Z is for Zombie

There isn't a strong tradition of classical zombies in DARK•HERITAGE so I don't expect them to feature much.  Undead in general become much more singular, or at least very rare, in this setting, then they would in, for example, a typical D&D style fantasy setting.  But, I'm a huge fan of the concept of undead in general if done correctly (which usually means sparingly.)  Of course, your typical zombie appearance is anything but sparing; they've become highly correlated with concepts like zombie apocalypses, where zombies are running around all over the place.  Individual zombies are rarely meant to be frightening; it's rather the vast horde of them that leads to the survival horror instinct.

To be perfectly honest with you, I have no use for this type of zombie.  Foot-soldiers of the undead, if you will.  Cannon fodder.  Those are attributes that stand in direct opposition to the notion of zombies that are actually terrifying in any way.

Zombies in DARK•HERITAGE are known from ancient rituals passed down through the Tarushans, where a type of semi-legendary Tarushan wizard or warlock known as a bokor (or boccori in the Terassan tongue) would raise the corpses of the recently dead to be his slaves.  This practice apparently persisted into fairly recent times, and Terassan academy scholars have theorized that these so-called zombies were never truly dead at all, but were instead drugged into a state of near-death, buried alive, and retrieved by the boccori.  The boccori then used a combination of cultural indoctrination and forced drugs to keep them susceptible, paranoid and compliant.  This debunking of the zombie myth by Terassan academics has been touted as triumph of the rational over the superstitious, and most Terassans (at least, if not necessarily Tarushans) believe that the zombie myth is just a myth.

However, less well known is the case of a young Terassan student, a true genius although a psychopathic one who cared only for the advancement of knowledge rather than the moral or ethical ramifications of his experiments, seized upon the data obtained by this study and built upon it.  This fellow, one Heriberto Òvest, believed in the ability to use chemical reagents to bring dead tissue back to functionality.  He seems to have been successful in his experiments to a degree, although all of his reanimated corpses have devolved into a horrific, bestial state, and there has been little of rational ability left to any of them.

Heriberto Òvest is, of course, a play on words of Herbert West, the titular character of Lovecraft's story Herbert West - Reanimator.  This story is itself a pastiche, of sorts, of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.

Zombies in DARK•HERITAGE are therefore more like flesh golems of D&D lore than the monsters that are called zombies.  If using a d20 variant to represent the setting, that would be your best bet to recreate them.  The m20 rules include both flesh golems and zombies, but those are just (basically) cut and pasted from other sources.  I'm not quite sure what, if anything, the zombie stats would represent other than perhaps the very early boccori type zombie, which should be nonexistent at this point in the setting.

Y is for Yog-Sothoth

It's been a really long time since I did an A to Z post.  Good thing I didn't try and attempt the challenge over the course of 26 days!  I've been lingering near the end for a long time now, though, and I've had on my list Y is for Yog-Sothoth for a while now.  I've usually steered just a step or two shy of outright pastiche, without at least adding much of my own to it somehow, but in the case of Yog-Sothoth, I think he stands alone as he is quite well.

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

Of course, what exactly in the world is Yog-Sothoth?  Known by various names or nicknames, including The Lurker at the Threshold, The Eater of Souls, 'Umr at-Tawil, and others.  Yog-Sothoth is considered by many to merely be a literary personification of the idea of using sorcery to travel between worlds to the Realms Beyond, both the somewhat more earthlike Near Realms, and the considerably more alien Far Realms.

But others believe Yog-Sothoth to be more than a literary device, and that it is indeed some kind of creature with a bizarre and inhuman perspective on space and time.  Cultists make fiendish sacrifices in the name of Yog-Sothoth, seeking knowledge or power.  And occasionally something answers.

One of the strangest cases, the details of which were purged and surpressed by Terassan authorities, but which are known to a few daring students of black esoterica, is that of the small village of Dunvicus.  The Green Book, which can be found in a few mouldering collections, tells of one Lavinia Vatleigh, a balshatoi woman who lived deep in the marshy hills outside of Dunvicus with her father, Old Man Vatleigh. Officially, her father was accused of incest when Lavinia became pregnant and gave birth to a strange boy, Vilbur, although the Old Man always denied it.  Yog-Sothoth himself was the father.  Vilbur was a strange child, who grew quickly and seemed intelligent after a fashion, but who always inspired loathing and dread where ever he want.  Vilbur disappears from the public record and the Green Book makes no mention of his eventual fate, although whatever sinister design Old Man Vatleigh had planned seems to have been thwarted, at least for the time being.  Shortly after Vilbur's disappearance, the Green Book makes reference to a garbled account of some kind of menace that nearly destroyed the entire village of Dunvicus entirely, and even today, several generations after the event, locals are suspicious and recalcitrant to speak with anyone who mentions the Unpleasantness, as they call it.  The Green Book suggests, horrifyingly, that Vilbur had a twin brother--one who resembled more closely his unearthly father, Yog-Sothoth, rather than his earthly mother Lavinia.

Otherwise, however, references to Yog-Sothoth are vague and sporadic.  The name is known to students of the occult, but much of his or its nature is not, nor is their agreement on who or what it is, if it is indeed a thing at all, and not just a cosmic principle like gravity, for instance.

The Green Book does make reference to Yog-Sothoth as a being of blasphemous glowing orbs and ever-changing shape.  Few take this literally.

X is for Rua de Xavier

The Liure river runs right through Porto Liure.  Although it is not truly navigable beyond the city, small ferries, gondolas, and other small watercraft ply the river, as well as the many canals that spring off from the river and penetrate deeply into the city.  Because cool sea breezes blow in after dark, the river and the many canals are the source of frequent blankets of fog and mist that rise from the waters as the temperature changes.  This thick blanket of mist helps to cement and encourage the many legends and stories of hauntings and ghosts that have given Porto Liure it's nickname as Port of Ghosts, but the persistance of the rumors and legends and stories... as well as the disquieting frequency with which new stories seems to be added to the corpus suggests to many that they are not merely quaint urban myths, but indicative of a much more serious condition.

Many such stories originate on the infamous Rua de Xavier.  The Rua is, strictly speaking, a bridge rather than a street, but the name persists regardless.  The Rua is about a quarter mile long, and bridges the Academy to the Ciutat Veixa district to the north.  Built on a series of stone starlings, the Rua is fairly wide, and has developed almost into a mini-neighborhood in its own right.  Buildings--houses, business, and more line both sides of the bridge, and hang out over the river to a considerable degree.  Many of them also overhang the street, so walking along the Rua is often compared to walking through a dim, man-made tunnel.

One of the most infamous buildings on the Rua is the vacant Church of Starry Wisdom.  Once a business owned by a locksmith, later converted into a pub, and later again into a meeting place for said church, this building is now often claimed to be haunted.  Five years ago, a cult was rousted from the Church after allegations of kidnappings, sacrifices, and odd summonings of unearthly, unnatural creatures.  After a closed trial, there was a very public execution of twenty-one individuals associated with the church.  Rumors hint at ten times that many members who slunk away quietly to disappear into the city.

Since that time, the ghosts of the executed members of the Church of Starry Wisdom are among the least of the stories that still remain.  Strange and furtive individuals are still said to lurk about the church at night.  Disquieting behavior from rats in the area is often reported, including a persistant rumor of a rat that has the face of a noted assistant of the executed "high priest" of the cult.  This fellow was know as Brown Jaume, and a large rat with Brown Jaume's face has been reported by no less than five people who live in the area nearby.  There are rumors that something that was summoned remains in the area. Perhaps trapped in the building of the church itself (hopefully) but perhaps not.  Residents nearby close and lock their doors on moonless nights, especially if the mists are up.

Strange sounds, often disembodied, are heard in the area.  Chittering sounds, or the chanting of many voices (although no source for the chanting can ever be found).  Sounds of uncertain provenance are frequent in Porto Liure in general, and this is to be expected for a city that is frequently blanketed in thick mists, but the frequency of which they are reported in the Rua de Xavier is higher than anywhere else in the city.

