Time seemed to slow down to a crawl before her eyes, almost stopping as events played out around her in near stop-motion as perception and mind raced faster and faster.
The sheer pain of being cooked alive in the deepening flames she'd been sent flying into, the body of the bony monstrosity she'd tried to hurt prior crushing down on her chest, her respiratory system convulsing terribly as the smoke flowed in and the blood-curdling screams of raw pain and terror came out of her mouth, and even the searing stones and broken fragments cutting into and burning her back was all simply unimaginable. Unimaginable to live through this far at the very least. Any less luck on her end, or the lack of her grimoire's activation, and she'd have been outright dead and left as food or worse.
This all frankly was going on as her staff was already, since the beast had pounced on her and she'd reflexively raised that staff, pushing as hard as possible back against the beast's body in a rather desperate and reflexive reaction to try to keep its away from her head. Her hands likewise gripped the staff as tightly as possible, the one thing seemingly keeping its maw away from herself for all she knew.
Yet to ever say this whole situation was foreign to her was something of a lie if she had to be honest...because this sort of thing was not something she thought she'd ever feel again. She still saw it all in her nightmares now and then. Just as vivid as is she was still there those many years ago.
She could virtually feel the contrast of the piercing, deep cold of that day as it had crept into her very bones like specter.
She could hear the crunching of the dense northern forest debris underneath her feet with each hurried and panicked step.
She could remember the feeling of the tremendous foot of that beast crushing down on her chest, and feel the claws starting to gently sink into her flesh as it didn't even bother to go for the kill. Toying with her, even as her last real sibling tried to get the thing's attention.
Hell...oh hell. She could hear the crunch of Lyria's bones in its maw after it has tossed her around for fun. The images of that thing as the crimson blood dripped from its face, and as its eyes stared into her very soul, would forever stain her memories and nightmares alike. It was carved deep into her, etched in like a deep wound that would never fully fade away. Or had it ever fully healed in the first place?
What had they done to deserve this? Why? Why?Why were things like this???WHY WERE THEY JUST WATCHING THEM DIE LIKE THIS WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE?!?!
She wanted to run, flee, be anywhere and anything else than there. Her basest instincts screamed at the top of their lungs, and her heart felt like it was racing faster than any car could comprehend. She could see the almost-darkness starting to encroach on the farthest edges of her peripheral vision. The pain began to deeper. The panic began to settle in even more.
It had to stop.
'I-I...'
There had to be some way to make it stop.
'I...'
Please, anything, anyone, please make the pain stop!
'I...!'
MAKE IT STOP!!!
The adrenaline surged through her body, and Wukong forced her body to eek out a melody with all of her remaining strength. It was a desperate plea for survival eeked out in reality as soon as she could force it to as soon and quickly as possible. This desperate melody, this attack cast out as her staff was pressed against the general body of this monster, was her way of screaming the words she had taken most to heart 'that' day.
Yet right now, her very soul silently shouted these words out far louder than any sound vocal chords could have ever made. Louder than any siren or bell, louder than anything she could imagine on the face of the planet.
'I WANT TO LIVE!!!'
She would fight to her truest and most final dying breath. She would struggle until the most bitter of ends came. She would defy death until every bit of life in her was spent.
Her journey was not yet over, not if she had anything to say and do about it!
As the blood-knight nun’s instrument swung toward Wukong, empowered into a full-on threat beyond what the nun already had been, the simian esper reacted the only way she and her grimoire knew how to do on the fly…adapt!
Despite the instincts telling her to jump back from the attack, Lilliah’s body refused to do so. Or rather, it did not refuse to do so…but couldn’t?! Like something held her back from moving farther away. In her panic the siminan esper ultimately rolled to her own left, dodging as the nun’s attack came crashing mightily vertically down where she once stood. At the same time, as she came back up to her feet and primed to make another move, Wukong struck out with her staff, aiming to use her reach to poke out/at one of the blood knight-nun’s own eyes.
“For a nun, you really do stick around like a bad habit!”
The matter of reach, however, no longer mattered. Her mobility options sealed by the nun’s cursed eye, the two dueling espers were now both within reach of each other’s weapons, and any step forward they took would further decrease the amount of space they had to maneuver. Which, of course, was fine with Lenore.
As Wukong’s staff thrust out, the armored nun took another step forward, tilting her head to one side. The bludgeoning weapon clipped the side of her helmet instead, the damage minimal, and with a twist of her hips, she swung her falchion diagonally towards Wukong, the blood-graced blade aiming to carve into the soft flesh beneath her ribs.
As the bloody blade sliced through the air toward her midsection, Wukong was casting a melody of her own as she pulled her staff to block the attack. With how little time she had to react, however, the most her staff would do is intercept the enemy’s blade closer toward the handle. And yet…
Bronze Touch
Damage X
Push
…she hoped this would work. She really hoped this would work.
“Finally!”
Moments before sword would meet staff, Wukong noticed it. The shifting of Lenore’s posture, her knees dropping and her back straightening out, her exposed eye glimmering with an arcane light. She was expecting something. She understood something. She sensed something.
With the echoing of a great gong, one that resonated from the very depths of Wukong’s soul, her crimson battlestaff unleashed a rippling force against the incoming falchion, repelling it with magical force. Yet the nature of Instruments was indestructibility, and though the simian esper could hear the fractures racing up her opponent’s arm, she saw too, the reason for the change in posture. The falchion was pushed away at a tremendous speed, but the person wielding it had steadied herself against the incoming force.
So what had happened?
Spinning around, even faster than her first strike, Lenore delivered another horizontal slash, this one propelled by her opponent’s spell, to bisect the wind-blessed martial artist.
Noticing something was wrong in those moments before contact, the shift of her opponent’s posture and so forth, Lilliah’s eyes widened as the gong-like echo of the blow rang out into the air and through her very self. She yanked her staff to the other side of herself as the blow pushed off of her staff, both hands and her body barely moved to the ‘safe’ side of her staff and holding onto it for dear life as she tried to block the blow with the midsection of her instrument where her hands were now not holding it. Her body also twisted as she moved to do this, lining up to brace in full behind the staff itself whilst taking a knee.
Known among their own kind as the “Asu’rai” (Asu = ‘people’, and rai = ‘divine’; more specifically in context being ‘of the divine’), they are a former race of Gaia whose history before the cataclysm came about with a…rocky start.
The Asu'rai are a race that was once embroiled in endless tribal wars among their own, living in an area of fertile and vast plains defended naturally from the north and west by great mountain ranges. Those plains have been soaked in more Asu'rai blood than any can hope to recall or count, and the fight for resources and competition for dominance kept them embroiled despite pieces of peace existing here and there in their home territory. Still, the race would come to be one with the arts of war and would hone their own crafts and tools of it to match. They would ride large, six-legged beasts called “Gir’thru” (Gir = ‘beast’, and thru = ‘swift’; contextually as in ‘as swift as the wind’) and could wield multiple weapons in their six arms. Their three faces would be used to keep an eye on the world around them with acute observation, and their stature places the females’ average height in turn as being 5’9” to 6’0” tall. Females trend toward being taller than males until they reach adulthood, where males will overcome them right about the time they reach adulthood.
The race is also highly resistant to fire and heat, whilst also having notably redundant bodies and the ability to regrow lost organs and so forth over time (yet slowly, like a natural healing process). Further, the skin of male Asu’rai reddens with age, starting off a pale caucasian white, whilst females start a light pink and become pale caucasian at a young age before remaining so for the rest of their lives.
(Males)
(Very Old Elderly Male)
(Female)
((More Could Be Added Later))
The majority race of the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles, which are called the“Volrest Isles” by the locals. In the Rolvfen tongue the name means “Royal Isles”, or “The Isles of the King”. Also a race that exists on the mainland within the bounds of the Empire’s territory.
The Rolvfen themselves are a humanoid race with tough draconic scales, two arms, and two legs. Their heads are dragon-like in shape, with eyes whose pupils are round in the daylight and become a bestial-looking slit in the dark (or when they are very panicked otherwise). The species stands with the males having a taller-than-the-females average height of 5’5”-5’8”, and females’ average height being 3-4 inches below that. The scales on their bodies are able to withstand rubbing against even coarse substances, and are made to also help them get a grip when walking around on slippery surfaces. Those living on the mainland tend to have more earthy and simple skin tones as well as others like golden yellows (think harvest wheat) and blues (if their people live near enough to a big body of water like a big lake or the ocean). The skin tone changes based on where they live over the course of about three generations, reflecting it in a sense and passing on that heritage to the next generation. It is said in their most ancient legends that they were made like this to help them survive against predators in their own very ancient past. The race in regards to the mainland also has eye colors ranging from a crimson red to violet to verdant forest greens and earthy browns and golden yellows and so forth.
Yet in terms of skin tone those living on the Isles have only one of two: Red or White. In this case it does not matter where they live or for how long or how many generations, which is a major oddity among their kind elsewhere. They also stand out in that their eye colors range from gold to silver to various gemstone-like colors. This is also where their past history and strife comes into play, as the Reds and the Pales (as they call themselves) are said to be descendants of a pair of mighty and powerful dragons who once ruled the isles and led their people to them for sanctuary from a great disaster of some kind. The Reds possess a higher stamina than the Pales whilst having tougher-than-normal scales for a Rolvfen, whilst the Pales possess stronger senses and a notable resistance to magic instead.
Whilst those living on the mainland eastern coast were either semi-tribal or otherwise disorganized when it came to governance, at least before the Empire emerged and swept them in, those living on the Isles were far more distinct. They had kingdoms that warred against each other, using longbows and leather armor and scale mail chest pieces and a simple chainmail skirt and leather woven sandals for their soldiers. They had small straight shortswords, and petty grudges going back generations upon generations to when their benefactor-founders infused them with their blood and supposedly died in battle against each other over some matter or issue very much long forgotten by time. Like the other areas on the eastern mainland, and the Empire to boot, the Rolvfen of the Isles had to deal with the presence of dragons and at times would serve them or kill them or ally with them or so forth based on whatever was going on at the time.
Rolvfen in general have clutches of 2-4 eggs that are protected by the female and male in tandem, one protecting the eggs usually due to their instincts. After hatching, males tend to venture out and females rule the ‘nest’ back home as it were. Children are held as important enough that females with eggs are expected to protect them and have those egg-protecting rights respected in ancient Rolvfen law. Meanwhile females who do not have eggs can work in any other jobs the male Rolvfen can. Male Rolvfen whose mate has died are expected to step up or find another mate/wife to help by traditional law as well. However, in many but not all ways the imposition of imperial law by the Empire has changed the status quo after over a century of enforcement and revolt and other civil issues leading to the eventual reforms and certain grants and such being made to keep order on the Isles.
Mainland Rolvfen compose about half of the Rolvfen population of the Empire, whilst the “Isles Rolvfen” compose the other half of the Empire’s Rolvfen population. Differences in culture are easy to see, and despite the retained ability to have children with each other the two differing Rolvfen populations had been separated (prior to the Empire) for a very long and unknown amount of time as well.
((More Could Be Added Later))
(Example: A Young Faerur With Her Hair Grown Long On Purpose)
The Faerur are from the second biggest of the Volrest Isles, located to the northwest of the largest island that long ago housed the majority of the Isles Rolvfen population. They are beings that exist somewhere between a centaur and a fae of some kind, beings who have the grace and mystery and oddity of the fae and all of the body shape of a proper centaur. They all have silvery hair, with various eye colors that always appear in mismatched pairs with no reason or rhyme. A gold eye and a brown one, a silver eye on a green one, a chocolate brown eye and a blue one, and so forth are among the incredible range of eye colors they can possess. In fact, to find any two Faerur with the same color eyes is already an incredibly rare feat, and to find two with the same eye colors in the same specific eyes as each other is even more extremely rare. They also have fae-like pointy ears and unicorn-like horn on their heads. Their skin colors too are odd, ranging from pale whites and snowy light grays to oranges and soft reds and light pinks. In this manner the Asu’rai themselves saw a sort of distant kinship with them and tended to treat them somewhat more favorably in the initial years and decades after taking over the Isles.
Prior to the involvement of the Empire, the Faerur were a race usually picked on and pushed back by the Rolvfen over and over again as the latter tried to subjugate the former. At times this succeeded for a time, and at others the Faerur would push back and be free once more. Immediately before the Empire arrived and took over, the Faerur lands had been split in half with more of it subjugated than the Rolvfen had ever managed before. After this the Faerur found themselves in a more favorable position underneath their new overlords, with many moving willingly by themselves or Empire mandate to the mainland or taken Rolvfen land to escape the past and others remaining home.
