeper, and more stable tunnels, allowed one to circumvent castle defenses, and allowed attacks to be pressed underground when blizzards rendered surface movement dangerous. The Empire of Vivesper was established shortly after the conquest, named after the territory previously known as Vacacia that would now be known to the Empire as Vivesper to reflect its ability to make the land work. In the time that followed, the Empire rapidly grew in size, with most human territories choosing to pledge loyalty to it and gain the advantage of stability from being under its umbrella, rather than wasting lives and resources delaying what was seen as inevitable. As the Vivesperian Empire grew, the idea of uniting the entire land under one authority gradually changed from concept, to aspiration, to objective. The elves refused to give themselves freely to human rule. The Empire used a major smallpox epidemic that originated from a human settlement close to elvish territory as casus belli for a punitive war against elvish territories - elves were accused of conducting a targeted attack with a horrible disease known only to infect humans, motivated by their bigotry, though specifics regarding those accusations were lacking. Having made it clear after a few battles that elves that didn't surrender would be slaughtered, the bloody affair went on for a very long time, before remaining territories surrendered. Seeing elves as an obstacle to a unified Vivesper, however, the Emperor ordered every single elf in the realm slaughtered. It was nearly impossible for the remaining elves to put up any meaningful resistance after their territory was already under control of the Empire. What would have been seen as the most depraved sort of affair imaginable instead became seen as a marker of a once divided people being made whole again, with much emphasis being placed by the Empire's historians on the reactionary ideals of the elves, their hubris, and their crimes against humanity.
Culture and Society: Culturally, the realm puts major focus on unity, loyalty, obedience, and knowing and fulfilling one's role in society. Propaganda posters frequently reiterate the importance of these values. Working long hours is frequent for many. The culture of fulfilling one's role in society leads many to become highly devoted to their sociological niche, taking pride. One's profession and position in society is second only to their name as far as personal identity goes. People are more reluctant to explore different fields overall, which potentially leads some to squander potential they had elsewhere. Phoenixes are a national icon. In addition to their ashes being the basis for phoenix steel, their ability to survive in harsh areas is seen as symbolic of the resiliency of the people, and their legendary reincarnation is seen as iconic of the people themselves rising from the ashes. Vivesperians do not bury their dead in a traditional sense. Instead, the dead are processed into compost. A fruit tree is often planted with some of this compost in honor of the dead individual; much like the phoenix, such a gesture is symbolic of life from death, and allows one to continue to serve their fellow man even after death. With there being universal literacy (albeit to different levels of proficiency), many libraries have been established in Vivesper. Though much of the writing within these libraries is practical or historical, there are also many fictional stories. Mythology, by nature of its invocation of religious ideas, is not found within libraries. Works directly critical of the Empire, or that portray its actions or ideals in a bad light, are very difficult to have approved, though some more clever authors may get around this through use of allusions. There is a stigma against ostentatious displays of wealth, though this stigma has been weakening over time as the Empire has stabilized. Though peoples' clothing reflects their social status, nobles rarely wear jewelry at anything other than the most important ceremonies of the year. The most major holiday of the year is Founding Day, the anniversary of the Empire's founding and the coronation of the first Emperor. Though usually held on the actual day, the festivities in an area are postponed if there is bad weather. Alcohol, though it isn't rare or scarce, is more limited than in other places due to the lower amount of arable land; Founding Day is one of the biggest times for drinking it. There are usually many games to be had, with archery competitions being some of the most popular.
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Governance and Politics: The Vivesperian Empire has relatively high taxes. It is often emphasized in propaganda how paying one's taxes is an important part of fulfilling your due to society and helping your fellow people survive. Religiosity is banned by mandate. It is regularly emphasized that gods forsook the people of Vivesper, and that the continued survival of the people comes from the strength of its people, and their strength alone. Punishments for many things are often draconian. Beyond the crime itself, criminals are seen as opposing the very foundation of the Empire itself, that being the mutual cooperation that allowed its people to survive in spite of the land itself trying to kill them. Public executions in many places are frequent, with criminals being executed in ways that make their death slow, painful, and showy. The people revel in seeing an end to those who are seen as being a danger to their survival. Prisoners are often allocated to dangerous jobs, and frequently die as a result of misadventure during those jobs. At least per the Vivesperian mandate, the role of children is seen as learning and developing into the future of the Empire. Education for young children is mandatory; this policy was highly unpopular when initially invoked, as it meant fewer hands for things like farm work. It has mainly survived because none of the emperors have been of any other mind, despite the concerns of subordinates. Though criticizing the Empire isn't a crime in and of itself, it is a crime to attempt to challenge or subvert the Empire's authority. How this gets interpreted is generally based on whoever is enforcing the law.
Technology and Magic: Magic is something that takes a thorough understanding of both physical and metaphysical laws in order to use, at least with any degree of proficiency. Thus, magic is often associated with higher education, and, by extension, with privilege. In military matters, mages serve as specialists; they're not used as general agents of lethality, but to perform a specific action that cannot be done with more traditional tools. Though one might be able to use basic spells of various types, one often has to specialize in a particular type of magic to get the most out of it. A major technological advancement was phoenix steel. It is a steel alloy which derives its carbon content from phoenix ashes. It can only be forged at extremely high temperatures, temperatures that can only be sustained and survived with the aid of magic.
Military Overview: Currently, with stability as opposed to constant wars, the Vivesperian Empire's standing army is much smaller than it was at its peak. It is composed of knights, mages, and other elite men-at-arms. The majority of those in the standing army are under direct command of the Emperor; this makes potential rebellion a difficult affair, as one cannot outnumber the Emperor's professional army with their own professional troops even in the unlikely event that every other noble with professional troops offered their support. Beyond the standing army, the Empire also requires every man of fighting age to own and be proficient with a weapon of their choice, with other potential arrangements based on the Empire's needs. These men can be drafted as needed for either local militias or the main army. In addition to traditional cavalry, the Empire breeds wyverns, and trains wyvern riders. The advantage of flight is particularly significant in many of the areas of rough terrain. Given the value of wyvern riders, however, they are rarely used in situations in which enemies are holding firm; they are often used to pursue disorganized enemies in routs, to attack divided groups of enemies, or to take out high-value targets.
@Tortoise@Timemaster@IrredeemableWell, here is my mostly done but still a definitely WIP submission. Hopefully it work in the end. Maybe. Sorta-kinda? I'll get to see after things are done at least. ^^;
1/28: So outside of the one section that is currently blank due to the need to develop it over time or add over time, whether far sooner or much later, the app should be generally done! Should be.
Kingdom of Travanash
~Government Form~
Monarchy
~Demographics~
Humanity, a race with great versatility but a lack in any distinct advantages. A “jack of all trades” race, as it were, able to learn much but not biologically leaning toward being masters of anything in the way other races might be. Many settled within the Aratharian Highlands, remaining mostly neutral but also not appreciating the occasional Dwarven-Virmari-Arathari war that would inevitably intrude on their lands. Many refugees of such wars from both sides of whichever given war it was would arrive in their lands to settle as well, leading to a very mixed bunch living among them over the long term. Likewise they were the second most numerous non-High-Elven race living within the walls of Ila’faroth itself, albeit followed closely behind by others. Even so, the humans formed many a city-state and occasionally a larger Kingdom within the bounds of the Aratharian Highlands and its surrounding territory. Though these would never last forever, they did leave their marks on local politics and wars and other such events going on. In one case, a group of adventurers would fight past deceptions and waves of minions and monsters slay the demonic being who took over the body of what would be the final king of a grand dynasty…one that was terrifyingly close to uniting the whole of the highlands underneath their grasp. That is just one of the stories originating from mankind’s presence, however, with many more either remembered or recorded or outright forgotten by current times.
The humans living in the highlands were once seen as the most chaotic race due to their antics, but also the most resourceful in a pinch. This turned out to be good in tandem with the expertise of the other races living in and about the highlands when the Cataclysm hit, helping to finish and move along progress to making the Rift that would let the various races pour through to another plane in order to survive and rebuild once more.
Those elves that came into the new plane of existence to live, and who inhabit the Kingdom today, stem from two particular groups: The “High Elves” and the Virmarian Elves.
The race the Aratharian Highlands was named after, being the first and once considered the most prestigious of its inhabitants. They possess a far greater sensitivity to magic than most races from old Gaia, especially among their kind, and their ability to fine-tune spells and arcanely-artificed mechanisms and so forth was nothing short of astounding. At the same time, however, their physical strength was not as good as other more able-bodied elven species/brethren and they are apt to try to use magic to help bridge that gap where they can.
They founded the great city of Ila’faroth in the Aratharian Highlands, a former regional capital nestled in a valley and surrounded by great mountains famous for its magic academy and being the place with the greatest concentration of high elves on Gaia (not the only place that has High Elves that is). This city, during the Cataclysm, was one of the few places that seemed to hold firm in the face of it all…but that is just as compared to how the planet itself ended up. By the end of its life the grand city was a meager shell of its former self, filled with various inhabitants beyond the usual High Elves and mix of humans and the occasional dwarven and Virmari exiles who formed their own distinct minorities. They had a sort of blood feud and rivalry with the dwarves of the Carthanius Mountains, dubbed the “Carthanius Dwarves” and also locally among the High Elves as “those rocky morons” and “the idiots who caused no less than two demon incursions in the Highlands”. Yet when push came to shove, ancient rivalries were held back just barely enough to take the dwarves in and get more help opening a Rift within the city.
Indeed, Ila’faroth would become a patchwork of different magics and scraps and materials taken from the shattering world that were slapped together to create something meant for one thing and one thing only: Survival. Even after 500 years, the ruins are probably still holding up somehow, with some ancient power sources and mechanisms and wards still up if all it has had to face are the ravages of time. It was also here where one of the ancient Rifts was opened eventually, allowing the refugees in the area to clamber through to fulfill their desperate hopes for a new life.
After entering their new planar home, the High Elves would ultimately produce the bloodline that created the second dynasty of the eventual Kingdom that formed. Albeit the particular High Elves who achieved that position of power stemmed from a regent who let it all go to his head in the long term. He achieved much, but his son, one had by the last Travanashian Queen, assassinated him to take power only 60 years into the dynasty’s reign. He wound up not doing any harm, but also no good at all. It was mostly him spending much on extensive parties and letting his father’s old officials hold up the work, and raising new taxes to get revenue for his eccentric affairs. He was then killed by his half-brother by a Virmarian Concubine fifteen years later, who led a bloody purge to try to ‘clean up the mess’ and reshape the Kingdom into his own image. This would in turn lead to a revolt ten more years later, purging the last of the Kalvadian Dynasty and resulting in the emergence of the Illuvian Dynasty.
By current times, the Arathari who were part of the ancient decadence are either dead or frankly socially isolated. Much of the younger generation who arose in the new lands had no ties to the long-gone ancient feuds and such, as well as having grown up with parents who ended up by and large on the bad side of the later Kalvadian Dynasty (just like everyone else for that matter). They are known as great magic weavers yet still, however, with Aratharian Nobles usually having a variety of experts on hand to serve their estates (a trend that has caught onto the nobility of other races in the Kingdom by this point). However, anyone with ties to the old Kalvadian Dynasty were erased no matter how flimsy it was back after the old dynasty’s fall…a scar that was not the doing of the new royal family but more so a thing done by the people themselves (including high elves). It is a black spot that resonates among them even today, not wishing to emulate the evils of that dark bit of the past and the darker spots of their pre-kingdom history back on Gaia. Because with beings that can grow as old and ancient as the High Elves (1000 years old is their 100 years old equivalent, average lifespan is about 600-700), it becomes very hard to forget...
The Virmarian Elves are a race anciently nicknamed the “Snow Elves” or “Grim Elves”, alienated by their High Elf brethren after their creation for reasons long forgotten and sporting deathly pale white hair and very pale skin compared to that of a corpse by their foes and detractors. They went about living in the heights of the Carthanius Mountains and some to the frozen cold north beyond that, having issues with dwarves and High Elves alike before making peace with the former due to grudges against the latter. They were rugged and tough people, donning armor darkened by the flames of their forges (mostly the soot and such) after being repaired over and over to recycle what supplies they had during more desperate times. If one needed a guide through tough northern lands, if one was passing through the Aratharian Highlands they would reach the border and seek to hire a local Virmari as an unspoken rule of thumb if they took advice from locals.
Among the achievements the Virmari made was creating their own Runic Magic using their own alphabet as a base, as well as creating tough and well-armored mage-warriors and other magic-using-soldiers who were reputed for their icy cold approach and merciless dedication to duty in the most literal sense. The most famous among these were the Death Guard, who scared even some Virmari, a group of the most honed and deadly and potent warriors who’d seen things, fought things, survived the worst that Gaia threw at them to the point they were most famous for having runes etched into their skin using special tattoo ink that would grant them enhancements and boons and so forth. The Death Guard are known as the only military group to ever pierce past the defenses of Ila’faroth (the greatest high elven city) and Gathras (the rather legendary and literally super-fortress-like capital of the Carthanius Dwares), and had the nickname of “The Immortals” for a very, very, very good reason.
The Virmari were hired out as mercenaries by a number of locals and even those from other places back on Gaia in general in the pre-Cataclysm era, though, but to get the best prices for hire one would hire them to fight High Elves of some sort (even if it meant being hired by other high elves to kill high elves). They also practiced more necromantic arts as a means of communing with the dead and getting information, though the raising of the undead was not something they would usually do unless they got…desperate. Very desperate. It is no wonder, though, that their craft and those of the dwarves living closest to them became similar in regards to dealing with spirits to some extent or another in one way or another. When one is surrounded by death and the potential for it, one comes closer to it and seeks to learn more about what is around them.
During the Cataclysm, however, the Virmarian Elves were devastated so horribly they would come to be forced alongside the dwarves to seek shelter in the one place that still stood ‘best’ within all of the Aratharian Highlands: Ila’faroth. They and the dwarves nearly just invaded outright to take it to stay safe, were it not for the fact those who remained of themselves and others in that ancient Gaian city found the idea of the Rift opening to a new home for themselves far more desirable compared to more slaughter and death than they’d already seen. However, it was safe to say that the Virmari did well in those first brutal decades after passing through the Rift…brutally well. This was to the point that the Travanashian Dynasty used the best of them as part of the Royal Guard, and the Kalvadian Dynasty kept them along initially until the last two members of that dynasty kicked them out and even took measures to isolate (and exterminate in the lattermost case) the whole race themselves. Even the attempted genocide at the end of the Galdarian Dynasty had a secondary focus on them.