Gradually, many people who live or work on the Rua itself have been selling out, often at a loss, and moving to other neighborhoods.  Sometimes this means new neighbors—an always troubling prospect in a city like Porto Liure, but sometimes it simply means that buildings go vacant for months at a time as new owners attempt to figure out what to do with real estate that hangs over a bridge.  It is estimated that over the last five years, almost ten percent of the former inhabitants have left, and of that ten percent, probably about half have been replaced.  Five percent of the buildings on the Rua are vacant... but troublingly, not necessarily abandoned or empty.  Because the Rua is a bridge that connects to neighborhoods, it did not have an assigned Watch, but the Watch has since added the bridge to the route of the patrols for Ciutat Veixa, and the Academy Guard also keeps a wary eye on the place.  This has improved the feeling of security for many in the area, but dark rumors persist.

V is for Vuukrat Savana

The Vuukrat savana is the northern third of the territory of Kurushat.  Nestled between the Karkose Sea and the Saheli and northern Black Mountains, and pierced nearly in half by the Sukotu River, the Vuukrat is the backcountry just beyond the major urban centers, and core area where Kurushat culture developed: Sinjagat and Jekara.  The soil of the Vuukrat is dark and volcanic in origin; in ancient times, massive lava flows swept over the area, only to be eroded eventually into fertile soil.  Volcanic activity is now quiet over the Vuukrat--the hot spot that lead to the lava flows has migrated due to continental drift, and the center of volcanic activity in Kurushat is now Mount Kadu and the Ash Wastes.

The Vuukrat Savana, like the American Great Plains, is the breadbasket of the empire. Numerous farms dot the landscape, especially along the Sukotu River banks. Farther afield, drovers drive enormous herds of semi-domesticated bison who make up the main meat, leather and other animal products industry for the empire. Beyond that, the savanas are wild and largely unexplored. The wildlife is dangerous; hairless mammoths, elephants, cave hyenas, giant black lions, scimitar-tooths, and worse. The savanas are not as flat as one would expect; rolling hills and occasional brakes of trees keep the horizon hidden often, and craggy volcanic plugs jut like isolated castles from the yellow sea of grass. Fragments of crumbled ruins from some mysterious civilization that predates the rise of the kurushi are hidden deep in the savana as well.

The Sukotu River pierces the Vuukrat.  It is not a major highway, for it is often fast and rocky, and other times shallow and silted up, but it is a major source of drainage across the Vuukrat Savana, and brings fresh water to both Jekara and Sinjagat; two cities that are on opposite ends of the Sukotu river delta. The Vuukrat benefits from lake-effect rain from the endorheic Karkose Sea, whose water is not entirely fresh (the Karkose is very comparable in both size and composition to the Caspian Sea.)

The Saheli Mountains make up the northern border of the Vuukrat, and of Kurushat itself. There are no large settlements in that region, as the mountains are considered useless and resourceless. This isn't strictly speaking true, but the kurushi have yet to find anything worth exploiting in the region yet, with the exception of a handful of hardy herders and stockbreeders. The mountains are also extremely cold, and are notorious for their difficult to find and traverse passes and trails. Very little traffic of any kind crosses the mountain range.  A handful of small military outposts guard the few strategic passes and charge taxes on any travelers that pass through; otherwise, the empire officially rarely acknowledges the region whatsoever.

What few in the empire realize, however, is that there are many hidden colonies of escaped slaves and revolutionaries that live in the mountains, plotting against the empire. Some of these are clandestinely supplied by the empire's enemies, or even by the Emperor's enemies within the empire. Kajim Qaerkuun, the Emperor's favored heir and khan over the entire armed forces, is one such individual. In his search for any method to accelerate the death of the emperor, while his own status and likelihood to ascend are still high, he's considered trying to lure the khagan back into the field of battle where he can be carefully ambushed and killed without anyone being the wiser, and he believes that these escaped slaves and revolutionaries might just be the group to serve as his bait.

U is for the Unmoving Watchers

Although it is not unique to this area, the best visibility to the Unmoving Watchers is from the island of al-Qazmir itself, and the Golden Peninsula.  They seem, in fact, to be hovering in the sky directly above Noq Qundi Bay which separate the two.

What are the Unmoving Watchers?  They seem to be three stars, located in the pattern of a small equilateral triangle.  However, unlike the rest of the stars in the night sky, these do not rotate around the North Star, nor do they rise and set.  In fact, even during the day, when they are mostly lost to the bright blue of the daytime sky, keen-eyed observers can faintly see them, still sitting there patiently in space, never moving, always watching.

At night, everyone can see them, and they tend to be among the brightest stars in the sky.  On clear nights, it is also apparent to most that there is a vaguely different color to each of the stars.  The topmost star is a yellowish gold color, not unlike a small version of the sun.  The right hand base star is a cooler white/silver, while the left hand base star is a more reddish gold.

City of Gold

In reality, the Unmoving Watchers are not stars at all, they are small satellites in space, tidally locked and always over the same location in their orbits.  Each is a city, and behaves unusually (from a scientific standpoint) since they have regular atmosphere and gravity.  The large blueish white disc of the world is suspended in their skies always, taking up, in fact, more than half of the visible sky.  These three cities in fact make up three of the Near Realms to the world.  This begs the question of what these Realms are.  Some claim that they are extradimensional places, but in this case, they clearly seem to be within the regular dimension, just too far away and unreachable by any earthly means save magic (since space shuttles do not exist in DARK•HERITAGE.)

The first city is called the City of Gold, and it is, in fact, mostly made of Gold, which is why it offers a shining golden facade down on earth.  Its inhabitants are angelic beings of radiant light and beauty, and it is from them, in fact, that myths and legends about angels come (in d20 terms, creatures like trumpet archons and devas.)  The City of Silver, on the other hand, is a cold place, full of genies and sylphs and other creatures of air.  The cities of Gold and Silver have been at war with each other for many, many years.  The angels were ordered to attack the genies for some sin by the Voice Which Commands.  Their leader, Iblis, refused, and along with many of his sympathetic cronies, was thrown down from the City of Gold, becoming the first and greatest Fallen Angel.  The city of Gold is ruled by a council of seven archangels today.  Although the entire seven is unknown, the existance of Michael, their warleader, as well as Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel is relatively well established.  The City of Silver, on the other hand, is ruled by a genie sultan named Masud Barham Shah.

Surtr, Sultan of the City of Brass

The City of Brass is the last of the three cities, and it is made up mostly of creatures like ifrit and fire giants.  It's ruler is the Sultan Surtr.  The City of Brass often sends mercenary companies to fight in the wars between the cities of Gold and Silver, and also serves as a hotbed of intrigue when open warfare has calmed somewhat, but they otherwise stay strictly neutral and are more involved with other affairs than in entangling themselves with the affairs of the other two cities.

Surtr and his court also seem to take the most interest in the affairs of mortals on earth.  Perhaps this best explains the descendents of some of his people mingling with mortals and creating the race of the jann.

T is for the Tether

Deep in the wilderness territory that once made up the Baal Hamazi empire is the Tether.  Located in a thickly wooded hanging valley on the edge of the Kindattu Mountains, overloooking the much drier grasslands of the Hallashu Basin, the Tether is not a destination for many.  Too far away, and bounded by mountains that are difficult to cross, or a vast savanna where the availability of water is uncertain, the large hanging valley is also infamous for its savage tribes of head-hunting and man-eating changelings; the most barbaric and violent enclave of a race that is not known for its peaceful interactions with others in most cases.  In this case, the Hallashu changelings, as they are sometimes called, make even the dangerous woses of the Shifting Forest seem tame.  Legend holds that the curse of lycanthropy itself originated in this very hanging valley (called the Wose Basin) and that even today genuine werewolves sometimes lead hunting bands of woses.

Despite this, sometimes people do want to reach the Wose Basin, to see the Tether.  The Tether is the unofficial name for a large city built on a floating rock.  It is believed that the city itself would float completely away except that it is tethered (hence the name) by four gigantic chains that are rooted in the bedrock of the mountains.  Nobody except legendary, or at least semi-legendary, characters have ever managed to climb the chains to reach the city, so nobody is for sure who lives in it.  It is apparent that someone does, as occasionally litter falls from the waterfalls that course off the floating rock, and lights can be seen in the windows at night.  Occasionally sounds, as of celebrations or clashes of arms can be heard from high above.