Traditional Faerur culture would usually see them organized into groups, a kind of thing parallel to fae courts which they called ‘councils’. Such Councils would war against each other here and there, work together one day and be sabotaging each other the next, and would even sometimes target others in the Isles for actions or mischief or so forth. Only when the Rolvfen became more of a problem over the years did the Council begin to grow more in size and war less with each other than they did try to survive the enemy and toy with them all the same. When the Empire took over, many abandoned the old system due to the changing times having already begun to break it down by this point prior. The Councils system was then in final shattered for good within the smaller portion who stayed back in their homeland, though it would take a civil revolt of those last few Councils before they were crushed. Since then, the native population in the Faerur homeland has barely recovered to pre-Imperial-conquest levels as more immigrants were moved in and peoples were moved all about to mitigate potential rebellions all over the Isles.
Being natural mages in their own right, Faerur have an innate magical talent that can be honed through actual training. Untrained, their magical talent can at least do little whimsical things like hide things and switch the placement of things and small-level small-scale stuff like that.
((More Could Be Added Later))
The Gnomar, who call themselves the “Lepraus” in their native tongue, are very small, diminutive humanoids who began on the north part of the largest island of the Isles. Sharing their home with the Rolvfen, however, proved to be less than ideal to say the least. The race has an inborn talent to dig through dirt with their strong but small little hands, but would eventually come to live in hillsides and similar underground abodes that would be wrought to keep hidden from enemies and to keep one’s children and food safe from invaders. They became industrious people who came to be close to the earth itself, and whilst not tricksters they would come to embrace traps and holes and guerilla warfare from day one due to their short stature being a great disadvantage in regards to reach. Their bodies are dense and their skeletons are tough, and they can take a brutal beating for something their size. They produce a lot of heat in their bodies as well, and possess a natural and inborn green thumb that they can fiddle with. So too do they make good spies and agents, able to be hidden in things and getting into places anyone as large as a human would not be able to.
Of course, becoming known for hoarding food and other valuables they own in their hidden homes, they gained a reputation somewhat akin to dragons. It does not help this that their other inborn talent is for keeping track of numbers. Yet this secondary talent makes them good merchants to boot, albeit some break the mold through sheer personal…’lack of talent’ as they tend to carefully put it among Gnomar.
The race’s land has mostly been ever occupied by the Rolvfen, with minimal interactions with the Faerur save to trade or make deals with a Faerur Council near the coast. The ingenuity of the race led them to survive very well, but with the arrival of the Empire the occupation of their lands was generally ended in favor of taking a lot of them and the other races of the Isles and resettling them elsewhere all over the Empire. Even so, they’ve found more success on the mainland than they did alone back on the Isles. Likewise with the redistribution they can be found scattered all over the empire…even if they do still remain the smallest minority and shortest race in the whole of the Empire.
~Population~
20 million
((If That Number Doesn’t Work, I Will Negotiate @_@))
~Plane Description~
The name of this plane the Empire inhabits has been dubbed "Aiag", a reversal of a word in an old foreign tongue from a place far away from the original migrants' homeland back on their former plane of existence. A word both reversed and foreign, representing a new plane that was both familiar and yet foreign at the same time. A fitting thing in the eyes of the original Asu'rai. It possesses fertile valleys and titanic mountains, looming volcanoes and islands scattered about the seas, frozen wastes and icy depths to the far poles, rolling hills and verdant fields, great oceans and clear lakes, vast deserts and stretching savannas, and so forth in a mirrored but differing image of the "old world" recorded of in the Empire's most ancient and precious records. Yet this would not be all.
The Rolvfen sitting north of the grand area the Empire would be founded in would be brought into the fold first, and would be the first contacts of this new place. Disorganized and scattered, word and legend tell that more of their kind live far west of the pine forests and the northernmost boundary of the Empire. Rarely are some vaguely Rolvfen heads supposedly seen from those dense pines and the glint of nighttime firelight, and at times other ones that to the imagination seem to snarl back in the dark from afar. Rumor has it that a vast desert with jackal-eared humans lies far beyond to the southwest, ruling a vast nation and riding upon giant insects, but none remember for sure outside of the ancient mainland Rolvfen oral traditions and scant information or such tales that come from the rarely seen northern traders at most.
Yet to the north of the Empire, the frozen wastes and icy tunda and subzero temperatures and jagged rocky protrusions and so forth that act as home to host to life and beings that have been long honed to withstand and subsist in this place...and to survive the terrors that lurk deep underneath the layers of glacial sheets and soil of that horrific land. From this place the warrior-people of the north have long struck out invasions, sent raiding parties, and come against the Empire before being driven back. On rare occasions, however, traders arrive from this region and deal peaceably in goods and tales and stories of their homeland on the northern border. On other occasions, a dragon or other gigantic or even titanic shambling horror or mythical beast will emerge from the far north or northwest and threaten the Empire itself on their rampaging path.
To the east and southeast of the Empire's southern heartland, dubbed the 'Fertile Basin', are the vast, warm oceans that grow colder the farther north one moves. Yet from due east and northeastern directions, across the oceans, would come the occasional ship of oddly hostile island Rolvfen of a stranger sort, and even ships made of wood manned by myriad beastfolk or alternately floating etched stone platforms held aloft by magic and manned by avian peoples would come over to do trade after initial run-ins with exploratory groups in the past. Ships would be sent back in return, talking of vast lands of farms and myriad nations in wars with each other and vast stone keeps that stretched out for miles to keep hold of an area. Yet at other times such beastfolk or avian peoples would return as enemies under other banners or flags or designs made for their craft to distinguish them differently somehow, seeking invasions or the taking of goods, and would have to be repelled once more with more or less effort.
To the south, two kingdoms would border the Empire itself. One is a kingdom of demonic-looking treefolk and dryads and elf-like folk, a strange people of ancients and peculiar mannerisms who would be at on-and-off war with the Empire and their other neighbor to the south. The other kingdom, in turn, would turn out to be a kingdom of different elvish-like folk and frog-like beings and even bull-like people who would be usually a trading partner and at other times riding about on a warpath atop vulture-like beasts diving down onto their foes from the sky.
Such is what is known thus far of other inhabitants of Aiag, and with the securing of the Volrest Isles over a century ago the opportunity to seek out what else lies within this vast new world has become tempting. At the same time, however, the opening of the Rift once more has led to its own sense of awe and panic among those who know. For only the gods know what lies beyond that gate, and what other worlds and peoples and places and dangers might linger or lurk beyond that ancient magical veil...
((More Could Eventually Be Added Due To Events On Aiag Itself In The Future))
~History~
Over two thousand five hundred years ago, a great and powerful Asu'rai warlord managed to unite the warring tribes into one contiguous body. With the might of his arms, the wisdom of his brow, and the light of his brilliant spirit (as the folklore goes among the Asu'rai), he was also a literal reincarnation of the first Asu'rai and had been sent by the gods to lead them to victory and greatness. With bloody slaughter he purged the ill elements preventing their unity, as well as slaughtered their enemies nearby and afar. With great knowledge he organized the people and their armies into one great throng, and took over lands unseen and places unspoken and races yet unmet and brought them under the Asu'rai heel using diplomacy, military might, and other various measures. Due to him, in the literal sense, the Asu'rai forged a mighty empire that stretched farther and wider than their homeland ever could have imagined. He lived long enough to forge a succession as well, passing on the empire he founded to his oldest son.
Holding true to his bloodline, the second Great Ach’hak ('Ach' = 'mighty' (('like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word)) and 'hak' = 'leader' ((a generic term for leader)) would make gains elsewhere and push the borders of the empire to their furthest by taking other areas and subjugating them. He would then turn more major attention to the internal affairs that had begun to backslide in his days, though his heir would die before he in turn fell ill and died along the way to his capital due to an unknown and mysterious disease From here the next ruler, his younger brother, would mostly focus on internal matters and barely maintain enough troops to keep the ‘core territories’ of the empire stable. The dramatic focus on the exponential issue of internal matters eventually led to unfavorable laws being passed to keep things in check, which would then lead to the leader’s fall to assassination by his younger twin siblings (half siblings themselves by another mother) after the loss of several periphery areas due to a lack of management. This duo took attention back to the military, pushing back out into certain lost areas and leading a purge in other internal ones to get rid of riotous elements. They would end up leading together until one died on the battlefield, and the other would become the victim of an assassination attempt he would survive but be crippled by.
By the time he died, the second twin (who was childless) had placed the only child of his twin brother on the throne and assigned the child’s mother as regent. Yet after a decade of regency on his behalf before he could come of age, the empire had been reorganized into a very decentralized form simply to try to hold itself together. In this time, however, it would also steadily crumble away to places forming into independent kingdoms and so forth on their own. It was under this last Great Ach’hak that the Asu'rai would make one last big offensive that would strike deep into trying to regain the past glories of the first Great Ach’hak. Yet with the ruler’s mother being the real power behind the throne, the current ruler being mostly a general with no political savviness, and the decentralization accelerating more and more over time, the empire of old would collapse into warring internal factions and attempted successor kingdoms and so forth.
By the time the Cataclysm came around, the most stable and long-lasting of these successor kingdoms that survived the times would become a hub of activity for many of the surviving Asu’rai once more. Refugees poured into this kingdom, with attempts to save sacred texts and old records somehow made along the way, and ultimately once the plans to make a Rift spread the move to construct one was made. Survivors were rallied underneath the last direct blood-relative of the former founders of the empire, a queen who took the throne with wisdom and grace said to have been bestowed on her by the gods themselves to ensure the survival of their people. It was under her enlightened rule in even these darkest of times that would bring the remaining population, at least those within her own lands by the time the Rift was completed, through the magical gateway and into a new home for their people.
…And what a home it would be. Great mountain basins/valleys filled with hills and vast open plains, as well as rivers weaving in and out and tributaries all over. All over there was fertile soil, with the vast mountains forming a rough terrain and a vast range protecting the western border stalwartly. To the east there was proper safe access to the sea, expanding out and moving gently downward to a sprawling eastern coastline and warm seas. A paradise that had been wrought from tumult or magic or whatever other forces of the world, but an area that would come to host the new rebirth of the Asu’rai race that was to come. The people would spread out over those titanic mountains and throughout the vast fertile mountain basins and valleys, and would fan out in time alongside the large and warm eastern coastline. They would reach from the top to the bottom, farming and mining and seeking a new future wrought from the ashes of the past. Also from this idea came the name for their homeland: “Ish’ull’rai”/Ishullrai (ish = ‘ash/ashes’, ull = ‘rebirth’, rai = ‘divine’). Rapid population growth from the plentitude of food, three civil wars, and numerous conquests (ones stretching in all directions) later, and the centralized Ishullrai Empire has become something of a powerful local force and very prosperous nation indeed.
Among the more notable conquests of the Empire throughout the last 500 years, the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles (called the“Volrest Isles” locally) in the colder seas to the northeast are among the more notable ones. Inhabited by three component races who have become part of the Asu’rai’s nation for the last 125 years, the area they live in is a land that has seen much war in and of itself as well. The treatment of the locals has changed over the years, depending on the ruler and other ongoing events, and immigration of Asu’rai to these islands and locals back to the mainland from the islands has been performed over the years to try to water down potential civil unrest to an effective point of success for the most part.
~Culture and Society~
~General~
The Empire enjoys a wide variety of festivals and celebrations, most being once a year ones held for deities or even ancient heroes. There are even specific festivals held to celebrate the harvest season and the start of a new year as the old one fades away. There are also feasts held to celebrate births, for those who can afford to put on one, and weddings and funerals more commonly so. At feasts for weddings and funerals one is expected to partake if they come to it, as it is to take in part of the bounty that symbolically represents the new life and joy the wedding rings in…or alternately the joy brought to the lives of others by the deceased whose funeral it is.
The Empire’s people enjoy the art of theater, with men and women participating, utilizing exaggerated gestures and masks and set pieces and songs. It is also a passion that began with the Asu’rai and became a general staple of the Empire in the end.
The smaller the theater the less the background pieces would be, leading to the idea of ‘simplified theater’ that focuses more on the actors. It is more dependent on the individuals, where actors can more splendidly shine individually but are relied on to tell the story of the piece/play. They go about being entirely minimalist in scenery and setting pieces, sometimes having nothing but a platform and seating all about to watch it in the most bare-minimal cases, by current times.
The larger and more wealthy the theater the more one can find, such as clockwork mechanisms and fancy backdrops and such, which in time has led to the idea of ‘epic theater’ that seeks to enthrall the senses and where the actors are a part of the fantastic scenes and so forth going on as part of the story. This form of theater can also make use of subtle details or such included in a scene, requiring one to have a keen eye to notice or best appreciate the occasional hints at the plot or little subtle cues and clues here and there which tie back into the story or help accentuate a scene. The fine details in both actors and the stage set apart ‘epic theater’ from the other form, and the use of clockwork karakuri-style dolls or such is also mixed into this form of Asu’rai theater.