In the aftermath the Virmari race would steadily come to rebuild and regrow, but the prices paid in blood and their presence among the rebels who helped usher in the Illuvian Dynasty would be the start to repairing relations and seeking a better life in the thriving land of their new home. They would remain legendary for their soldiers, as martial traditions did not get fully abandoned, but with many Virmari seeking to go into other areas of work all over (both due to personal drive and attempts by them to smooth out their reputation as encouraged by surviving elders) it has made them much more well-rounded than they ever once were. Ranging from merchants to court mages or farmers or so forth, these efforts have been the force that has made them yet another part of the Kingdom like anyone else…something the vast majority by far prefer to their situation from the olden times.
The dwarves of the Kingdom are descendants of only one of the potential species or groups called ‘dwarves’ on Gaia. This group of dwarves are a shorter/diminutive, humanoid race that traces their origins back thousands of years back down their blood and adoptive family trees, a people who were among those that used a form of Shamanistic Magic and Artifice and were known for their greater work underground and in regards to the soil and rock and so forth. This group in particular came from the nearby Carthanius Mountains, close enough to the Aratharian Highlands that they became part of those who fled Gaia from the Rift that was made there to get to another plane. They can withstand rather high pressures and extreme temperatures and are a rather durable race in some general-ish sense, fitting their lives underground, and can see in the dark to boot!. They make superb farmers and miners both, and with any sort of work that involves the earth and soil and rock and such. Despite the rumors on Old Gaia that they were inherent metalsmiths, they simply learned the arts of forging and metalwork due to their proximity to the materials themselves and a lot of fiddling around with said materials and such to boot.
They are a hardy bunch of dwarves whose males naturally can grow thick, durable beards, and whose females are distinct by their total lack of beards and any potential for facial hair whatsoever (as well as being rather attractive by various other races’ standards). Despite their stature they are not built stocky at all, instead having denser bones and bodies and so forth to match their physiological capabilities. The idea of a stocky dwarf regarding these dwarves from the former Carthanius Mountains came from the lives of many dwarves from here living outside of their homes or far away, where having more food than usual available led to a very small minority of these dwarves in particular gorging so badly and horribly and profusely they ended up becoming fatter than their relatives back home. That and the potential confusion of these dwarves with others. Not all became this way, as dwarves have a rather powerful metabolism throughout their lives, but in the end the stereotype stuck as ever before the Cataclysm came through.
Since the move to another plane, only a rather tiny minority manage to get fat, but they are known far and wide for their crafts under the ground as much as their lives above it as well. Likewise, history remains something well-recorded by them…yet the old issue of centuries-borne grudges has been mitigated after centuries of conflict and the initial near-death of their race after coming to the other side of the Rift from Gaia. It was all a rather rude awakening, and one that has shaken them to the core ever since.
(Example Of An Eadici Queen Below)
The Eadici are the second most prolific race in the Kingdom and are a race native to this place of existence the Travanashian Kingdom was founded and built upon. From the shoulders to the tips of their three-fingered hands, from the thighs down to the ends of their gripping two claw-’toes’ on their feet, and the two antennae on their heads paired with their (somewhat larger than humans eyes) insect-style eyes, the Eadici are much akin to insects. They possess the armored carapace, strength, ant-like abdomen, and advantages these things provide. Yet their torso, head, and face have flesh shapes like those of humans, perhaps hinting them as being or being related to the ‘humans’ of their native plane of existence somehow. The Eadici explain it as being wrought into beings by their patron goddess, who created two races as her children to embody ‘strong bodies’ and ‘strong minds’ respectively. Yet these races, according to legend, once long warred with each other and brought pain to their creator in doing so…to the point of the goddess fusing them together to stop the conflict and creating the Eadici (Ea = “life” and “dici” = two; as the word is explained in native Eadician). A people who were born to their physiological role, and organized neatly at the instinctual level to ensure they would prosper, as apparently the goddess deigned to design the Eadici when doing the fusion.
The Eadici are divided biologically into five castes:
The least common but most important form of Eadici. An Eadici Queen is the only one that can and does bear children, and she is a necessity for any Eadici community, much less a greater colony, to survive. She mates with drones of her own species, or other species’ males, in order to get pregnant and kick off a life of bearing quite a large number of children. For the most part the queens have a sort of cultural respect given to them, basically a sort of reverence, which has led them to commonly be either leaders or otherwise super-influential figures in Eadici societies. Their burden is a hard one to bear, as it is seen, and one deserving of respect…though anyone can go ‘too far’ no matter what they are born as among the Eadici.
When bearing eggs, she does so in very large clutches and with a very hyper-swollen abdomen. It takes a lot out of her to do this, leaving her weak and exhausted beyond all recognition in the aftermath, though she produces pheromones naturally that will help protect her from other Eadici and others if any seek to approach her during this time period with ill intent (meaning getting in close to kill one in the middle of pregnancy and such is not going to work). Her body will store Eadici drone and non-Eadici male genetic information within itself for future pregnancies, though non-Eadici genetic information is reprocessed and re-coded to Eadici code in order to confer any genetic/racial advantages the father has to offspring.
It is also of note that a series of Eadici Queens ruled the second-longest-lasting dynasty of the Kingdom at one time, that being the Illuvian Dynasty. They are also the first ones to have peacefully transferred power to the next dynasty.
Tied for the most common/numerous biological caste of the Eadici alongside Workers, the Soldiers are all-female and stand taller than any other Eadici. They possess a dense natural musculature, tougher exoskeletal pieces, and are far more survivable and hardy by nature of their bodies being supernaturally redundant to quite an extent. Originally limited to just the act of fighting and protecting all their lives in far more ancient times, by the time of the refugees arriving through the Rift five hundred years ago they have become accepted in other working roles both dangerous and mundane as Eadici civilization has grown.
Tied for the most common/numerous biological caste alongside Soldiers, Workers are of about the average human height range. They are also a more evenly-distributed caste with about a 60-40 female-to-male balance and usually rather stable numbers between the sexes. Neither can breed either way, however, and their strength and physical capabilities are lesser than Soldiers. Yet they possess an inherently better spatial awareness whilst being shorter and embodying the idea of ‘strength in numbers’ very well indeed, being inherently accustomed to group work biologically. This isn’t to say they are smarter, as individuals can vary in intelligence and even ability to work with the natural caste their bodies were born into among the Eadici as with any humanoid sentient race, but they stand shorter than any Soldiers as frankly any other non-Soldier Eadici does.
Similar to the soldiers, anciently their caste was also held socially and very strictly. Yet by the time the Rift opened to their home plane, the shift allowing them into other areas of society just as Soldiers as their species’ civilization has expanded to an extent.
A male-only caste who are born simply for the sake of breeding, whose bodies are smaller and weaker than any other caste. They are second least common among the Eadici biological castes, as well as considered the most frail. They tend to look rather effeminate in comparison to their worker peers, though this is mostly due to their slimmer builds and lack of raw size. They do possess stamina in return for lacking in many other areas, and many have acted as eunuch-like directors who organize protection and care over the eggs of the queens they mate with. Their lives historically have been one living within luxury, though it is due to more bloody histories among competing ‘eunuch drones’ in the far past that ‘egg burning’ is a crime that is seen as horrible to all. By current times, however, they tend to live near queens alongside any other consorts of other species a queen might keep. In this sense they remain nobility of a sort, but only if brought to live near or with a queen of their own species.
(‘Egg burning’ being a male drone seeking the destruction of eggs under his care or other drones’ care in the farther-back ancient days, seeking to destroy the genetic offspring of other males and removing that influence from the colony. It is one reason that drones do not serve in any such roles anymore, even through current times, under penalty of death. That was how often and bad it got anciently among the Eadici in far too many places.)
A female-only caste that stands of the same height as queens, standing in height on the lower end of the height spectrum for Workers-caste individuals. They uniquely possess two sets of wings, four individual ones in total, that allow them to fly well and dart about with a fine finesse. When a queen dies, the most mature Princess nearby will biologically become a Queen and take on the role from that point on, signified by the permanent shedding/loss of their wings. They stand as the third least common caste, but do so by a longshot as compared to workers and soldiers. In ancient days only a few would be kept, and others would be killed, in order to better secure succession by Eadici or to be sent off to create ‘secondary colonies’ elsewhere to expand the colony’s land. Before even this the wars among princesses to secure the leadership or influential position of a colony were fierce and terrible in every way imaginable. Egg burnings, slaughters, riots, etc, nothing was off the table if it meant securing that position as the future Queen of the colony.
By current times, the expansion of Eadici society and growth of the Eadici civilization has done more for the Princess caste than ancient times. They oldest ones are kept closer to their mothers to avoid confusion by having them live all over the place, are raised by them, and exist in a chain of succession that encompasses them all. The remainder are scattered about to other homes, raised taking on some other kind of job or role or even being trained for battle and acting as flying soldiers and away from any kind of royalty or leadership position. They usually do have more of a penchant for leadership, with some having personalities and such learning far more inherently and other individuals’ personalities able to contrast this biological aspect entirely depending on how the individual is.
Translated as ‘people of the twisted wood’, the Jubon are a unique race to the Kingdom and were created on this plane as new natives of it quite by mistake. A powerful ‘Old Blood/Noble’ vampire that had pitched into the prior effort of getting through the Rift was allowed over with a few of his kind, mostly on shaky grounds due to the desperation of everyone to survive, but like others from the ‘old world’ who held onto grudges and anger and ultimately entered decades of war they were no different in effect. His bloodline was said to tie back to the original vampire, and his pride came far before the lives of those seen as being far beneath himself who also lived there on the other side of the Rift. Those underneath him, however, would become his undoing in turn. Fifteen years after the start of the decades of initial conflict, this great and former noble vampire of the old world would be slain and have his heartless and headless corpse buried in the ground and a tree grown over it to seal it away forever.
Yet this tree would not grow as intended. Nourished in dark magic and the blood of an undead noble vampire, the tree would shape and grow into something far more: the first Jubon. A being whose body looks like that of a pale-skinned vampire, full of regal elegance, but whose flesh is wrought from fleshy wood and the pulse of life rather than undeath. From she, whom the Jubon dub as ‘The First Mother’ of their kind (a title with more than simple respect bound to it), the Jubon race was created and grown and forged within the lands of the eventual Kingdom. Rumor has it that the “First Monarch” was a Jubon, though others have contested this rumor here and there over the dynasties and centuries. In truth, the lack of knowledge about the First Dynasty is ultimately due to actions of the Second Dynasty sealing most of that away in an Old Royal Vault that has yet to be broken into due to its extensive and ludicrous magical seals and extensive mundane constructions and so forth implemented to prevent anyone some kind of access to its knowledge and riches.
The Jubon by now take the form of a myriad of beings of the same kind of nature as the original Jubon, though the containers and individual natures vary. Within the sub-races that compose the jubon, there are: Some looking like vampires but able to transform parts and body pieces into tendrils and roots and branches and so forth. Ent-or-Treeman-like beings who have ashen gray or white or blackened or other similar colored barks, who can drink the life force out of the bodies of other beings to gain sustenance and produce blood-red sap that can nourish vampires far better than regular blood. Dryad-like beings who live in trees and plants, changing them to better fit their nature and protecting them whilst causing them to grow strange fruits (such as the dark blue colored Danga-fruit) that have myriad effects ranging from turning people into mindless lesser undead wights with a unique flavor to granting one a surge of mana…or even stranger things like a fruit that is harmless otherwise yet the seeds in particular being dangerous to eat raw since they’ll kill the eater over time and operate their corpse to find a fertile place to grow. Nature-spirits who reflect the darker side of nature, the night-side of it even, and are most active during the dark of the night. Etc, etc, etc.
In reality, the Jubon race’s ‘founder’ who was indeed the “First Monarch” is still alive and more than well.
She was reborn/born from the blood and flesh of the Old Blood/Noble Vampire that was taken in and absorbed by the tree planted over the remaining corpse to seal it away. Faked her identity and death to pass on the kingdom to the most reliable Jubon of her seed, only to have a more direct bloodline stemming from her losing hold over the throne with the bloody end of the Aratharian Kalvadian Dynasty. Then again, all Jubon are descended from her. She was, however, the powerful force and being that united the Kingdom before her elven descendants hid away all information on her identity in the Old Royal Vault out of fear and hoping to glorify their own dynasty over her own.
She is also in reality the First Vampire, a former human who achieved the status as the first Vampire in seeking to elevate human lifespans to being the same as that of the elves. Prior to this she’d been prophesied by an ancient sage in her day to be “the thrice-born and twice-founded, one who would bring great glory and beginnings”, she was taken from her tiny village and raised to become a concubine of the king one day to take advantage of her bloodline. Her blood family and their friends, however, were all killed to avoid any ideas of escape or fleeing to known friends or allies. Thus was her life, eventually becoming a magic-user and researcher at the whims of the king due to her prophetic status and being one of his favorite concubines to boot.
She created her first disciple and descendant by drinking almost all of the blood, but not all of the blood, of a eunuch in the ancient palace she was a concubine in at the time of a more than far-more-than-long-lost-by-now ancient civilization no one else but maybe the most ancient of beings remember. He also partook of some of her blood by accident due to an injury she’d sustained at the time trying to stop herself from killing him. Still, this first vampire sired by her initially followed her out of a sense of wonder for her nature. His name was Valren, and over time she taught him some of what she’d learned and memorized as she sought to make her new immortal undead life better despite the circumstances. There was no need to fear the sun or running water or so forth back then, as such afflictions of the Vampire race were nonexistent at the time. Only holy magic and holy-blessed weapons and holy places were dangerous to them, as well as both simply being beheaded and having their hearts destroyed.
Yet Valren would betray her in time, his power and nature getting to his head or perhaps driving him mad or both, and would begin to create more vampires to serve himself. He lied about being the “First Vampire” and having invented the method, and would seek more and more power to ensure he and his race could take over the world. From him came the ‘vampire complex’, that air of superiority and so forth, at the very least the vast and near total majority of vampires from then on would have after he instilled it into their ancestors. He even forged a bloody pact with an evil god in order to cement his power and grant himself more boons and might in general. But after all of this, and amassing power and slaves and servants and so forth, he felt there was one last ‘loose end’ to tie up before he could move forward with his plans. His sire.
