The Ranuun Dominion
Nation Overview & Government
In the Amorian Desert, a powerful force has come to dominate the many city states in the region- that of the Ranuun people. The Ranuun people are a people of great confidence as they have come to believe themselves the agents of a all-powerful being they have direct contact with.
The various cities represent a different culture loosely related to the Ranuun that dominate them, that of coastal traders and merchants who have been distributed into multiple castes consisting of Artisans, Workers, Merchants and Slaves. The highest caste was usually the Warrior-Priest Caste, who acted as the the sovereigns of the local city.
The general structure is not entirely wealth based, but the general idea is that there is one Dominant caste with three middling castes who are considered 'equal' as brothers and sisters while the Unwanted Ones are treated as human cattle. Interbeeding between castes is strictly forbidden and this is enforced not only by the Ranuun People, as the social order of things requires that every caste keeps to their part in society and interbreeding the races dilutes the role one performs in society.
The main ruler is the Grand Soverign, always a Ranuun who through power politics has worked up through the ranks and rules absolutely. The line of secession is generally on the lines of brothers, which has ended up with many Ranuun Soverigns killing their brothers before they die until only the brother they favor most is left. As a result, often a Ranuun Soverign tries (but in practice, usually fails due to how easy it is as a agent of god to get any pureblood Ranuun woman you want) to only have two male heirs while having many female heirs to shore up loyalty with local leaders in other cities by giving them princesses to father new Ranuun of the Soverign's bloodline.
The Ranuun Caste acts as the ruling elite and makes up a surprising 10% of the whole realm's population due to how much the Ranuun have had children. The Ranuun despite their deeply patrical social order are majority female due a the tendency to kill the boys whenever there is more than two of them. The male Ranuun are pretty much all warriors and no other role in life is considered remotely acceptable as a pureblooded Ranuun Man. The female Ranuun carry out the building of encampments, cooking and enforcing the social order domestically. The Ranuun Caste has lots of social mobility and is to a degree a meritocracy, but even here neopotism and delineation based on which clan you are a part of is considered important even if interclan marriages are considered a good thing as long as it is a Ranuun clan. The Ranuun practice polygamy heavily and every Ranuun Man usually has multiple women who take care of some different domestic activity with the high ranking Ranuun Men having whole groups of women who try to vie for his favor.
The other four castes, or the Urban castes exist in tightly bound interdependant city states where mutual dependancy is the norm.
The Builder Caste, the Mercantile Caste, the Farmer Caste and the Slave Caste,
The Builders, Merchants and Farmers make up the bulk of society and all look down on the Slave Caste, which is also referred to as the "bought" as they are people bought from other cultures through trade that whoever owns them can do whatever they want with from the other castes. Like with the Ranuun Caste, none of them can interbreed and face horrific consequences if they do so.
Each caste has its own hierarchy and bloodlines that feud for the top of their internal structure.
Ethnicity
The Khanate has multiple ethnicities within their dominion due to the overall society having deeply entrenched systems of forced breeding among multiple groups of people that over the millennia have created a caste system that has perpetuated itself from a total hostility to any racial mixing. It is one of the most strictly enforced caste systems in the known world, where any form of social mobility is absent and any attempt to disrupt the harmony is bet with in extremely, extremely brutal fashions. For instance, any refusal to do what your caste demands of you will lead to your family having to murder you or risk fratricide on part of the regional chief. Interbreeding in particular has deep, deep contempt among Ranuunian civilization. For it is tradition that Children born from mixed marriages must be cooked to dearg and their remains fed to those who made the kid to begin (both the mother and father) with to forever taint them. For they aren't even considered people of any sort- failing to fall into any of the castes.
There are five recognized castes, typified mainly by skin and eye color.
The Ranuun, or the angels of god. The Ranuun are a rough skinned, golden eyed group and dark haired ethnicity of people who have a long running tradition of horse mounted warfare that has managed to prove shockingly adaptable to modern advancements with weapons, switching between bows and rifles as they will.
The Builders who make infrastructure and maintain the roads, aqueducts and so on. They tend to have darker skin and olive eyes.
The Merchants who trade and sell goods between the castes. Merchants tend to make the art in society and have tan skin and olive eyes.
The Farmers who make food. They tend to have darker skin and brown eyes.
The slaves who the other castes can do whatever they please with. They lack any real single ethnic due to their origins, but are expected not to interbred racially regardless- generally slaves get castrated.
Mixed breeds have severe consequences, mainly in that the mother and father must dine on the body of the child of mixed origin raw. The sickness they get from doing so, along with the social taint from the mixed breeding is used to keep them from ever trying to interbreed again.