People of the Empire also enjoy dance, which is common for certain festivals or celebrations such as one’s coming of age. Guests or not, one’s skill and accuracy does not matter when it comes to the dance. It is an expression of joy and jubilation and the fire of life when it is a public thing, though dancing in regards to a performance is a whole other thing requiring training and skill and grace to perform.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Religion~
A people who lived upon the land of their original home for longer than they have memory of back on Gaia, the Asu'rai were also religiously acquainted with the land. Mountains in their religion are seen as conduits to the divine, protecting them from harm as a shield from many foes and reaching up to the skies like a great pillar built up from the world itself. To live on one is to live upon or within a holy place, and to show proper respect to it. The eternal sky above stretches out like the ground below and also like unto vast bodies of water, and it is believed the gods/goddesses live beyond it and beyond a far more vast ‘sea of darkness and light’ which conceals their presence. During the night, this ‘sea of darkness and light’ can be seen if the skies are clear enough during that time.
To die is to be buried near the conduits of the gods, a mountain, or at least have a metal or stone-wrought mountain-like headstone called a “Rai’ach” (rai = “divine”, ach = 'mighty’ but ‘like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word) to place over the grave to the same effect. ((This term is also the name of their chief deity, who presides over the endless sky that stretches out over all.)) The idea of this is of one’s spirit being transmitted out to the gods to either lay at rest with them if one was righteous, or to be cast down into a hellish realm of punishment if one was evil. Rebirth is also possible and seen as a thing, mostly being for those who are sent by the gods to again touch the mortal realm for some divine purpose or another. Evil people can also be reborn if their evils are weighted and judged as lesser enough to be given a ‘second chance’, in this leading them to hopefully live a new and good life so they may achieve rest within the gods’ divine realm. One might have to live multiple good lives to burn away the negative evils and sins of their first life, but it is a struggle the traditional Asu’rai faith holds to be an eternal one until all redeemable souls pass into the pure realm of the gods and those who remain purely evil burn away in the ashes of punishment.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Random Additional Cultural Notes: Asu'rai Linguistics~
Asu'rai language uses a constructive or 'building block' style of formatting to convey ideas. They use an apostrophe to combine 'simpler words/terms' into more nuanced and detailed 'complex words' that are chained together to make sentences. Individual context of these simpler words, as well as the order they are used in, will ultimately affect the end meaning when the language is either written or spoken. Misordering simpler words can make larger words mean wholly different things.
Likewise, very complex things or very alien/new things can result in very long and highly complex words needing to be used. This can be highly tedious for speakers or writers, but the Asu'rai language is admirably flexible enough for it at the same time. Very long complex words can also be the result if new simpler words are needed to describe things which don't already have a term or concept for them, resulting in new simpler words being made over time to adapt.
Further, multiple different simple words can all refer to and signify the same base concept (like 'strength'), but will each have different nuances attached. This is also important to understand when trying to write or speak their language, as these nuances can also very readily affect the meaning of complex words.
((More To Maybe/or/Eventually Be Added One Day))
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~Governance and Politics~
Has a breakdown of organization from the smallest to the largest: Local, District, Regional, and Provincial. Then there is a great senate/council of experienced and well-seasoned governing individuals, including in their ranks the most wealthy and influential people of the empire.
Officials are paid by the state and are made part of it, with state organizations for tax collection, census taking, and so forth being set in place. The bureaucracy formed from these officials all over is basically what forms the day to day machine of the imperial government, with governing individuals being chosen via examinations held to help choose fitting people for positions throughout the Empire. Even governmental organizations use these examinations as a rule of thumb, and being proven unworthy of the position or corrupt and not doing your job is not going to lead to a ‘good’ end to say the least...
The monarchy remains hereditary, but monarchs will have multiple children who are educated and raised and eventually take their own exams to test their mettle and strength and intelligence and so forth. Among them, the most qualified will usually be chosen by the monarch. Otherwise the monarch does choose who their successor will be among their children, though if they die before doing that then the great senate/council chooses from among them instead.
~Technology and Magic~
The Empire has also not been lacking in terms of advancements over the years.
Crop rotation is utilized in order to help maximize the fertility of the soil and production of food. These ideas began in the more mountainous and fringe areas, as well as in a few areas where fertility in the soil seemed to start dropping, before eventually coalescing together as the concept was pieced together and came to be adopted formally about 275 years ago. Since then it has become a big hit, with the scholar who brought up the idea in a book about farming he wrote being credited with it publicly.
Methods of preservation such as pickling, dehydration (such as sun-drying), some curing done by hanging meats and such in dry/salty air blowing up on mountain slopes closer to the sea, and even mountainous root cellars are the types of preservation utilized within the Empire. The people of the Empire also actively make use of certain kinds of oils to store some foods, weighing them down with chunks of salt in jars of oil (the jars being sealed with wax or beeswax or similar sealants) in order to preserve them and use them for cooking later. Sometimes heavier foods might be covered in a thick coating of preserving spices and salt before being buried in the oil as a precaution, which also flavors the oil in the long term. Both versions of oil preservation make a generally useful byproduct for cooking called “Chu’ihs” (Chu = ‘long’, ihs = ‘meal’) due to how they flavor the oil in the containers of preserved foods. Chu’ihs is useful for adding calories and fat to even dishes with little meat and substance to them, as well as imparting meaty flavors and so forth secondarily that might be more of a morale thing than not. In areas with not as much fresh food access year-round, such as mountains, making food with Chu’ihs is a very common and reliable staple indeed to stretch out one’s food stores and improve one’s meals.
Further, the Empire has most notably emerged into the creation of gears and clockwork-style automata/mechanisms. Both magical and non-magical designs exist, utilizing anything from mana-generating ‘magic cores’ to power them to a series of levers or manually-operated means. Bridges that can be lowered or raised using gear-based mechanisms to cut off access during times of war, palace and city gates able to be opened and shut with cool mechanisms, dancing automata in the richest theaters, and so forth have had time to proliferate throughout the Empire in its major cities and many smaller towns. Naturally this doesn’t mean such things exist everywhere within the Empire’s lands as a standard, as the most distant and fringe areas or generally rural enough places of habitation don’t usually see them at all unless traveling elsewhere. For such people and foreigners traveling in or through the Empire, the sight of such things is a fascination and novelty that brings forth gasps of awe and gazes of wonder to the forefront. These advances also have extended to the military to boot, with auto-firing ballistae operated using easy-to-spin wheels to fire ammunition from atop carriages or on the field, as well as things like enchanted self-assembling automata trebuchet and well-improved crossbow-cocking designs, have become integrated inherently into the military.
Windmills and waterwheels also exist as technology made use of within the Empire, far more commonly so in the simple running of mills and grindstones and such. These things are also far more uncommonly used to help move or operate certain clockwork mechanisms in certain places in particular.
In terms of magic, most of it is rather standard to the ideas of casting spells using mana and using one's own mana or from the environment itself. Spells that call forth elementals or other beings from alien planes to serve as familiars under a magical contract, the creation of fireballs and magic missiles, and so forth feature among the vast array of generally but not entirely standard fantasy-magic faire. Artifice is also a very major area of magic-craft within the Empire, creating items and automata and golems and tools and weapons and so forth to make use of, and is a very well-developed area of magic use within the Empire to boot. There is also the use of uniquely movement-based magic called 'Ahtma', which uses symbolic movements to cast spells by drawing on the 'meaning' of said movements and the content created by using various movements in sequences. Ahtma looks a lot like martial arts or yoga or other such things, with anything from simple movements to complex ones being utilized within it. However, Ahtma users must train in the arts of using it and bringing effects and understanding to those magic-casting movements themselves in order for it to function in the first place. Simply imitating Ahtma moves isn't going to work, as the art requires its own sort of education and training and learning and so forth to be grasped or acquired in order to make use of it.
~Military Overview~
~Professional Living Army~
The former has evolved from what was once a thing controlled by nobility and knight-like warriors into what a professionally-trained force paid for by the Empire and not any particular person or group elsewhere. The food production of the Empire is its biggest and most prosperous area of its economy, that much cannot be denied, allowing it to fuel and keep moving a large standing army even far away from its heartland However, having a lot of food does not make a big army pop into existence either. Garrisons of troops exist across the Empire, helping put down any unrest and rotating here and there during times of peace…and taking on any threats that arise within or without the Empire. Monsters, enemy invasions from the north and south and at times the east, bandits, and so forth have become the usual long-term problems of an empire that controls a very wide swath of land as the Ishullrai Empire does. Highways act as major transit routes as well in order to keep goods and troops and so forth moving in good order, usually with a ‘route only for troops and messengers’ and a ‘route only for all other civilian traffic’ being built next to each other to facilitate this.
Military academies in the capital and other great cities of the Empire fuel the creation of new officers and so forth, and the training of soldiers properly and the implementation of regular pay is something that has created a highly-disciplined and well-drilled force to be reckoned with indeed. Such academies also prepare military engineers, logistical corps training, and so forth to add support roles. Other supporting units include mages and clerics and herbalist healers, who can be brought in to help assist wounded after battles and so forth, as well as messengers whose job it is to assist in sending messages back and forth.
Crossbows are deployed as the far more common type of projectile armament of choice, useful in both open areas and closer spaces depending on the size of crossbows used. Greatbows are the lingering remnant of what was once the dedicated archery core of the Empire’s armies centuries ago, being giant in size compared to a normal bow and being fired with all six arms of an Asu’rai (three to hold, three to draw back the string to fire) and firing powerful arrows a rather far distance (think more handheld ballistae in a sense). Clockwork ballistae can be used to fire larger bolts or rapid-fire many much smaller ones, and larger trebuchet who sometimes incorporate a bit of clockwork are usually manually operated and put together or taken apart to help in greater sieges to boot. Gunpowder components are something that exist within the Empire’s lands, but outside of the schools of magic in the greater cities and capital tinkering with materials no one has really come across the concept at all in the first place. However, enchanted ammunition and things like somewhat hollow oil-filled siege projectiles that use a stored fire spell to set the unfortunate impact area alight have been invented among other attempts to be creative.
In terms of melee weapons, one-handed, curved scimitar-like blades with strong cutting blades are used as the standard infantry weapon to cleave through lightly-armored or unarmored targets as a standard. A secondary spear, also a standard weapon, is used to help deal with armored foes and cavalry. These are paired with a shirt of chainmail, plate helmet, treated leather pants, a cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, boots, and a shield for all light infantry. Heavy infantry utilize the same armor and shield as light infantry alongside an additional plate cuirass, light plate pauldrons, and proper plate greaves. In this manner both heavy and light infantry can act as both an anti-infantry and anti-cavalry role depending on the battlefield and its needs. However, in return for the versatility there is a lack of proper specialization to boot outside of how heavily an infantry unit is armored or not.
Shock infantry are a rather small minority force in the professional army, rather small but having their potential uses against very lightly armored or unarmored foes and other less-protected targets. They utilize the same cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, the same pants as other infantry, and a plate helmet. For a weapon, they make use of a small selection of weapons. A large two-handed blade able to cleave through beasts and people alike, axes, and flanged maces are weapons they utilize. These weapons are two-handed as a general rule of thumb, but one-handed maces or axes might be paired with a shield in certain scenarios. These troops are meant to slam into the enemy and deal damage, as much as possible as quickly as possible, before letting the other infantry come in and handle the rest of the battle with superior armor and tools for a drawn-out clash.
In terms of cavalry a similar level of standardization has been used. Light cavalry utilize lances and light armor, moving fast and well-protected from most lighter weapons and blows in key places. They charge into and fight vulnerable enemy units, charge into enemy flanks for hit-and-run attacks, and sometimes might be equipped alternately with crossbows and used as an effective moving hit-and-run mobile ranged detachment. Heavy cavalry, meanwhile, have more dedicated armor and less mobility but are far harder-hitting on the charge. They do not go as far as being cataphract-level armored, though do have extra frontal armor as a matter of note. The heavy cavalry are meant for charging into enemy lines decisively with a heavier but more lethal lance, before pulling their secondary swords as arms and engaging in extended melee. Fast-moving and light carriage-mounted ballistae might also be used in a battle, firing in on enemy formations and troops before skirting back and being protected by the light cavalry depending on the particular battlefield.
~Automata/Golems~
Kept and maintained in long-term warehouses during times of peace, and constructed as needed during times of war as losses are sustained, this army differs from the professional army in far more than just what it is composed of. It costs notably more to build up this so-called ‘second army’ as compared to the professional one, but to maintain it over time and make use of it is far cheaper and exceptionally easier than any living army in comparison. That is where this army comes into play best, able to be used to supplement and assist and fight alongside living forces as well as to alternately supplant living forces when the Empire is stretched out too much militarily. It can also be used as an elite gut-punch of a force, using raw force, the self-repairing automata, and the heavy-hitting golems composed of various elements or builds or such to attrition and hammer into the enemy to buy time or do so for other strategic reasons. This secondary army is just that, secondary, but its uses are made to be rather potent when they are brought into play. They’ve slain large dragons and great monsters alone or alongside other living troops, and the corps of magic who attend to them and work with them and so forth are very skilled and drilled and trained by the military to boot.
