[b]Region Number: 7[/b] [b]Nation Name:[/b] Most Serene and Holy Kingdom of Helor, Empire of the Rat's Friends, [i]"Shield of Hightower"[/i] and [i]"Reliquary of the Gods."[/i] [b]Nation Leader: [/b] Saint-King Bharat in Divine Stead [b]Nation Banner:[/b] Left half is green, wreathed in a stylized depiction of vines. Right half is a stylized night sky and assembled zodiac figures. A river rushes diagonally from left down to right, crossing over both. A sunburst of green thunderbolts forms a shield shape, imposed over the other aspects. [b]Race:[/b] Heloran Ratmen, Minors: Rakshasa, Vanara, Ganesha [b]Custom Race Descriptions[/b] [hider=Heloran][indent]- Name: Heloran Ratman - Life Span: Fluctuates significantly. The average-living individual could live to 50 naturally, while the brighter-burning would be lucky to see the age of 30 due to physiological limitations. Devout ascetics are known to break one hundred. - Appearance: Varies, but most typically brown furred with white underbelly & coat, black-eyed, with black tails around their body length/height. Manner of dress is southeast Asian. - General Traits: Rigorously casted/uncasted, cautious, magnanimous, vengeful when crossed, forgiving of the sincere, communally and personally faithful, ardently nationalist against foreign invaders. City-builders, tunnelers, agriculturalists and priests.[/indent][/hider] [hider=Rakshasa][indent]- Name: Rakshasa - Life Span: The lowly and well-off both live to around at greatest 40, dying of material excess. - Appearance: Exceptionally swarthy humanoids, with skin most oft like pitch, heavy brows and facial hair, fanged mouths and strong build. Most often reach seven feet of height. Dress is as mythological Lanka. Devilish visages in the form of mask or makeup are common. - General Traits: Temperamental, vice-ridden, arbitrary qualities tempered by shrewdness, materially inclined and disinclined to the divine. More mercantile than martial. Traders, sellswords, and racketeers.[/indent][/hider] [hider=Vanara][indent]- Name: Vanara - Life Span: Even more wildly fluctuating than the Helorans, the driven tend to die at 20 from some heroism/foolishness or another. No consistent middle range. Ascetics will see similar lifespans to their Heloran contemporaries. - Appearance: As humanoid macaques, often with styled beards or moustaches. Morphology (i.e, dominance of humanoid or monkeylike feature) varies. Dress is Newār. - General Traits: Courageous to a fault, curious, intelligent but not always wise, straightforward in application of justice. Pastoralists and craftsmen.[/indent][/hider] [hider=Ganesha][indent]- Name: Ganesha - Life Span: Excessive at a hundred years naturally. Often shortened by circumstance. - Appearance: Humanoid Indian elephants. Splayed feet with four nail-jut 'toes.' Deceptively dexterous though wide & short fingers, four to a hand plus thumb. Typically approaching eight feet despite hunched back, exceptional examples approach ten. Dress is Punjabi/Sikhist. - General Traits: Slow to rouse emotionally, intense once done. Similarly justice-inclined to the Vanara, and similarly straightforward. Maintain martial school-strongholds; otherwise nomadic grazers & limited agriculturalists outside of certain families whom maintain polders on the western coast. Hospitable if stoic, slow to make friends, long in having them.[/indent][/hider] [b]Capital City:[/b] Dēvī pina, the Divine Pin [b]Other Major Settlements:[/b] Great School of Ganesh (west lakes region, Ganeshan, fortress-school located centrally in an expansive marsh & series of polders) Bandaragāha, City on the Water (north peninsula, Rakshasa, trade center and site of major lend-lease docking to Hightower) Lukēkā pahāḍa, the Hidden Mountain (dispersed through southern range, Hightower border, Vanara-Heloran settlements dug and carved into the mountains & hills) Orc mārca, the Orcmarch (Heloran agricultural stretch, burrows and sparse former Imperial wayforts, dotting along the eastern border, particularly southeast) [b]Gross Population:[/b]270,000 (108,000 Helorans, 54,000 Rakshasa, 81,000 Vanara, 27,000 Ganesha; any others too insignificant to serve as demographic) [b]Exports:[/b] Stone, rice (wheat equiv.) [hider=History][b]Brief Nation History:[/b] The region of Helor has, since recorded history, been an alien place to its surroundings. A land of rainforest, jungle, marsh and wetland, giving way to deserts east & plains west, mountains south and bay north. A seeming paradise to the uninitiated, but unequivocally hostile to the foreigner, bested in this regard only by the most