The inhabitants of the Tether interact very little with the world below, although clearly they can see it and know of some of the other nearby cities amongst the hamazin and elsewhere.  The city is known to them as Mael Aaru.  About 2,000 individuals live there.  A few of them are regular humans, although it is unknown of what original racial stock they originate, or how they got on the city.  There is also a very small number of embodied spirits of various types, who call themselves either angels or djinn.  The majority of the inhabitants are mostly human, with a touch of angelic or djinnic blood in them (i.e., nephilim.)

In reality, the inhabitants of Mael Aaru interact much more with various inhabitants of beings who live in "Nearby Outside"; i.e., in otherworldly realms that are similar in many ways to the world itself, and populated by creatures that are not terribly alien.  This cosmology is too complicated to be summarized too quickly here (besides, it surely deserves its own post at some future point, assuming I get around to defining it--in reality, DARK•HERITAGE is not meant to be a "planes-hopping" setting anyway.) King Semyaza of Mael Aaru self-identifies as an angel, although he is extremely lustful and cruel in his personal life, if not necessarily to his subjects overall.  He maintains relationships with other polities from the Near Realms, such as the City of Brass.  Because of his, the Tether is a fairly cosmopolitan place, and can be a nexus by which Outsiders from the Near Realms make their way into the world--much as the Plateau of Leng is a nexus by which much more alien Outsiders from the Far Realms make their way into the world.

Despite the fact that Outsiders from the Near Realms are less alien than some Outsiders, they are not often friendly to humanity or their closely related sister-races, such as woses, neanderthals, hellspawn or jann.  In reality, the Tether, if one were to make their way up the chains to the city, is not a hospitable or safe place for any mortal of any kind except perhaps those who are native to it and know how to navigate its intricacies.  On very rare occasions, semi-legendary heroes have climbed the chains, and even more rarely won the favor of a citizen of Mael Aaru and been allowed to stay, or travel from there to the Near Realms.  Powerful sorcerers occasionally frequent its streets, but as they are equally strange, nearly inhuman due to their exposure to eldritch witchery, and able to hold their own against powerful deity-like entities, they don't really count.  It is rumored that the Heresiarchy meet on occasion for conference on Mael Aaru.

R is for Rumors

Porto Liure is one of the signature towns of the DARK•HERITAGE setting, and I envision many if not most of my potential games will take place there.  It is also extremely cosmopolitan, being both a destination and a refuge for all kinds of folks from all over the region, due to its policy of not asking many questions.

The following are rumors that can be heard in and around Porto Liure, and (mostly) have to do with local affairs, although some really bizarre expatriate rumors do make the rounds from time to time.  The truth of most of these will have to reside with the discretion of any particular game master (although for my money, most of them are mostly true.  Mostly.)

When (or if) players are specifically looking to hear rumors, or if they're in a position where they might, feel free to use this table.  Roll 1d20 as many times as you need to determine which rumors they will be hearing.

1. Baronette Montazin de Galard is a witch, and has designs on the Lord's throne.
2. One of the guards at the Lord's palace is a spy for a band of pirates.
3. The Lord's chief contender for the title of Lord-Consort, Segnore Bonolva, is land-poor and his family is nearly penniless.
4. The Lord's chief contender fo the title of Lord-Consort, Segnore Bonolva is immensely wealthy, with an unguarded fortune tucked away in the cellars of his house here in town.
5. The owners of the Dog & Drake tavern are former assassins, and still have connections if you need to hire one.
6. The clergy at the cathedral in Low Tide plaza have been infiltrated by demon-worshippers.
7. A guard at a warehouse in Foghorn Park dropped dead a few days ago during a scuffle in a tavern with two local, well-known ne'er-do-wells.  But... I saw the guard again the next day, and the bodies of the two scalawags were found on the edge of town, slashed and burned to death!
8. I once saw a butcher in Qazmir Park fire a shower of flame out of his hand right into a thief's face!  The poor ruffian fell over into the street, dead.
9. A child was bitten and killed by a gigantic rat near the well in the center of the square in White Stones.
10. The Emperor in Terrasa is really a vampire, in thrall to overlords from Tarush Noptii.

11. I once saw what looked like a walking, talking human skeleton down by the docks, directing the unloading of a casket that looked suspiciously like a coffin!
12. This town isn't nicknamed the Port of Ghosts for nothing!  Beware the ghost of Black Maria, the drawn and quartered daughter-in-law of Jacobo Bernat, the founder of the city.
13. The dead walk the land near Rocky Hill, outside of town.
14. I have seen the archbishop of Terrasa come to town himself on occasion!  I don't know why he'd be in Porto Liure.  He was traveling incognito, but when he saw me looking, he covered his face and gestured to his plain-clothes guards.  I beat it quick before they could rough me up.
15. Something weird is going on up north.  Refugees from the far northern cities of the old Baal Hamazi lands have been fleeing southwards.
16. The Condor Cliffs is a haven for bandits.  Watch yourself in the woods outside of town.
17. The woods around Bald Top Hill is a common camp ground for folks who prefer the woods and are not bandits.
18. There is a pack of fierce, hyena-like animals with dark fur and glowing red eyes that wander the woods to the south of town.
19. I couldn't believe my eyes.  There he was; larger than life--Dog, drinking from a stream, near the Rockswaddles.  Then he sauntered into a small, hidden defile in the rocks, and disappeared.  I think it might be his mysterious den!
20. The banks of Pebble Creek is a safe place to make camp if you're ever in the area on the island, outside of town.

Q is for Qaserum

Located on the border between the Baix Pallars hill-country and the Sahir savanna, on the shores of the Nijat River, Qaserum is a far-flung outpost of the al-Qazmir nation, and the furthest (so far) that their control extends formally to the south and west.  Far from the population centers of the Golden Peninsula and beyond, until very recently, it was a rather sleepy outpost town, with a small fort and a military contingent made up of a handful of out-of-favor soldiers who were exiled to the butt-end of nowhere for falling out of favor elsewhere.  This started changing about thirty years ago when the fur trade starting passing through Qaserum from the green mountains and forested hills beyond.  But in the last five years, this change became rather dramatic when veins of gold and silver were located beyond Qaserum.  Suddenly growing to boom-town status, merchants, soldiers, and more from al-Qazmir have flooded the poor, dirt streets of Qaserum.  Quickly constructed buildings and crowds of both the unwashed and the professional now rub elbows throughout town, and the poor garrison has seen a dramatic increase in recruits stationed here (and the garrison commander is no-longer an out-of-favor cast-off, but a highly trained professional who commands the ear of the sultan of Masqutan, the nearest (although not near by any objective measure) major city, beyond Qila Safah Lake and the Chaman Hills.  Only the great difficulty (and distance) in crossing the Sahir savanna (and all of the intervening region in between) has kept Qaserum from becoming even more flooded with entrepreneurs and con artists looking to make a quick fortune in precious metals.

Qaserum is thus nicknamed the City of Sin in al-Qazmir gossip, due to its percieved lawlessness and strong element of get-rich quick rogues.  This perception, over the last year or so, has become somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The riches to be found beyond Qaserum have also turned the Caliphate's eye to the lands beyond, Baix Pallars which is nominally (although only on paper) part of the Terrasan Empire.  This has also sparked a period of intense diplomatic activity between agents of the Caliph and the Empire, although Terrasa's de facto abandonment of the province means that effectively they don't have much with which to stop Qasmiri expansion into the region.  Nationalist sentiment amongst the Pallarans runs high, and many are turning to very questionable tactics to protect themselves from the percieved threat (see the entry on Baix Pallars for more detail.)

