Nations: Difference between revisions
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====Territories==== | ====Territories==== | ||
:[[Whitegate]]: Capital of the empire, Whitegate is perhaps the largest city on Antarok, with sprawling stratified neighborhoods of Victorian townhomes and vast industrial complexes along its ports delivering goods to territories near and far. As the throbbing heart of Dullahan, its city center is teeming with wondrous magical complexes built from the schema of arcane engineers and slave labor. [[ | :[[Whitegate]]: Capital of the empire, Whitegate is perhaps the largest city on Antarok, with sprawling stratified neighborhoods of Victorian townhomes and vast industrial complexes along its ports delivering goods to territories near and far. As the throbbing heart of Dullahan, its city center is teeming with wondrous magical complexes built from the schema of arcane engineers and slave labor. [[Airships]] fly overhead as they transfer goods and stream propaganda to millions, and [[Railways]] carry its citizens around the city and across the country. Tens of miles of ghettos for the poor and non-citizens lay tucked along the foothills, an unregulated pox on an otherwise majestic example of humanity. | ||
==The Marches== | ==The Marches== | ||
Rising to fill the power vacuum left behind by the inward focus of the Dullahan and Jian Empires, the Marches are a coalition of hordes and warbands loosely loyal to Pack Queen Raish, a powerful gnoll warlord responsible for subjugating otherwise squabbling tribes of Beastfolk and monstrous Stonekin. From the vast Orlandrian Plains of the west to the cold and mountainous Spines of the east and the sprawling desert badlands of the Elhim, the Marches are currently the largest nation in all the world. Its borders are amorphous year by year, member tribes falling away only to be subjugated time and time again as brutal wars are fought within to maintain loyalty. The tribes, clans, and piratical nations making up its borders raid other lands for slaves and treasure. | Rising to fill the power vacuum left behind by the inward focus of the Dullahan and Jian Empires, the Marches are a coalition of hordes and warbands loosely loyal to Pack Queen Raish, a powerful gnoll warlord responsible for subjugating otherwise squabbling tribes of Beastfolk and monstrous Stonekin. From the vast Orlandrian Plains of the west to the cold and mountainous Spines of the east and the sprawling desert badlands of the Elhim, the Marches are currently the largest nation in all the world. Its borders are amorphous year by year, member tribes falling away only to be subjugated time and time again as brutal wars are fought within to maintain loyalty. The tribes, clans, and piratical nations making up its borders raid other lands for slaves and treasure. | ||
Revision as of 14:26, 10 August 2023
Nations
While Antarok may be a world rife with monsters, magic, and strange entities, its peoples have come together to form hundreds of individual societies. A vicious world of danger encourages its people to band together for survival in trying times while their societal wicks burn short from disastrous conflict.
Dullahan
The Dullahan Empire is known for its divisive politics, laws, and xenophobic rhetoric. It is a huge, slow machine of humanity with sprawling borders along the western realm. Arcana is highly regulated in Dullahan, nearly all of it banned aside from Practices and the Antarokian Pact. Its main concerns are repelling the Marches from the east, and putting down the rampant internal strife of quarreling factions, heathen cultists, monsters, and rebellious hedge mages.
- Citizens: Humans
- Tolerated: Dvergar, Gnomes, Elves, Servs
- Forbidden: Draugr, Najda
- Slaves: Everything Else
- Languages: Common
- Religions: Elysian - the worship of Antarok - is the only permitted faith within Dullahan. Practicing heathen faith is considered a crime.
Territories
- Whitegate: Capital of the empire, Whitegate is perhaps the largest city on Antarok, with sprawling stratified neighborhoods of Victorian townhomes and vast industrial complexes along its ports delivering goods to territories near and far. As the throbbing heart of Dullahan, its city center is teeming with wondrous magical complexes built from the schema of arcane engineers and slave labor. Airships fly overhead as they transfer goods and stream propaganda to millions, and Railways carry its citizens around the city and across the country. Tens of miles of ghettos for the poor and non-citizens lay tucked along the foothills, an unregulated pox on an otherwise majestic example of humanity.