The automata are generally equipped with enchanted weapons ranging from swords to spears and more when it comes to melee weapons. They can also use crossbows that use magic to draw in more ammo from vast storehouses kept filled way back home behind friendly lines. They move incredibly fluidly and smoothly down to the minute level, far more than most average civilian automata in this regard at least, and this has been noted as ‘creepy’ and ‘disturbing’ by those who have seen them in action on either side of a battle. This is also because they possess a humanoid-style appearance, four arms, and a peaceful but stoic-looking ‘face’ on their heads. They can rebuild each other and repair themselves in the field, even scavenging materials for doing such and adapting them to their own bodies as needed, and can be sent on magically-automated patrols or such things without the need for constant supervision and guidance/care. Among their ranks are also automata cavalry as well as self-assembling automata siege weapons or ballistae and such.
The golems are similar, possessing two to four arms and having the ability to be used in battle and even sent on magically-automated patrols or such things like with the automata. However, their construction tends to vary quite a bit. They can be generated locally for a battle by the Empire’s military mages, allowing them to be crafted from the local area and local materials, and can be stored away for war as well to boot. They are usually crafted elementally, using water, fire, earth, air, and even wood or metal to forge their bodies into something powerful and mightily strong. For what they lack in sheer numbers, which the automata and even living armies better make use of, they make up for in raw, pure power. Earth golems creating stone barriers and collapsing nearby cliff sides, water golems engulfing enemy forces and drowning them, fire golems tearing a hot red scar through formations, metal golems throwing oversized javelins or metal chunks generated from their own bodies to hit enemy placements, and otherwise are not something to underestimate on the battlefield. They are few, which makes the loss of them bad for an ongoing battle, though they can be more easily recreated between or outside of battles (not during battles). They can also be armed with weapons, sometimes ones magically wrought from their own element, in order to try to give them another advantage. However, this is mostly seen as a waste and is set to the wayside.
The title and enduring nickname for this ‘secondary army’ is “The Silver Army”.
The slime was eating up hunters and changing and gurgling something aloud, and for a second the Bastelian almost imagined the thing even gurgled out the word 'mother' or something. Not to mention that she saw a female someone bolt away from the scene whilst the others got nabbed up, which made her suspicious and brought only one word to mind. Soyala. Whatever the Hunters had been doing on this side of the portal, however the Slime ended up appearing here, however Lazhira of all people had been around this spot, she didn't trust anyone outside of the inquisitive girl and the allies she herself was currently working with. That much Leannah knew for a surety.
Time for the big guns then.
Leannah darted around the left side of the beast (it's left, not her left) and kept out of its reach. At the same time she prepared her one real offensive spell once more. Yet this time she did not hold back so much. She let power flow into it, just as much as she had put into it back in the Illuminator's divine realm...and much more. Enough juice to hopefully turn this giant enemy slime into boiling remnants sitting on the ground. It wasn't a closed, contained area she was tossing this into, but Leannah all the same hoped she wouldn't make this worse than it already was.
Then, when she had the lineup to blow the beast clear off the cliff but not in the direction of her allies or the carts (in the hopefully worst case scenario), the Bastelian threw the attack with all of her might at the slime to where it would land dead in front of it. Immediately after, she nearly threw her own body down onto the ground as she moved to duck and roll away and lie on the ground as quickly as she could. Her right side, already burnt, would be facing the potential heat wave and fire of the blast at most.
Yet as she made her move to dive away she didn't stay silent either.
"GET FLAT ON THE GROUND, NOW!!!"
She hoped this worked. She really, really hoped this worked.
Her moment of daze hadn't lent itself well to anything, at least in the simian esper's mind. The enemies were already moving to take them down, Orion was gone, Sil and Valkyrie were sent flying back covered in something, someone had already charged the vampire mage, and a cloud of toxic fumes was coming down on them. By the time the fire lamp was cut, Lilliah reflexively was about to try to launch herself to the side to get away. Yet her actions would be interrupted as a certain dragon lady's melody would sweep herself, and a lot more, off of the ground.
Wukong, as it was, was then left standing on a piece of debris as her coworker's spell seemingly saved their collective hides in some manner or another. At least until it all landed back down and Su's construction arose around them. Yet the protection of the columns and railing, however, would not be forever. If they all did make it, however, she was tempted to secretly send Su that bottle of alcohol for this (the one she'd kept from the safe) as thanks.
But more pressing matters needed to be attended to.
Yet the vile enemy rider atop that horrid beast, still hanging above, remained. Wukong would then immediately move to cast a melody against the vile mount itself as Merry made her move to take a shot at the nun. She just hoped the end result worked to better her and her alies' own situation. Somehow. She would track the target as best as she could if it moved, however, prior to the melody firing off if it came down to it.
A Giant Enemy Slime? The rest of the Hunters?! A deer thing?!?! LAZHIRA?!?!?!?!?! Albeit the lattermost party seemed to bolt, which was good, but it did not look good at all.
This was not any kind of good. The Hunters were under a rather bad impression as it was about Lazhira, and this monster was nothing good in the first place. Nothing good at all. She couldn't see Narkissa or any of the others, but she did not trust the Hunters. Neither had anything slipped out of the gate with them, she knew that much. She could see the remnants of some kind of crate next to the slime as well, as if someone had...ah. The slime was an obvious threat, but hell if she was not suspecting the worst right now!
"Akando! Eirhild! Protect the Carts! The other Hunters and Soyala are enemies, and are all also after Lazhira!"
Leannah directed the cart to the side to avoid plowing forward into the mess, stopping as quickly as she could and standing up. She did not hesitate to leap off of the cart, holding out one hand and beginning to channel the same 'failed light spell' effect as she had before. Not as potent and big as she had before within the Illuminator's divine realm, but stronger than what she'd thrown back in Delphiti's old lab. Potent enough and burn-y, and without being too big or too little...or being used in a rather contained and much smaller space. She'd made that mistake once, and wanted to keep it that way. Still, Leannah gauged the distance needed to be safe of the blast radius based on her experiences with this spell's use so far, both after using it in a closed space and a not-so-closed one as well.
But there was no time to hesitate, no greater time to think or ponder the situation. She had to pick and unleash her attack at a target. A monster was here, and their obvious enemies were as well. Thus they had to act, and fast. Yet Donovan charging the slime made her initial choice of target impossible, and so the Bastelian had to choose a second target and throw her spell before it was too late or became too big.
Leannah thus desperately hurled the miniature exploding sun as hard and true as she could muster strength from her body, sending it flying beyond to the other side of the slime. With her quick change in aim the idea was to place it as close as possible to the nearest hunter on the other side. Far away from herself and the carts and known allies being in the blast radius at all, and hurled over the top of the slime to avoid hitting Donovan. It wasn't much of an aim, chosen at the last second but hopefully not having regrettable consequences.
@Tortoise@Timemaster@IrredeemableWell, here is my mostly done but still a definitely WIP submission. Hopefully it work in the end. Maybe. Sorta-kinda? I'll get to see after things are done at least. ^^;
1/28: So outside of the one section that is currently blank due to the need to develop it over time or add over time, whether far sooner or much later, the app should be generally done! Should be.
Kingdom of Travanash
~Government Form~
Monarchy
~Demographics~
Humanity, a race with great versatility but a lack in any distinct advantages. A “jack of all trades” race, as it were, able to learn much but not biologically leaning toward being masters of anything in the way other races might be. Many settled within the Aratharian Highlands, remaining mostly neutral but also not appreciating the occasional Dwarven-Virmari-Arathari war that would inevitably intrude on their lands. Many refugees of such wars from both sides of whichever given war it was would arrive in their lands to settle as well, leading to a very mixed bunch living among them over the long term. Likewise they were the second most numerous non-High-Elven race living within the walls of Ila’faroth itself, albeit followed closely behind by others. Even so, the humans formed many a city-state and occasionally a larger Kingdom within the bounds of the Aratharian Highlands and its surrounding territory. Though these would never last forever, they did leave their marks on local politics and wars and other such events going on. In one case, a group of adventurers would fight past deceptions and waves of minions and monsters slay the demonic being who took over the body of what would be the final king of a grand dynasty…one that was terrifyingly close to uniting the whole of the highlands underneath their grasp. That is just one of the stories originating from mankind’s presence, however, with many more either remembered or recorded or outright forgotten by current times.
The humans living in the highlands were once seen as the most chaotic race due to their antics, but also the most resourceful in a pinch. This turned out to be good in tandem with the expertise of the other races living in and about the highlands when the Cataclysm hit, helping to finish and move along progress to making the Rift that would let the various races pour through to another plane in order to survive and rebuild once more.
Those elves that came into the new plane of existence to live, and who inhabit the Kingdom today, stem from two particular groups: The “High Elves” and the Virmarian Elves.
The race the Aratharian Highlands was named after, being the first and once considered the most prestigious of its inhabitants. They possess a far greater sensitivity to magic than most races from old Gaia, especially among their kind, and their ability to fine-tune spells and arcanely-artificed mechanisms and so forth was nothing short of astounding. At the same time, however, their physical strength was not as good as other more able-bodied elven species/brethren and they are apt to try to use magic to help bridge that gap where they can.
They founded the great city of Ila’faroth in the Aratharian Highlands, a former regional capital nestled in a valley and surrounded by great mountains famous for its magic academy and being the place with the greatest concentration of high elves on Gaia (not the only place that has High Elves that is). This city, during the Cataclysm, was one of the few places that seemed to hold firm in the face of it all…but that is just as compared to how the planet itself ended up. By the end of its life the grand city was a meager shell of its former self, filled with various inhabitants beyond the usual High Elves and mix of humans and the occasional dwarven and Virmari exiles who formed their own distinct minorities. They had a sort of blood feud and rivalry with the dwarves of the Carthanius Mountains, dubbed the “Carthanius Dwarves” and also locally among the High Elves as “those rocky morons” and “the idiots who caused no less than two demon incursions in the Highlands”. Yet when push came to shove, ancient rivalries were held back just barely enough to take the dwarves in and get more help opening a Rift within the city.
Indeed, Ila’faroth would become a patchwork of different magics and scraps and materials taken from the shattering world that were slapped together to create something meant for one thing and one thing only: Survival. Even after 500 years, the ruins are probably still holding up somehow, with some ancient power sources and mechanisms and wards still up if all it has had to face are the ravages of time. It was also here where one of the ancient Rifts was opened eventually, allowing the refugees in the area to clamber through to fulfill their desperate hopes for a new life.
After entering their new planar home, the High Elves would ultimately produce the bloodline that created the second dynasty of the eventual Kingdom that formed. Albeit the particular High Elves who achieved that position of power stemmed from a regent who let it all go to his head in the long term. He achieved much, but his son, one had by the last Travanashian Queen, assassinated him to take power only 60 years into the dynasty’s reign. He wound up not doing any harm, but also no good at all. It was mostly him spending much on extensive parties and letting his father’s old officials hold up the work, and raising new taxes to get revenue for his eccentric affairs. He was then killed by his half-brother by a Virmarian Concubine fifteen years later, who led a bloody purge to try to ‘clean up the mess’ and reshape the Kingdom into his own image. This would in turn lead to a revolt ten more years later, purging the last of the Kalvadian Dynasty and resulting in the emergence of the Illuvian Dynasty.
By current times, the Arathari who were part of the ancient decadence are either dead or frankly socially isolated. Much of the younger generation who arose in the new lands had no ties to the long-gone ancient feuds and such, as well as having grown up with parents who ended up by and large on the bad side of the later Kalvadian Dynasty (just like everyone else for that matter). They are known as great magic weavers yet still, however, with Aratharian Nobles usually having a variety of experts on hand to serve their estates (a trend that has caught onto the nobility of other races in the Kingdom by this point). However, anyone with ties to the old Kalvadian Dynasty were erased no matter how flimsy it was back after the old dynasty’s fall…a scar that was not the doing of the new royal family but more so a thing done by the people themselves (including high elves). It is a black spot that resonates among them even today, not wishing to emulate the evils of that dark bit of the past and the darker spots of their pre-kingdom history back on Gaia. Because with beings that can grow as old and ancient as the High Elves (1000 years old is their 100 years old equivalent, average lifespan is about 600-700), it becomes very hard to forget...
The Virmarian Elves are a race anciently nicknamed the “Snow Elves” or “Grim Elves”, alienated by their High Elf brethren after their creation for reasons long forgotten and sporting deathly pale white hair and very pale skin compared to that of a corpse by their foes and detractors. They went about living in the heights of the Carthanius Mountains and some to the frozen cold north beyond that, having issues with dwarves and High Elves alike before making peace with the former due to grudges against the latter. They were rugged and tough people, donning armor darkened by the flames of their forges (mostly the soot and such) after being repaired over and over to recycle what supplies they had during more desperate times. If one needed a guide through tough northern lands, if one was passing through the Aratharian Highlands they would reach the border and seek to hire a local Virmari as an unspoken rule of thumb if they took advice from locals.