Qaserum is located smack dab on the Nijat River--in fact, the bulk of the city is located on a series of islands connected by a bridge right in the middle of the river (although as the town expands, the north shore as "mainland" Qaserum is where most of the growth is.)  Here are a few areas of interest in Qaserum:

• The Palace of Gilded Delights--a long-running bordello that has become a center of illicit activity in the last few years; even as its owner attempts to clean up its reputation somewhat and establish it as a "legitimate" cultural location, where opera, art, theater, and more can all be sampled.  There's as yet little to differentiate the actors from the harlots, but give it a few more years, and it may yet pull itself up from debauchery to respectability.  Arshyan Kara is the proprietor, a man who was exiled from the capital of al-Qazmir, wandered for a time in Sarabasca before getting himself in trouble, and settling in Qazerum, tyring to turn his luck around.
• The Garrison, commanded by Nizam ibn Omar, a respectable noble sent specifically to curb the percieved excesses of the populace and protect the interest of the Caliphate in the region.  He is young and cunning; and he needs to be, because he's undermanned and faces substantial challenges.  The garrison is located on a separate island from the rest of the city, after a deep channel was dug to separate it, making it very defensible.  Nizam has been petitioning for more soldiers for months now, and while he occasionally gets reinforcements, he's still not anywhere near enough to pacify the Baix Pallars countryside, which would ensure that miners and furriers could trade their wares in peace.  As the situation with the native Pallarans deteriorates, ironically, he's finding it easier to gain important ears to his pleas, which is likely to accelerate the Qazmiri expansion into the area.
• The Sacred Flame.  The reason that the Qasmiri established this village in the first place is that it has a vent to a volcanic magma chamber under the ground.  Heat, and shimmers of flame occasionally dance above this vent, and the superstitious Qazmiri believe that they can commune with the afrit through the fire.  This does mean, however, that the area is prone to occasional earthquakes, and may indeed be subject to a devastatin quake or eruption.  Since the arrival of boomtown status, this has been nothing more than occasional minor quakes which, at most, are an inconvenience, but many years ago, before it became a trading center for furriers, a major earthquake hit the area.  Fallen trees and still be seen outside of town, and a few old timers recall the complete destruction of almost all of the (admittedly few, at that time) buildings in town.  It's only a matter of time before it happens again.  And, of course, while it hasn't ever been directly confirmed by reputable sources, it may indeed be that afrits or other elemental creatures do indeed live in the magma chamber below town somewhere.
• Qaserum is surprisingly caste-driven, as the wealthy new arrivals have little desire to mingle with frontier adventurers, slaves or laborers, and the military presence is also generally cut off from the rest of society by social barriers.  Because of this, a series of walls separated Qaserum into various small districts, including the Barracks, Hightown, the Slave Quarter, Tanner's Lane, and the Market (not meant to be a comprehensive list necessarily.)

P is for the Primogenitor Vampires

I wrote this on my wiki some time ago.  It's a good starting point.

Primogenitors are truly monstrous vampires, creatures who have no humanity left in them at all. Primogenitors don't really feature in the campaign, and nobody has seen one in centuries, at least not that they've reported. The Primogenitors are the remnants of the once noble defenders who came to fight the Fallen One and contain him, and were in turn poisoned and corrupted by him. They are said to be literally the first vampires in the world.

Because of their great age, their appearance and power is completely beyond the ken of the otherwise oldest vampires in Tarush Noptii. However, for whatever reason, the Primogenitors remain in the catacombs deep beneath the city. Whether they slumber, or whether they prowl them for the unluckly lost soul who may occasionally wander his way there is unknown, but for mysterious reasons, no Primogenitor has surfaced for many hundreds of years.

According to legend there were twenty Primogenitors, and the various vampire houses are all "descendents" of one of these monsters. It is unknown if there still exist twenty Primogenitors under the city.

A few additional facts about these bad boys:

• Tarush, the Fallen One himself, is the god of the Primogenitors, but they don't worship him; they fear him and plot against him.  In the great ritual that sealed Tarush beneath the city, they found themselves trapped with him, sealed magically and only on very occasional instances able to communicate with the world outside of the catacombs beneath the city.
• There are persistent rumors amongst some of the nobility of Tarush Noptii that the seals are rotting, or failing, or otherwise in danger of no longer keeping Tarush and the Primogenitors sealed.  This is dismissed as persistent paranoia by most, but the rumors remain alive nonetheless.

• It is unclear how exactly the Primogenitors were formed from the Knight Magi heroes who went to seal Tarush in the first place.  It is also unclear how they were able to transfer the curse of vampirism to others in the Tarush Noptii area, but it leads to troubling speculation that the seals are not as absolute as they appear.
• The following are the names of the known Primogenitors: Vyrko, Dracul, Strix, Ubyr, Vetala, Nosferatu, Rusalka and Orlok.  This is obviously not even half of the twenty Primogenitors.  Some of them spawned vampire Houses which no longer exist, the rest are forgotten, but not gone.
• The fact above that the Primogenitors are literally the first vampires may be, actually a "factoid" instead of a fact--a comforting lie spread by vampires that have no connection whatsoever with Tarush, the Primogenitors, or their descendents who rule Tarush Noptii.  Vampire really refers to any type of cannibalistic parasitism in which feeding on the blood, flesh, life-force or soul of other people is used to unnaturally prolong the life of the feeder.  According to the Nine Books of Sotetseg, an Apocryphal work banned in most civilized areas but highly sought after by researchers into the forbidden occult, Tarush himself may have been the first vampire.  Many of his disciples were formed; some were slain by either mortal heroes, or in their internecine wars between each other, but the Primogenitors are something special and unique--accidentally occuring vampires when the Knight Magi were tragically corrupted by Tarush's blasphemous touch even as they heroically sealed him away forever.
• The Primogenitors are almost certainly insane in at least some ways, driven mad by centuries of isolation with only the horror of their cursed condition to keep them company.

O is for Outsiders

I was looking at my list of A TO Z topics and realized that the topic I had in mind for S is one that I've already written about.  Rather than change the topic and create more work for myself, I relabled the post I already had.  Of course, this meant that I now have S done, almost immediately on the heels of N, and clearly out of order.  While this isn't exactly a problem per se, it is motivating me to get caught up to S more quickly because I don't love that situation.  So, hot on the heels of writting N and changing an existing post to be S, I figured I better throw out O, which is for Outsiders.

One of the things that I like about D&D is the presence of a wide assortment of interesting Outsiders.  Many of them are esoteric, but for the most part, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of Europe and the middle-east--demons, angels, genies and more.  And D&D itself has done some really interesting things with a lot of them; even when they're taking names from mythology or esoteric eschatology.  How can you not love the D&D lore around iconic demon lords like Orcus or Demogorgon, neither of whom is a D&D creation, but both of whom are known almost exclusively from their D&D lore rather than from the paucity of actual information from mythology or literature.

In D&D itself, the nature of Outsiders is strongly informed by their concept of alignment.  This is even further detailed in the 3.5 version of the rules, which split out Celestials into three types--each corresponding to one of the varieties of "good" that D&D allows.  But what happened in 3.5 was a minor shift towards furthering what was already part of the way things worked in D&D.  It was just more obvious with the "evil" outsiders previously--indeed, from the early monster manuals.

So, although I quite like the idea of Outsiders, and want to have them in the DARK•HERITAGE setting, some thought needs to be given to how they work in a setting that doesn't have alignment, and doesn't really have a regular pantheon, including friendly or helpful gods at all.  In fact, I've said before (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but somewhat not) that in DARK•HERITAGE the only real difference between angels and demons is that angels are better looking and have better PR.  My vision of Outsiders heavily favors some D&D paradigms, but also equally favors a Lovecraftian intepretation of outsiders, particularly demons and other nasties--who, in true Lovecraftian fashion might actually be Insiders, at least in the sense that while they aren't "native", they could be stuck here, sleeping in sunken cities on the sea-floor a la Cthulhu or Dagon, or something.  Add to that borrowings from implications in The Black Company of gods all being insanely powerful and paranoid (and just insane) sorcerers who managed to claw their way up the divinity ladder, and from The Deepgate Codex of Heaven being shut and all gods, angels and anything else being at best Fallen angels or whatever, and you've got a general idea of where Outsiders fit into DARK•HERITAGE, and it's--well, unsurprisingly, it's a dark kinda paradigm.  tvtropes.com calls that paradigm a "crapsack world" and it applies a fair bit, given that I consider DARK•HERITAGE a Lovecraftian fantasy, and use the subgenre tag coined by Shane Magnus--SWORD & SANITY--to describe it.

How is that consistent and how does that all make sense, you may ask?  How can Outsiders be a combination of D&D (which is largely esoteric Judeo-Christian Apocrypha in its roots), Lovecraftian, the Ten Who Were Taken, and Fallen angels all at once?  Well, you're right.  It doesn't necessarily make sense.  The setting doesn't, because like the real world, it's too complex to be understood by any given mind.  It's too complex to be understood by humanity in general--the famous quote by Lovecraft from "The Call of Cthulhu" about man not being able to comprehend reality as it really is and maintain his sanity applies to DARK•HERITAGE quite well.  As with Yog-Sothothery, a lot of these elements are also better viewed as plot devices rather than a systemic description of cosmology anyway.