Thus after sending a message for his old sire to meet with him, after having hid his plans and so forth for several centuries to ensure the element of surprise for the world in general, to partake of some dinner. It was a humble invitation his sire accepted out of nostalgia, sending him the location of her current hideout, not knowing what he’d become or where he’d been. He then wanted to see the rest of where she’d been living, which she’d go on to show him before he sprung his trap. He had poisoned her with holy water during dinner, placed magical wards on the exterior of the cave his sire had made into a home that would nullify most of (not all) her magical defenses both home-based and personal, and had hidden forces located just outside swarm in to help deal with her. It was a fight that was uphill for Valren and his forces even so, but one they would win before the ‘Master Vampire’ would move to take his sire’s research notes and knowledge for himself after having her slain and her body burnt miles away from the nearby village. Yet in this she would defy him one last time, her last defensive spell she hadn’t told him about burning most of her greatest works to ashes.
Valren scrambled to recover the rest and remake or restore it, but what he would pass along would be flawed and incomplete at best. He would also slay the subordinates who’d helped him in the deed or even themselves known in general about the messages he’d sent or received (and his visit away from his secretive base of operations) at all. He did so out of not wanting anyone to witness or know the truth to a rather paranoid degree, and to his credit he was thorough in his work. Very, very thorough. Yet the rituals he would concoct and the spells he’d try to recreate would not amount to those of his master, though would be considered vile dark magics, with the ‘greatest’ of his work being an incomplete ritual to resurrect himself as a powerful vampiric god should he die. Pride at its finest.
After his plan for world domination would fail after he launched it, he and his kind would begin to accrue further weaknesses due to the nature of what they’d done. Such was the nature of his crimes and evil that the gods themselves, whichever pantheons and so forth they were from, did this to him over time. The sun would now burn them to death and reduce them to ash. They could not cross bodies of flowing water. Fire would take to their bodies like it was potent fuel, and would be hard to put out if their bodies were ever set on fire. Garlic flowers could create a ward against them, and proper holy symbols/sigils/signs would now repel them rather than just harm them. So too would people curse them, verbally and magically, and these curses would accumulate within the vampiric bloodline and cause issues or madness or pain or whatever else the mass of them manifested as in an individual vampire’s lifetime. Still, the power becoming one offered was far from stopping others from trying to become one or ending up serving one with the chance to gain immortality. Adventurers and heroes would slay them, villagers would stake and behead them, and so forth as the centuries and utter millenia would pass along. So too would the legends about them and their origins.
In time, a group of ‘pureblood’ vampires descended from Valren would seek to complete his ritual at some point, seeking to restore the ‘glory of their race’ through bringing him back as their vampiric god. However, the way they completed the ritual invoked the ‘first great ancestor, the origin of which our blood flows’ rather than Valren specifically by name. It was one anecdote Valren had failed to add to his work before being killed by another scion of his in a rather ironic backstabbing all those millenia ago. The idea, in the case of the finished ritual’ was to restore the ‘legendary first vampire’ by having them take over the body of a newly-created vampire with their very soul supplanting that of the victim. Likewise the ritual was left less than complete in effect when it was disrupted by a great ancient hero and his party, who came together over time and managed to interrupt the ritual proper. It was a grand event remembered even now due to the significance of it in folklore and tale and legend, having been performed under a ritualistically auspicious night ‘when the planets aligned, the stars were right, and the right grounds were prepared after centuries of work’ as a vampiric prophecy so told. In the end, the incomplete ritual was ruined, records of its nature burned in finality, and…the spirit of the real first vampire bound to the body of a newborn old blood/noble vampire.
This new vampire would see the spirit of his oldest ancestor, bound to his body and speaking with him and advising him with all of her wisdom and knowledge, though despite his potential he would amount to nothing but a minor vampire lord in a distant location and derisively called a ‘pacifist’ and as a terrible example of a ‘weak and horrid vampire’. Even so, his line would become isolationists in their own area of the world until two holy wars and a total planetary Cataclysm later they would be exterminated from Gaia.
When the tree took in the remaining flesh, as well as the blood, of the Old Blood/Noble Vampire who came through this particular Rift, the prophecy of the ‘First Vampire’ laid on her at birth was fulfilled in full. She was reborn as a new being with great power, all after having been the founder of the vampires prior. She became the ‘thrice-born and twice-founded’ of legend in final, and after almost five-hundred years more of life she’s become something well beyond any individual.
However, she continues to pursue her own interests and so forth as she always has by current times. Indeed, she once stated to an old friend (now long dead) that her new goal was ‘to see time until its end if [she could], and to live and learn and continue doing so in fullness until she either [dies] again or everything ends either way’. Initially she led as the ‘First Monarch’ and formed the Kingdom out of a sense of personal guilt, but in time came to terms with it and moved onward. She also left a tree behind in the original spot she emerged from, which produces a mana-rich fruit of unknown effects every 200 years, to be ‘where her corpse was buried’ after ‘her untimely death on the throne’ that she faked. The site has become a place of worship for some Jubon and a minority from other races. She also serves as one of the current Court Mages to the throne at this point in time, having taken up the chance as a way to indulge herself for fun and do more secretive research on the side. Likewise, not unless the records she wrote for her descendants are finally uncovered from the Old Royal Vault somehow would she potentially pay attention to that tidbit again for one reason or another.))
Unless raised from the dead or conjured from some kind of afterlife or underworld on some other pane, either for purposes of civilian work or otherwise war, the undead have very very little presence within the Kingdom as a properly sentient ‘civilian race’ as it were. At the very best. Most undead used or conjured are mindless, or outright magic-control/directed, things that serve some purpose or another without thinking for themselves. Occasional undead arising from certain ancient battlefields or lost burial grounds tend to be signs of places that need rites performed or such measures to contain the potential dangers, or have something like ‘adventurers’ sent to help take care of them.
Lesser vampires are perhaps the most prolific ‘sentient’ undead, though no greater ones exist and have not for a very long time. The most an “Old Blood/Noble Vampire” is known is among the detailed old documents and tomes and stories preserved or copied by hand/magic over the past centuries. Lesser Vampires, meanwhile, are a presence that usually are taken care of in one way or another by the Kingdom since far and wide most are just outright people who sought this state to gain more power and influence. This also usually involved clearing and cleaning up an affected area in the aftermath, even using Jubon and Jubon products alongside the standard holy clerics/paladins and blessed materials and so forth to help clean things up.
However, other Greater Undead do pop up here and there. Things like Death Knights and Greater Banshees and so forth arising from areas with mass graves, and others such as Greater Wights arising from the bloodiest battlefields. Those undead that are taken in are a rather small minority of citizens at best, but usually have influence in a local area they live in and are amicable with and submit to the authority of the Kingdom itself properly.
Known among their own kind as the “Asu’rai” (Asu = ‘people’, and rai = ‘divine’; more specifically in context being ‘of the divine’), but as ‘Verfolk’ by everyone else, they are the youngest members of the Kingdom and were introduced through a very…rocky start. Eighty years of heated on-and-off war with their former home nation has left a good amount of them scattered about the lands of the Kingdom since, and the son of the last Galdarian Dynasty King attempted a genocide of them before being stopped by his own father and his father’s new heir. In the seventy-five years leading into the current day, relations have relatively softened in most of the kingdom as the Verfolk have migrated about and settled in many areas of the Kingdom and become much more integrated. Mostly the Verfolk and others can generally get along, though very few live in the north of the kingdom anymore, the place where they once were most populous and concentrated but also part of the long war. Not even the Verfolk can escape the bonds of cruel memories, however, which is one reason the North is far from totally inhospitable to them locally but still retains the scars of those old wars in their memories in pockets here and there that pose their own occasional dangers. The fact the current monarch has a female Verfolk consort is a show of the changing times, at least, though only time will tell how the future plays out for them.
The Verfolk are a race that was once embroiled in endless tribal wars among their own, living in an area of fertile and vast plains defended naturally from the north and west by great mountain ranges. Those plains have been soaked in more Verfolk blood than any can hope to recall or count, and the fight for resources and competition for dominance has kept them embroiled despite pieces of peace existing here and there in their home territory. Still, the race would come to be one with the arts of war and would hone their own crafts and tools of it to match. They would ride large, six-legged beasts called “Gir’thru” (Gir = ‘beast’, and thru = ‘swift’; contextually as in ‘as swift as the wind’) and could wield multiple weapons in their six arms. Their three faces would be used to keep an eye on the world around them with acute observation, and their stature places their males as taller than the females and the females’ average height as being 5’8” to 6’0” tall. The race is highly resistant to fire and heat, whilst also having semi-redundancy bodies and the ability to regrow lost arms and fingers and toes and legs only (yet slowly).
A people who lived upon the land of their home for longer than they have memory of, the Verfolk were religiously acquainted with the land. Mountains in their religion are seen as conduits to the divine, protecting them from harm as a shield from many foes and reaching up to the skies like a great pillar built up from the world itself. To live on one is to live upon or within a holy place, and to show proper respect to it. The eternal sky above stretches out like the ground below and also like unto vast bodies of water, and it is believed the gods/goddesses live beyond it and beyond a far more vast ‘sea of darkness and light’ which conceals their presence. During the night, this ‘sea of darkness and light’ can be seen if the skies are clear enough during that time. To die is to be buried near the conduits of the gods, or if too far from one then one crafted and wrought from stone to place over the grave, with one’s spirit being transmitted out to the gods to either lay at rest with them (if one was righteous) or to be cast down into a hellish realm of punishment (if one was evil). Rebirth is also possible and seen as a thing, mostly being for those who are sent by the gods to again touch the mortal realm for some divine purpose or another. Evil people can also be reborn if their evils are weighted and judged as lesser enough to be given a ‘second chance’, in this leading them to hopefully live a new and goodly life so they may achieve rest within the gods’ divine realm.
Over one hundred years ago, roughly about 145, a great and powerful Verfolk warlord managed to unite the warring tribes into one contiguous body. With the might of his arms, the wisdom of his brow, and the light of his brilliant spirit (as the folklore goes among the Verfolk), he was a reincarnation of the first Verfolk and had been sent by the gods to lead them to victory and greatness. With bloody slaughter he purged the ill elements preventing their unity, as well as slaughtered their enemies nearby and afar. With great knowledge he organized the people and their armies into one great throng, and took over lands unseen and places unspoken and races yet unmet and brought them under the Verfolk heel using diplomacy, military might, and other various measures. Due to him, in the literal sense, the Verfolk forged a mighty empire that stretched farther and wider than their homeland ever could. He lived long enough to fight against the Kingdom and begin the war against it, only coming to the front lines there when his generals proved unable to crack it fully. It was during this time the Kingdom suffered the worst defeats and lost by far the most land in those decades of conflict when the first Great Ach’hak was present on the field. It was also against him that the toughest battles were fought, win or lose.
But when the first died, the second took up where his father had left things. No big gains were made against the kingdom, and half the land taken by his father would be lost, but holding true to his bloodline the new Great Ach’hak would make gains elsewhere and push the borders of the empire to their furthest by taking other areas and subjugating them. He would then turn more major attention to the front with the Kingdom, only to push the border back again before falling ill and dying along the way to his people’s capital due to an unknown and mysterious cause. From here the next ruler, his younger brother, would mostly focus on internal matters and barely maintain enough troops on the Kingdom front as the need to balance and organize and keep order internally with the existing borders would lead to the Kingdom taking all their lost land back. The dramatic focus on the exponential issue of internal matters eventually led to unfavorable laws being passed to keep things in check, which would then lead to the leader’s fall to assassination by his younger twin siblings by another mother. This duo took attention back to the military, pushing back into the Kingdom a bit once more and leading together until one died on the battlefield and the other would lead an internal purge against the assassins using the military. By the time he died and the only son of the first twin took the throne after a decade of regency on his behalf, the empire had been reorganized into a very decentralized form that would steadily crumble away or form into independent kingdoms of their own. It was under this last Great Ach’hak that the Verfolk would make one last big offensive against the Kingdom, making a large push but ultimately being rebuffed and losing some northern territory in the north to the kingdom. This despite an initial success at striking somewhat deeper into the Kingdom than the prior two or three leaders had managed to, but being repelled in one final and rather climactic battle that sent the Verfolk forces reeling hard.
From here the empire collapsed into warring internal factions as the lost military forces led some to take advantage of their rivals wh led in other imperial territories. One thing led to another, and the crumbling of the empire was finally complete. The military and some other innovations remained with those whose smaller successor states, and the Kingdom would gain a proper Verfolk population who have somehow lasted until current times. Those within the Kingdom have become proper citizens by now, though anytime conflicts with the north occur the memory of those olden times flickers back for a brief moment…like a firefly flickering in the night.
(Males)
(Very Old Elderly Male)
(Female)
Verfolk language uses a constructive or 'building block' style of formatting to convey ideas. They use an apostrophe to combine 'simpler words/terms' into more nuanced and detailed 'complex words' that are chained together to make sentences. Individual context of these simpler words, as well as the order they are used in, will ultimately affect the end meaning when the language is either written or spoken. Misordering simpler words can make larger words mean wholly different things.
Likewise, very complex things or very alien/new things can result in very long and highly complex words needing to be used. This can be highly tedious for speakers or writers, but the Verfolk language is admirably flexible enough for it at the same time. Very long complex words can also be the result if new simpler words are needed to describe things which don't already have a term or concept for them, resulting in new simpler words being made over time to adapt.
Further, multiple different simple words can all refer to and signify the same base concept (like 'strength'), but will each have different nuances attached. This is also important to understand when trying to write or speak their language, as these nuances can also very readily affect the meaning of complex words.
~Population~
Twenty Million
~Plane Description~
The plane the Kingdom of Travannash exists on is one similar to the plane they once lived in, or at the very least is similar to the planet of Gaia. Mountain ranges and canyons, thriving verdant forests and hills and highlands, grand deserts and vast oceans, vast plains and volcanic areas, and even frozen tundra and icy wastes in the far poles and so forth exist (and more). A place that isn’t a perfect paradise, but which is very familiar to home, that has its own fauna and flora and monsters and even races and so forth that live within it. The Kingdom is far from having even sought to explore the unknown expaneses of the plane, and the truths and full nature of it is an unknown.
A new and incredible world, and an even more infinitely vast plane beyond, lie uncharted and unchecked and unexplored to enough of an extent! This also means, however, that just as many threats and dangers lie beyond the horizon…with some closer than others.
((Also they call the plane “Aiag”, locals mirroring the name of Gaia due to the perceived similarities. Secondary name is “Evalanar”, which in some Gaian tongue, maybe Virmari Elf language or something, means "Mirror World".))
