Senor Herp — Roleplayer Guild

Ey, Sini, where's a sane placement on the map for severe volcanic faulting? Ashlandy stuff, Morrowind-alike. Ideally somewhere that makes sense for that geography and that also might've been a plausible imperial centerpiece & hold-out for a formerly much larger state. I'm thinking Khumer has been a relative constant through antiquity as the codifier of asshole sorcerer kings (or supposed sorcerer kings) having ups and downs between superpower status and dogged slaver rump-state. Lots of coalition wars of containment, successful or failed, that sort of thing. Editing in retrospect, I think I see three good places; east of the southwestern delta, in the spine by Oxfreight and Jukku, and in the far northern mountain hideaway. I'm leaning heavily towards the southwestern delta mountain spine, south of Arman-Arhus and east of where Cap'n's sorcerer-king killers are probably getting situated, so I'll claim that for the time being and keep the other two prospects on backup in case of any necessary shuffle-around. For custom pro & con, I tried to make them as thematic as possible, and broad reaching rather than specific practices. Something to give life in crunch to the overall fluff. By Terror Thou Shalt Wage War: There can be no doubt that as a military entity Khumer is efficient and brutal, but further so as a sociopolitical one. While few men would willingly subject themselves to the horror of living in Khumer's lands and systems, to throw themselves in chains under those exceedingly cruel men, yet fewer would like to face the cruelty of the Khumerian highborn or their much-repressed slaves. Better to go into captivity amongst exceedingly cruel men than be eaten alive by them, or vice-versa. With little or no fight, some states in history have become vassals to Khumer when faced with the inevitability of conquest to spare themselves the butcherous ruin that would follow refusal to submit. Although such days are long past with Khumer's sorry state and the ease of successful coalition, soldiers will nonetheless face wildly fluctuating morale and force organization when faced with the Khumite question; an organized formation might be feeble and giving, or an unbreakably, rabidly fearful mob- fighting as many more men on the personal level- might lose all cohesion. Either may serve as wheat to thresh for the Khumites if the enemy commanders do not retain control of the situation. O Daughter of Babylon: Conversely, the terror of Khumer and all its iniquities leaves few men alive to speak any favorable thing, to have any good notion of it. It is a black-hearted man, either by malevolence or fear, who would make any deal with the priest-statesmen of Khumer. Legitimate diplomacy with that black realm is ill found in this era, and even secret overtures are few and kept as careful secret. The Khumerian highborne as a race are rarely considered humans, more often as demons given flesh, both for their stature and the stature of their moral monstrosity. Therefore, Khumer can expect an absolutely frigid political climate, if it is not warmed by fire and blood.

SHELL SHEET - TO BE FILLED

A god-man was forged in the sins of the unworthy and the pride of the old kings. A god-man was quenched in the blood of the high men and the low. A god-man was drawn up from the great throngs of the damned, stolen by fate from doom. A god-man- our King- stands atop the world, and he finds it wanting.

Name: The Divinely Anointed Kingdom of Khumer

Flag/emblem: The emblem of Khumer, usually beaten out of brass and iron rather than weaved in cloth, is that of a wide-eyed sunwheel-sunburst, ringed with flaming tongues, encircled by leering snake and straddled by glowering bull. There is no enforced style on the eye, leading to various depictions and expressions on the part of the craftsmen and commissioner, but is most often forged in an unfocused, dilated gape, with bloodshottedness simulated by the careful spattering of human blood.

Demonym: Khumerian or Khumite

Khumer is the longest-lived and most famous in the series of sorcerer-kings' realms that scar the history of Tanis, as well as the most doggedly vile and pompous. Stretching back some thousands of years, legend has it that the ancient state of Khum was formed in the center continent on the thence-named Sea of Khum by the demigod-king Nebayrdinuzar, the leader of an exceedingly cruel race of cannibalistic giants, themselves claiming divine heritage, and all others proclaiming them devil's spawn. Once, in this antideluvian era, they claim to have held sway over all of civilized Tanis, though whether this is fact or aggrandizement is unclear. The sheer size of their empire would be their undoing, as the men of Khum were thrown out from their holdings in a flood of rebellion by countless tribals and aristocrats of 'lesser' stock. That race of men and its collaborators were scattered to the far corners, to carve out their own petty realms, mimicking the rise and fall of Khum. The only successor-state to survive is Khumer, taking much more than mere namesake from its progenitor by unfailingly maintaining the necessary brutality that brought Khum to power in the first place.