But this may help.  A metaphysical conceit of the setting, which I've never really described on this blog before, but which underwrites a lot of it, is that it's really more science fiction in a way than fantasy (believe it or not.)  The presence of magic and monsters and whatnot is attributable to elements of brane cosmology, which is an esoteric theory (really not even developed far enough to be considered more than a hypothesis or mathematical model) from particle physics.  How does it apply to DARK•HERITAGE?  Simply that the setting is on a brane (as is the observable universe we live in) and sorcery comes from outside the brane--either from another brane, or the environment of the bulk itself (read the wiki article for more details.  Brane is short for "membrane" which is a simplified representation of the entire universe being a sheet, or membrane, suspended in a "bulk", stacked possibly next to other branes.  Occasionally the branes brush against each other, causing things like the Big Bang and whatnot to happen.  They also can be "leaks" for power--explaining why gravity is so much weaker than the Strong force or the Weak force in particle physics, for instance.  Or, according to some models, dark energy has as its source motions and actions taken outside the brane.  The tentative "discovery" of the Higgs-boson particle may make all this more unlikely, in which case I'm either at odds with current science, or I revert to this being more exactly fantasy and don't care.)

If "magic" is really the manipulation of dark energy, which comes from Outside the known universe; either from another universe "adjacent" to this one, or from the spaces between the universes (a very Lovecraftian notion if ever there was one) then Outsiders can be inhabitants of other universes.  Or they can be inhabitants of our universe corrupted by forces from outside the universe.  Or, then can be strange and inexplicable beings or sentiences that float in the spaces between universes.  Or, they could be all of them, depending on the specific Outsider in question.

And that approach, without bothering to necessarily claim for each individual what it is, gives me room to wiggle and slip anything I want or need into the setting, while maintaining its essential SWORD & SANITY nature quite well, thankyouverymuch.

N is for Neighborhoods of Porto Liure

Like most cities of sufficient size, Porto Liure is frequently broken up into informal chunks for easy reference.  The Watch has formalized these to some extent; each of these neighborhoods has a Watch barracks, and most Watchmen have a regular patrol that is limited to just one neighborhood.  These are the districts of Porto Liure.

• Academy: Named for the Academy which takes up most of this area; a rather staid (for Porto Liure) university district, which strives to be taken as seriously as the Universitat in Razina, or the Grand Academie in Terrasa, but which has a long way to go still in terms of gaining prestige, longevity and funding.  Still, the Academy at Porto Liure is a popular one for wealthier students around the Mezzovian area who are more interested in the experience than necessarily their education--it's widely seen as a "party school" compared to its competitors.  Young sons of minor nobles and merchants make up the majority of the student body.  In addition to the halls of the Academy itself, this district has the dormitories of the students, staff and faculty, and a number of small shops that cater to the students, staff and faculty, and other hangers-on.
• Castello: Named for the large "castles" that fill the district, this is a wealthy one, where the summer homes of nobility from around the area, as well as the local nobility and wealthier merchants, are found.  With private docks, opera houses, and high class accomodations and services, this is a fairly quiet and peaceful neighborhood, and the Watch's relationship with various private security forces is sometimes somewhat tense.
• Cherskii Quarter: More broadly a middle class neighborhood, but Rue des Hamazins, which is renowned for its hamazi restaurants and small ethnic neighborhood is responsible for the name of the entire district.  Infamous as a hold-out of the Cherskii Mafia--the Watch here is suspected of being thoroughly corrupt.
• Ciutat Veixa: Jacobo Bernat's original keep, and a great deal of the old money and old power of Porto Liure make their homes here.  In reality, few people actually "live" here, though--this is a busy quarter during the day, with the running of the business and administration of the city-state's government, but goes very quiet at night.  The Watch presence is strong and implacable, by reputation.
• Foghorn Park: A lower-class neighborhood far from the waterfront and nestled in the arms of the foothills at the edge of town, many of the people who live here are laborers in the farms outside of town, or hunters in the mountains, or otherwise have occupations that keep them busy away from the commerce of the city.  Overland smugglers are said to thrive here, and people walk relatively carefully due to suspicion of gang activity.  Much of the changeling population of the city lives here; even so-called "urban changelings" are consumed with enough wanderlust that they feel more comfortable being able to leave the city quietly, unobtrusively, and relatively frequently.
• Little North: Little North is actually on the south end of town, but because it gained character as a balshatoi ethnic neighborhood, it became known as Little North.  Curiously, it's not particularly settled by Northerners anymore--it's a low class laborer neighborhood, and a hotbed of gang warfare; a crossroads of various gang's territory, as it were.  The Union of the Snake headquarters are located here, near the docks.
• Los Corts: The origin of the name is lost to history, but no Courts hold sway in this neighborhood anymore.  Both the Watch and private security don't wait for sentencing to mete out punishment to anyone who violates the peace here, as Los Corts is primarily a warehouse district, and goods worth a king's ransom move through this district almost routinely.
• Qazmir Park: The last neighborhood named for an ethnic component, this one lives up to its name, and Rue des Sultains is famous for its al-Qazmiri architecture, signage, cuisine and more.  The neighborhood in general, though, has become a slum for all kinds of expatriates living in Porto Liure, and it could as easily be named for any of them.  Gang violence (and other violence, for that matter) is not unusual here, and the Watch seargents who work this beat are reputed to be unflappable and highly used to all kinds of terrible things.  Kaz's Crew, a gang of northerners, curiously, has much of the district in its grip, but other gangs work the area as well.
• Sént-Vincenç: An almost "anti-ethnic" neighborhood, the residents here are proud of their Terrasan heritage and have little patience for immigrants and the troubles that seem to follow them.  The Watch is firmly in the pocket of the Castiadas crime family here, who maintain a respectable façade.
• Soddens: The poorest slum in the city, Soddens is supposed to be nearly lawless.  In truth, the Watch keeps a strong presence here, but no matter what they do, it's insufficient.  Firmly in the grip of crime families, all of the industry of this district is illicit--smuggling, drug dens, prostitution, slave markets--if it's illegal, or even frowned upon, it happens here.  Life is cheap, and dead bodies in the street are hardly enough to spur the Watch to become concerned.  Named for the thick fogs that roll off the hills and blanket this district, it's also notorious among those who tell these kinds of tales, as a haunted district, and much of the supernatural activity that rumors and ghost-stories love to regale are centered around Black Maria's Square, where old Jacobo Bernat's daughter-in-law was supposedly executed in the early days of the city.
• White Stones: Infamous as the headquarters of the Fuzeta da Ponte crime family, this neighborhood is named for the pale granite flagstones that make up much of its streets.  Boats slip in and out of this neighborhood at all hours, and nobody asks too many questions of their neighbors, which keeps this a relatively peaceful neighborhood most of the time; although one infamous for things happening which are not supposed to.
  

M is for Magic

I had earlier indicated my desire to discuss/share my Map for the letter M, and discuss magic under S for Sorcery.  I'm updating my plan, because the map is taking much longer to get done than I hoped, and I don't want this series to languish without updates for that long.  I'll get the map out there soon--I am working on it already--although it might not end up being part of the A TO Z challenge after all.

The mundane, regular world is the natural world. Things that happen here tend to happen for natural reasons. In this regard, the world of the DARK•HERITAGE campaign setting is very much like the mundane, scientifically understood world in which we live in as well. However, the world of the DARK•HERITAGE setting also intersects on occasion with many other worlds, and when energies, spirits, demons, or entities of unknown type cross over through these intersections into the mundane world, it is called supernatural rather than natural. Unlike some fantasy settings, such as those served by the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® game, the supernatural in this setting is rare, poorly understood, and often dangerous to encounter in any form whatsoever. Most people have never witnessed anything supernatural, and some few don't even believe in it. Most others do, but it is similar to how many people in our world are religious or superstitious; it is not because they have direct evidence that is convincing for its existance, it is because they have faith and/or fear in the potential power of the supernatural to disrupt their lives.