Among the achievements the Virmari made was creating their own Runic Magic using their own alphabet as a base, as well as creating tough and well-armored mage-warriors and other magic-using-soldiers who were reputed for their icy cold approach and merciless dedication to duty in the most literal sense. The most famous among these were the Death Guard, who scared even some Virmari, a group of the most honed and deadly and potent warriors who’d seen things, fought things, survived the worst that Gaia threw at them to the point they were most famous for having runes etched into their skin using special tattoo ink that would grant them enhancements and boons and so forth. The Death Guard are known as the only military group to ever pierce past the defenses of Ila’faroth (the greatest high elven city) and Gathras (the rather legendary and literally super-fortress-like capital of the Carthanius Dwares), and had the nickname of “The Immortals” for a very, very, very good reason.
The Virmari were hired out as mercenaries by a number of locals and even those from other places back on Gaia in general in the pre-Cataclysm era, though, but to get the best prices for hire one would hire them to fight High Elves of some sort (even if it meant being hired by other high elves to kill high elves). They also practiced more necromantic arts as a means of communing with the dead and getting information, though the raising of the undead was not something they would usually do unless they got…desperate. Very desperate. It is no wonder, though, that their craft and those of the dwarves living closest to them became similar in regards to dealing with spirits to some extent or another in one way or another. When one is surrounded by death and the potential for it, one comes closer to it and seeks to learn more about what is around them.
During the Cataclysm, however, the Virmarian Elves were devastated so horribly they would come to be forced alongside the dwarves to seek shelter in the one place that still stood ‘best’ within all of the Aratharian Highlands: Ila’faroth. They and the dwarves nearly just invaded outright to take it to stay safe, were it not for the fact those who remained of themselves and others in that ancient Gaian city found the idea of the Rift opening to a new home for themselves far more desirable compared to more slaughter and death than they’d already seen. However, it was safe to say that the Virmari did well in those first brutal decades after passing through the Rift…brutally well. This was to the point that the Travanashian Dynasty used the best of them as part of the Royal Guard, and the Kalvadian Dynasty kept them along initially until the last two members of that dynasty kicked them out and even took measures to isolate (and exterminate in the lattermost case) the whole race themselves. Even the attempted genocide at the end of the Galdarian Dynasty had a secondary focus on them.
In the aftermath the Virmari race would steadily come to rebuild and regrow, but the prices paid in blood and their presence among the rebels who helped usher in the Illuvian Dynasty would be the start to repairing relations and seeking a better life in the thriving land of their new home. They would remain legendary for their soldiers, as martial traditions did not get fully abandoned, but with many Virmari seeking to go into other areas of work all over (both due to personal drive and attempts by them to smooth out their reputation as encouraged by surviving elders) it has made them much more well-rounded than they ever once were. Ranging from merchants to court mages or farmers or so forth, these efforts have been the force that has made them yet another part of the Kingdom like anyone else…something the vast majority by far prefer to their situation from the olden times.
The dwarves of the Kingdom are descendants of only one of the potential species or groups called ‘dwarves’ on Gaia. This group of dwarves are a shorter/diminutive, humanoid race that traces their origins back thousands of years back down their blood and adoptive family trees, a people who were among those that used a form of Shamanistic Magic and Artifice and were known for their greater work underground and in regards to the soil and rock and so forth. This group in particular came from the nearby Carthanius Mountains, close enough to the Aratharian Highlands that they became part of those who fled Gaia from the Rift that was made there to get to another plane. They can withstand rather high pressures and extreme temperatures and are a rather durable race in some general-ish sense, fitting their lives underground, and can see in the dark to boot!. They make superb farmers and miners both, and with any sort of work that involves the earth and soil and rock and such. Despite the rumors on Old Gaia that they were inherent metalsmiths, they simply learned the arts of forging and metalwork due to their proximity to the materials themselves and a lot of fiddling around with said materials and such to boot.
They are a hardy bunch of dwarves whose males naturally can grow thick, durable beards, and whose females are distinct by their total lack of beards and any potential for facial hair whatsoever (as well as being rather attractive by various other races’ standards). Despite their stature they are not built stocky at all, instead having denser bones and bodies and so forth to match their physiological capabilities. The idea of a stocky dwarf regarding these dwarves from the former Carthanius Mountains came from the lives of many dwarves from here living outside of their homes or far away, where having more food than usual available led to a very small minority of these dwarves in particular gorging so badly and horribly and profusely they ended up becoming fatter than their relatives back home. That and the potential confusion of these dwarves with others. Not all became this way, as dwarves have a rather powerful metabolism throughout their lives, but in the end the stereotype stuck as ever before the Cataclysm came through.
Since the move to another plane, only a rather tiny minority manage to get fat, but they are known far and wide for their crafts under the ground as much as their lives above it as well. Likewise, history remains something well-recorded by them…yet the old issue of centuries-borne grudges has been mitigated after centuries of conflict and the initial near-death of their race after coming to the other side of the Rift from Gaia. It was all a rather rude awakening, and one that has shaken them to the core ever since.
(Example Of An Eadici Queen Below)
The Eadici are the second most prolific race in the Kingdom and are a race native to this place of existence the Travanashian Kingdom was founded and built upon. From the shoulders to the tips of their three-fingered hands, from the thighs down to the ends of their gripping two claw-’toes’ on their feet, and the two antennae on their heads paired with their (somewhat larger than humans eyes) insect-style eyes, the Eadici are much akin to insects. They possess the armored carapace, strength, ant-like abdomen, and advantages these things provide. Yet their torso, head, and face have flesh shapes like those of humans, perhaps hinting them as being or being related to the ‘humans’ of their native plane of existence somehow. The Eadici explain it as being wrought into beings by their patron goddess, who created two races as her children to embody ‘strong bodies’ and ‘strong minds’ respectively. Yet these races, according to legend, once long warred with each other and brought pain to their creator in doing so…to the point of the goddess fusing them together to stop the conflict and creating the Eadici (Ea = “life” and “dici” = two; as the word is explained in native Eadician). A people who were born to their physiological role, and organized neatly at the instinctual level to ensure they would prosper, as apparently the goddess deigned to design the Eadici when doing the fusion.
The Eadici are divided biologically into five castes:
The least common but most important form of Eadici. An Eadici Queen is the only one that can and does bear children, and she is a necessity for any Eadici community, much less a greater colony, to survive. She mates with drones of her own species, or other species’ males, in order to get pregnant and kick off a life of bearing quite a large number of children. For the most part the queens have a sort of cultural respect given to them, basically a sort of reverence, which has led them to commonly be either leaders or otherwise super-influential figures in Eadici societies. Their burden is a hard one to bear, as it is seen, and one deserving of respect…though anyone can go ‘too far’ no matter what they are born as among the Eadici.
When bearing eggs, she does so in very large clutches and with a very hyper-swollen abdomen. It takes a lot out of her to do this, leaving her weak and exhausted beyond all recognition in the aftermath, though she produces pheromones naturally that will help protect her from other Eadici and others if any seek to approach her during this time period with ill intent (meaning getting in close to kill one in the middle of pregnancy and such is not going to work). Her body will store Eadici drone and non-Eadici male genetic information within itself for future pregnancies, though non-Eadici genetic information is reprocessed and re-coded to Eadici code in order to confer any genetic/racial advantages the father has to offspring.
It is also of note that a series of Eadici Queens ruled the second-longest-lasting dynasty of the Kingdom at one time, that being the Illuvian Dynasty. They are also the first ones to have peacefully transferred power to the next dynasty.
Tied for the most common/numerous biological caste of the Eadici alongside Workers, the Soldiers are all-female and stand taller than any other Eadici. They possess a dense natural musculature, tougher exoskeletal pieces, and are far more survivable and hardy by nature of their bodies being supernaturally redundant to quite an extent. Originally limited to just the act of fighting and protecting all their lives in far more ancient times, by the time of the refugees arriving through the Rift five hundred years ago they have become accepted in other working roles both dangerous and mundane as Eadici civilization has grown.
Tied for the most common/numerous biological caste alongside Soldiers, Workers are of about the average human height range. They are also a more evenly-distributed caste with about a 60-40 female-to-male balance and usually rather stable numbers between the sexes. Neither can breed either way, however, and their strength and physical capabilities are lesser than Soldiers. Yet they possess an inherently better spatial awareness whilst being shorter and embodying the idea of ‘strength in numbers’ very well indeed, being inherently accustomed to group work biologically. This isn’t to say they are smarter, as individuals can vary in intelligence and even ability to work with the natural caste their bodies were born into among the Eadici as with any humanoid sentient race, but they stand shorter than any Soldiers as frankly any other non-Soldier Eadici does.
Similar to the soldiers, anciently their caste was also held socially and very strictly. Yet by the time the Rift opened to their home plane, the shift allowing them into other areas of society just as Soldiers as their species’ civilization has expanded to an extent.
A male-only caste who are born simply for the sake of breeding, whose bodies are smaller and weaker than any other caste. They are second least common among the Eadici biological castes, as well as considered the most frail. They tend to look rather effeminate in comparison to their worker peers, though this is mostly due to their slimmer builds and lack of raw size. They do possess stamina in return for lacking in many other areas, and many have acted as eunuch-like directors who organize protection and care over the eggs of the queens they mate with. Their lives historically have been one living within luxury, though it is due to more bloody histories among competing ‘eunuch drones’ in the far past that ‘egg burning’ is a crime that is seen as horrible to all. By current times, however, they tend to live near queens alongside any other consorts of other species a queen might keep. In this sense they remain nobility of a sort, but only if brought to live near or with a queen of their own species.
(‘Egg burning’ being a male drone seeking the destruction of eggs under his care or other drones’ care in the farther-back ancient days, seeking to destroy the genetic offspring of other males and removing that influence from the colony. It is one reason that drones do not serve in any such roles anymore, even through current times, under penalty of death. That was how often and bad it got anciently among the Eadici in far too many places.)
A female-only caste that stands of the same height as queens, standing in height on the lower end of the height spectrum for Workers-caste individuals. They uniquely possess two sets of wings, four individual ones in total, that allow them to fly well and dart about with a fine finesse. When a queen dies, the most mature Princess nearby will biologically become a Queen and take on the role from that point on, signified by the permanent shedding/loss of their wings. They stand as the third least common caste, but do so by a longshot as compared to workers and soldiers. In ancient days only a few would be kept, and others would be killed, in order to better secure succession by Eadici or to be sent off to create ‘secondary colonies’ elsewhere to expand the colony’s land. Before even this the wars among princesses to secure the leadership or influential position of a colony were fierce and terrible in every way imaginable. Egg burnings, slaughters, riots, etc, nothing was off the table if it meant securing that position as the future Queen of the colony.
By current times, the expansion of Eadici society and growth of the Eadici civilization has done more for the Princess caste than ancient times. They oldest ones are kept closer to their mothers to avoid confusion by having them live all over the place, are raised by them, and exist in a chain of succession that encompasses them all. The remainder are scattered about to other homes, raised taking on some other kind of job or role or even being trained for battle and acting as flying soldiers and away from any kind of royalty or leadership position. They usually do have more of a penchant for leadership, with some having personalities and such learning far more inherently and other individuals’ personalities able to contrast this biological aspect entirely depending on how the individual is.
Translated as ‘people of the twisted wood’, the Jubon are a unique race to the Kingdom and were created on this plane as new natives of it quite by mistake. A powerful ‘Old Blood/Noble’ vampire that had pitched into the prior effort of getting through the Rift was allowed over with a few of his kind, mostly on shaky grounds due to the desperation of everyone to survive, but like others from the ‘old world’ who held onto grudges and anger and ultimately entered decades of war they were no different in effect. His bloodline was said to tie back to the original vampire, and his pride came far before the lives of those seen as being far beneath himself who also lived there on the other side of the Rift. Those underneath him, however, would become his undoing in turn. Fifteen years after the start of the decades of initial conflict, this great and former noble vampire of the old world would be slain and have his heartless and headless corpse buried in the ground and a tree grown over it to seal it away forever.
Yet this tree would not grow as intended. Nourished in dark magic and the blood of an undead noble vampire, the tree would shape and grow into something far more: the first Jubon. A being whose body looks like that of a pale-skinned vampire, full of regal elegance, but whose flesh is wrought from fleshy wood and the pulse of life rather than undeath. From she, whom the Jubon dub as ‘The First Mother’ of their kind (a title with more than simple respect bound to it), the Jubon race was created and grown and forged within the lands of the eventual Kingdom. Rumor has it that the “First Monarch” was a Jubon, though others have contested this rumor here and there over the dynasties and centuries. In truth, the lack of knowledge about the First Dynasty is ultimately due to actions of the Second Dynasty sealing most of that away in an Old Royal Vault that has yet to be broken into due to its extensive and ludicrous magical seals and extensive mundane constructions and so forth implemented to prevent anyone some kind of access to its knowledge and riches.
