Nations

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 pro-humanist rhetoric. It is a huge, slow machine of humanity with sprawling borders along the western realm. Arcana is highly regulated in Dullahan, much of it banned aside from Practices and certain forms of Theurgy. Its main concerns are repelling the Marches from the east, and putting down the rampant internal strife of quarreling factions, heretics, and rebellious hedge mages.

Territories

Cityname: Description about city.

• Citizens: Races who are citizens.
• Tolerated: Races who are allowed to work and live here but not hold office.
• Forbidden: Races who are barred entry or killed on site.
• Slaves: Races who are enslaved when found.
• Languages:
• Religions:

The Marches

Rising to fill the power vacuum left behind by the fall of the Dullahan Empire, the Marches are a coalition of hordes and warbands loosely loyal to the Pack Queen, a powerful gnoll warlord responsible for subjugating otherwise warring tribes of Beastfolk and monstrous Stonekin. From the vast Orlandrian Plains of the west to the cold and mountainous Spines of the east, 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 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.

• Citizens: Beastfolk, Orks, Trow, Goblins, Beastfolk, Kobold, Draugr
• Tolerated: Faefolk, Dragons
• Slaves: Everything Else
• Languages: Deeptongue, Various
• Religions: Polytheistic; each race maintains autonomy over its own beliefs and spiritual practices.

The Gnoll Horde: Matriarchal tribes of nomadic gnoll who form many small warbands to raid the western Free Cities.

• Citizens: Gnoll
• Tolerated: Citizens of the Marches, Faefolk, Dragons
• Slaves: Everything Else
• Languages: Gnollish, Crudish
• Religions: The Hunt, Shamanism

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 the Prophet, 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, Deeptongue
• 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 Ald'Norai, Dvergar, and Gnomes 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.

• Languages: Crudish
• Religions: Warywryd, Shamanism, The Tall Father
• Citizens: Orks, Trow, Goblins
• Tolerated: Citizens of the Marches, Faefolk, Dragons
• Slaves: Everything Else
• Religions: The Hunt, Shamanism

   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.

• Citizens: Dvergar, Gnomes, Kobold, Dragons
• Tolerated: Everything Else - if it can survive in the Ur'duun.
• Forbidden: Orks, Trow, Goblins
• Slaves: None
• Languages: Dvernish, Gnomish
• Religion: The denizens of the Deepholds worship the heart of the world, the World-Soul.

   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.

• Citizens: Jian, Dragons, Kobold, Half-Dragons
• Tolerated: Non-Jian Humans, Dvergar, Gnomes, Servs, Inari, Rakshasa
• Forbidden: Faefolk
• Slaves: Everything Else
• Languages: Jianese, Draconic
• Religion: The Jian people believe in The Reflections, a draconic philosophy.

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

   There are no fae villages on Antarok. They are too individualist and whimsical to band together.