Because the supernatural seems to maintain a discrete stance on this setting, it is most often referred to as the Shadow; a force that can only be percieved indirectly, and only rudimentarily understood, and which stays out of the glare of knowledge and enlightenment. Mankind is simply not equipped to know and understand the supernatural, so to him, it will always be merely the Shadow; lurking in the darkness just out of sight, haunting his footsteps, waiting for an unwary moment. As H. P. Lovecraft said, "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

But occasionally the Shadow does, indeed, intrude into the lives of mankind. Some have learned to control or harness a portion of the Shadow to increase their own power. These sorcerers and witches may wield power which is a trifle to the Old Ones, or the demons and spirits of Beyond, but they are perilous to mortals. Monsters and strange, alien creatures occasionally can breach the Gate and walk through the intersections into our world. The entire, dire location of Leng is one such intersection, and the slow seeping of Shadow out of that area has created the entire cursed and shunned region called the Forbidden Lands. In the distant past, an ancient god or demon named Tarush fell from the sky and was buried where he fell in the nation that became Tarush Noptii. While he is now perhaps dead or dreaming, his influence has spread, infecting some of those in the region with the curse of vampirism. The hellkin and the jann also claim to have ancestors amongst them who come from the Shadow; although that is as much legend as fact. And in some way poorly understood, the curse of lycanthropy infected those who lived in the Shifting Forest anciently. While the curse is now believed to be greatly diluted, and the great and terrible werewolves of old no longer exist, their descendents in the form of the changeling race still bear the mark of the Shadow on them.

While many people remain largely ignorant of the Shadow--even changelings, hellkin and jann give it little thought, for the most part--still it lurks, just out of sight, a secret world which surrounds and infiltrates the more mundane world. While most people in this setting have few encounters with the Shadow, player characters (PCs) and others are exceptional; and as such, are much more likely to encounter the Shadow in the course of their travels. For the most part, this will come in a few categories:

• Monsters of the Shadow may be discrete, and some may doubt their existence, but they are all too real. Vampires really do roam the streets and rule the kindgom of Tarush Noptii. Dog may be torpid and asleep for years at a time, but he really does come out and eat sacrifices on the edge of Porto Liure. Strange creatures like the river gods or the thurses lurk in the wild places of the world. Unscrupulous sorcerers summon creatures through the Gate into the world from Places Beyond. Alien creatures wander from Leng, or other places of natural weakness in the Gate, and find their way to places they do not belong.

• Any character can learn to cast an Incantation or Ritual, assuming he can read and speak the language that the ritual is in. The rules for doing so are found in the Arcana section of the MSRD right here. In theory, I (as GM) should provide you with Incantations that are available; you mostly have to find them in forbidden tomes like The Prophecies of the Daemon-sultan, or The Book of Eibon or somesuch. The rules for creating incantations are for GMs, not for players. Eventually I'll get around to it, but the urgency is not there at present, so look at the examples in the Arcana section of the MSRD to see how they work and what a typical Incantation looks like.

• There are two advanced classes that provide some access to the Shadow--as well as some that are focusd on hunting and rooting out its influence. The Occultist and the Soulknife have very different approaches to dealing with the Shadow; the Occultist advanced class being much closer to the traditional archetype of a sorcerer or witch.

• There are a few feats that can give access to any character to a few minor spells and a familiar--most "world class" sorcerers start here while learning as many Incantations as they can get their hands on, before advancing into levels of the Occultist advanced class.

L is for the Plateau of Leng

As you may have noticed, if you've looked at my map of the Forbidden Lands (which is not meant to be comprehensive; many locations exist which aren't labeled on that map), one of the notable locations is the Plateau of Leng.  Ringed by titanic mountains of madness (heh), but with Lake Hali and the Tarqan Lake on its southern and southeastern edges, the plateau is difficult to reach, nearly impossible to climb, and extremely uninviting, just from an environmental perspective.  Very little grows on its cold, windswept surface, which is extremely arid and littered with ancient menhirs, standing stones, and crumbling ruins of ancient walls and structures who's purpose can only be guessed at today.  The few creatures that eke out a living on the Plateau of Leng are carnivorous giant spiders and cannibalistic, pale people, similar to the inhabitants of the Cannibal Isle, and probably ethnically related to them.  These "Men of Leng" as they are known, have a tendency to devolve into beast-like sub-humans over time, although their curse appears to be different than that of the Islanders.

Despite this, there appear to be other inhabitants of some kind as well.  Eerie howls of unknown provenance echo across the vast table-land, and the scratching and digging of some kind of creature that is rarely glimpsed but frequently heard can be picked out by keen listeners as well.  These glimpses seem to be of pale, lumpish creatures that are not even vaguely humanoid, being instead hunched, toad-like creatures, like Deep Ones who have lived for generations in caves and become pale and eyeless.

This bleakness is broken by a few landmarks:

Carcosa. Located on the edge of the plateau, with sheer cliffs that fall into the dark, silent waters of Lake Hali from which nearly constant mist rises, this abandoned and cursed city has no inhabitants that can be seen, but there is always an eerie feel of watchfulness and menace.  A strange flapping sound, as of rags hung out in a strong wind, echoes through the deserted stone.  According to patchy myths and legends, the King in Yellow himself might haunt Carcosa at times.

Sarkomand. A city of the Men of Leng, where they have some measure of culture.  Ruled over by the Elder Heirophant (also known as the Tcho Tcho Lama, or the High Priest Not to Be Described), a mysterious figure who also hides himself behind yellow robes, this is a sinister city where peoples of the Lands of Three Empires might come as slaves--possibly--but they don't live long.  Rumors are that vast caverns called the Vaults of Zin lurk underneath the city.

Iganok.  A small port town on the shores of Tarqan Lake.  The peoples who live here are subject to the Hierophant of Sarkomand.  In addition to the sinister traffic in slaves for unknown purposes, they also mine onyx from the slopes of the plateau itself.

N'gah. Actually, a city in the Hsan Jungle just to the west of the plateau, the carnivorous and intelligent (yet barbaric) apes and monkeys that live here also have a subject relationship of sorts with the Heirophant, and provide many of the goods that the Heirophants people need to live--although they also have a fractious relationship, since the apes cannot live with anyone, and frequently bring violence to the people of Sarkomand, Iganok, and anyone else that they can reach.

Kadath.  A city atop the mountains that overlooks the plateau with a commanding view, this cold, black-stoned fortress-city is the home of the Great Ones--mysterious beings who nominally (but passively) rule the entire plateau.

K is for Kinzassál

Records of the ancient days of the Mezzovian area are scanty and poor, meaning that many of the kingdoms, nations, tribes and peoples of long ago are poorly known, if at all.  The scientific inquiry into the past via archeology, anthropology, parahistory and prehistory is in its infancy in the Mezzovian area, compared to what it is in our own world.  But it is a fruitful area of inquiry to those of scholarly bent who aspire to learn more of such things, and while records may be poor, in some cases there are other sources of information that can be tapped by the brave or foolhardy: vampires, who's memories stretch back centuries, shades, ghosts and specters, and Outsider demons and angels or other spirits who's memory reaches into the past.  Trusting such sources is fraught with academic dangers--to say nothing of the actual physical dangers that come with inquiring for information--but occasionally academic and scholarly information worth its weight in gold comes from such lines of inquiry.

One kingdom that, relative to many others is somewhat well-known as a name, at least, if details of its history are not, is Kinzassál, a kingdom that sat north of the Mezzovian sea and east southeast of the Indash Salt Sea.  Today, this land is a wilderness, populated only by nomadic Untash barbarians, but these Untash are relative newcomers to the area.  Prior to their incursions, it was part of the Empire of Baal Hamazi, and although the badlands were thinly settled, they made up an important part of the satrapy of Pnakot or Pnakotus, the capital of the area on the shores of Lake Kidin, and still an important successor city-state of Baal Hamazi today.  But the Badlands weren't always as forbidding an environment as they are today, and there are many indications that climate change in the last millennium has dramatically changed the landscape.  Much of the land inhabited by the drylanders today was not, in fact, desert at all, but received far more rain than it does today, and it was dotted with pluvial lakes, the Indash Salt Sea being a shrunken remnant of the last of them, one that once covered all the land between the Kindattu and the Dagan mountain ranges, and much of the Shutruk Savanna as well.  These lakes were in retreat at the time of the very earliest historical records, which tell of the rise of the early balshatoi kingdoms: Rozovķa, Ryazan, Pjarmia, Pezhek, and Vuronezh.  The balshatoi kingdoms were along the northern coast of the Mezzovian Sea, and thus south of the lands that later become the Drylands.  Long before the arrival of the nomadic peoples who occupy the area today, a series of kingdoms of a completely unrelated ethnicity lived in the area, and dealt with the early balshatoi as traders, as allies, and occasionally as rivals and enemies.  The greatest of these kingdoms, and the only one who's name as come down through the ages, is Kinzassál.