The Jubon by now take the form of a myriad of beings of the same kind of nature as the original Jubon, though the containers and individual natures vary. Within the sub-races that compose the jubon, there are: Some looking like vampires but able to transform parts and body pieces into tendrils and roots and branches and so forth. Ent-or-Treeman-like beings who have ashen gray or white or blackened or other similar colored barks, who can drink the life force out of the bodies of other beings to gain sustenance and produce blood-red sap that can nourish vampires far better than regular blood. Dryad-like beings who live in trees and plants, changing them to better fit their nature and protecting them whilst causing them to grow strange fruits (such as the dark blue colored Danga-fruit) that have myriad effects ranging from turning people into mindless lesser undead wights with a unique flavor to granting one a surge of mana…or even stranger things like a fruit that is harmless otherwise yet the seeds in particular being dangerous to eat raw since they’ll kill the eater over time and operate their corpse to find a fertile place to grow. Nature-spirits who reflect the darker side of nature, the night-side of it even, and are most active during the dark of the night. Etc, etc, etc.
In reality, the Jubon race’s ‘founder’ who was indeed the “First Monarch” is still alive and more than well.
She was reborn/born from the blood and flesh of the Old Blood/Noble Vampire that was taken in and absorbed by the tree planted over the remaining corpse to seal it away. Faked her identity and death to pass on the kingdom to the most reliable Jubon of her seed, only to have a more direct bloodline stemming from her losing hold over the throne with the bloody end of the Aratharian Kalvadian Dynasty. Then again, all Jubon are descended from her. She was, however, the powerful force and being that united the Kingdom before her elven descendants hid away all information on her identity in the Old Royal Vault out of fear and hoping to glorify their own dynasty over her own.
She is also in reality the First Vampire, a former human who achieved the status as the first Vampire in seeking to elevate human lifespans to being the same as that of the elves. Prior to this she’d been prophesied by an ancient sage in her day to be “the thrice-born and twice-founded, one who would bring great glory and beginnings”, she was taken from her tiny village and raised to become a concubine of the king one day to take advantage of her bloodline. Her blood family and their friends, however, were all killed to avoid any ideas of escape or fleeing to known friends or allies. Thus was her life, eventually becoming a magic-user and researcher at the whims of the king due to her prophetic status and being one of his favorite concubines to boot.
She created her first disciple and descendant by drinking almost all of the blood, but not all of the blood, of a eunuch in the ancient palace she was a concubine in at the time of a more than far-more-than-long-lost-by-now ancient civilization no one else but maybe the most ancient of beings remember. He also partook of some of her blood by accident due to an injury she’d sustained at the time trying to stop herself from killing him. Still, this first vampire sired by her initially followed her out of a sense of wonder for her nature. His name was Valren, and over time she taught him some of what she’d learned and memorized as she sought to make her new immortal undead life better despite the circumstances. There was no need to fear the sun or running water or so forth back then, as such afflictions of the Vampire race were nonexistent at the time. Only holy magic and holy-blessed weapons and holy places were dangerous to them, as well as both simply being beheaded and having their hearts destroyed.
Yet Valren would betray her in time, his power and nature getting to his head or perhaps driving him mad or both, and would begin to create more vampires to serve himself. He lied about being the “First Vampire” and having invented the method, and would seek more and more power to ensure he and his race could take over the world. From him came the ‘vampire complex’, that air of superiority and so forth, at the very least the vast and near total majority of vampires from then on would have after he instilled it into their ancestors. He even forged a bloody pact with an evil god in order to cement his power and grant himself more boons and might in general. But after all of this, and amassing power and slaves and servants and so forth, he felt there was one last ‘loose end’ to tie up before he could move forward with his plans. His sire.
Thus after sending a message for his old sire to meet with him, after having hid his plans and so forth for several centuries to ensure the element of surprise for the world in general, to partake of some dinner. It was a humble invitation his sire accepted out of nostalgia, sending him the location of her current hideout, not knowing what he’d become or where he’d been. He then wanted to see the rest of where she’d been living, which she’d go on to show him before he sprung his trap. He had poisoned her with holy water during dinner, placed magical wards on the exterior of the cave his sire had made into a home that would nullify most of (not all) her magical defenses both home-based and personal, and had hidden forces located just outside swarm in to help deal with her. It was a fight that was uphill for Valren and his forces even so, but one they would win before the ‘Master Vampire’ would move to take his sire’s research notes and knowledge for himself after having her slain and her body burnt miles away from the nearby village. Yet in this she would defy him one last time, her last defensive spell she hadn’t told him about burning most of her greatest works to ashes.
Valren scrambled to recover the rest and remake or restore it, but what he would pass along would be flawed and incomplete at best. He would also slay the subordinates who’d helped him in the deed or even themselves known in general about the messages he’d sent or received (and his visit away from his secretive base of operations) at all. He did so out of not wanting anyone to witness or know the truth to a rather paranoid degree, and to his credit he was thorough in his work. Very, very thorough. Yet the rituals he would concoct and the spells he’d try to recreate would not amount to those of his master, though would be considered vile dark magics, with the ‘greatest’ of his work being an incomplete ritual to resurrect himself as a powerful vampiric god should he die. Pride at its finest.
After his plan for world domination would fail after he launched it, he and his kind would begin to accrue further weaknesses due to the nature of what they’d done. Such was the nature of his crimes and evil that the gods themselves, whichever pantheons and so forth they were from, did this to him over time. The sun would now burn them to death and reduce them to ash. They could not cross bodies of flowing water. Fire would take to their bodies like it was potent fuel, and would be hard to put out if their bodies were ever set on fire. Garlic flowers could create a ward against them, and proper holy symbols/sigils/signs would now repel them rather than just harm them. So too would people curse them, verbally and magically, and these curses would accumulate within the vampiric bloodline and cause issues or madness or pain or whatever else the mass of them manifested as in an individual vampire’s lifetime. Still, the power becoming one offered was far from stopping others from trying to become one or ending up serving one with the chance to gain immortality. Adventurers and heroes would slay them, villagers would stake and behead them, and so forth as the centuries and utter millenia would pass along. So too would the legends about them and their origins.
In time, a group of ‘pureblood’ vampires descended from Valren would seek to complete his ritual at some point, seeking to restore the ‘glory of their race’ through bringing him back as their vampiric god. However, the way they completed the ritual invoked the ‘first great ancestor, the origin of which our blood flows’ rather than Valren specifically by name. It was one anecdote Valren had failed to add to his work before being killed by another scion of his in a rather ironic backstabbing all those millenia ago. The idea, in the case of the finished ritual’ was to restore the ‘legendary first vampire’ by having them take over the body of a newly-created vampire with their very soul supplanting that of the victim. Likewise the ritual was left less than complete in effect when it was disrupted by a great ancient hero and his party, who came together over time and managed to interrupt the ritual proper. It was a grand event remembered even now due to the significance of it in folklore and tale and legend, having been performed under a ritualistically auspicious night ‘when the planets aligned, the stars were right, and the right grounds were prepared after centuries of work’ as a vampiric prophecy so told. In the end, the incomplete ritual was ruined, records of its nature burned in finality, and…the spirit of the real first vampire bound to the body of a newborn old blood/noble vampire.
This new vampire would see the spirit of his oldest ancestor, bound to his body and speaking with him and advising him with all of her wisdom and knowledge, though despite his potential he would amount to nothing but a minor vampire lord in a distant location and derisively called a ‘pacifist’ and as a terrible example of a ‘weak and horrid vampire’. Even so, his line would become isolationists in their own area of the world until two holy wars and a total planetary Cataclysm later they would be exterminated from Gaia.
When the tree took in the remaining flesh, as well as the blood, of the Old Blood/Noble Vampire who came through this particular Rift, the prophecy of the ‘First Vampire’ laid on her at birth was fulfilled in full. She was reborn as a new being with great power, all after having been the founder of the vampires prior. She became the ‘thrice-born and twice-founded’ of legend in final, and after almost five-hundred years more of life she’s become something well beyond any individual.
However, she continues to pursue her own interests and so forth as she always has by current times. Indeed, she once stated to an old friend (now long dead) that her new goal was ‘to see time until its end if [she could], and to live and learn and continue doing so in fullness until she either [dies] again or everything ends either way’. Initially she led as the ‘First Monarch’ and formed the Kingdom out of a sense of personal guilt, but in time came to terms with it and moved onward. She also left a tree behind in the original spot she emerged from, which produces a mana-rich fruit of unknown effects every 200 years, to be ‘where her corpse was buried’ after ‘her untimely death on the throne’ that she faked. The site has become a place of worship for some Jubon and a minority from other races. She also serves as one of the current Court Mages to the throne at this point in time, having taken up the chance as a way to indulge herself for fun and do more secretive research on the side. Likewise, not unless the records she wrote for her descendants are finally uncovered from the Old Royal Vault somehow would she potentially pay attention to that tidbit again for one reason or another.))
Unless raised from the dead or conjured from some kind of afterlife or underworld on some other pane, either for purposes of civilian work or otherwise war, the undead have very very little presence within the Kingdom as a properly sentient ‘civilian race’ as it were. At the very best. Most undead used or conjured are mindless, or outright magic-control/directed, things that serve some purpose or another without thinking for themselves. Occasional undead arising from certain ancient battlefields or lost burial grounds tend to be signs of places that need rites performed or such measures to contain the potential dangers, or have something like ‘adventurers’ sent to help take care of them.
Lesser vampires are perhaps the most prolific ‘sentient’ undead, though no greater ones exist and have not for a very long time. The most an “Old Blood/Noble Vampire” is known is among the detailed old documents and tomes and stories preserved or copied by hand/magic over the past centuries. Lesser Vampires, meanwhile, are a presence that usually are taken care of in one way or another by the Kingdom since far and wide most are just outright people who sought this state to gain more power and influence. This also usually involved clearing and cleaning up an affected area in the aftermath, even using Jubon and Jubon products alongside the standard holy clerics/paladins and blessed materials and so forth to help clean things up.
However, other Greater Undead do pop up here and there. Things like Death Knights and Greater Banshees and so forth arising from areas with mass graves, and others such as Greater Wights arising from the bloodiest battlefields. Those undead that are taken in are a rather small minority of citizens at best, but usually have influence in a local area they live in and are amicable with and submit to the authority of the Kingdom itself properly.
Known among their own kind as the “Asu’rai” (Asu = ‘people’, and rai = ‘divine’; more specifically in context being ‘of the divine’), but as ‘Verfolk’ by everyone else, they are the youngest members of the Kingdom and were introduced through a very…rocky start. Eighty years of heated on-and-off war with their former home nation has left a good amount of them scattered about the lands of the Kingdom since, and the son of the last Galdarian Dynasty King attempted a genocide of them before being stopped by his own father and his father’s new heir. In the seventy-five years leading into the current day, relations have relatively softened in most of the kingdom as the Verfolk have migrated about and settled in many areas of the Kingdom and become much more integrated. Mostly the Verfolk and others can generally get along, though very few live in the north of the kingdom anymore, the place where they once were most populous and concentrated but also part of the long war. Not even the Verfolk can escape the bonds of cruel memories, however, which is one reason the North is far from totally inhospitable to them locally but still retains the scars of those old wars in their memories in pockets here and there that pose their own occasional dangers. The fact the current monarch has a female Verfolk consort is a show of the changing times, at least, though only time will tell how the future plays out for them.
The Verfolk are a race that was once embroiled in endless tribal wars among their own, living in an area of fertile and vast plains defended naturally from the north and west by great mountain ranges. Those plains have been soaked in more Verfolk blood than any can hope to recall or count, and the fight for resources and competition for dominance has kept them embroiled despite pieces of peace existing here and there in their home territory. Still, the race would come to be one with the arts of war and would hone their own crafts and tools of it to match. They would ride large, six-legged beasts called “Gir’thru” (Gir = ‘beast’, and thru = ‘swift’; contextually as in ‘as swift as the wind’) and could wield multiple weapons in their six arms. Their three faces would be used to keep an eye on the world around them with acute observation, and their stature places their males as taller than the females and the females’ average height as being 5’8” to 6’0” tall. The race is highly resistant to fire and heat, whilst also having semi-redundancy bodies and the ability to regrow lost arms and fingers and toes and legs only (yet slowly).
A people who lived upon the land of their home for longer than they have memory of, the Verfolk were religiously acquainted with the land. Mountains in their religion are seen as conduits to the divine, protecting them from harm as a shield from many foes and reaching up to the skies like a great pillar built up from the world itself. To live on one is to live upon or within a holy place, and to show proper respect to it. The eternal sky above stretches out like the ground below and also like unto vast bodies of water, and it is believed the gods/goddesses live beyond it and beyond a far more vast ‘sea of darkness and light’ which conceals their presence. During the night, this ‘sea of darkness and light’ can be seen if the skies are clear enough during that time. To die is to be buried near the conduits of the gods, or if too far from one then one crafted and wrought from stone to place over the grave, with one’s spirit being transmitted out to the gods to either lay at rest with them (if one was righteous) or to be cast down into a hellish realm of punishment (if one was evil). Rebirth is also possible and seen as a thing, mostly being for those who are sent by the gods to again touch the mortal realm for some divine purpose or another. Evil people can also be reborn if their evils are weighted and judged as lesser enough to be given a ‘second chance’, in this leading them to hopefully live a new and goodly life so they may achieve rest within the gods’ divine realm.