The Marches
Rising to fill the power vacuum left behind by the inward focus of the Dullahan and Jian Empires, the Marches are a coalition of hordes and warbands loosely loyal to Pack Queen Raish, a powerful gnoll warlord responsible for subjugating otherwise squabbling tribes of Beastfolk and monstrous Stonekin. From the vast Orlandrian Plains of the west to the cold and mountainous Spines of the east and the sprawling desert badlands of the Elhim, the Marches are currently the largest nation in all the world. Its borders are amorphous year by year, member tribes falling away only to be subjugated time and time again as brutal wars are fought within to maintain loyalty. The tribes, clans, and piratical nations making up its borders raid other lands for slaves and treasure.
Territories
- Kesh: Capital of the Marches, Kesh is the site of a vast port city belonging to no race in particular. Here every race of the Marches can mingle for glory and fortune while contending with the brutal enforcement of tribal law. Pirates moor here, pillaging up and down the rivers and shores of the Free Cities when they manage to break the blockades.
- The Gnoll Horde: Matriarchal tribes of nomadic gnoll who form many small warbands to raid the western Free Cities.
- Ouros: The Tail-Eater Clan - or the Ourobori - are a sorcerous theocracy of Naj'da and the living dead they care for, their ziggurats erected within the rolling tides of a saltwater mangrove swamp. Led by Lich-Snake Ssarsarin, Ourobori work with those those they are going to eat and those who are already dead to understand what they hold dear, sending spies to gather their affects. Tail-Eaters venerate the dead and the souls of their prey, mingling with them as allies and sources of power.
- Citizens: Naj'da, Draugr, Ghosts, the Devouring Acolytes
- Tolerated: Citizens of the Marches, Faefolk, Dragons.
- Slaves: Everything Else - slaves are kept as servants until they are eaten or raised as the living dead.
- Languages: Najiti, Crudish
- Religions: The Devouring; Naj'da know they will devour the world at the end of time, and all that lives will starve except for the living dead.
- The Black Ramparts: A series of mountainous and subterranean holds belonging to the Orks, Trow, and Goblins, mortal enemies of the Dvergar, Gnomes, and Ald'Norai they war against. Their war machine is ever churning throughout the Ur'duun, cadres of slaves carving out the rock and felling trees to the south for expansion. Many of their disparate warbands quarrel amongst themselves for spoils from those they waylay.
Various smaller tribes of a thousand people or less operate beneath the banner of the Marches.
The Deepholds
The Deepholds are the vast and isolationist network of Dvergar and Gnomish hold-states famed for their wealth and technology, each of them in a coalition with one-another. There are tunnels to the Underkyne all through Ur'duun, the hollow world beneath. They have lost many members to the Marches due to bureaucracy over how their resources should be mobilized; a railway once connected every city, but this marvel of engineering has since fallen to disarray in the wake of the war.
Territories
- Bal Tor: The wartime capital of the Deepholds, Bal Tor is a city of reverence for the earth, statues and smooth stone walkways lining its crystalline globe-lit caverns. Bal Tor Artificers are known for their hulking golems and automatons, and its competitive guilds produce coveted jewels and inventions.
Dozens of holds comprised of between one hundred and ten thousand individuals operate beneath the banner of the Deepholds, each specialized in a form of magic or mineral.
The Jian Empire
The last empire of humanity, the jingoist people of Jian are known to the rest of the world as dragon riders and sorcerers who venerate the dragons who fight alongside them and share their wisdom of the world. Jian is a vast and bureaucratic empire that struggles with internal conflict, warring mage-lords and naive dragon kings fighting civil wars while fending off the Marches to the west.
- The Heavenly Mountain: The spiritual capital of the Jian Empire, the Heavenly Mountain is a city of temples and resorts built into the slopes of an active volcano, an ancient dragon slumbering in its molten heart.
The Fae Courts
The Faefolk live upon the lawless plane of Elphyne, far from the concerns of fearful mortals. Fae customs are strange and wild, a people who are difficult to understand. They have no concept of borders beyond home and garden, as Elphyne has never known war nor conflict over resources. Those without Arcana are advised to stay far away from these savage and self-interested people.
- Citizens: Faefolk
- Tolerated: Dragon, Kobold, Inari, and those skilled with trickery or Arcana
- Slaves: Everything Else
- Languages: Eudaimonic
The fae who live on Antarok are usually descended from exiles, or else they are serving their part in an arrangement that benefits them.