~History~
The land of Travanash was forged from a menagerie of survivors who trickled through the Rift, peoples seeking survival who had been banded together for the sake of forging and escape. It had been a tenuous and semi-unstable ‘alliance’ of sorts, forged by several powerful individuals who still held some sway due to holding on to some of the last remaining resources in the area known formerly on Gaia as the Arathian Highlands. So by the time the refugees were through the Rift and into the plane they would now call home, things went…sideways really fast. Alongside the discovery of a couple local groups nearby whom the Gaian refugees would come to blows with inevitably, fifty years of conflict would ultimately paint the scene of the next few decades. Forged in the fires of desperation and old grudges, this period of conflict was only quenched when those who had held power before the migration died off with those grudges coming along with them. In the lingering embers afterward, the First Monarch rose to power and united the disparate groups of those years underneath one banner. One crown. One throne. One kingdom.
It was not an easy rise or start, but with the burnout on all sides from war and the refugee situation and so forth it was not too hard to find those who desired peace among all the groups present. The land itself would too be named in a mix of old Gaian and new-planar language, dubbed “Trava” (a form of old Gaian common-tongue for ‘new’) and “nash” (fire/life; in the Eadici language the context is more akin to ‘a new life reborn from the ashes’). Travanash. The ‘First Monarch’ took this as the name of their dynasty in turn, a sign of symbolic solidarity with the land and desire for a new future. The Travanashian Dynasty would kick off as the first, and greatest according to many, lasting 148 years until the throne was taken from the sickly and weak child heir by the regent after an amount of politicking and negotiations within the kingdom. The child’s mother would be taken as the wife of the new elvish Kalvadian Dynasty, which would last for another 85 years and would help build up the base ideas of the Travanashians as well as create the Grand Library at Kalimos and other major monuments to the past and current dynasty as the population continued to expand. In time, an internal civil war within the dynasty would lead to the eventually corrupt and decadent members of it to fall in favor of the Eadici-led Illuvian Dynasty. Rather than sit on the wealth and laurels of the Kalvadians, the Illuvians were known for their efficiency and public works for the most part. Road networks were forged, organization of the government was improved to increase efficiency, and law was enforced. It was a dynasty that did see some ‘rough’ patches in relations with the public, but ultimately the last Illuvian Monarch would 107 years later peacefully pass off the throne to the human-led Galdarian Dynasty after the death of the last Illuvian heir to disease would lead to a near-war-causing debate in the aftermath which was handled better than most assumed it would be.
Within this time of the Galdarian Dynasty, a great horde of creatures from elsewhere on the plane would migrate to near the borders of the Kingdom. Known as the “Verfolk” (Ver = 'noisy/beastial/animalistic' in the Carthanian Dwarven tongue) for the sound of their growling-and-bestial-like language of choice, the Verfolk were nomads who enacted conquest all the way to near the kingdom’s borders. This was done by them under the leadership of a new ‘Great Ach'hak’ (Ach'hak = in Verfolk means: 'Ach' = 'mighty' (('like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word)) and 'hak' = 'leader' ((a generic term for leader))) who sought to lead them to a more prosperous land. A strong military leader whose martial authority and troops kept the formerly warring Verfolk tribes together, even if barely at times, the drive of conquest had helped keep the system of things stable along the way and strengthened the by-now-rather-aging Great Ach'hak’s authority. What began as minute trade between the Kingdom and the Great Verfolkan Empire (as the Travasharian people called them at least) would eventually decline as border pressures and attempts of the latter to bully the former into submission became more and more hostile. The enacting of Verfolkan laws on citizens just across the border and into kingdom lands, followed by proper tribute demands, would end up kicking off war in full despite attempts to avoid it otherwise. For eighty years the Kingdom would be at an on-and-off but always rather heated war with the Verfolk, the battle lines being drawn in the north and leading to occasional conflicts with a couple of other groups surrounding the kingdom who sought the opportunistic chances to gain land or influence from the Kingdom itself.
Credit being where credit is due, however, the Galdarian Dynasty would hold together the Kingdom in the face of the vast and powerful Verfolkan Hordes and armies despite the decisions and such required to do so at some of those times. Decisions not rather popular and which would leave lasting scars, but which ensured survival and the gaining of ground. In this era the Kingdom would lose much land, but would retake both its old borders as well as slightly expand them by the end of those eighty years and five total monarchs who ruled and took command during it all. Thus 420 years after the entering of refugees through the Rift, the land was once more at peace from such a larger threat after the death of the last ‘Great Ach'hak’ in a climactic battle in the north (where the main battlefront was) led directly by the final Galdarian Monarch. Yet being leaders mostly during times of war and desperate succession due to deaths and so forth, the Galdarians had proven to be more warlike leaders than peaceful ones. The last Galdarian Monarch would survive to old age, but being weakened and bedridden most days they were able to see that their own surviving heir was too warlike and violent to take the throne. Thus the old Galdarian King would convene with the nobility and eventually take a monarch from among the more prominent families of the north, the area that had suffered most in the fighting, who would be proclaimed his heir apparent with all the legal and social flair and pomp and circumstance. This heir would seek peace over the likes of war, being from a family who did not want to seek a strike beyond the new northern border as the old Galdarian King’s flesh-and-blood son would.
What ensued would be…not the most pleasant. A five year rebellion and attempted Verfolk Extermination by the son of the old king would be initiated with his supporters and those who desired revenge for the prior decades of war, only to see the Galdarian Bloodline reduced to ashes as his father and the new heir led the Kingdom moved on to wipe out the rebel forces and crush the attempts at genocide in the name of internal peace. After this the new heir would rise, instating the dynasty that has ruled through current times in what has become called the Bakan Dynasty. In this time no great war has been present, and peace has generally been kept as the kingdom has seen rebuilding and improvement over the last 75 years. Prosperity has generally reigned and internal peace been more consistent, though the Kingdom’s military has been far from idle or bored by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet with the opening of the Rifts once more, the Kingdom faces the first great event in many generations. The other descendants of Gaia lie beyond the Rift, groups who have matured and grown and prospered (or not) otherwise within their own new home planes of existence. As the rift is contained within the central royal territory at the center of the kingdom, the fears of new threats beyond the veil and the potential of new allies alike rings in the minds of those leading within the Kingdom. What new horrors and benefits alike could emerge are anyone’s guess, and any surviving old records about Gaia and the Rifts have been sought out and poured over and over again to try to get even a vague or rough-ish idea of things. In the meantime the Kingdom has attempted to secure their Rift rift site with quick but temporary fortifications, all as more permanent ones have barely even begun the process of planning to build them around the rift. Diplomats and Generals alike have been prepared internally as quickly as the Kingdom can get them in on the same page, though only time will tell how things will go moving into the future.
~Culture and Society~
(How do they live? Anything from ritual cannibals, to matriarchal atheists, to a German-Chinese fusion culture. Religion also goes here!
This is Tort’s favorite section ^-^)
((Crusader’s Note: To Be Developed At All One Day
(@_@).
Ugh, brain hurt.
Might combine with the Demographics section since I tend to say stuff when describing a race anyways. Probably already included some there. Also is usually the hardest section for me to write. ))
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~Governance and Politics~
The Kingdom is a vast one, governed at the top by the Royal Family who control the largest central territory in the middle of the nation (which includes their Rift’s location). With the Kingdom being more centralized in terms of its power base, there are a series of royal institutions that help in keeping tabs and check on things in the Kingdom ranging from taxes to ensuring laws are being upheld and noting any issues or such going on and otherwise. A noble family rules over each of the great provinces of the kingdom, and other nobles rule smaller-scale regions with even other nobles ruling each region’s local districts below that. At the local-most level, mayors are ultimately chosen from among the people by the local district noble, though testing the waters of how the people feel about it is usually done as a side thing to try to prevent a terrible clash, as well as being answerable to the district nobles.
Judges are themselves appointed in each district and region and province respectively by the noble family in control at said level, usually coming from the local area they serve at a given level, and then must request approval from the Royal Judicar (Royal Judge) who lives at the capital. This letter also includes reasons and details why the candidate should have the position, which the Judicar will then review in time. The candidate can be investigated by the Royal Judicar as well, though ultimately approval or disapproval will be given by the end of this. Should an appointment become too questionable or problem-filled, the monarch might be approached for assistance by the Royal Judicar as well. There is also a system of ‘back up judges’ who are approved into their position, who are present in all cases the main judge is in order to learn and grow and be able to act in the place of the proper Judge during the course of finding a replacement and in the case the proper Judge in their area is incapacitated or such in the short term alone.
The gathering of taxes is itself also a complex affair, controlled by the Royal Treasury and its myriad officials and branches that exist across the Kingdom proper. Ruling nobles at various levels are expected to help assist these officials as they perform their work during each tax season, for which the nobility get a proper return of a small and set percentage of the total taxes gathered from their area. So the nobles have at least some more reasons to support the tax officials properly, not to say that some officials and nobles haven’t been caught for embezzling funds from the crown and punished here and there in the past. The better the land’s people do, the more taxes are able to be acquired, which means the more profit for the nobility there is to be reaped by working along with the crown.
As for the passing of power, the usual thing is to pass power to the oldest applicable sibling of the ruler. At least barring any special circumstances or things like being disinherited or so forth on that heir’s part. The throne’s politics also involve the sending of consorts and concubines to the ruler, who can potentially be used to gain favor from the crown upon one’s noble family of origin, though concubines and consorts are kept from the public and upon royal property. Concubines and consorts also have no legal or royal authority/power to command others around, save for calling in servants and that sort of simple thing, but their position is key when a noble family of the Kingdom wants to gain more royal favor and better cement their position of authority underneath a given monarch in particular. Children had by concubines and consorts are raised in the royal household to become future officers and officials and so forth for the crown, kept away from their non-ruling parent entirely prior to adulthood and working in their given role for at least 5 years. This is to help block undue influence from the consorts and concubines, which used to be more of a problem in the past overall for the royal family to the extent these laws have been etched into the palace and nation in blood. Only the king or queen’s children by their proper wife or husband respectively are eligible for the throne, however, and this has also been enforced due to that bloody past of the consorts and concubines farther back. If suspicions of undue or bad things going on on the part of consorts and concubines or these individuals’ children by the monarch are suspected badly enough, the Royal Spymaster will investigate and present evidence to the monarch once they’ve come to a conclusion.
Noble families can also seek favor and such of the throne to get positions of power over the likes of their rival or other noble families, mostly in the rare but real case a noble family loses their position of authority and another one must be chosen to take their place. In a sense this opens up the chance for a ‘promotion’ among nobility. Further, knights must choose to swear to the new noble family in charge or risk losing everything and their status to the local governing noble family who can redistribute or take the knight's land and title or otherwise as needed. Of course a knight can also petition the royal family to investigate, though most cases tend to be straightforward. In general governing nobles at a given level of governmental rule will distribute land to knights in general to give them a base of loyal troops to call upon. Noble children are also sent to the Educational Academies in the capital, effectively acting as both hostages and learning to become proper rulers starting at the age of ten when they are sent there, albeit non-inheriting children are simply sent to military academies by current times to disinherit them from succession and keep them away from dealings of inheritance at home entirely. Similar academies do not exist outside of the capital, however, for both legal and open as well as secretive and rather unspoken reasons. Great academies to train mages and magic users and so forth also exist within the vast and sprawling capital city as well, both for military and non-military purposes. Knights also do not govern in any fashion, but simply are given estate and wealth and status as minor nobles in return for being full-time warriors/soldiers/police-like officials more directly for their local lord/lady they serve. They are a stepping stone for becoming nobility as well, meaning if one can become a knight and thus the lowest tier of nobility the chance to start a rise up the ladder in some manner or another can present itself. Albeit not easily. Still, governing noble families can only have a small handful of knights in their service as both soldier/warrior/officers of their lord with a hard limit placed on it. They also do not see war anymore as part of the Kingdom's military, which has created a further simmering sort of resentment among those who hold to the 'ancient knightly ideals' and the old ways even through current times...
The Royal Guildhall is also an institution that exists, and it hosts the heads of the most reputed, skilled, and powerful guilds across the kingdom, allowing them to bring grievances as well as present their skills and so forth to the crown and kingdom at large. It is a place of negotiation and craft and presentation and speaking, where those seeking to gain more royal support and backing and so forth will seek to show themselves off and act (visibly at least) as best as they can. None are exempt from taxes, not even the nobles or merchants or guilds themselves if they reap a profit, but to get this royal backing and greater recognition on the part of a guild is to gain much more by paying their taxes and getting that position at the top. Entrance into the guildhall and representation within its halls is a thing one must earn, usually as a guild works its way up from the bottom and amasses the needed skills and people and scale and reputation and influence and such to eventually get invited. It is an incredible honor to be invited there, and potentially a very profitable one since only the best of the Guildhall are usually paid by the royal family or others to commission various works and do things such as arm the living soldiers in the military (among myriad other things such as getting resources to the military in part via guilds and their logistics).
~Technology and Magic~
(I hope this works? If I didn’t forget anything that is. If I did goof something up please let me know so I can fix this to be more fitting for the setting.)
In urban areas stuff like aqueducts and gravel filters paired with an alum-equivalent or such to sift out and clean water alongside boiling tanks worked by magic has been invented, creating public water cisterns and private water cistern. However, ‘public toilets’ tend to mostly be chamber pots dumped into the public sewers for ‘safer disposal’, sewers which flow a bit of water through and send it all back downstream of where the city/town/etc gets its water from. These ideas are usually in much more watered down and limited versions in all other living areas like villages and small enough townships, who are usually limited to wells and water purification rites/spells if they have a magic user who knows those around…all whilst otherwise trying to get water from a place or lake or such that isn’t downstream of a place with a sewer of some kind and such. Ducts for moving water are present in even rural areas, however, but take on simpler forms and materials that can be accessed in the local areas. Only those areas with good enough means of making the water safer to use tend to purposefully live downstream of other places with sewers in the first place, at least unless forced to by choice or location.
However, this is all more just antiquity being rediscovered or bubbling back in in time than anything else. One example of how limited the spread is too is that there are no actual public baths outside of any very major areas like the capital. Water-wheel-operated grindstone mills and windmills used in similar and other ways have caught on and are in use, this alongside the ideas of crop rotation being put into effect within the last three decades and showing more of their colors and benefits to the initially skeptical citizens as time goes on. Indeed, above the fame of their metalwork the Kingdom's greatest product and civilian technology is simply food. And quite a lot of it that can be grown by these times with attempts to improve farming coming to the forefront.