Over one hundred years ago, roughly about 145, a great and powerful Verfolk warlord managed to unite the warring tribes into one contiguous body. With the might of his arms, the wisdom of his brow, and the light of his brilliant spirit (as the folklore goes among the Verfolk), he was a reincarnation of the first Verfolk and had been sent by the gods to lead them to victory and greatness. With bloody slaughter he purged the ill elements preventing their unity, as well as slaughtered their enemies nearby and afar. With great knowledge he organized the people and their armies into one great throng, and took over lands unseen and places unspoken and races yet unmet and brought them under the Verfolk heel using diplomacy, military might, and other various measures. Due to him, in the literal sense, the Verfolk forged a mighty empire that stretched farther and wider than their homeland ever could. He lived long enough to fight against the Kingdom and begin the war against it, only coming to the front lines there when his generals proved unable to crack it fully. It was during this time the Kingdom suffered the worst defeats and lost by far the most land in those decades of conflict when the first Great Ach’hak was present on the field. It was also against him that the toughest battles were fought, win or lose.
But when the first died, the second took up where his father had left things. No big gains were made against the kingdom, and half the land taken by his father would be lost, but holding true to his bloodline the new Great Ach’hak would make gains elsewhere and push the borders of the empire to their furthest by taking other areas and subjugating them. He would then turn more major attention to the front with the Kingdom, only to push the border back again before falling ill and dying along the way to his people’s capital due to an unknown and mysterious cause. From here the next ruler, his younger brother, would mostly focus on internal matters and barely maintain enough troops on the Kingdom front as the need to balance and organize and keep order internally with the existing borders would lead to the Kingdom taking all their lost land back. The dramatic focus on the exponential issue of internal matters eventually led to unfavorable laws being passed to keep things in check, which would then lead to the leader’s fall to assassination by his younger twin siblings by another mother. This duo took attention back to the military, pushing back into the Kingdom a bit once more and leading together until one died on the battlefield and the other would lead an internal purge against the assassins using the military. By the time he died and the only son of the first twin took the throne after a decade of regency on his behalf, the empire had been reorganized into a very decentralized form that would steadily crumble away or form into independent kingdoms of their own. It was under this last Great Ach’hak that the Verfolk would make one last big offensive against the Kingdom, making a large push but ultimately being rebuffed and losing some northern territory in the north to the kingdom. This despite an initial success at striking somewhat deeper into the Kingdom than the prior two or three leaders had managed to, but being repelled in one final and rather climactic battle that sent the Verfolk forces reeling hard.
From here the empire collapsed into warring internal factions as the lost military forces led some to take advantage of their rivals wh led in other imperial territories. One thing led to another, and the crumbling of the empire was finally complete. The military and some other innovations remained with those whose smaller successor states, and the Kingdom would gain a proper Verfolk population who have somehow lasted until current times. Those within the Kingdom have become proper citizens by now, though anytime conflicts with the north occur the memory of those olden times flickers back for a brief moment…like a firefly flickering in the night.
(Males)
(Very Old Elderly Male)
(Female)
Verfolk language uses a constructive or 'building block' style of formatting to convey ideas. They use an apostrophe to combine 'simpler words/terms' into more nuanced and detailed 'complex words' that are chained together to make sentences. Individual context of these simpler words, as well as the order they are used in, will ultimately affect the end meaning when the language is either written or spoken. Misordering simpler words can make larger words mean wholly different things.
Likewise, very complex things or very alien/new things can result in very long and highly complex words needing to be used. This can be highly tedious for speakers or writers, but the Verfolk language is admirably flexible enough for it at the same time. Very long complex words can also be the result if new simpler words are needed to describe things which don't already have a term or concept for them, resulting in new simpler words being made over time to adapt.
Further, multiple different simple words can all refer to and signify the same base concept (like 'strength'), but will each have different nuances attached. This is also important to understand when trying to write or speak their language, as these nuances can also very readily affect the meaning of complex words.
~Population~
Twenty Million
~Plane Description~
The plane the Kingdom of Travannash exists on is one similar to the plane they once lived in, or at the very least is similar to the planet of Gaia. Mountain ranges and canyons, thriving verdant forests and hills and highlands, grand deserts and vast oceans, vast plains and volcanic areas, and even frozen tundra and icy wastes in the far poles and so forth exist (and more). A place that isn’t a perfect paradise, but which is very familiar to home, that has its own fauna and flora and monsters and even races and so forth that live within it. The Kingdom is far from having even sought to explore the unknown expaneses of the plane, and the truths and full nature of it is an unknown.
A new and incredible world, and an even more infinitely vast plane beyond, lie uncharted and unchecked and unexplored to enough of an extent! This also means, however, that just as many threats and dangers lie beyond the horizon…with some closer than others.
((Also they call the plane “Aiag”, locals mirroring the name of Gaia due to the perceived similarities. Secondary name is “Evalanar”, which in some Gaian tongue, maybe Virmari Elf language or something, means "Mirror World".))
~History~
The land of Travanash was forged from a menagerie of survivors who trickled through the Rift, peoples seeking survival who had been banded together for the sake of forging and escape. It had been a tenuous and semi-unstable ‘alliance’ of sorts, forged by several powerful individuals who still held some sway due to holding on to some of the last remaining resources in the area known formerly on Gaia as the Arathian Highlands. So by the time the refugees were through the Rift and into the plane they would now call home, things went…sideways really fast. Alongside the discovery of a couple local groups nearby whom the Gaian refugees would come to blows with inevitably, fifty years of conflict would ultimately paint the scene of the next few decades. Forged in the fires of desperation and old grudges, this period of conflict was only quenched when those who had held power before the migration died off with those grudges coming along with them. In the lingering embers afterward, the First Monarch rose to power and united the disparate groups of those years underneath one banner. One crown. One throne. One kingdom.
It was not an easy rise or start, but with the burnout on all sides from war and the refugee situation and so forth it was not too hard to find those who desired peace among all the groups present. The land itself would too be named in a mix of old Gaian and new-planar language, dubbed “Trava” (a form of old Gaian common-tongue for ‘new’) and “nash” (fire/life; in the Eadici language the context is more akin to ‘a new life reborn from the ashes’). Travanash. The ‘First Monarch’ took this as the name of their dynasty in turn, a sign of symbolic solidarity with the land and desire for a new future. The Travanashian Dynasty would kick off as the first, and greatest according to many, lasting 148 years until the throne was taken from the sickly and weak child heir by the regent after an amount of politicking and negotiations within the kingdom. The child’s mother would be taken as the wife of the new elvish Kalvadian Dynasty, which would last for another 85 years and would help build up the base ideas of the Travanashians as well as create the Grand Library at Kalimos and other major monuments to the past and current dynasty as the population continued to expand. In time, an internal civil war within the dynasty would lead to the eventually corrupt and decadent members of it to fall in favor of the Eadici-led Illuvian Dynasty. Rather than sit on the wealth and laurels of the Kalvadians, the Illuvians were known for their efficiency and public works for the most part. Road networks were forged, organization of the government was improved to increase efficiency, and law was enforced. It was a dynasty that did see some ‘rough’ patches in relations with the public, but ultimately the last Illuvian Monarch would 107 years later peacefully pass off the throne to the human-led Galdarian Dynasty after the death of the last Illuvian heir to disease would lead to a near-war-causing debate in the aftermath which was handled better than most assumed it would be.
Within this time of the Galdarian Dynasty, a great horde of creatures from elsewhere on the plane would migrate to near the borders of the Kingdom. Known as the “Verfolk” (Ver = 'noisy/beastial/animalistic' in the Carthanian Dwarven tongue) for the sound of their growling-and-bestial-like language of choice, the Verfolk were nomads who enacted conquest all the way to near the kingdom’s borders. This was done by them under the leadership of a new ‘Great Ach'hak’ (Ach'hak = in Verfolk means: 'Ach' = 'mighty' (('like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word)) and 'hak' = 'leader' ((a generic term for leader))) who sought to lead them to a more prosperous land. A strong military leader whose martial authority and troops kept the formerly warring Verfolk tribes together, even if barely at times, the drive of conquest had helped keep the system of things stable along the way and strengthened the by-now-rather-aging Great Ach'hak’s authority. What began as minute trade between the Kingdom and the Great Verfolkan Empire (as the Travasharian people called them at least) would eventually decline as border pressures and attempts of the latter to bully the former into submission became more and more hostile. The enacting of Verfolkan laws on citizens just across the border and into kingdom lands, followed by proper tribute demands, would end up kicking off war in full despite attempts to avoid it otherwise. For eighty years the Kingdom would be at an on-and-off but always rather heated war with the Verfolk, the battle lines being drawn in the north and leading to occasional conflicts with a couple of other groups surrounding the kingdom who sought the opportunistic chances to gain land or influence from the Kingdom itself.
Credit being where credit is due, however, the Galdarian Dynasty would hold together the Kingdom in the face of the vast and powerful Verfolkan Hordes and armies despite the decisions and such required to do so at some of those times. Decisions not rather popular and which would leave lasting scars, but which ensured survival and the gaining of ground. In this era the Kingdom would lose much land, but would retake both its old borders as well as slightly expand them by the end of those eighty years and five total monarchs who ruled and took command during it all. Thus 420 years after the entering of refugees through the Rift, the land was once more at peace from such a larger threat after the death of the last ‘Great Ach'hak’ in a climactic battle in the north (where the main battlefront was) led directly by the final Galdarian Monarch. Yet being leaders mostly during times of war and desperate succession due to deaths and so forth, the Galdarians had proven to be more warlike leaders than peaceful ones. The last Galdarian Monarch would survive to old age, but being weakened and bedridden most days they were able to see that their own surviving heir was too warlike and violent to take the throne. Thus the old Galdarian King would convene with the nobility and eventually take a monarch from among the more prominent families of the north, the area that had suffered most in the fighting, who would be proclaimed his heir apparent with all the legal and social flair and pomp and circumstance. This heir would seek peace over the likes of war, being from a family who did not want to seek a strike beyond the new northern border as the old Galdarian King’s flesh-and-blood son would.
What ensued would be…not the most pleasant. A five year rebellion and attempted Verfolk Extermination by the son of the old king would be initiated with his supporters and those who desired revenge for the prior decades of war, only to see the Galdarian Bloodline reduced to ashes as his father and the new heir led the Kingdom moved on to wipe out the rebel forces and crush the attempts at genocide in the name of internal peace. After this the new heir would rise, instating the dynasty that has ruled through current times in what has become called the Bakan Dynasty. In this time no great war has been present, and peace has generally been kept as the kingdom has seen rebuilding and improvement over the last 75 years. Prosperity has generally reigned and internal peace been more consistent, though the Kingdom’s military has been far from idle or bored by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet with the opening of the Rifts once more, the Kingdom faces the first great event in many generations. The other descendants of Gaia lie beyond the Rift, groups who have matured and grown and prospered (or not) otherwise within their own new home planes of existence. As the rift is contained within the central royal territory at the center of the kingdom, the fears of new threats beyond the veil and the potential of new allies alike rings in the minds of those leading within the Kingdom. What new horrors and benefits alike could emerge are anyone’s guess, and any surviving old records about Gaia and the Rifts have been sought out and poured over and over again to try to get even a vague or rough-ish idea of things. In the meantime the Kingdom has attempted to secure their Rift rift site with quick but temporary fortifications, all as more permanent ones have barely even begun the process of planning to build them around the rift. Diplomats and Generals alike have been prepared internally as quickly as the Kingdom can get them in on the same page, though only time will tell how things will go moving into the future.
~Culture and Society~
(How do they live? Anything from ritual cannibals, to matriarchal atheists, to a German-Chinese fusion culture. Religion also goes here!
This is Tort’s favorite section ^-^)
((Crusader’s Note: To Be Developed At All One Day
(@_@).
Ugh, brain hurt.
Might combine with the Demographics section since I tend to say stuff when describing a race anyways. Probably already included some there. Also is usually the hardest section for me to write. ))
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~Governance and Politics~
The Kingdom is a vast one, governed at the top by the Royal Family who control the largest central territory in the middle of the nation (which includes their Rift’s location). With the Kingdom being more centralized in terms of its power base, there are a series of royal institutions that help in keeping tabs and check on things in the Kingdom ranging from taxes to ensuring laws are being upheld and noting any issues or such going on and otherwise. A noble family rules over each of the great provinces of the kingdom, and other nobles rule smaller-scale regions with even other nobles ruling each region’s local districts below that. At the local-most level, mayors are ultimately chosen from among the people by the local district noble, though testing the waters of how the people feel about it is usually done as a side thing to try to prevent a terrible clash, as well as being answerable to the district nobles.