Nestled in the southwestern Serpentsback mountains, the fortress-towers and ziggurats rise out from the rock and fire like jagged nails in the cross of the world. In the days of old, the region was the preferred retreat of Nebayrdinuzar and those successors- by lineage or scheming and murder- whom cared not for the gentle waters and warm green of his formal and practical seat of power, instead preferring the naked, primal brutality of the ash-wastes that he and his imitators saw as the original state of divinity, when the Sun's blood first spilled on the earth. Countless pits were dug for slavekeeping and sacrifice, by fire and crushing and murder by the sword. Horrendous beasts, twisted and maligned to survive in the Serpentsback, were captured and broken, to wage war and provide spectacle for the endless thirst of bloodsport. The blood of Khum's high men was purer here, more mad, more vile, and they kept a stature two heads above the other men of the world. Khumer was a plague to all tribes around it, nomad or city-dweller. And though its territories have fluctuated in losses both steady and sudden with only uncommon reclaimations in the face of coalition, the core of Khumer has refused to move, the brass gates have remain shut, a work of stone and metal and blood to make the world tremble. 

Such has been the way for the past millenia, with the other sorcerer-kings dying away or falling into exile as mere hedge wizards and court viziers, offering mystical advisory to those lords, governors and khans bold or foolish enough to employ them. With the rise of the Flayed King, there have been stirrings within and without Khumer. Stirrings of war and ruin, of a restoration of some measure of the old Empire; to straddle the sea of Khum once again and put the fear of the 'true' gods back into the races of men. Such stirrings, too, have been the way of things for the past millenia.

Stirrings they will not remain. (TO BE CONTINUED)

The governing of Khumer is a pyramidal absolute despotism. While it has fluctuated between monarchic succession, election by peer, and bloody-handed coup, there has been one constant; the word of the King of Khumer, claimant to the throne of the world as Emperor of Khum, is absolute. Or at least, absolute insofar as he can make it so. The Serpent and Bull are cannibal godheads, acquiring their positions at the head of the world by devouring all in the seats of power above them, and all below who threatened them, and the Khumerian aristocracy mimics this closely, often literally. If one is strong or clever enough to strongarm their way into another's position, or to strongarm others into doing the deed, then it is done. Only so many deep schemers will retain themselves in middling positions. If the murderer-ascendant has made his way upward by luck or exceeding deceit and not by merit or strength, thus proving unwise in stewardship of his new holdings, be they a lowly slave market and its supporting infrastructure, a township's governance, or the Throne of the Bloody Eye itself, then a hopefully more competent or at least less incompetent murderer-ascendant will take his place. From heel to head, this is the way of things in Khumer, and this is the only true law; all others are only lawful as far as the lawmaker and his underlings can enforce them, and are by no means written in stone.