barren wastes. Fitting, then, that it would harbor far different peoples than the surroundings to fill the vacuum. A number of distinct populations form the national makeup, each a small nation unto its own, made as one by military adventure, diplomacy, faith or alliance in distant history by the Helorans. Brought into the Empire by King Almon III the Conqueror, previous ventures had been met with vicious failure on the western front, the marshes being untenable to advance through even without Ganeshi saint-soldiers exploiting it so terribly. It was only with Almon that a different route was sought, in expedition through the desert and into the mountains of future Hightower- less state then and more frontier- into the arguably friendlier terrain of the Vanara. There they find themselves harried by mischief instead of glaive, as adventurer rather than invader. The saving of a Heloran Saint-King from disaster against orc invasion in fulfillment of myriad prophecies saw Helor's near-immediate entry into the Empire as a client state. From there, besides trickling advances, the writing of new sagas, and the temporary pacification of the Orcs in later day, the Heloran state of affairs remained largely the same as always. A heart of darkness, famous and infamous, from which a few interesting, groundbreaking ones, might spring. From time to time, Heloran advisers might be in vogue, or Vanara mercenaries and the rare Ganeshi crusader. Many songs were written of Rakshasan corsairs, loosing iron and smoke against the enemies of Bohaddon, and others of considerably bawdier nature. Continued development of Hightower and mutual action against the orcs saw a close bond between frontiersmen and later men of the state & the peoples of Helor, to whom few others could claim any closeness, the other immediate neighbors being hated Orcs, somewhat stigmatized West heartlanders, or divided by wide bay. Helor was one of numerous nations within nations in the Empire, but its contributions were undeniable, and its loyalty assured. It is this close relation to the Empire and Hightower in particular which assured its stability in the times to come, but also what left it shook to the core in the Empire's fall. Confusion was rampant, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the borders strained under skirmishes with insurrectionists, loyalists and rebels, brigands and petty warlords, and the hostility of the country to incursion was the prime reason any lasting military campaign from one aggressor or another was avoided. The Empire's fall was viewed as fulfillment of the prophetic, and of Helor's fracturing and reforging in the wake was to follow; also recorded was that 'one may hold the crown again,' though it is poetically vague. Initial civil unrest was quashed by the Saint-King Bharat's interventions; none desired to be the ones to break the covenant first, even in trying times and seeming inevitability, and conservative thought won out. Then wizened, he is only morso now; he has lived through the reign of three emperors and none. What he and his charges will live through following is for the gods to see, as tension flares through the once-peaceable state.[/hider] ----------------------------- Nation Status Card [b][i]Most Serene and Holy Kingdom of Helor[/i][/b] [hider=Nation Status] [b]Current Leader/Government: Saint-King Bharat[/b] [b]Settlements Owned:[/b] 5 [b]Provinces Owned:[/b] 1 [b]Population:[/b] 270,000 [b]Standing Army:[/b] [indent] - /<1200?>/ (regular-irregulars, light and medium infantry formed from formal reservists and informal militia; 'standing' in sense of being ready-at-call levies and armed citizenry) - /<900>// (extra-heavy infantry, marsh fighters, high personal strength, comparatively small manpower in numbers to contemporaries leads to higher force dispersial, equaling smaller overall strength for non-field battle/siege operations unassisted) - /<800>// (military-monastic order, dualpurpose bushwhackers and shock infantry)[/indent] [b]Standing Navy:[/b] [indent]-/<# 32 light ships (merchant junks, cannon-armed)>/<14 medium ships (turtle ships; cannon armed, smokescreen, iron plated & spiked top deck, reinforced iron rams>/<2 big ships (recommissioned treasure ships)>//[/indent] [b]Population Happiness:[/b] 65% (social unrest and anxiety, politically stable) [b]Imports:[/b] Wine (Hightower) [b]Exports:[/b] Rice (wheat), stone, wine (tariff from Hightower) [b]Wealth:[/b] Respectable [b]Alliances:[/b] Hightower [b]Trade Pacts:[/b] Hightower (wine & tarriffs for stone & stoneworker expertise) [b]Cease Fires:[/b] [/hider]