The Battle of Eltdown, with much artistic license

At the time that the early balshatoi kingdoms were carving out their influence, the great kingdom of Kinzassál was already in decline, as waves of subsequent droughts depleted the shrinking pluvial lakes that made up their homeland, and the area become increasingly xeric.  This set in motion a great deal of unrest within Kinzassál, which brought them into conflict with the balshatoi kingdoms, especially Ryazan, which was located directly to its south and beyond the forests.  In those days, there was no gap between the Shifting and Haunted Forests, which were not known by those names, nor did they have the evil reputation that they gained in years since.  Legend has it, in fact, that many of the changelings that gave the Shifting Forest its name were originally Kinzassian peoples displaced and cursed by the droughts and associations with werewolves of the forest.  The Kinzassians contested right of passage though the area with the expanding influence of Ryazan, since settlers related to and subject to the king in Volék Szemennok, the capital city of Kinzassál, already lived to the east of Ryazan, in lands that later became Tarush Noptii.  It seems likely that the Tarushans today were related ethnically and culturally with the Kinzassians.  Some scholars even posit that Tarush Noptii was little more than a colony of Kinzassian settlers, while others speculate on more complicated relationships, calling the ethnic Tarushans more like "cousins" of the Kinzassians rather than direct descendents of them.  In any case, whomever the peoples were who lived in Tarush Noptii at the time, they recognized the authority and sovereingty of the Kinzassians, which put them at odds with Ryazan, and later with Pezhek, when it inherited Ryazan via dynastic union.  The borderlands of Ryazan to both the north and the east were unsettled and uneasy for many generations, although open warfare was rare.  Only the pitched battle at a location very close to the present day sleepy village of Eltdown is known to historians, while otherwise border skirmishes and diplomatic wrangling appear to have characterized much of the relationship between these kingdoms.

On the night that has retroactively been labeled "The Falling of the Star of Doom" the fate of Kinzassál appears to have been sealed.  A great sign and omen in the heavens was the falling of Tæriruuş, the Death-god from the sky.  The language which rendered his name is unknown, but he was eventually called simply Tarush, and is immortalized in name with the kingdom of Tarush Noptii.  Twenty great champions of Kinzassál traveled to the place where the the god fell, and by their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of the ancient Witch-lord retainers they brought with them, Tarush was contained for all time beneath the surface of the earth, and eventually the capital city of Tarush Noptii itself was built over the spot where that triumph was realized.

This ancient sorcery and the legendary battles of the Twenty with the servants and creatures of Tarush ruined the land of Tarush Noptii for generations, though.  Ryazan and Pezhek turned its face from the land and contested it no more, and it took many centuries before the native population regrew to a sustainable level.  The loss of this territory devastated Kinzassál, however, which was still suffering from a climatic crisis that continued to worsen.  At the same time, barbarians--the most ancient ancestors of the drylanders and the tribesmen of today--had made their way on the now dried corridors between the mountains and the Salt Sea.  These nomadic peoples had an economy that was better positioned to take advantage of the drying conditions, by following nomadic herds of bison, pronghorns, or feral longhorn cattle, who spread across the dry savannas as the woodlands retreated following many years of drought and drying.  These barbarians fell upon the weakened Kinzassians until they met the balshatoi, who were now ranging up through the forests to the borderlands of the savanas and badlands itself.  By the time the two people first contacted each other, though, Kinzassál was largely a depopulated wasteland, and its few remaining inhabitants were absorbed completely into one of those two successor populations, leaving behind little evidence of their existence.

The ancient capital of Volék Szemennok's location is unknown, and its ruins are undiscovered, at least by Terrasan or Hamazin scholars.  Such a find would be a great treasure trove of knowledge, as it is believed that extensive archives of historical and arcane knowledge were lost with the city.  Some believe that the vampires of Tarush Noptii, as the sole remaining heirs of the Kinzassian people, know its location and have long ago looted it, or perhaps haunted its ruins, hoarding it for themselves, but this is only idle speculation.  In truth, very little of Kinzassál is really known, other than the legend of "The Falling of the Star of Doom" and the foundation of the current nation of Tarush Noptii as a splinter of sorts from Kinzassian sources.

J is for Jekara

Jekara is the capital city of the Kurushat khaganate, as well as the home of the khagan's palace and harem, and many of the nobility of the Kurushi overall.  The kurushi race, as described earlier, is unique and distinct from others in the land of the Three Empires.  I'll repost the description of the Kurushi briefly before moving on to the details of Jekara specifically.

The Kurushi are a group of peoples who live in the very southwest areas that are mapped. Their name comes from the major country in the area, Kurushat, but in reality, many of them have only recently been integrated into that polity, and some of them have more loyalty to their local traditions than to the grand, national one. Be that as it may, the kurushans have a similar appearance, traditions, language and way of life, even if their more or less unity into a single country is a recent thing. Fiercely militaristic, frequently even jingoistic to the point of obnoxiousness, and an active, virile and growing group of people, the kurushans are ready to take on the Mezzovian region by storm... except that, well, they're still relatively removed from the area, and have enough of their own issues going on around the shores of the much smaller inland Karkose Sea to deal with. Fractuous and proud, they will probably always have to deal with local pride, insubordination and other issues within their khaganate, especially as the old khagan sees the end of his life approaching and the tempestuous scrabbling for his position that will no doubt follow his death among his eligible heirs apparent. The Kurushi are fairly tall and pale-skinned except when tanned by summers of campaigning and other outdoor activity. They value achievement and ambition, and even the wealthy and the nobility pursue scholarly, athletic, military, or even mercantile pursuits. Success in any of these arenas brings prestige. Because of this, many kurushans are fairly tanned; they maintain an active, outdoor lifestyle. They have dark hair and extremely pale gray eyes, which are often almond shaped due to modest epicanthic folds. Kurushans have only fairly recently been coming into the lands of other peoples, have been isolated on the other side of the Black Mountains and the Cavusto steppes, but when they have come into contact with isolated settlements, villages, or even full cities other other nationalities, their response has often been aggressive: raiding or even outright conquering and enslaving of thousands of people. They now have diplomatic relationships with Terrasa and others, so much of that has been officially curtailed, but the kurushans, once they get past their local issues, have been eyeing the rich lands of the Mezzovian region and seeing themselves as the natural overlords.

Kurushat as a country is a relatively recent phenomena.  While ethnically, culturally and linguistically linked, all of the people in the Karkose Inner Sea region were more independent and Balkanized until recently.  Some of the cities that now fall under the banner of the Empire have done so recently--the most recent in living memory, even--and in some cases, that banner waves uncomfortably over a still recalcitrant populace.  Jekara, on the other hand, is the homeland of the group that conquered the rest.  To use a real life example, Kurushat would be much like the early days of the Roman Republic, and the Romans themselves--the Jekarans--have only recently imposed themselves over the Sabine, Samnite, Faliscan, Oscan or Umbrian peoples--and started calling them all Kurushi in an attempt to create a monolithic Kurushan culture.  Assuming its continued political dominance, it'll get there eventually, but realistically there are generations yet to come in which the Jekara dialect, Jekara fashions and customs, and loyalty to the entire nation as a whole rather than to regional concerns remain elusive.

Jekaran Praetorian

Jekara is located on the coast of the Karkose Inner Sea, at the mouth of the Sukotu River.  Its closest neighbor amongst the major cities that are now part of the Empire is Sinjagat, and long before the formation of the Empire, they had a long and mutually beneficial relationship as allies and trading partners anyway.  This created a great deal of cultural symbiosis, so that while Jekara is the secular head of the Empire, Sinjagat is its spiritual head, and the cult and worship of Yinigu, the patron god of Kurushat, started at Sinjagat and is still centered there.  Because of this, there are still a number of people in Jekara who maintain practice of their old ancestor worship cult, often side by side with the worship of Yinigu, but sometimes in place of it.

