A WIP, but it has an overview that gives a pretty good idea. Edit: updated [hider=Imperial Colony of Lemuria] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/dColfmV.png[/img] [hr] [img]https://i.imgur.com/ufhScvs.png[/img][/center] [hr] [center][b]Overview:[/b][/center] Derung, as the subcontinent itself is called, is a largely savage and untamed wilderness. Dense jungles sprawl across much of the rugged inland area and choke out the light, whilst many low-lying coastal regions and estuaries can only be described as swamps. Despite all of that, it has many resources, and for thousands of years it has been home to a diverse mix of primitive native tribes. Perhaps the foremost and most brutal example of elven ambition and Old World Imperialism, Lemuria is a Yllendyr colony that was founded upon the island of Derung only four decades ago. In that timespan it has already managed to create obscene wealth; those native populations along the western coast that didn't flee east to escape the Yllendyr incursion found themselves brutally subjugated. Even by the standards of the most oppressive dominions, the Lemurian system of slavery imposed upon the natives stands out as especially horrific and appalling. On the rubber plantations, the Yllendyr overseers are expected to impose such a level of fear that it utterly breaks the slaves; an example of this is that every overseer is given a certain quota of hands, fingers, and ears that they must sever from their unruly charges each season. Most of the native slaves toil in rubber plantations, but there are also hardwood logging camps and mines. In this manner, Lemuria continues to systematically plunder the natural wealth of Derung and rape the land. Despite this, its infrastructure is in a terrible state and it still remains very much a frontier. As efforts have been made to expand the scale of operations, expeditions to found new colonies and worksites further inland have been met with heavy resistance from the remaining free native populations. From the jungles and swamps the natives continue to wage a guerilla war to drive out all foreign invaders from their land, and the colonial government has tried at every step to meet their defiance with even more ruthless force. Whilst the inland is still mostly rugged and uncharted jungle and mountains full of hostile natives, the eastern coast is less populated. Efforts have been made to investigate its potential, but its harbors are not as forgiving and its lands even harder to settle. In addition to the natural obstacles that it imposes, the lawless and untamed east coast is home to several outposts full of pirates and other criminal castaways. For now, Lemuria allows the eastern side of Derung to continue festering while it focuses almost solely upon burning the jungles and taming the inland. For the past twenty years, General Talic Estroth has ruled over Lemuria (and to hear him say it, all of Derung) with an iron fist. Initially a mere major in the army hailing from a minor noble house, he was quick to advance through the ranks of the military, especially when the failing initial conquest and colonization of Lemuria saw so many of his superiors die to native ambushes, assassinations, diseases, and even mutiny. Estroth has shown himself nigh impervious to all of those things, though, having already survived multiple attempts upon his life. Nonetheless, for each of his merits he has a dozen alleged scandals and stains upon his name. By all accounts the man is cruel and ill-tempered, but many would go so far as to call him mad. Rumors abound not only of the gruesome system he's designed, but also of him harboring a sadistic and psychopathic temperament as he murders and tortures political enemies just as readily as upstart slaves. Critics have styled him the Butcher of Derung, but he embraces and embodies the title. Estroth is feared by all: the natives that he wages war against, the slaves that he works to death, the soldiers that answer to him, the few Yllendyr colonists under his protection, and even some on the mainland are all terrified of the man. The past decades has ensured that he's easily among the most wealthy figures in the Old World, and is perhaps also the single most infamous one. He's come to be viewed by revolutionaries as the living embodiment of all that is wrong with the Imperium. [hider=History and Details of Native Peoples] [hider=Early and Ancient History] The subcontinental island of Derung was discovered by sailors from the Old World many centuries ago. Though it was known to many states of the Old World, no serious colonization attempts were ever made until rather recently, due in large part to what reports came from the few exploration efforts that were launched over the years. The land was somewhat remote and seemed so rugged and untamed that trying to exploit its resources and control it seemed a wasted effort. In