Geography
The Amorian Desert is a temperamental, hot place with many aquatic resources manifesting in a oasis in many places. Various water sources from the mountains in the north have also been beds of major cities as well, with the rivers running from the central hills being the site of ancient cultures in times long past before the rise of the Ranuun. There is fertile soil to be found towards the major coastal areas where the major cities exist.
Culture/Society
The Amorian societies all share the general trend of a strict interpretation of human nature where certain peoples are good and only good for one set of tasks in life and is rigorous in the caste system that is perpetuated with mixed races being viewed as not even a human of any sort with a strong ritual punishment for the parents of mixed race children- the recycling ceremony. The recycling ceremony simply dictates that the mother and father must eat any mixed race children they give birth.
The cities of the Salt Coasts are trade oriented in nature, content to travel around the coasts to many nearby places trading mostly in barter due to money being only used within the Amorian desert.
The cities have various water networks and often are built near a river delta or oasis.
Economy/Industry
The majority of industry in the Khanate is within the coastal towns and cities which are controlled by the Ranuun Caste whose horsemen protect the trade routes and generally act as a stabilizing actor for perchant trade within the Ranuun dominion. Which ensures easy land trade throughout the deserts and ensures a constant revenue of tribute for the Ranuun people. The system so far has been stable only so much that the Ranuun are very hard to remove from power due to other castes being deprived of any knowledge of military tactics and any attempts to revolt leading to the complete wipe out of a dissenting city.
A slave economy exists in the cities, for slaves teach, serve and are used as target practice for all matter of things that the people who bought them want.
Military
Basically Ottoman-Style military with a gun welding Calvary, large cannons and various detachments of conscripts whose job is to carry out logistics.
The rifles the Ranuun use are often highly decorated and usually are manufactured by Merchants in the cities who the Ranuun distrust highly. Their technology seems highly derived from other lands, but they insist it to be a invention of the ancient realm and nothing modern in nature. The Ranuun rifles tend to be effective more as a shock weapon used before arrow barrages or a direct charge into the meat of battle with a curved sword known as a Kleviar, which is well known for its ability to slice through skin very easily even if it is not terribly effective against heavy armor as the Kleviar's main purpose is to slice the neck of other horse riders and slice through civilians.
The bows that Ranuun Archers use are ancient, developed over the centuries and are well known for how hard they hit the enemy while still being compact enough to fire from horseback.
The horses tend to be armored as well, with stirrups and metal scales built up by the rider.
The Ranuun in combat use heavy armor, with broad shoulder pads and silk plating to minimize the heat of the desert while maximizing a resistance to ranged assaults by any enemy forces.
History
According to myth, the Ranuun are the chosen people of god, his soldier on Earth as angels fallen from the power they once had. There was the age of division between the Ranuun confederations, and endless war before the great one Sanguis- a forgotten member of the lost civilization who would bring back the advancements lost to the Ranuun people. And with those advancements came unity once more as a once backwater people regained their supremacy as god intended it. Conquering the cities on the Salt Coasts across the Amorian Desert and basing their home in the Pyra mountains where the Supreme Sovereign leads from, the Ranuun reigned supreme over the other peoples of the world once again.
The Kingdom of Rhoda would be among these conquests, a relatively recent one at that which has been primarily used as a tributary more than as a direct territory like the city-states under Ranuun dominion.
Yet there is still too many out in the world who have yet to recognize the supremacy of the Ranuun- and the current Supreme Soverign is aging. He had a father who made a critical error in caring too much for his children against god's wishes and now instead of having a designated brother to succeed him, there is much fear among the inner circles that a dynastic struggle is on the verge of breaking out in the midst of preparing for the next big conquest.
Relations
Probably wants to also conquer and dominate all neighboring players. They don't like that there are other societies not paying tribute. Mercantile, more cordial relationships with the distant countries are likely.
Characters
Insan, the current Sovereign of the Ranuun and the deserts. A aging leader who has let too many of his brothers live and now the consequences of this action concern those of higher echelons of society in how secession shall go in the event Insan perishes- for than the plans to invade the savage south western lands or secure the eastern frontier will have all matter of complications if a secession crises breaks into civil war as it had twice before. He is known for having a harem of over two hundred women.
Linsan, a younger, very spirited man and one of the brothers of Insan who has managed to avoid the wrath of a aging Insan by being mindlessly loyal. It is uncertain if he has ambitions for running the domain, however.
Clisan, a middle aged man and another brother of Insan who is believed to be the designated successor of Insan due to his experience and being the mastermind behind the vassalization of the fertile northern kingdom of Rhodos, which has brought much wealth and food to the normally desert centered Ranuun Dom