The economy of Khumer, thanks to the severe depletion of natural resources and chilly relations with the peoples around them, revolves largely around two products; slaves, and alum. Slaves are a simple matter, take flesh from one state or tribe, and sell them to the next one or many over, no matter the difficulty of finding an unobjecting and morally unscrupulous market. Khumerian traders have their ways, and are quick to find new ones. The flesh-trade dries in coalition wartime, as the excesses of Khumerian raiders grow intolerable, but the need for cheap labor by the greedy sees the market return in time. Alum, on the other hand, is a more complex matter. As both a disinfectant, a highly regarded cure-all, and industrial aid, alum mining is even more lucrative than Khumer's salt mines, and even more vital. The abominable amount of filth produced by the Khumerian society's excesses and brutality is nightmarish, and with how little water there is in Khumer to go around- it is not an exaggeration that blood flows and is drunk more commonly- it is vital that drinking and sewage water are both as clean as possible. In water and alone, in various forms, it is spread over cuts as disinfectant, over the body and filth to dispel foul smells and humors, and consumed to 'purge demons of the gut,' a side effect of the lattermost being a widespread form rickets that deforms the bones, giving both native-born slaves and Khumite highborn an unpleasantly jagged, ridged quality at joints and along the spine. In industry, it dissolves steel, dries and preserves hides during tanning, aids in the process of paper marbling, improves the viscosity of ceramic glaze, acts as base for alchemically flame retardant solutions, is used in pickling, twice-leavens bread when added to baking powder, and so on. A robustly useful product, much is consumed domestically, but the so-called white blood of the gods is common enough to make for a lucrative export market.

"In the First Day, there was naught. There was no earth, and no sky, and nothing swam, walked, crawled or flew. And from the black, the Sun shone forth, and spake, 'let there be blood!' And the blood, from which all things sprang, flowed forth as Sun split his belly with fire and death. In its coagulation, its elements of earth, sea and sky split apart, and a cruel firmament was made, one which demanded cruelty of its victims, if life they wished. His children rose from the spirit of the blood, and the Sun spake in his dying; 'I have given all this to you, and it must return one day in kind! Bring me my blood!' And his children were faithful. So they set upon one another with tooth and nail and the light-drinking glass, and drank the blood of one another that they may be most prime, giving no thought to their own will in the matter. The greatest drinkers of our age are Snake and Bull, the most holy Snake and Bull, and their greatest servants are the men of Khumer, without doubt. But as the former grow fat, and bloated, we shall no longer be heel, but head, and they shall be neither. We will feast on their flesh as they have on ours, and we shall make slaves of the rest of this rotten world. Then, they will learn our ways, and when we are complacent, will subject us to the same fate of replacement by cannibalism. Such is the way of things."

- From the recent psalms of Apocrypha-Prophet Hashenkut, Novel Musings Divine and Otherwise

The religion of Khumer is, to most people, a nightmare, a fever dream born and manifested out of cannibal blood-sickness. The mythology itself is only vaguely cemented, centered around the creation myth of the blinded sun-godhead committing to the suicidal creation of the world, before commanding his creation to pay back the debt of what he had given. This debt was in blood, and the sum for the creation of everything was more than any could pay; the debt was infinitive. From this philosophical-metaphysical base, along with an esoteric focus on the transmutation of blood into mystical power, came the basis for the cult of Khum. The debt cannot be repaid in full, but one can become the most favored debter, as in the present case of Snake and Bull, likely anthropomorphized forms of the danger of the old Khumite pasturelanders whom would be often bled and killed, by the former with poison, and the latter with auroch's horns. Thus, he whom repays the tortured, dying godhead the most in blood will, logically, receive the least degree of forcible debt-taking from the spiritual realm; by spilling blood and murdering others, one avoids the same fate falling on oneself. 

There is little concept of idealized karma, beyond the cause and effect of open malevolence usually being rejected by force, and thus the philosophy is 'do unto others as brutally and quickly as they would do to you before they do.' Death is largely inexplicable, but traceable to not causing enough to others. From here, the Khumite cults diverge heavily into innumerable separate camps, following after their own learned masters of metaphysical legalism, masters of the art of twisting Law and Debt. Ritualized transfer of sin (although what constitutes 'sin' is usually up to the learned masters to decide, regardless of previous assertions by scripture or priesthood, and can more often be identified with 'ill fates and curses' rather than 'wrongdoings') either to animals or humans- with or without following blood sacrifice- is very common, as is preemptive eschewing of vows; one cannot take on a debt later that he has before said shall not truly be a debt, nevermind that he whom one would be indebted to does not know this. An unspoken truth, in this sense, cannot be a lie, as is the common thought. This kind of legalism and law-cheating is pandemically common to Khumerian philosophy, and viewed as a holy necessity in exulting the divine (insofar as it serves the self) and the efficient paying of debts (largely on personally-interested basis.)