Militarily, however, things are generally seen as being more notable than the civilian area in terms of advancements and inventions. Whilst cannons do not exist, trebuchet have been advanced to try to make them more quick and efficient to transport and deploy. Ideas of stone spheres crafted using magic and filled with burning sticky oils and a fire-trap rune to set it off on impact have been forged into being, among similar ideas for arrow and siege weapon projectiles, and in the area of metals things have gone even further. Blast furnaces and slitting mills and smeltmills and such have come into more notable prominence, these alongside improvements to metallurgy techniques and metal forging. Verfolk metal techniques have even produced a Wootz/Damascus type steel to boot, leading to the metals and tools and weapons of the Kingdom being a rather high-quality product that stands out most.
As for things like forged rudimentary metal automata and earth-or-other-element-wrought golems, concepts of more advanced automata and golems are being looked into and tested and developed and taken in over time. Likewise the army of automata and golems and such utilized by the Kingdom has in part helped place it at the peak of artifice and golemcraft within their home plane of existence, at least within the area of it they live in and actually know about, and metalwork has seen incredible improvements by current times as well to feed into this craze and elsewhere. The "Metal Revolution", as many scholars are beginning to call this time period through current times, has even seen the making and use of automata-like mechanisms in the mundane sense as well as artifice and magic being used in the civilian sphere within the few urban centers and minute areas who can tap into such advancements within the Kingdom. Noble families make use of automata and living servants/maids alike, and such craft is seen as a sign of wealth and status and even forward-thinking among most in the actually educated younger generations. Meanwhile, to see one in the smaller areas and distant or rural places is something incredibly fancy and bourgeois no matter how old it is, with much older ones or partly-intact ones being more common to be bought and used by Kingdom merchants in a very secondhand way when the chance arises.
~Military Overview~
The Kingdom over the years has seen an amount of war, enough that the need to mitigate costs and create as ready a fighting force as possible has eventually become a driving force behind it due to the needs for one through even current times.
In the beginning began with knights and levies in the standard feudal fashion, and mercantile men-at-arms to supplement. Mighty cavalry charges and rows of simply-prepared peasant conscripts paired with fitting tactics to accompany them all, sitting alongside the likes of ballistae and torsion catapults at most for some kind of siege equipment. It was a time that some might reflect on as 'honorable' with a wistful eye for what once was, but the realities of life have driven such thinking out and left to those who reminisce over the tomes of history that have been recorded down in the libraries of the Kingdom. The Kalvadian Rebellion was the last time a full feudal-style army came into use in a major conflict, and throughout the Iluvian Dynasty the system would see the beginnings to a minor reorganization of sorts. Work was done to try to better organize the levy system, such as creating designated levy stations/areas, chains of command that would be established among levy during wartime, and the recycling of old or captured arms alongside the stockpiling of arms and preserved foods in special warehouses to help more rapidly arm and ready levies for somewhat faster deployments. It also led to establishing ideas that would lead to the creation of the Royal Guildhall, mostly in attempts to better arm the Royal Guard and concentrate greater influence into the capital city itself and to draw in 'the best' to this place.
Yet during the "Age of Five Kings" or "Eighty Years' War" as it is more commonly called, the heated on-and-off wars with with the Verfolk would take the Kingdom by surprise and more. The old system was salvageable somewhat initially, though the losses of land most common in the start of the conflict would prove to be the unmaking of what once was. Grasping to the older ways was not as feasible either in the presence of the first two Great Ach'hak, both who proved to be very keen and skilled military leaders in their own rights. Especially the first one. Losses of land meant less food for troops, less resources to make use of, and less levy and knights able to be accessed. Refugee nobility and their knights attempting to resettle elsewhere and using their old authority to simply take from others created internal problems with land distribution and other strife created by the masses who fled occupied areas if they could. In this the Galdarian Monarchs would have to not only look very much inward, but would have to think on what would help outwardly against the foe they were barely holding the desperate front line against on the northern border of the central territory of the Royal Family itself!
This would come in the form of magic, or more specifically in the form of magical artifice and golemcraft. The creation of automata and golems to face the Kingdom's foes became a potential source of more troops for, at least, less resources than it would cost for an all-living army in the long term. The cost in resources to make them was higher than getting a levy going and armed, but in the long term the ability to maintain them and control them and repair them and so forth was eventually proven to be far more manageable. It was also one big reason that the Kingdom's metalwork and related technologies would become as advanced as they have alongside their magical artifice and golemcrafting arts by current times. Gears and magic and weapons of war would be tooled into the seemingly endless march of automata, and magic work would make golem wrought of earth and stone and water and fire and such things beyond. It would forge an army that would withstand the test of time and the long-term, and whose costs were seen as being more viable under the conditions the Kingdom was under in those days. A living army would be used in tandem, though greater reforms would have to be scattered throughout it here and there in tiny tidbits until after the time of the first two Great Ach'hak opened things up a bit more. Even through the days of the final great leader of the Verfolk, who was barely holding onto a rapidly-crumbling empire and was simply a mouthpiece for their own mother's rule, the army would be tested and tried and pushed and reshaped by the fires of war and conflict.
After the war, the new army would also prove frighteningly effective against the five-year rebellion led by the son of the last Galdarian Monarch after an initially bumpy period due to the surprise nature of the rebellion and how many had joined it in the end. Afterward, the forces of the Kingdom's military would be shaped into what they have become today.
Most of the army by now is composed of artifice-wrought automata and carefully-crafted golems, the former being far more numerous and the latter being more potent and yet fewer in number. Beyond the mages and artificers and even mundane trained military officers who command and direct and repair and secure them and so forth, the high cost to build it up is mitigated by the far, far lesser cost of keeping it over even a long period of time. Upgrades and additions be wrought into the constructs' designs to improve them, even old rusty metal and so forth from far older days can be repurposed into useful parts and materials among other things just lying about or sat to the side by others. These units can even be stored in simple warehouses with minimal to really no care needed aside from regular checkups by a minimal amount of mages/people/artificers.
In terms of living soldiers, the Kingdom funds small and evenly-scattered garrisons of 'professional men-at-arms' who are kingdom/crown-funded infantry/cavalry trained professionally at academies in the capital and smattered about as a small but sustainable 'standing army' it can afford to keep up across the Kingdom. They are mostly meant for home defense in case of invasions or incursions, as well as act as border guard who keep tabs on things using scouts and so forth. They form the internal defensive backbone, though can also be recalled and moved about akin to the flexible professional military units of late antiquity in order to be used on the battlefields where they are needed here and there offensively as well. Peaceful enough areas might see their garrisons moved elsewhere where they are needed, leaving policing in the local areas in general to the existing Sheriffs and their people locally. In this regard the Kingdom can be seen as having 'gone backwards' militarily, though such a system has worked well for them thus far and been combined with better arms and armor designed to be efficient in use but good enough quality in nature...all in a carefully-kept but ever-struggling balance between cost and quality.
Overall the Kingdom's army is a rather large one overall due to its history and affairs with other neighbors and threats even through current times, and its non-living components being far more well-understood due to incidents and uses over the years. Everything from well-armed living infantry and cavalry to advanced automata with sleek and well-engineered crossbows built into their arms and golems that can provide a smoke screen or create barriers of their element to shield Kingdom forces. And more! Self-assembling trebuchets that conjure prepared ammo from storehouses or locations located far from battles lines, a magical and miraculous thing in and of themselves, are the predominant form of siege equipment given the lack of gunpowder discovery (albeit the materials to make it are present in the Kingdom's lands or are in use in other areas like alchemy or medicine).
—
(As for individual battle tactics on the field, ah, I’ll think of something or use some general stuff as a baseline or something befitting a fantasy war/battle.)
~Additional Info~
(Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
(Note: To Be Added Eventually)
Edit: 2/4: ((Ignore The Above App, Because Yes Tort I Did The Thing And Made A New Overhauled App IN 6 HOURS, AAAAAAAAAAAAA))
Ishullrai/Ish’ull’rai Empire
~Government Form~
Centralized Imperial Monarchy
~Demographics~
Known among their own kind as the “Asu’rai” (Asu = ‘people’, and rai = ‘divine’; more specifically in context being ‘of the divine’), they are a former race of Gaia whose history before the cataclysm came about with a…rocky start.
The Asu'rai are a race that was once embroiled in endless tribal wars among their own, living in an area of fertile and vast plains defended naturally from the north and west by great mountain ranges. Those plains have been soaked in more Asu'rai blood than any can hope to recall or count, and the fight for resources and competition for dominance kept them embroiled despite pieces of peace existing here and there in their home territory. Still, the race would come to be one with the arts of war and would hone their own crafts and tools of it to match. They would ride large, six-legged beasts called “Gir’thru” (Gir = ‘beast’, and thru = ‘swift’; contextually as in ‘as swift as the wind’) and could wield multiple weapons in their six arms. Their three faces would be used to keep an eye on the world around them with acute observation, and their stature places the females’ average height in turn as being 5’9” to 6’0” tall. Females trend toward being taller than males until they reach adulthood, where males will overcome them right about the time they reach adulthood.
The race is also highly resistant to fire and heat, whilst also having notably redundant bodies and the ability to regrow lost organs and so forth over time (yet slowly, like a natural healing process). Further, the skin of male Asu’rai reddens with age, starting off a pale caucasian white, whilst females start a light pink and become pale caucasian at a young age before remaining so for the rest of their lives.
(Males)
(Very Old Elderly Male)
(Female)
((More Could Be Added Later))
The majority race of the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles, which are called the“Volrest Isles” by the locals. In the Rolvfen tongue the name means “Royal Isles”, or “The Isles of the King”. Also a race that exists on the mainland within the bounds of the Empire’s territory.
The Rolvfen themselves are a humanoid race with tough draconic scales, two arms, and two legs. Their heads are dragon-like in shape, with eyes whose pupils are round in the daylight and become a bestial-looking slit in the dark (or when they are very panicked otherwise). The species stands with the males having a taller-than-the-females average height of 5’5”-5’8”, and females’ average height being 3-4 inches below that. The scales on their bodies are able to withstand rubbing against even coarse substances, and are made to also help them get a grip when walking around on slippery surfaces. Those living on the mainland tend to have more earthy and simple skin tones as well as others like golden yellows (think harvest wheat) and blues (if their people live near enough to a big body of water like a big lake or the ocean). The skin tone changes based on where they live over the course of about three generations, reflecting it in a sense and passing on that heritage to the next generation. It is said in their most ancient legends that they were made like this to help them survive against predators in their own very ancient past. The race in regards to the mainland also has eye colors ranging from a crimson red to violet to verdant forest greens and earthy browns and golden yellows and so forth.
Yet in terms of skin tone those living on the Isles have only one of two: Red or White. In this case it does not matter where they live or for how long or how many generations, which is a major oddity among their kind elsewhere. They also stand out in that their eye colors range from gold to silver to various gemstone-like colors. This is also where their past history and strife comes into play, as the Reds and the Pales (as they call themselves) are said to be descendants of a pair of mighty and powerful dragons who once ruled the isles and led their people to them for sanctuary from a great disaster of some kind. The Reds possess a higher stamina than the Pales whilst having tougher-than-normal scales for a Rolvfen, whilst the Pales possess stronger senses and a notable resistance to magic instead.
Whilst those living on the mainland eastern coast were either semi-tribal or otherwise disorganized when it came to governance, at least before the Empire emerged and swept them in, those living on the Isles were far more distinct. They had kingdoms that warred against each other, using longbows and leather armor and scale mail chest pieces and a simple chainmail skirt and leather woven sandals for their soldiers. They had small straight shortswords, and petty grudges going back generations upon generations to when their benefactor-founders infused them with their blood and supposedly died in battle against each other over some matter or issue very much long forgotten by time. Like the other areas on the eastern mainland, and the Empire to boot, the Rolvfen of the Isles had to deal with the presence of dragons and at times would serve them or kill them or ally with them or so forth based on whatever was going on at the time.
Rolvfen in general have clutches of 2-4 eggs that are protected by the female and male in tandem, one protecting the eggs usually due to their instincts. After hatching, males tend to venture out and females rule the ‘nest’ back home as it were. Children are held as important enough that females with eggs are expected to protect them and have those egg-protecting rights respected in ancient Rolvfen law. Meanwhile females who do not have eggs can work in any other jobs the male Rolvfen can. Male Rolvfen whose mate has died are expected to step up or find another mate/wife to help by traditional law as well. However, in many but not all ways the imposition of imperial law by the Empire has changed the status quo after over a century of enforcement and revolt and other civil issues leading to the eventual reforms and certain grants and such being made to keep order on the Isles.
Mainland Rolvfen compose about half of the Rolvfen population of the Empire, whilst the “Isles Rolvfen” compose the other half of the Empire’s Rolvfen population. Differences in culture are easy to see, and despite the retained ability to have children with each other the two differing Rolvfen populations had been separated (prior to the Empire) for a very long and unknown amount of time as well.
((More Could Be Added Later))
(Example: A Young Faerur With Her Hair Grown Long On Purpose)
The Faerur are from the second biggest of the Volrest Isles, located to the northwest of the largest island that long ago housed the majority of the Isles Rolvfen population. They are beings that exist somewhere between a centaur and a fae of some kind, beings who have the grace and mystery and oddity of the fae and all of the body shape of a proper centaur. They all have silvery hair, with various eye colors that always appear in mismatched pairs with no reason or rhyme. A gold eye and a brown one, a silver eye on a green one, a chocolate brown eye and a blue one, and so forth are among the incredible range of eye colors they can possess. In fact, to find any two Faerur with the same color eyes is already an incredibly rare feat, and to find two with the same eye colors in the same specific eyes as each other is even more extremely rare. They also have fae-like pointy ears and unicorn-like horn on their heads. Their skin colors too are odd, ranging from pale whites and snowy light grays to oranges and soft reds and light pinks. In this manner the Asu’rai themselves saw a sort of distant kinship with them and tended to treat them somewhat more favorably in the initial years and decades after taking over the Isles.
Prior to the involvement of the Empire, the Faerur were a race usually picked on and pushed back by the Rolvfen over and over again as the latter tried to subjugate the former. At times this succeeded for a time, and at others the Faerur would push back and be free once more. Immediately before the Empire arrived and took over, the Faerur lands had been split in half with more of it subjugated than the Rolvfen had ever managed before. After this the Faerur found themselves in a more favorable position underneath their new overlords, with many moving willingly by themselves or Empire mandate to the mainland or taken Rolvfen land to escape the past and others remaining home.