time it came to be a pirate haven of sorts; numerous hideouts for lawless types were built on inland coves or in secluded harbors, and these pirates had just enough bad run-ins with the indigenous populations to make the formerly curious natives grow territorial and aggressive to any foreigners that they encountered. The hostility of the natives was just yet another factor compounded onto the list of reasons that no major powers wanted to invest in the subcontinent. In the distant past, several breeds of natives came to occupy the region of Derung. In the modern day, there exist two distinct groups: the Derung swamp orcs that lived near the coast, and the so-called 'pygmies' that mostly dwell in the jungles. Though the pygmies bear a great deal of resemblance to the humans that can be found on the Old World, the Yllendyr have classified them as taxonomically different to (and inferior than) humans, despite their one redeeming factor in that they have skin dark as the native mahogany. This classification came to be in part because of the convenience of declaring the local populations to be the lowest of the low and fit only for slavery, but also because their language, mental capacity, technology, and customs were all significantly more primitive than had been seen in any other barbarous population of humans. In addition, their bone structure has slight differences. By elven standards the pygmies have even uglier visages than those of men, and the pygmies have ankle structures better suited for climbing yet worse for running and walking, and they of course earned their name by having such short stature. Many pygmies would be on the very low end of 'average' for a human, but some tribes have no men much taller than four and a half feet. Modern scholars have posited two main theories: the first that these pygmies are descended from the native monkeys, and the second that the island of Derung was once connected to the mainland thousands of years ago and that the humans that dwelled upon it either remained half bestial cavemen or perhaps even degenerated from their former status. Nobody seriously entertains the possibility of the pygmies being descended from humans that sailed to the island from elsewhere during prehistoric times, namely because the pygmies have demonstrated nothing more than the capacity to craft small and canoes and various other crude rivercraft, and the notion of them building seaworthy vessels is dismissed as absurd. [hider=Depiction of pygmies] [img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ciE683UBmIc/Uem0nfzmyUI/AAAAAAAAAt0/lE2pCPNXKDs/s1600/brobat_beesbok_warhammer_pygmies.jpg[/img] [/hider] The swamp orcs are the second distinct group of natives. They are gigantic by the standards of the pygmies, and large still in the eyes of the Yllendyr. The swamp orcs have a greyish hue of skin not so different from that of the Yllendyr, a stature slightly taller than most humans and significantly more muscular, and a characteristic dogmatic aggression that combines with the cultural phenomena of them almost all being both brave and brutal. Though the orcs and pygmies are alike in that they keep only oral tradition and have no written history with which to help scholars, the swamp orcs tell tales of other lands and of great spirits that can carry people across worlds. For that reason, prevailing historical theorists are not so condescending towards the swamp orcs, and many believe that they are distantly related to the orc populations present in the modern-day state of Fibor, perhaps descended from sailors that left their ancestral homeland centuries ago and came to reside upon Derung at some point prior to when the explorers of old discovered the island and noted the swamp orcs as being among the local inhabitants. Historically, both the pygmy and the swamp orc populations were divided into numerous tribes and ethnic groups that frequently raided one another. Relations between the pygmies and the swamp orcs have varied over the years, but have hardly ever been good. The swamp orcs, despite being numerically inferior, are simply so much individually stronger that the pygmies have never had success fighting them in open combat. It has been through the use of ambushes, guerilla warfare, and an excellent knowledge on how to create effective poisons that the pygmies have always managed to successfully defend their jungles from swamp orc incursions. [/hider] [hider=Modern History] The modern history of Derung began with Yllendyr's recent colonization attempts and their eventual foundation of Lemuria. It was only five decades ago that the Imperium of Yllendyr (and by extent, the rest of the world) began to take serious interest in Derung. While attempting to cleanse it of the increasing numerous and brazen population of pirates and exiles that had come to grow there, the Imperium became aware that the island had rubber