Khumer is an ash-waste. Situated in volcanic wakes and acidic salt flats, it is terribly inhospitable for man. The earth flows red, and the air is choked with smog and sulphur. Outcroppings of rock and glass are common and sharply angled. Flatland bowls readily give way to sudden cliffs and switchbacks. Though the ash makes the ground fertile where it is not choked completely, the best agrarian lands of this like are reserved to the thick-blooded classes, while the thin-blooded subsist on hardier crops in poorer lands, hunter-gathering, and necessitated cannibalism. The flora is near-universally scrubby and sparse, with trees being bare of leaves, knot-covered and wounding by sucking creatures that have grown tolerant of the poison sap. Flowers are rare, most often the subject of annual bloomings, while those that bloom year-round are often immensely poisonous, with fields of such deadly specimens forming unusually calm, peaceful patches in the never-ending chaos of Khumer's natural order.

Population: 4,200,000 

Demographics (Makeup of your population; ethnicities, languages, minorities.)

Once considered completely impregnable, the Blister of the Bull remains in the modern era a terrifying edifice to Khumer's brutally monumental architecture, as well as the monumental architecture of its brutality. It is a series of fortress complexes surrounding the capital, unique more in the manner of construction than in its scale; it was made largely through the shifting of cooling lava, by magic, tool, and hand. The death of thousands of slaves was necessary to see it erected, swallowed up when the thin grey-black sheath over the red blood of the earth burst or succumbing to bone-deep burns, and to this day there are warped skeletal remains of those halfway submerged. The conventional masonry is largely sharp-angled and aggressively pompous, while the shaped lava formations have a characteristic pustule-like appearance, alike to boils and sores, lending a doubly eye-hurting quality to the Blister. Fortresses copied after its model and construction, if not its scale, were erected throughout Khumer to guard the passes and switchbacks into the country as well as the personal estates of sorcerer-lords.

(An overview of important cities, military forts, wonders, and Historical Landmarks (which is to say, along the lines of the Taj Mahal or the Pyramids at Giza)) 

A lowborn draftee brought up from the meagerest standing, he was victim to the death-marches of Aheid's jihad against Famarqudian loyalists and Khumerian soldiers both. Surviving the taking of his skin, his face, and his eyes, the Flayed King rose by intrigue, murder, and the favour of fortune to take a throne never meant for him, to wed a wife whom could not love him nor sympathize with him, and to lead some of the greatest legions and mightiest men on the continent. Wracked by visions in nightmare, he sees without seeing, acts without acting, kills without the sword, and for a purpose he does not believe nor understand, he will change the face of the world in the purity of his spite.

(Important people in your country; leaders and the such, people that factor heavily into your RP. At the very least, the ruler (de facto and/or de jure, probably other characters such as priests, heirs, rivals, ambassadors, your important generals or administrators.) 

TO FILL
 (Major institutions of the nations, such as legislative bodies, corporate organisations/guilds, families, most importantly, the military.)

(professional/militia/levy/..., doctrine, tactics, equipment, though the latter can be put underneath as well, etc.) Troop Total: (keep reality and upkeep in mind, e.g. 3% of your population as full-time professional soldiers would be a whole lot) 

ESSENTIALS 

Population Density (Population - 4,200,000) - relatively populated, regionally dense; A good amount of manpower for the military and economic purposes, with social infrastructure strained more at a regional basis. Civic projects range from affordable to expensive. The nation requires a stronger agriculture to sustain itself. 

Economy - Slow Growth - The economy is performing well, though there is room for improvement. There are certain limitations on the economy that are bottlenecking real growth, such as a restriction in supplies or insufficient demand, however. There is some unemployment and economic unhappiness among people in the lower income brackets. You heavily are dependent on trade. 

Urbanisation - Urbanised: There are several towns and a cities present, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants.