Traditional Faerur culture would usually see them organized into groups, a kind of thing parallel to fae courts which they called ‘councils’. Such Councils would war against each other here and there, work together one day and be sabotaging each other the next, and would even sometimes target others in the Isles for actions or mischief or so forth. Only when the Rolvfen became more of a problem over the years did the Council begin to grow more in size and war less with each other than they did try to survive the enemy and toy with them all the same. When the Empire took over, many abandoned the old system due to the changing times having already begun to break it down by this point prior. The Councils system was then in final shattered for good within the smaller portion who stayed back in their homeland, though it would take a civil revolt of those last few Councils before they were crushed. Since then, the native population in the Faerur homeland has barely recovered to pre-Imperial-conquest levels as more immigrants were moved in and peoples were moved all about to mitigate potential rebellions all over the Isles.
Being natural mages in their own right, Faerur have an innate magical talent that can be honed through actual training. Untrained, their magical talent can at least do little whimsical things like hide things and switch the placement of things and small-level small-scale stuff like that.
((More Could Be Added Later))
The Gnomar, who call themselves the “Lepraus” in their native tongue, are very small, diminutive humanoids who began on the north part of the largest island of the Isles. Sharing their home with the Rolvfen, however, proved to be less than ideal to say the least. The race has an inborn talent to dig through dirt with their strong but small little hands, but would eventually come to live in hillsides and similar underground abodes that would be wrought to keep hidden from enemies and to keep one’s children and food safe from invaders. They became industrious people who came to be close to the earth itself, and whilst not tricksters they would come to embrace traps and holes and guerilla warfare from day one due to their short stature being a great disadvantage in regards to reach. Their bodies are dense and their skeletons are tough, and they can take a brutal beating for something their size. They produce a lot of heat in their bodies as well, and possess a natural and inborn green thumb that they can fiddle with. So too do they make good spies and agents, able to be hidden in things and getting into places anyone as large as a human would not be able to.
Of course, becoming known for hoarding food and other valuables they own in their hidden homes, they gained a reputation somewhat akin to dragons. It does not help this that their other inborn talent is for keeping track of numbers. Yet this secondary talent makes them good merchants to boot, albeit some break the mold through sheer personal…’lack of talent’ as they tend to carefully put it among Gnomar.
The race’s land has mostly been ever occupied by the Rolvfen, with minimal interactions with the Faerur save to trade or make deals with a Faerur Council near the coast. The ingenuity of the race led them to survive very well, but with the arrival of the Empire the occupation of their lands was generally ended in favor of taking a lot of them and the other races of the Isles and resettling them elsewhere all over the Empire. Even so, they’ve found more success on the mainland than they did alone back on the Isles. Likewise with the redistribution they can be found scattered all over the empire…even if they do still remain the smallest minority and shortest race in the whole of the Empire.
~Population~
20 million
((If That Number Doesn’t Work, I Will Negotiate @_@))
~Plane Description~
The name of this plane the Empire inhabits has been dubbed "Aiag", a reversal of a word in an old foreign tongue from a place far away from the original migrants' homeland back on their former plane of existence. A word both reversed and foreign, representing a new plane that was both familiar and yet foreign at the same time. A fitting thing in the eyes of the original Asu'rai. It possesses fertile valleys and titanic mountains, looming volcanoes and islands scattered about the seas, frozen wastes and icy depths to the far poles, rolling hills and verdant fields, great oceans and clear lakes, vast deserts and stretching savannas, and so forth in a mirrored but differing image of the "old world" recorded of in the Empire's most ancient and precious records. Yet this would not be all.
The Rolvfen sitting north of the grand area the Empire would be founded in would be brought into the fold first, and would be the first contacts of this new place. Disorganized and scattered, word and legend tell that more of their kind live far west of the pine forests and the northernmost boundary of the Empire. Rarely are some vaguely Rolvfen heads supposedly seen from those dense pines and the glint of nighttime firelight, and at times other ones that to the imagination seem to snarl back in the dark from afar. Rumor has it that a vast desert with jackal-eared humans lies far beyond to the southwest, ruling a vast nation and riding upon giant insects, but none remember for sure outside of the ancient mainland Rolvfen oral traditions and scant information or such tales that come from the rarely seen northern traders at most.
Yet to the north of the Empire, the frozen wastes and icy tunda and subzero temperatures and jagged rocky protrusions and so forth that act as home to host to life and beings that have been long honed to withstand and subsist in this place...and to survive the terrors that lurk deep underneath the layers of glacial sheets and soil of that horrific land. From this place the warrior-people of the north have long struck out invasions, sent raiding parties, and come against the Empire before being driven back. On rare occasions, however, traders arrive from this region and deal peaceably in goods and tales and stories of their homeland on the northern border. On other occasions, a dragon or other gigantic or even titanic shambling horror or mythical beast will emerge from the far north or northwest and threaten the Empire itself on their rampaging path.
To the east and southeast of the Empire's southern heartland, dubbed the 'Fertile Basin', are the vast, warm oceans that grow colder the farther north one moves. Yet from due east and northeastern directions, across the oceans, would come the occasional ship of oddly hostile island Rolvfen of a stranger sort, and even ships made of wood manned by myriad beastfolk or alternately floating etched stone platforms held aloft by magic and manned by avian peoples would come over to do trade after initial run-ins with exploratory groups in the past. Ships would be sent back in return, talking of vast lands of farms and myriad nations in wars with each other and vast stone keeps that stretched out for miles to keep hold of an area. Yet at other times such beastfolk or avian peoples would return as enemies under other banners or flags or designs made for their craft to distinguish them differently somehow, seeking invasions or the taking of goods, and would have to be repelled once more with more or less effort.
To the south, two kingdoms would border the Empire itself. One is a kingdom of demonic-looking treefolk and dryads and elf-like folk, a strange people of ancients and peculiar mannerisms who would be at on-and-off war with the Empire and their other neighbor to the south. The other kingdom, in turn, would turn out to be a kingdom of different elvish-like folk and frog-like beings and even bull-like people who would be usually a trading partner and at other times riding about on a warpath atop vulture-like beasts diving down onto their foes from the sky.
Such is what is known thus far of other inhabitants of Aiag, and with the securing of the Volrest Isles over a century ago the opportunity to seek out what else lies within this vast new world has become tempting. At the same time, however, the opening of the Rift once more has led to its own sense of awe and panic among those who know. For only the gods know what lies beyond that gate, and what other worlds and peoples and places and dangers might linger or lurk beyond that ancient magical veil...
((More Could Eventually Be Added Due To Events On Aiag Itself In The Future))
~History~
Over two thousand five hundred years ago, a great and powerful Asu'rai warlord managed to unite the warring tribes into one contiguous body. With the might of his arms, the wisdom of his brow, and the light of his brilliant spirit (as the folklore goes among the Asu'rai), he was also a literal reincarnation of the first Asu'rai and had been sent by the gods to lead them to victory and greatness. With bloody slaughter he purged the ill elements preventing their unity, as well as slaughtered their enemies nearby and afar. With great knowledge he organized the people and their armies into one great throng, and took over lands unseen and places unspoken and races yet unmet and brought them under the Asu'rai heel using diplomacy, military might, and other various measures. Due to him, in the literal sense, the Asu'rai forged a mighty empire that stretched farther and wider than their homeland ever could have imagined. He lived long enough to forge a succession as well, passing on the empire he founded to his oldest son.
Holding true to his bloodline, the second Great Ach’hak ('Ach' = 'mighty' (('like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word)) and 'hak' = 'leader' ((a generic term for leader)) would make gains elsewhere and push the borders of the empire to their furthest by taking other areas and subjugating them. He would then turn more major attention to the internal affairs that had begun to backslide in his days, though his heir would die before he in turn fell ill and died along the way to his capital due to an unknown and mysterious disease From here the next ruler, his younger brother, would mostly focus on internal matters and barely maintain enough troops to keep the ‘core territories’ of the empire stable. The dramatic focus on the exponential issue of internal matters eventually led to unfavorable laws being passed to keep things in check, which would then lead to the leader’s fall to assassination by his younger twin siblings (half siblings themselves by another mother) after the loss of several periphery areas due to a lack of management. This duo took attention back to the military, pushing back out into certain lost areas and leading a purge in other internal ones to get rid of riotous elements. They would end up leading together until one died on the battlefield, and the other would become the victim of an assassination attempt he would survive but be crippled by.
By the time he died, the second twin (who was childless) had placed the only child of his twin brother on the throne and assigned the child’s mother as regent. Yet after a decade of regency on his behalf before he could come of age, the empire had been reorganized into a very decentralized form simply to try to hold itself together. In this time, however, it would also steadily crumble away to places forming into independent kingdoms and so forth on their own. It was under this last Great Ach’hak that the Asu'rai would make one last big offensive that would strike deep into trying to regain the past glories of the first Great Ach’hak. Yet with the ruler’s mother being the real power behind the throne, the current ruler being mostly a general with no political savviness, and the decentralization accelerating more and more over time, the empire of old would collapse into warring internal factions and attempted successor kingdoms and so forth.
By the time the Cataclysm came around, the most stable and long-lasting of these successor kingdoms that survived the times would become a hub of activity for many of the surviving Asu’rai once more. Refugees poured into this kingdom, with attempts to save sacred texts and old records somehow made along the way, and ultimately once the plans to make a Rift spread the move to construct one was made. Survivors were rallied underneath the last direct blood-relative of the former founders of the empire, a queen who took the throne with wisdom and grace said to have been bestowed on her by the gods themselves to ensure the survival of their people. It was under her enlightened rule in even these darkest of times that would bring the remaining population, at least those within her own lands by the time the Rift was completed, through the magical gateway and into a new home for their people.
…And what a home it would be. Great mountain basins/valleys filled with hills and vast open plains, as well as rivers weaving in and out and tributaries all over. All over there was fertile soil, with the vast mountains forming a rough terrain and a vast range protecting the western border stalwartly. To the east there was proper safe access to the sea, expanding out and moving gently downward to a sprawling eastern coastline and warm seas. A paradise that had been wrought from tumult or magic or whatever other forces of the world, but an area that would come to host the new rebirth of the Asu’rai race that was to come. The people would spread out over those titanic mountains and throughout the vast fertile mountain basins and valleys, and would fan out in time alongside the large and warm eastern coastline. They would reach from the top to the bottom, farming and mining and seeking a new future wrought from the ashes of the past. Also from this idea came the name for their homeland: “Ish’ull’rai”/Ishullrai (ish = ‘ash/ashes’, ull = ‘rebirth’, rai = ‘divine’). Rapid population growth from the plentitude of food, three civil wars, and numerous conquests (ones stretching in all directions) later, and the centralized Ishullrai Empire has become something of a powerful local force and very prosperous nation indeed.
Among the more notable conquests of the Empire throughout the last 500 years, the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles (called the“Volrest Isles” locally) in the colder seas to the northeast are among the more notable ones. Inhabited by three component races who have become part of the Asu’rai’s nation for the last 125 years, the area they live in is a land that has seen much war in and of itself as well. The treatment of the locals has changed over the years, depending on the ruler and other ongoing events, and immigration of Asu’rai to these islands and locals back to the mainland from the islands has been performed over the years to try to water down potential civil unrest to an effective point of success for the most part.
~Culture and Society~
~General~
The Empire enjoys a wide variety of festivals and celebrations, most being once a year ones held for deities or even ancient heroes. There are even specific festivals held to celebrate the harvest season and the start of a new year as the old one fades away. There are also feasts held to celebrate births, for those who can afford to put on one, and weddings and funerals more commonly so. At feasts for weddings and funerals one is expected to partake if they come to it, as it is to take in part of the bounty that symbolically represents the new life and joy the wedding rings in…or alternately the joy brought to the lives of others by the deceased whose funeral it is.
The Empire’s people enjoy the art of theater, with men and women participating, utilizing exaggerated gestures and masks and set pieces and songs. It is also a passion that began with the Asu’rai and became a general staple of the Empire in the end.
The smaller the theater the less the background pieces would be, leading to the idea of ‘simplified theater’ that focuses more on the actors. It is more dependent on the individuals, where actors can more splendidly shine individually but are relied on to tell the story of the piece/play. They go about being entirely minimalist in scenery and setting pieces, sometimes having nothing but a platform and seating all about to watch it in the most bare-minimal cases, by current times.
The larger and more wealthy the theater the more one can find, such as clockwork mechanisms and fancy backdrops and such, which in time has led to the idea of ‘epic theater’ that seeks to enthrall the senses and where the actors are a part of the fantastic scenes and so forth going on as part of the story. This form of theater can also make use of subtle details or such included in a scene, requiring one to have a keen eye to notice or best appreciate the occasional hints at the plot or little subtle cues and clues here and there which tie back into the story or help accentuate a scene. The fine details in both actors and the stage set apart ‘epic theater’ from the other form, and the use of clockwork karakuri-style dolls or such is also mixed into this form of Asu’rai theater.
People of the Empire also enjoy dance, which is common for certain festivals or celebrations such as one’s coming of age. Guests or not, one’s skill and accuracy does not matter when it comes to the dance. It is an expression of joy and jubilation and the fire of life when it is a public thing, though dancing in regards to a performance is a whole other thing requiring training and skill and grace to perform.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Religion~
A people who lived upon the land of their original home for longer than they have memory of back on Gaia, the Asu'rai were also religiously acquainted with the land. Mountains in their religion are seen as conduits to the divine, protecting them from harm as a shield from many foes and reaching up to the skies like a great pillar built up from the world itself. To live on one is to live upon or within a holy place, and to show proper respect to it. The eternal sky above stretches out like the ground below and also like unto vast bodies of water, and it is believed the gods/goddesses live beyond it and beyond a far more vast ‘sea of darkness and light’ which conceals their presence. During the night, this ‘sea of darkness and light’ can be seen if the skies are clear enough during that time.
To die is to be buried near the conduits of the gods, a mountain, or at least have a metal or stone-wrought mountain-like headstone called a “Rai’ach” (rai = “divine”, ach = 'mighty’ but ‘like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word) to place over the grave to the same effect. ((This term is also the name of their chief deity, who presides over the endless sky that stretches out over all.)) The idea of this is of one’s spirit being transmitted out to the gods to either lay at rest with them if one was righteous, or to be cast down into a hellish realm of punishment if one was evil. Rebirth is also possible and seen as a thing, mostly being for those who are sent by the gods to again touch the mortal realm for some divine purpose or another. Evil people can also be reborn if their evils are weighted and judged as lesser enough to be given a ‘second chance’, in this leading them to hopefully live a new and good life so they may achieve rest within the gods’ divine realm. One might have to live multiple good lives to burn away the negative evils and sins of their first life, but it is a struggle the traditional Asu’rai faith holds to be an eternal one until all redeemable souls pass into the pure realm of the gods and those who remain purely evil burn away in the ashes of punishment.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Random Additional Cultural Notes: Asu'rai Linguistics~
Asu'rai language uses a constructive or 'building block' style of formatting to convey ideas. They use an apostrophe to combine 'simpler words/terms' into more nuanced and detailed 'complex words' that are chained together to make sentences. Individual context of these simpler words, as well as the order they are used in, will ultimately affect the end meaning when the language is either written or spoken. Misordering simpler words can make larger words mean wholly different things.