Since it is the headquarters of the Khan of Khans, life in Jekara is largely shaped by the political manuevering of its noble class.  The supreme leader of Kurushat is the Khan of Khans, The Almighty Khagan, Kajim Tokraas IX, Blessed of Yinigu, Blade of the South, Hammer of the Weak. Kajim Tokraas is a very wily ruler, and he is old and powerful. Despite his age and relatively passive appearance, he is a monster of a warrior, and his age has not in the least dimmed his reflexes, strength or battle instincts. As a master of unarmed combat and some small sorcery, he is always armed even when he appears harmless or defenseless.  His most notable trait is his absolute ruthlessness, reliance on a combination of convoluted plotting and naked power to hold on to his position. Nobody loves the Khagan, but everyone fears him.

The Cataracts of the Sukotu River at Jekara with the Khagan's palace

There is no heir per se to the khagan, but a number of khans, many of them his siblings and children, have been positioning themselves for years to take over the mantle of the khagan on his eventual death. This is the ancient Jekaran leadership ritual; a ruler holds power until he no longer can hold it (i.e., he is violently ousted and killed by a prospective replacement, or he otherwise dies of natural or unnatural causes.) On the death of past khagans, a brief period of anarchy grips the khaganate, as each of the khans attempts to ascend the throne. Usually this means a great deal of fratricide, patricide and filicide, and a significant depletion of the ranks of the upper nobility. The new ruler then spends some time consolidating power and his grip over Kurushat.

Currently the favored khan to inherit is the oldest surviving son, Kajim Qaerkuun, a gigantic brute of a man that many whisper is half Neanderthal based on his massive build, ugly features and prominent body hair. He's not--he's just really big, ugly and hairy. He's served for many years as Tokraas' brutal enforcer and Right Hand, but this appearance of loyalty is a sham, and Tokraas knows it. Tokraas has no problem allowing Qaerkuun to inherit as long as he waits for a natural death and doesn't get impatient, but he keeps a wary eye on his ambitious son.

Most of the other khans serve important roles in the khagan's court, or serve as an equivalent to regional governers. Under the khans are the various members of the noble caste. Many of them have administrative roles in the government of the khaganate, although many of them are merely titular heads of their households, and their only role of leadership is over their clan soldiers, laborers and slaves. A few of the nobles have charters that were extended to them as the city-state of Jekara gradually went "Imperial" and started expanding as the Kurushat Empire, but for the most part, these local lords were killed when their own countries and/or city-states were conquered, and nobles of Jekaran blood were installed. For some of the older conquests, this has been the situation for many generations, and is a well-established status quo. For others on the frontiers of Kurushat, the local lords are newly installed and the local populace seethes with rebellion and general unruliness. These far-flung leaders have a light presence in Jekara itself, as their duties (and distance) keep them otherwise occupied, but no khan is willing to foreswear Jekara entirely, and the more settled khans maintain permanent residence here, to better ensure that they are close to the seat of power in Kurushat.

Life in Jekara--and increasingly so everywhere in Kurushat--is dominated by a complex and convoluted caste system.  The following are the castes commonly associated with Jekara and Sinjagat and Kurushi culture in general.

• Royals: These are those who could potentially take over the crown in the event of the death of the khagan. Permeability is extremely low; it would be a very unusual and exceptional case for someone not born to this caste to enter it. This is the khagan himself, and all the khans, and their immediate families.

• Praetorians: Professional soldiers. Most make up heavy infantry units, and train almost from birth to the soldiering career. Sorta like hereditary positions in the Roman legions. The numbers are relatively small, but there's enough of them that the army pretty much has to always be on the move. The recent khagan's have created an unsustainable situation in which without a foreign war to prosecute, they've got entire castes of kurushi that are essentially unemployed and the economic basis of the entire country would collapse. You can be born into, or buy a commission into this caste. Although most praetorians are not overtly wealthy, it is seen as a noble, almost a holy calling, and praetorians are a very prestigeous caste.  They are especially common within and around Jekara itself, which is a highly militarized area.

• Cataphracts: Also professional soldiers, but also nobility. Not unlike the knights of medieval Europe. Titles to this caste can be granted by royals, so permeability here is relatively good. You cannot buy commissions as a cataphract, though, and they are always fewer in number than the Praetorians.

• Mortitheurges: To borrow a label from Privateer Press's skorne society, these guys are both religious and arcane in nature and serve as a priestly caste. Although not celibate, moritheurges do not raise their own children nor do they marry, so you cannot be born to this caste.  Their origin is in the ancestor worship beliefs of the past, but most of them have been seamlessly adopted into the worship of Yinigu as well.

• Juugashi: The Juugashi are the Elect of Yinigu, special shock troops that have been selected via a painful and potentially fatal initiation ceremony to undergo a magical transformation to better resemble the god of their religion as "were-hyenas" of a sort (although their physical change is permanent, and has nothing to do with the moon.)  Juugashi spend some of their time cloistered in special monasteries, but they also serve as elite troops on campaign, and as bodyguards for wandering clerics and nobles within the empire themselves.

Juugashi soldiers

It is illegal for all but a khan or other extremely highly placed noble to interfere with the Juugashi, so many of the common citizens of the Empire see them as little more than state-sponsored bandits, and want nothing to do with them if they can help it. Soldiers are more forgiving, as the Juugashi have a proven track record of "getting it done" when things get difficult.

In keeping with the nature of Yinigu, and the hyenas that they resemble, the Juugashi are brutal, aggressive and domineering.

• Ugiun (Artisans): A more prestigious force than laborers, these free-born entrepreneurs can belong to guilds, and are known as masters of their crafts. Not unlike medieval guild-type professions. Doctors and others also qualify. In modern society, we would call these "skilled trades."

• Haaziran (Laborers): Much less prestigious than artisans, these are the unskilled laborers. From farmers and urban unskilled labor to domestic help, this vast throng of mostly non-Kurushi, disgraced Kurushi, or those of recently conquered populations, humans, Neanderthals, and others who have somehow avoided slavery still find their lot little better than serfs in most respects. They are, however, socially somewhat invisible, and for that reason, they can move about the empire more freely than the government would care to admit. Their control over the laborers is slight; however, since most laborers have to work to survive, the potential for civil unrest from this quarter is lower than it might otherwise be.

• Kabaatas Erkek (Traveling merchants): A relatively prestigious caste that has the freedom to come and go throughout the khaganate and beyond is rare, and this privilege belongs to the hereditary merchant caste. Each merchant (and his retinue) has a charter from a khaganate himself, giving him authority to enact non-local trade relationships, and this charter is passed down from parent to child. Younger, less able, or less interested children can be placed, due to the merchants wealth, in the praetorian, scholar and administrator or artisan castes as well, to ensure that the entire family prospers.

• Qaabru: Not unlike the Nazi SS; a caste that is police force, paramility force, and which operates somewhat independently of the other arms of the government here, and which has its fingers in all aspects of Kurushi life. Members of the Qaabru are hand-picked by its leaders. In theory, this is a eugenics program; the Qaabru are supposed to be everything that's best about the Kurushi race, and an attempt to improve on that even more and perpetuate their better qualities without sullying them with any other concerns. In reality, the leaders of the Qaabru quite frequently allow Kurushi to buy entrance into this caste for their children, or they pick them as political favors.

• Slaves: Name speaks for itself. Few slaves have any rights, and their lot is a miserable one. However, this isn't universally true. The khagan himself, and his top khans, select slaves for administrative talent, and most of the bureacrats of Kurushat are slaves, Kurushi or otherwise. They can rise to great power and wealth in these roles, but they can also lose it overnight if they don't play their cards exactly right. There are also regiments of slave soldiers, not unlike the janissaries, usually led by a charismatic and powerful Juugashi individual. These jannisary-soldiers are exclusively non-Kurushi, and Terrasans and Neanderthals make up the majority of their numbers.

Finally, an interesting bit of local color for Jekara is the existance of "The city above the City"--a network of catwalks, rickety shanties and scaffolds, that are build atop many of the buildings of Jekara, in an overt example of strange squatting.  This neighborhood, called Overcity by the pretentious and Rickets by the rest, is a strange home to escaped slaves, lower class citizens with nowhere else to go, criminals and more.  Why the khagan tolerates it is unclear, but for both practical reasons and as a matter of policy, local law enforcement views the Rickets as off-limits.  Many argue that if it were cleared away, it would simply spring back up again like mushrooms within a matter of days anyway.