Technology - Rapidly Modernizing: The industrial infrastructure is in the process of improvement, and this is a teething process. But the economy is seeing increased activity because of this investment. New technologies are becoming domestically available. However, there is a degree of dependence on imports, including in terms of resources and supplies. Metallurgy is high-tech, even steel lies within your capabilities.

Domestic Political Stability - City riots

GEOGRAPHY Largely consists of plains, hills, mountains

RESOURCES

Mineral Deposits - minimal deposits of metals and minerals.

Valuable Mineral Deposits - Trace deposits of rare earth metals, predominately salt.

Unique Materials - alum (wide variety of uses, here: pigment fixing, medicine), truffles and citrus

Agriculture - cattle and small livestock based, food shortages are seasonally common

MILITARY

Military Focus - inferior navy but excellent army, superior spearmen, bad infantry and cavalry ratio (11:1)

Military Recruitment - Volunteer Force Military, additional levies in wartime

Reliability - Levies are of decent quality, generals are loyal to the state but decentralised

Military Size - medium core of elite units, relative to total population: requires some upkeep, relatively easy to equip/supply quickly, seasonal levies

Military Technology - Rapid Modernization, your nation does not lag behind the rest of the world, and even sets the standard on some levels.

Military Training and Morale - Highly Trained; High Morale, levies are of poor quality with high morale

Military Leadership - Incompetent; Appointed; Decadent Military

Reputation - Popular domestically; considered dangerous rabble by foreigners

Siege Equipment - Decent, seasoned corps of engineers and sappers; Loyal

Pro: Slavers: Yours is a nation that embraces and uses slavery, there is little distinction between those who enslave wholesale and those for whom slavery is a punishment for grave crimes. Either way, there are those they regard as simple property with no rights. Slave loyalty is a fickle thing, but the slavers have a simple solution to such a minor concern, a disobedient, troublesome or just plain worthless slave is quite simply sent to the (alum) mines to work the rest of their meagre and miserably short lives. The threat of this is often enough to ensure the loyalty of other slaves.

Con: Turnips and Radishes: Your peasantry has the singular honour of having the single worst diet in the world. Your more worth-something citizens simply must get every food worth eating leaving your peasants with the two worst foods of the medieval world. And sometimes (if your rulers are cruel enough) brussel sprouts are on the peasants table too. Of course its nobody’s fault when the peasants rise up in revolt (If your food was as revolting you might revolt too.)

Pro: By Terror Thou Shalt Wage War: There can be no doubt that as a military entity Khumer is efficient and brutal, but further so as a sociopolitical one. While few men would willingly subject themselves to the horror of living in Khumer's lands and systems, to throw themselves in chains under those exceedingly cruel men, yet fewer would like to face the cruelty of the Khumerian highborn or their much-repressed slaves. Better to go into captivity amongst exceedingly cruel men than be eaten alive by them, or vice-versa. With little or no fight, some states in history have become vassals to Khumer when faced with the inevitability of conquest to spare themselves the butcherous ruin that would follow refusal to submit. Although such days are long past with Khumer's sorry state and the ease of successful coalition, soldiers will nonetheless face wildly fluctuating morale and force organization when faced with the Khumite question; an organized formation might be feeble and giving, or an unbreakably, rabidly fearful mob- fighting as many more men on the personal level- might lose all cohesion. Either may serve as wheat to thresh for the Khumites if the enemy commanders do not retain control of the situation. 

Con: O Daughter of Babylon: Conversely, the terror of Khumer and all its iniquities leaves few men alive to speak any favorable thing, to have any good notion of it. It is a black-hearted man, either by malevolence or fear, who would make any deal with the priest-statesmen of Khumer. Legitimate diplomacy with that black realm is ill found in this era, and even secret overtures are few and kept as careful secret. The Khumerian highborne as a race are rarely considered humans, more often as demons given flesh, both for their stature and the stature of their moral monstrosity. Therefore, Khumer can expect an absolutely frigid political climate, if it is not warmed by fire and blood.

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