Likewise, very complex things or very alien/new things can result in very long and highly complex words needing to be used. This can be highly tedious for speakers or writers, but the Asu'rai language is admirably flexible enough for it at the same time. Very long complex words can also be the result if new simpler words are needed to describe things which don't already have a term or concept for them, resulting in new simpler words being made over time to adapt.
Further, multiple different simple words can all refer to and signify the same base concept (like 'strength'), but will each have different nuances attached. This is also important to understand when trying to write or speak their language, as these nuances can also very readily affect the meaning of complex words.
((More To Maybe/or/Eventually Be Added One Day))
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~Governance and Politics~
Has a breakdown of organization from the smallest to the largest: Local, District, Regional, and Provincial. Then there is a great senate/council of experienced and well-seasoned governing individuals, including in their ranks the most wealthy and influential people of the empire.
Officials are paid by the state and are made part of it, with state organizations for tax collection, census taking, and so forth being set in place. The bureaucracy formed from these officials all over is basically what forms the day to day machine of the imperial government, with governing individuals being chosen via examinations held to help choose fitting people for positions throughout the Empire. Even governmental organizations use these examinations as a rule of thumb, and being proven unworthy of the position or corrupt and not doing your job is not going to lead to a ‘good’ end to say the least...
The monarchy remains hereditary, but monarchs will have multiple children who are educated and raised and eventually take their own exams to test their mettle and strength and intelligence and so forth. Among them, the most qualified will usually be chosen by the monarch. Otherwise the monarch does choose who their successor will be among their children, though if they die before doing that then the great senate/council chooses from among them instead.
~Technology and Magic~
The Empire has also not been lacking in terms of advancements over the years.
Crop rotation is utilized in order to help maximize the fertility of the soil and production of food. These ideas began in the more mountainous and fringe areas, as well as in a few areas where fertility in the soil seemed to start dropping, before eventually coalescing together as the concept was pieced together and came to be adopted formally about 275 years ago. Since then it has become a big hit, with the scholar who brought up the idea in a book about farming he wrote being credited with it publicly.
Methods of preservation such as pickling, dehydration (such as sun-drying), some curing done by hanging meats and such in dry/salty air blowing up on mountain slopes closer to the sea, and even mountainous root cellars are the types of preservation utilized within the Empire. The people of the Empire also actively make use of certain kinds of oils to store some foods, weighing them down with chunks of salt in jars of oil (the jars being sealed with wax or beeswax or similar sealants) in order to preserve them and use them for cooking later. Sometimes heavier foods might be covered in a thick coating of preserving spices and salt before being buried in the oil as a precaution, which also flavors the oil in the long term. Both versions of oil preservation make a generally useful byproduct for cooking called “Chu’ihs” (Chu = ‘long’, ihs = ‘meal’) due to how they flavor the oil in the containers of preserved foods. Chu’ihs is useful for adding calories and fat to even dishes with little meat and substance to them, as well as imparting meaty flavors and so forth secondarily that might be more of a morale thing than not. In areas with not as much fresh food access year-round, such as mountains, making food with Chu’ihs is a very common and reliable staple indeed to stretch out one’s food stores and improve one’s meals.
Further, the Empire has most notably emerged into the creation of gears and clockwork-style automata/mechanisms. Both magical and non-magical designs exist, utilizing anything from mana-generating ‘magic cores’ to power them to a series of levers or manually-operated means. Bridges that can be lowered or raised using gear-based mechanisms to cut off access during times of war, palace and city gates able to be opened and shut with cool mechanisms, dancing automata in the richest theaters, and so forth have had time to proliferate throughout the Empire in its major cities and many smaller towns. Naturally this doesn’t mean such things exist everywhere within the Empire’s lands as a standard, as the most distant and fringe areas or generally rural enough places of habitation don’t usually see them at all unless traveling elsewhere. For such people and foreigners traveling in or through the Empire, the sight of such things is a fascination and novelty that brings forth gasps of awe and gazes of wonder to the forefront. These advances also have extended to the military to boot, with auto-firing ballistae operated using easy-to-spin wheels to fire ammunition from atop carriages or on the field, as well as things like enchanted self-assembling automata trebuchet and well-improved crossbow-cocking designs, have become integrated inherently into the military.
Windmills and waterwheels also exist as technology made use of within the Empire, far more commonly so in the simple running of mills and grindstones and such. These things are also far more uncommonly used to help move or operate certain clockwork mechanisms in certain places in particular.
In terms of magic, most of it is rather standard to the ideas of casting spells using mana and using one's own mana or from the environment itself. Spells that call forth elementals or other beings from alien planes to serve as familiars under a magical contract, the creation of fireballs and magic missiles, and so forth feature among the vast array of generally but not entirely standard fantasy-magic faire. Artifice is also a very major area of magic-craft within the Empire, creating items and automata and golems and tools and weapons and so forth to make use of, and is a very well-developed area of magic use within the Empire to boot. There is also the use of uniquely movement-based magic called 'Ahtma', which uses symbolic movements to cast spells by drawing on the 'meaning' of said movements and the content created by using various movements in sequences. Ahtma looks a lot like martial arts or yoga or other such things, with anything from simple movements to complex ones being utilized within it. However, Ahtma users must train in the arts of using it and bringing effects and understanding to those magic-casting movements themselves in order for it to function in the first place. Simply imitating Ahtma moves isn't going to work, as the art requires its own sort of education and training and learning and so forth to be grasped or acquired in order to make use of it.
~Military Overview~
~Professional Living Army~
The former has evolved from what was once a thing controlled by nobility and knight-like warriors into what a professionally-trained force paid for by the Empire and not any particular person or group elsewhere. The food production of the Empire is its biggest and most prosperous area of its economy, that much cannot be denied, allowing it to fuel and keep moving a large standing army even far away from its heartland However, having a lot of food does not make a big army pop into existence either. Garrisons of troops exist across the Empire, helping put down any unrest and rotating here and there during times of peace…and taking on any threats that arise within or without the Empire. Monsters, enemy invasions from the north and south and at times the east, bandits, and so forth have become the usual long-term problems of an empire that controls a very wide swath of land as the Ishullrai Empire does. Highways act as major transit routes as well in order to keep goods and troops and so forth moving in good order, usually with a ‘route only for troops and messengers’ and a ‘route only for all other civilian traffic’ being built next to each other to facilitate this.
Military academies in the capital and other great cities of the Empire fuel the creation of new officers and so forth, and the training of soldiers properly and the implementation of regular pay is something that has created a highly-disciplined and well-drilled force to be reckoned with indeed. Such academies also prepare military engineers, logistical corps training, and so forth to add support roles. Other supporting units include mages and clerics and herbalist healers, who can be brought in to help assist wounded after battles and so forth, as well as messengers whose job it is to assist in sending messages back and forth.
Crossbows are deployed as the far more common type of projectile armament of choice, useful in both open areas and closer spaces depending on the size of crossbows used. Greatbows are the lingering remnant of what was once the dedicated archery core of the Empire’s armies centuries ago, being giant in size compared to a normal bow and being fired with all six arms of an Asu’rai (three to hold, three to draw back the string to fire) and firing powerful arrows a rather far distance (think more handheld ballistae in a sense). Clockwork ballistae can be used to fire larger bolts or rapid-fire many much smaller ones, and larger trebuchet who sometimes incorporate a bit of clockwork are usually manually operated and put together or taken apart to help in greater sieges to boot. Gunpowder components are something that exist within the Empire’s lands, but outside of the schools of magic in the greater cities and capital tinkering with materials no one has really come across the concept at all in the first place. However, enchanted ammunition and things like somewhat hollow oil-filled siege projectiles that use a stored fire spell to set the unfortunate impact area alight have been invented among other attempts to be creative.
In terms of melee weapons, one-handed, curved scimitar-like blades with strong cutting blades are used as the standard infantry weapon to cleave through lightly-armored or unarmored targets as a standard. A secondary spear, also a standard weapon, is used to help deal with armored foes and cavalry. These are paired with a shirt of chainmail, plate helmet, treated leather pants, a cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, boots, and a shield for all light infantry. Heavy infantry utilize the same armor and shield as light infantry alongside an additional plate cuirass, light plate pauldrons, and proper plate greaves. In this manner both heavy and light infantry can act as both an anti-infantry and anti-cavalry role depending on the battlefield and its needs. However, in return for the versatility there is a lack of proper specialization to boot outside of how heavily an infantry unit is armored or not.
Shock infantry are a rather small minority force in the professional army, rather small but having their potential uses against very lightly armored or unarmored foes and other less-protected targets. They utilize the same cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, the same pants as other infantry, and a plate helmet. For a weapon, they make use of a small selection of weapons. A large two-handed blade able to cleave through beasts and people alike, axes, and flanged maces are weapons they utilize. These weapons are two-handed as a general rule of thumb, but one-handed maces or axes might be paired with a shield in certain scenarios. These troops are meant to slam into the enemy and deal damage, as much as possible as quickly as possible, before letting the other infantry come in and handle the rest of the battle with superior armor and tools for a drawn-out clash.
In terms of cavalry a similar level of standardization has been used. Light cavalry utilize lances and light armor, moving fast and well-protected from most lighter weapons and blows in key places. They charge into and fight vulnerable enemy units, charge into enemy flanks for hit-and-run attacks, and sometimes might be equipped alternately with crossbows and used as an effective moving hit-and-run mobile ranged detachment. Heavy cavalry, meanwhile, have more dedicated armor and less mobility but are far harder-hitting on the charge. They do not go as far as being cataphract-level armored, though do have extra frontal armor as a matter of note. The heavy cavalry are meant for charging into enemy lines decisively with a heavier but more lethal lance, before pulling their secondary swords as arms and engaging in extended melee. Fast-moving and light carriage-mounted ballistae might also be used in a battle, firing in on enemy formations and troops before skirting back and being protected by the light cavalry depending on the particular battlefield.
~Automata/Golems~
Kept and maintained in long-term warehouses during times of peace, and constructed as needed during times of war as losses are sustained, this army differs from the professional army in far more than just what it is composed of. It costs notably more to build up this so-called ‘second army’ as compared to the professional one, but to maintain it over time and make use of it is far cheaper and exceptionally easier than any living army in comparison. That is where this army comes into play best, able to be used to supplement and assist and fight alongside living forces as well as to alternately supplant living forces when the Empire is stretched out too much militarily. It can also be used as an elite gut-punch of a force, using raw force, the self-repairing automata, and the heavy-hitting golems composed of various elements or builds or such to attrition and hammer into the enemy to buy time or do so for other strategic reasons. This secondary army is just that, secondary, but its uses are made to be rather potent when they are brought into play. They’ve slain large dragons and great monsters alone or alongside other living troops, and the corps of magic who attend to them and work with them and so forth are very skilled and drilled and trained by the military to boot.
The automata are generally equipped with enchanted weapons ranging from swords to spears and more when it comes to melee weapons. They can also use crossbows that use magic to draw in more ammo from vast storehouses kept filled way back home behind friendly lines. They move incredibly fluidly and smoothly down to the minute level, far more than most average civilian automata in this regard at least, and this has been noted as ‘creepy’ and ‘disturbing’ by those who have seen them in action on either side of a battle. This is also because they possess a humanoid-style appearance, four arms, and a peaceful but stoic-looking ‘face’ on their heads. They can rebuild each other and repair themselves in the field, even scavenging materials for doing such and adapting them to their own bodies as needed, and can be sent on magically-automated patrols or such things without the need for constant supervision and guidance/care. Among their ranks are also automata cavalry as well as self-assembling automata siege weapons or ballistae and such.
The golems are similar, possessing two to four arms and having the ability to be used in battle and even sent on magically-automated patrols or such things like with the automata. However, their construction tends to vary quite a bit. They can be generated locally for a battle by the Empire’s military mages, allowing them to be crafted from the local area and local materials, and can be stored away for war as well to boot. They are usually crafted elementally, using water, fire, earth, air, and even wood or metal to forge their bodies into something powerful and mightily strong. For what they lack in sheer numbers, which the automata and even living armies better make use of, they make up for in raw, pure power. Earth golems creating stone barriers and collapsing nearby cliff sides, water golems engulfing enemy forces and drowning them, fire golems tearing a hot red scar through formations, metal golems throwing oversized javelins or metal chunks generated from their own bodies to hit enemy placements, and otherwise are not something to underestimate on the battlefield. They are few, which makes the loss of them bad for an ongoing battle, though they can be more easily recreated between or outside of battles (not during battles). They can also be armed with weapons, sometimes ones magically wrought from their own element, in order to try to give them another advantage. However, this is mostly seen as a waste and is set to the wayside.
The title and enduring nickname for this ‘secondary army’ is “The Silver Army”.
A few edits to what I wrote so far, expanding on culture, governance, and military somewhat, and noting the existence of significant mineral resources in the land. If there are any details in particular that I'm forgetting and someone feels I should mention, feel free to let me know.
At the moment, I'm considering the role my nation will play, relative to other nations. I think it'll primarily involve trading, at least at the beginning, though, of course, that remains to be seen. I can't wait to get started.
(Also, for the sake of clarity, I've specified the Vivesperian Empire, or the Empire, to refer to the nation, while specifying Vivesper to refer to the land, but "Vivesper" will probably be used interchangeably outside of the nation sheet.)
Still very much a WIP. Total population size/makeup is still subject to change. I'm hoping to knock out one or two more sections at work tonight, but no promises. At the very least this'll give you guys a heads up as to what direction I'm going.
The Acra Aprellan Empire
Imperial Banner
Government Form: Confederal Elective Monarchy
Demographics:
The humans who have made Estraphus their home have, over the centuries, been altered by it. They have obtained a resistance to mana that causes them to be unable to act as a channel for it, thus disabling their ability to utilize most forms of magic. This also means that most low and mid powered spells have little to no effect on them. Secondary effects from these spells, such as smoke or heat generated by a fireball would still affect an Estraphan human normally.