and minerals in great abundance. After several years of small-scale scouting to confirm the rumors, make note of the natives, and assess the territory for suitable sites to settle, the first true military expedition was sent forty years ago. The venture was launched with the backing of Emperor Naerzo as well as numerous other noble investors, so in addition to numerous citizen settlers coming to make their fortunes or simply acquire large tracts of cheap land, several hundred imperial soldiers were sent. Three ships landed upon the shores, and laborers were quick to establish a camp that would later grow to Port Lemuria. The swamp orcs were to first natives to encounter the new colony, despite their appearance and hostile reputation, they were deemed to be surprisingly civilized. Some of the swamp orcs already had limited trade and dealings with foreign pirates and the like. Even as the Imperial Navy sent a fleet to the new colony about purging the worst of the pirate havens, the colonists saw the potential to simply replace the pirates in their dealings with the orcs. Peace talks ensued. With promises of wealth and food and protection, most of the swamp orcs agreed to learn Yllerian and become imperial subjects. There was resistance from a few especially aggressive tribes that had the foresight to see what was to come, but their attacks were divided and weak and those barbarous tribes were utterly crushed. The quick execution of all their shamans and chieftains shocked other tribes into peacefully ceding to elven demands, and it also ensured the loyalty of the surviving and now subjugated, formerly-rebellious orcs. Pygmy interaction was still rare by that point; though the swamp orcs were able to confirm the historians' tales of the pygmies dwelling deep in the jungle, at this point Lemuria was still confined to the coast and the swamps and estuaries of their new subjects. Since they were mounting only limited exploration efforts inland, they came into contact with only about ten of the dozens of different pygmy tribes. Nonetheless, the pygmies were dealt with similarly to the swamp orcs, yet they proved far more defiant and unwilling to submit. Significantly more violence and coercion was used in the subjugation of the first few pygmy tribes, but as word traveled to the others, the jungle's inhabitants began to offer incredibly fierce resistance. Within two years, under one General Ridaros, Yllendyr had negotiated treaties with over 70 separate tribal entities and estimated the number of new legal subjects to be in excess of 20,000. As they made steady success, their base camp expanded to accommodate further waves of colonists, and soon it turned into a true and permanent port town. Citrus plantations and logging camps were soon built near the coast; despite being able to export much-desired teak as well as growing quantities of fruits and the swamp orcs' native crops like rice, the colony was thus far still a moneysink. Greedy for a return on the hefty initial investment, a renewed focus was placed upon the initial goal of producing rubber. Almost overnight they redoubled their slow efforts to explore the inland jungles and bring the pygmies to heel, but to disastrous effect. Several squads sent into the jungle never returned. Lemuria still didn't dare to leave their colony without a respectable garrison for fear of their new and still-barbarous subjects entertaining thoughts of uprising, so they concentrated all of the manpower that could be spared into one expedition force and sent it inland. In that manner they'd expected to conquer the pygmies one by one, admittedly in a much slower fashion than was ideal, but with minimum casualties. Instead, they were met with incredibly fierce resistance from a newly formed tribal confederation of pygmies, many of whom had firearms. They'd looted some weapons off the previous squads of soldiers that went missing, stolen others from explorers, and (as it would later be found out) purchased training and additional weapons from some of the remaining pirates that kept a presence on the island's eastern coast. In one horrific ambush, the pygmy confederation killed the entirety of the scouting force; the fate of the hundreds of soldiers and the colonel in charge became clear some weeks later when the pygmies left severed heads and flayed skins along the jungle's edge. But before the Lemurians became aware of those events and realized their peril, the pygmies quickly launched an attack on the colony. As their relations from the various groups of swamp orcs had previously ranged from being sworn enemies to merely harboring a dislike, the pygmies raided several swamp orc communities and killed several important tribal leaders that had acted as intermediaries between the orcs and their new overlords. At the same time, several Yllendyr colonists were butchered when the pygmies razed numerous relatively