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.
The Free Cities
Once the territory of the Dullahan Empire, the Free Cities are a collective of lands who trade with one another. Each city-state has its own faith, laws, and views upon the races of Antarok, and the only times they band together is when any one city-state is threatened by outside forces. Aside from this, they generally war amongst themselves over resources, doing their best to fend off the Marches to the east.
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 territory of monstrous nations loosely loyal to the Pact Queen, a powerful gnoll warlord responsible for subjugating otherwise warring tribes. 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
- Kar'nosh: Capital of the Marches, Kar'nosh 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 Hordes: Matriarchal tribes of nomadic gnoll who form many small warbands to raid the western Free Cities.
- Tail-Eaters: The Tail-Eater Clan - or the Ourobori - are a small but sorcerous theocracy of Naj'da and the living dead they care for, their temples erected in the midst of a humid 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
- 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 Ald'Norai, Dvergar, and Gnomes they war against. Their war machine is ever churning, cadres of slaves carving out the rock and felling trees to the south for expansion.
Various smaller tribes of a thousand people or less operate beneath the banner of the Marches.
The Mountain Halls
The Mountain Halls are the vast and isolationist network of Dvergar and Gnomish city-states famed for their wealth and technology. They have lost many holdings to the Marches due to bureaucracy over how their resources should be mobilized. There are tunnels to the Mountain Halls all through Ur'duun, the hollow world beneath.
Territories
- Bal Tor: The capital of the Mountain Holds, 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 jewels and inventions
Various fortresses of ten thousand people or less operate beneath the banner of the Mountain Halls.
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 Roost: The spiritual capital of the Jian Empire, the Heavenly Roost 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
There are no fae villages on Antarok. They are too individualist and whimsical to band together.