The Satyr race was created when humans who were undergoing changes due to the sheer amount of mana in Estraphus, was further changed through the use of naturalist magic. This resulted in a race of people who had the legs of a horse, goat, deer, or similar creature, horns, and retained the ability to act as a medium for mana. Satyr, while occasionally traveling to other regions, predominantly live in the Riftlands. They can live as long as a human, but Satyr over the age of sixty are fairly rare outside of the Riftlands’ few urban centers due to the inherent dangers of the region.
Like the Satyr, the Dryad race was created through the use of naturalist magic. Unlike Estraphan humans, Dryad have no special resistance to mana, in fact they use mana as a form of sustenance. They are powerful spellcasters, possessing a large internal reservoir of mana. In terms of appearance Dryad are similar to a human, except they posses some plantlike features and usually have either horns or antlers. Dryad do not die of old age, instead as they age they gradually become plantlike until, sometime after two-hundred years of life, they take root. Once they take root the plantification rapidly increases until they become almost visually indistinct from a tree or other similar plant. Eventually one or two new dryad will be born from the plant’s fruit or flowers. For some time the plantified dryad will retain its intellect and ability to use magic, but its consciousness will gradually fade away.
Population: 15 Million 14.1 Million Humans 750 Thousand Satyr 150 Thousand Dryad
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Plane Description: Estraphus is a world filled to the brim with life and magical energy. On Estraphus, unlike other worlds, mana isn’t uniformly distributed. Instead it flows and pools, almost like water in a sense. Places that have comparably low amounts of mana one day can the next day be the center of a massive pool of mana, brought in by a storm.
Life on Estraphus has adapted to make the most of its excessive mana, gaining sustenance from it like plants do sunlight. Forests are a common sight on Estraphus and are a visual indicator as to where mana rivers and pools are. Where mana is especially dense, jungles will appear. Massive creatures roam the forests and jungles of Estraphus, dwarfed by the titanic primordials that follow and feed off of the mana storms of Estraphus.
Even precious metals and gems aren’t left untouched by Estraphus’ abundant mana. Soaked in the mana of the plane, these precious items, called mana crystals, have come to store mana and, given the right techniques, can be made to release said mana so that it can be made use of.
Regions of the Empire The lands occupied by the Empire and immediately surrounding it are divided into three regions: the Riftlands, the Imperial Core, and the Eastern Reaches. The Riftlands in the west are where the Rift and heartlands of the old Aprellan Empire can be found. It is a mixture of mana-saturated forests and jungles, occupied by massive and ferocious beasts. The Imperial Core is made up of a mixture of forests and plains; it is notable for having very pleasant weather year round. To the east of the Imperial Core lays the Eastern Reaches. The Eastern Reaches are plains broken up by the occasional marsh, with mountains to its north and further east and a coastline to its south.
History: The refugees who fled to Estraphus were three things: diverse, hardy, and pragmatic. When they arrived in Estraphus, they saw a world of abundant resources, but also one that could be hiding dangers as well. It was with this mindset that the people agreed to band together and form one country, thus the Aprellan Empire was born. Emperor Soren I was a beloved and forward thinking ruler. Under his leadership cities were built, new paths in the forests cleared, and the reach of the Empire expanded ever outwards. Emperor Soren I’s one flaw as a leader was that he left his empire with an heir unfit for the post.
Fifty-one years after the formation of the Aprellan Empire, Emperor Soren II inherited the throne. Soren II was a well meaning, if not weak willed, man. Within a few years the old advisors of Soren I had been steadily displaced by greedy men who sought only their own gain. Within five years the people had begun to chafe under an ever increasingly corrupt imperial government. Within ten years the empire had disintegrated into numerous independent realms. It did not take even a year after the dissolution of the empire for these now rival realms to begin warring with each other.
In the year 200 of the Estraphus Calender (200 years after the refugees arrived in Estraphus), what had come to be known as the Warring Era was coming to a close. The Republic of Lyncia, the now hegemonic power of Estraphus and the country that controlled the lands around the rift, was increasingly using its power to deter war instead of pursuing it. Wars still occurred, especially on the periphery of what had once been the Aprellan Empire, but most people agreed that they were at the cusp of an era of peace. They were wrong.
The Republic of Lyncia and its immediate neighbors by a massive storm. Strong winds and rain pelted the land for over a month. And with the rain came mana in amounts unimaginable to the people. The mana pooled in the area, staying long after the storm had left. And then people began to get sick.
The amount of mana in the region proved too much for many people, their bodies simply unable to deal with the sheer amount of magical energy in the air. Mana sickness, the Drowning, and Mystical Inebriation were just some of the names given to the mana caused illnesses that began to ail the people. Some people felt the excessive mana begin to change their bodies, those that didn’t died.
And as if the Mana Sickness wasn’t bad enough, the excessive mana affected the flora and fauna of the area as well. Forests grew nearly overnight. Cities struggled to keep the trees and vines from tearing apart their walls and buildings. Animals became bigger, stronger, and faster as well. Leaving the city walls soon became a life endangering endeavor; when the plants, or an especially ornery animal, tore damaged a city wall the city itself would become a hunting ground. And then the Primordials arrived. Truly massive creatures, even the smallest of the Primordials towered over city walls. More than one city fell simply because a Primordial couldn’t be bothered to go around it.
The Republic of Lyncia and its neighboring states were abandoned; it proved too difficult simply to survive the area. Fearful that the forests and monstrous animals encroaching on their lands as well, the nearby countries formed the Aprellan League. The League quickly grew, soon coming to encompass almost every territory of the old Aprellan Empire, save for those near the rift and on the outskirts of colonized land.
It was around this time that the mages of the Aprellan League noticed a decreased ability to utilize mana. They found, in fact, that all humans in Estraphus were either becoming resistant to mana, thus losing some ability to use magic, or were being altered by the excessive mana in the environment. Terrified at the thought of losing magic in an environment that could, almost overnight, turn hostile, the mages tried to halt these changes. Soon, however, it became clear that they could not change them. Every human in Estraphus would soon become resistant to mana; those who were not resistant would become something else. So instead of halting these changes, the mages of the League instead chose to control them. Trial and error resulted in roughly a third the population of Estraphus changing into the Satyr and Dryad. These two races of demihumans would soon prove to be much better suited to living in the mana soaked areas around the rift than any normal human ever could hope.
In the year 300 of the Estraphus Calender the countries of the Aprellan League jointly declared that it was past time to retake the holy land of the Rift. By this time the League had, in terms of territory, doubled in size and was in the midst of an agricultural boom as slavery had been largely replaced with serfdom. Despite this the Aprellan League was weak, ununified and without clear leadership. The League was abolished and replaced by a new empire, a greater empire. Thus the Acra Aprellan Empire was born. Unlike the old Aprellan Empire, the leader of the Acra Aprellan Empire would be voted onto the throne by the Empire’s strongest and most important countries so that there would be no second Soren II.
Almost immediately the Acra Aprellan Empire set its gaze upon the old Aprellan territory lost to the forest and fauna. By this time the mana in the area, although still markedly denser than in other areas, had fallen to a level that made the recolonization of the area a possibility. An imperial army was mustered and sent into the forest and jungle around the rift. Only to be forced back by disease and fauna a few months later. Several years later a second attempt was made, only to end the same way. Then a third attempt. And then a forth. Each attempt failed, but the attempts weren’t made in vain. First, it became clear that the satyr and dryad had little issue living in the region, even when humans became ill due to the mana. With each attempt to recolonize the region, more satyr villages and towns formed. These villages and towns quickly discovered that metals and gems mined in the region were soaked in magical energy. Once these metals and gems started to make their way into the greater imperial economic, the economy boomed.
As the Acra Aprellan Empire was benefiting from its economic boom, the new satyr villages and towns were unified into the March of Xoskea. This new country was tasked with being a type of buffer state between the Empire and the mana dense region as well as colonizing said region.
Culture and Society: The Acra Aprellan Empire is a political union of numerous countries that stretches over a wide area, thus it comes at no surprise that it is culturally diverse. Although still quite diverse, the three regions of the Empire do tend to have enough similarities to allow some generalities to be made.
The Imperial Core is the most established of the three regions; it is the most developed in terms of economy and technology. The people of the Imperial Core live in numerous walled cities. These cities are home to a growing middle class of merchants and craftsmen. Although they typically aren’t permanent residents of the Imperial Core’s numerous urban centers, mercenaries are also growing in number and are largely considered to be part of the middle class. Despite the grow of the meritorious middle class, the upper classes of society are still dominated by the aristocracy.
The Eastern Reaches is most easily described as dominated by towns and villages; in contrast to the Imperial Core, where walled cities are the norm, the walled cities in the Eastern Reaches are sparsely sprinkled throughout the region and exist as independent city-states. The Eastern Reaches are the breadbasket of the Empire, the vast majority of its people are serfs, its tiny middle class consists mostly of merchants and mercenaries.
The Riftlands is perhaps the most distinct of the three regions. For starters it is where the majority of Satyr and Dryad live. Most of the settlements in the region are towns and villages, with only a handful of walled cities and castles in the entirety of the region. Tribes are common in the region and the relationship between these various tribes and the developed countries in the region are varied and fluid in nature. Women are viewed much more as equals in the region, although somewhat paradoxically poligamy is common amongst the middle and upper classes despite this. Riftland diets are also much more meat focused than the other regions. Many individuals view and worship the Primordials as gods.
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Governance and Politics: The Acra Aprellan Empire is neither a true empire nor country, but instead a coalition of independent states that have united together in order to deal with the issues of defense, internal trade, and expansion of inhabited lands. The various countries that make up the Empire have near absolute power within their own borders, with a few key exceptions. Where the Imperial throne does possess power is in relations between its constituent states, external threats, and the expansion of its borders. The power of the Imperial throne can change drastically depending on politics in the Empire and the political strength of the Emperor, but it is important to note that as a general trend the Imperial throne has been steadily gaining in power.
To become Emperor of the Acra Aprellan Empire, the ruler of one of its constituent states had to be elected. The five most powerful states in the Empire served as electors, these states being: the Kingdom of Acitha, the Kingdom of Siphonia, the Duchy of Kohnia, the Duchy of Musea, and the March of Xoskea.
Technology and Magic: The Empire has two generalized schools of magic: Naturalism (Naturalist magic) and Runism (Runic magic). In theory the difference between the two schools of magic is whether the mana used to power any given spell goes through the caster (naturalism) or a rune (runism). Because of their resistance to mana, Estraphan humans cannot cast naturalist mana.
Naturalism is most commonly used to alter and control living beings. This doesn’t mean that naturalist magic can’t be used to throw a fireball at someone, just that doing so would generally be ineffective against anything a naturalist mage might encounter in Estraphus. Naturalist magic is what was used to control and guide the changes made to some of the human population when they first arrived in Estraphus, allowing for the creation of the Dryad and Satyr raises. It is also commonly used to speed up the domestication of wildlife or temporarily control wildlife. It can also be used to control and accelerate the growth of plants. Naturalist magic draws its mana from either the environment or the caster’s internal mana pool, because of this its commonly considered to be more powerful in regions that have a lot of mana in the environment.
Runic magic is both an important school of magic as well as the basis for a lot of the technology used in the Empire. The way runic magic works is that a rune is used as a medium to channel mana so that it may be used to cast a spell. The mana can be drawn from the environment, but usually a mana crystal is used to provide the mana supply. These runes are very complicated; all but the most basic of runic magic requires runes that can take hours, if not days or months, to draw. Because of this professional artificers will etch the runes into a hard material that usually also serves as a housing for the mana crystal. Runic magic can, and often is, used to create clean water and lights. It is quite common for wands, staves, and even swords to be used as mediums for runic magic, with some of these devices even having multiple runes etched into them allowing for them to produce several different types of spells.
Technology within the Empire can vary widely between the three regions and even between two different countries within a single region. As a general rule of thumb the Imperial Core is the most technologically advanced region. Aqueducts are largely unnecessary within the Imperial Core as runic magic is used to create water-producing wells and fountains. Many homes in the Imperial Core have a primitive form of air conditioning: built into the walls are pipes that can have water pumped into them, cold water to cool rooms and hot to heat them up. Runic powered furnaces and smelters are also common in this region.
The Eastern Reaches tend to be somewhat similar to the Imperial Core, except it has less access to runic magic based technology. Water and windmills are a common sight in the Eastern Reaches. The Riftlands are the least technologically advanced region. About half the region could be considered to be approaching technological parity with the Eastern Reaches while the other half are closer to a primitive pre-iron age level of technology.
Military Overview: It should come as a surprise to no one that the Empire’s military is unified and highly varied in nature. When called to military action by the emperor, each of the Empire’s constituent countries are expected to raise their own forces and rally under the emperor’s banner. Rivalries, political schemes, and simple differences in quality of troops and tactics all diminish the Empire’s military capabilities. Even so the Empire has a lot of experience fighting wars; its constituent countries are seemingly always at war with each other. As a general rule of thumb Imperial troops tend to be hardy, disciplined soldiers.
While there is some variation between every single country in the Empire, there are some observable regional trends. Countries in the Imperial Core tend to field a core of heavily armored infantry and cavalry, augmented by pike levies. Landsknecht troops (formations of soldiers equipped with two-handed swords, crossbows, and pikes) have become an increasingly core component of most Imperial Core armies. Aerial cavalry, such as pteranodon riders, serve as scouts, messengers, and increasingly as skirmishers.
The countries of the Eastern Reaches in turn opted towards lighter armored, less expensive troops. Shield and axe or mace bearing troops act as the frontline, while ranged troops provide most of the offensive potential. Bow cavalry are common in the Eastern Reaches, with even the heavy cavalry of the region bringing ranged weapons into battle.
The Riftlands have the least organized armies of the Empire and are geared for fighting in rough terrain such as forests and against the fauna of the plane. The Riftlands are the only region where the sword is used as a primary weapon. Even more unique is the swords themselves, the falcata, which acts like a hybrid between a sword and axe due to its forward curving blade. The Riftlands are also unique as they employ large numbers of domesticated Estraphan wildlife in combat. Riftland raptor cavalry are employed not as shock cavalry, but as scouts and sustained-melee cavalry.
Mercenaries are a common sight throughout the Empire and will make up a significant portion of any fighting force in any given war. These are battle hardened troops who have the wealth necessary to pay for the highest quality arms and armor, even if they may not be entirely dedicated to the cause.
((Information about specific types of units, their armaments and armor, and tactics will be added at a later date))
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Additional Info: (Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
Edit: A lot of things have been added. Its essentially done outside of adding in details.
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