undefended citrus plantations and logging camps that were away from the main port. Though they didn't dare strike Port Lemuria directly, a small group of enemies did manage to disguise themselves as some of the already subjugated pygmies and then use that cover to assassinate General Ridaros. Even as they made efforts to withdraw the outlying colonists and fortify Lemuria whilst they repelled the hostile army, a sudden outbreak of malaria further crippled the colony and claimed yet more Lemurians, including several officers. Left in utter chaos, the chain of command placed one Major Estroth in command. From there, the rest was history. Over the next five years he managed to take Lemuria from the brink of utter failure and abandonment into what would become by far the empire's most profitable colony; first he purged the already subjugated pygmies on the suspicion that they had been acting as spies and aiding the enemy, and then he negotiated with the swamp orcs for military support. Realizing the peril of his situation now that the swamp orcs were beginning to see that they were in a losing bargain, especially since they now outnumbered the remaining Yllendyr soldiers more than ever, Estroth killed the whole flock of birds with one stone. By enlisting the swamp orcs as official auxiliary forces, they were able to rise in the eyes of the empire, and thus he could use government funds to arm and pay them generously enough to ensure their continued loyalty to him. Then, whilst awaiting further reinforcements from the mainland, Estroth trained his new army and had them guard the colony from pygmy raids. That bought him time and prevented the pygmies from destroying the colony or forcing the Lemurians to withdraw. When he eventually did receive the needed supplies and reinforcements from the mainland, Estroth left the majority of them to guard Lemuria and took only a few of them to supplement his force of some 2,000 orc auxiliaries. The orcs were natives and knew the land as well as the enemy, but beyond that, they were [i]expendable[/i]. In fact, by sending so many of their fittest people into the proverbial meatgrinder, he crippled the swamp orcs' ability to later revolt whilst simultaneously sparing the Yllendyr soldiers from taking more than neglible casualties. Marching his force into the jungle personally, Estroth was able to utterly crush the pygmy confederation. Those natives that didn't flee further inland to the mountains or around to the eastern coast were brutally enslaved. Much to their surprise and glee, the Yllendyr confirmed the reports of great amounts of rubber existing further inland, and then would later come to find that Derung's hills contained a wealth of copper, silver, and even diamonds. After recent events, there came no objections when Estroth implemented the horrific (albeit highly efficient) system that would go on to make colony famous around the world--for its cruelty yes, but also the obscene wealth that it generated. [/hider] [/hider] [u]Type of Government:[/u] Effective military dictatorship, with colonial infrastructure and production under martial law. General Estroth both commands the occupation forces and serves indefinitely as acting colonial governor. [u]Head(s) of Government:[/u] General Talic Estroth There have been Yllendyr officials on the mainland that questioned whether it is wise that he has been granted so much autonomy when he could believably be trying to entrench himself and carve out a realm of his own; however, he's never shown any indication of such treachery. To hear him tell it, he's the most zealous of all the Imperium's servants. He's ordered massacres of entire villages for the crimes of harboring traitors or speaking too loudly against him or Yllendyr. Colonel Zekel Mythec Estroth's second in command Captain Gruz Highest ranking swamp orc; de facto in charge of the swamp orc auxiliaries [u]Economy:[/u] [hider=Quick Summary] Imports: Consumer goods, settlers, military personnel and equipment, food Exports: Rubber, copper, silver, diamonds, citrus[/hider] [hider=Detailed Explanation, with Infrastructure] Most of the infrastructure is within ten miles of a river or the coast; large swathes of the inland areas are still very much untamed. Coming soon™ -Mostly small dirt or gravel roads -Horses and motorized vehicles impractical; heavy reliance upon rivers and steamboats [/hider] [u]Demographics:[/u] Coming soon™ [u]Location/Territories:[/u] The equatorial western coast of Derung, which is the map's easternmost large island just to the right of Yllendyr's heartland. On the map, Lemuria is denoted as purple as it is an overseas holding of Yllendyr itself rather than a semi-autonomous dominion or vassal state. [u]Military:[/u] Coming soon™ Notable swamp orc auxiliary force [u]Magic Prevalence/Usage and Elemental Alignment:[/u] Coming soon™ -Natives use gas and liquid magic [/hider]