Judges are themselves appointed in each district and region and province respectively by the noble family in control at said level, usually coming from the local area they serve at a given level, and then must request approval from the Royal Judicar (Royal Judge) who lives at the capital. This letter also includes reasons and details why the candidate should have the position, which the Judicar will then review in time. The candidate can be investigated by the Royal Judicar as well, though ultimately approval or disapproval will be given by the end of this. Should an appointment become too questionable or problem-filled, the monarch might be approached for assistance by the Royal Judicar as well. There is also a system of ‘back up judges’ who are approved into their position, who are present in all cases the main judge is in order to learn and grow and be able to act in the place of the proper Judge during the course of finding a replacement and in the case the proper Judge in their area is incapacitated or such in the short term alone.
The gathering of taxes is itself also a complex affair, controlled by the Royal Treasury and its myriad officials and branches that exist across the Kingdom proper. Ruling nobles at various levels are expected to help assist these officials as they perform their work during each tax season, for which the nobility get a proper return of a small and set percentage of the total taxes gathered from their area. So the nobles have at least some more reasons to support the tax officials properly, not to say that some officials and nobles haven’t been caught for embezzling funds from the crown and punished here and there in the past. The better the land’s people do, the more taxes are able to be acquired, which means the more profit for the nobility there is to be reaped by working along with the crown.
As for the passing of power, the usual thing is to pass power to the oldest applicable sibling of the ruler. At least barring any special circumstances or things like being disinherited or so forth on that heir’s part. The throne’s politics also involve the sending of consorts and concubines to the ruler, who can potentially be used to gain favor from the crown upon one’s noble family of origin, though concubines and consorts are kept from the public and upon royal property. Concubines and consorts also have no legal or royal authority/power to command others around, save for calling in servants and that sort of simple thing, but their position is key when a noble family of the Kingdom wants to gain more royal favor and better cement their position of authority underneath a given monarch in particular. Children had by concubines and consorts are raised in the royal household to become future officers and officials and so forth for the crown, kept away from their non-ruling parent entirely prior to adulthood and working in their given role for at least 5 years. This is to help block undue influence from the consorts and concubines, which used to be more of a problem in the past overall for the royal family to the extent these laws have been etched into the palace and nation in blood. Only the king or queen’s children by their proper wife or husband respectively are eligible for the throne, however, and this has also been enforced due to that bloody past of the consorts and concubines farther back. If suspicions of undue or bad things going on on the part of consorts and concubines or these individuals’ children by the monarch are suspected badly enough, the Royal Spymaster will investigate and present evidence to the monarch once they’ve come to a conclusion.
Noble families can also seek favor and such of the throne to get positions of power over the likes of their rival or other noble families, mostly in the rare but real case a noble family loses their position of authority and another one must be chosen to take their place. In a sense this opens up the chance for a ‘promotion’ among nobility. Further, knights must choose to swear to the new noble family in charge or risk losing everything and their status to the local governing noble family who can redistribute or take the knight's land and title or otherwise as needed. Of course a knight can also petition the royal family to investigate, though most cases tend to be straightforward. In general governing nobles at a given level of governmental rule will distribute land to knights in general to give them a base of loyal troops to call upon. Noble children are also sent to the Educational Academies in the capital, effectively acting as both hostages and learning to become proper rulers starting at the age of ten when they are sent there, albeit non-inheriting children are simply sent to military academies by current times to disinherit them from succession and keep them away from dealings of inheritance at home entirely. Similar academies do not exist outside of the capital, however, for both legal and open as well as secretive and rather unspoken reasons. Great academies to train mages and magic users and so forth also exist within the vast and sprawling capital city as well, both for military and non-military purposes. Knights also do not govern in any fashion, but simply are given estate and wealth and status as minor nobles in return for being full-time warriors/soldiers/police-like officials more directly for their local lord/lady they serve. They are a stepping stone for becoming nobility as well, meaning if one can become a knight and thus the lowest tier of nobility the chance to start a rise up the ladder in some manner or another can present itself. Albeit not easily. Still, governing noble families can only have a small handful of knights in their service as both soldier/warrior/officers of their lord with a hard limit placed on it. They also do not see war anymore as part of the Kingdom's military, which has created a further simmering sort of resentment among those who hold to the 'ancient knightly ideals' and the old ways even through current times...
The Royal Guildhall is also an institution that exists, and it hosts the heads of the most reputed, skilled, and powerful guilds across the kingdom, allowing them to bring grievances as well as present their skills and so forth to the crown and kingdom at large. It is a place of negotiation and craft and presentation and speaking, where those seeking to gain more royal support and backing and so forth will seek to show themselves off and act (visibly at least) as best as they can. None are exempt from taxes, not even the nobles or merchants or guilds themselves if they reap a profit, but to get this royal backing and greater recognition on the part of a guild is to gain much more by paying their taxes and getting that position at the top. Entrance into the guildhall and representation within its halls is a thing one must earn, usually as a guild works its way up from the bottom and amasses the needed skills and people and scale and reputation and influence and such to eventually get invited. It is an incredible honor to be invited there, and potentially a very profitable one since only the best of the Guildhall are usually paid by the royal family or others to commission various works and do things such as arm the living soldiers in the military (among myriad other things such as getting resources to the military in part via guilds and their logistics).
~Technology and Magic~
(I hope this works? If I didn’t forget anything that is. If I did goof something up please let me know so I can fix this to be more fitting for the setting.)
In urban areas stuff like aqueducts and gravel filters paired with an alum-equivalent or such to sift out and clean water alongside boiling tanks worked by magic has been invented, creating public water cisterns and private water cistern. However, ‘public toilets’ tend to mostly be chamber pots dumped into the public sewers for ‘safer disposal’, sewers which flow a bit of water through and send it all back downstream of where the city/town/etc gets its water from. These ideas are usually in much more watered down and limited versions in all other living areas like villages and small enough townships, who are usually limited to wells and water purification rites/spells if they have a magic user who knows those around…all whilst otherwise trying to get water from a place or lake or such that isn’t downstream of a place with a sewer of some kind and such. Ducts for moving water are present in even rural areas, however, but take on simpler forms and materials that can be accessed in the local areas. Only those areas with good enough means of making the water safer to use tend to purposefully live downstream of other places with sewers in the first place, at least unless forced to by choice or location.
However, this is all more just antiquity being rediscovered or bubbling back in in time than anything else. One example of how limited the spread is too is that there are no actual public baths outside of any very major areas like the capital. Water-wheel-operated grindstone mills and windmills used in similar and other ways have caught on and are in use, this alongside the ideas of crop rotation being put into effect within the last three decades and showing more of their colors and benefits to the initially skeptical citizens as time goes on. Indeed, above the fame of their metalwork the Kingdom's greatest product and civilian technology is simply food. And quite a lot of it that can be grown by these times with attempts to improve farming coming to the forefront.
Militarily, however, things are generally seen as being more notable than the civilian area in terms of advancements and inventions. Whilst cannons do not exist, trebuchet have been advanced to try to make them more quick and efficient to transport and deploy. Ideas of stone spheres crafted using magic and filled with burning sticky oils and a fire-trap rune to set it off on impact have been forged into being, among similar ideas for arrow and siege weapon projectiles, and in the area of metals things have gone even further. Blast furnaces and slitting mills and smeltmills and such have come into more notable prominence, these alongside improvements to metallurgy techniques and metal forging. Verfolk metal techniques have even produced a Wootz/Damascus type steel to boot, leading to the metals and tools and weapons of the Kingdom being a rather high-quality product that stands out most.
As for things like forged rudimentary metal automata and earth-or-other-element-wrought golems, concepts of more advanced automata and golems are being looked into and tested and developed and taken in over time. Likewise the army of automata and golems and such utilized by the Kingdom has in part helped place it at the peak of artifice and golemcraft within their home plane of existence, at least within the area of it they live in and actually know about, and metalwork has seen incredible improvements by current times as well to feed into this craze and elsewhere. The "Metal Revolution", as many scholars are beginning to call this time period through current times, has even seen the making and use of automata-like mechanisms in the mundane sense as well as artifice and magic being used in the civilian sphere within the few urban centers and minute areas who can tap into such advancements within the Kingdom. Noble families make use of automata and living servants/maids alike, and such craft is seen as a sign of wealth and status and even forward-thinking among most in the actually educated younger generations. Meanwhile, to see one in the smaller areas and distant or rural places is something incredibly fancy and bourgeois no matter how old it is, with much older ones or partly-intact ones being more common to be bought and used by Kingdom merchants in a very secondhand way when the chance arises.
~Military Overview~
The Kingdom over the years has seen an amount of war, enough that the need to mitigate costs and create as ready a fighting force as possible has eventually become a driving force behind it due to the needs for one through even current times.
In the beginning began with knights and levies in the standard feudal fashion, and mercantile men-at-arms to supplement. Mighty cavalry charges and rows of simply-prepared peasant conscripts paired with fitting tactics to accompany them all, sitting alongside the likes of ballistae and torsion catapults at most for some kind of siege equipment. It was a time that some might reflect on as 'honorable' with a wistful eye for what once was, but the realities of life have driven such thinking out and left to those who reminisce over the tomes of history that have been recorded down in the libraries of the Kingdom. The Kalvadian Rebellion was the last time a full feudal-style army came into use in a major conflict, and throughout the Iluvian Dynasty the system would see the beginnings to a minor reorganization of sorts. Work was done to try to better organize the levy system, such as creating designated levy stations/areas, chains of command that would be established among levy during wartime, and the recycling of old or captured arms alongside the stockpiling of arms and preserved foods in special warehouses to help more rapidly arm and ready levies for somewhat faster deployments. It also led to establishing ideas that would lead to the creation of the Royal Guildhall, mostly in attempts to better arm the Royal Guard and concentrate greater influence into the capital city itself and to draw in 'the best' to this place.
Yet during the "Age of Five Kings" or "Eighty Years' War" as it is more commonly called, the heated on-and-off wars with with the Verfolk would take the Kingdom by surprise and more. The old system was salvageable somewhat initially, though the losses of land most common in the start of the conflict would prove to be the unmaking of what once was. Grasping to the older ways was not as feasible either in the presence of the first two Great Ach'hak, both who proved to be very keen and skilled military leaders in their own rights. Especially the first one. Losses of land meant less food for troops, less resources to make use of, and less levy and knights able to be accessed. Refugee nobility and their knights attempting to resettle elsewhere and using their old authority to simply take from others created internal problems with land distribution and other strife created by the masses who fled occupied areas if they could. In this the Galdarian Monarchs would have to not only look very much inward, but would have to think on what would help outwardly against the foe they were barely holding the desperate front line against on the northern border of the central territory of the Royal Family itself!
This would come in the form of magic, or more specifically in the form of magical artifice and golemcraft. The creation of automata and golems to face the Kingdom's foes became a potential source of more troops for, at least, less resources than it would cost for an all-living army in the long term. The cost in resources to make them was higher than getting a levy going and armed, but in the long term the ability to maintain them and control them and repair them and so forth was eventually proven to be far more manageable. It was also one big reason that the Kingdom's metalwork and related technologies would become as advanced as they have alongside their magical artifice and golemcrafting arts by current times. Gears and magic and weapons of war would be tooled into the seemingly endless march of automata, and magic work would make golem wrought of earth and stone and water and fire and such things beyond. It would forge an army that would withstand the test of time and the long-term, and whose costs were seen as being more viable under the conditions the Kingdom was under in those days. A living army would be used in tandem, though greater reforms would have to be scattered throughout it here and there in tiny tidbits until after the time of the first two Great Ach'hak opened things up a bit more. Even through the days of the final great leader of the Verfolk, who was barely holding onto a rapidly-crumbling empire and was simply a mouthpiece for their own mother's rule, the army would be tested and tried and pushed and reshaped by the fires of war and conflict.
After the war, the new army would also prove frighteningly effective against the five-year rebellion led by the son of the last Galdarian Monarch after an initially bumpy period due to the surprise nature of the rebellion and how many had joined it in the end. Afterward, the forces of the Kingdom's military would be shaped into what they have become today.
Most of the army by now is composed of artifice-wrought automata and carefully-crafted golems, the former being far more numerous and the latter being more potent and yet fewer in number. Beyond the mages and artificers and even mundane trained military officers who command and direct and repair and secure them and so forth, the high cost to build it up is mitigated by the far, far lesser cost of keeping it over even a long period of time. Upgrades and additions be wrought into the constructs' designs to improve them, even old rusty metal and so forth from far older days can be repurposed into useful parts and materials among other things just lying about or sat to the side by others. These units can even be stored in simple warehouses with minimal to really no care needed aside from regular checkups by a minimal amount of mages/people/artificers.
In terms of living soldiers, the Kingdom funds small and evenly-scattered garrisons of 'professional men-at-arms' who are kingdom/crown-funded infantry/cavalry trained professionally at academies in the capital and smattered about as a small but sustainable 'standing army' it can afford to keep up across the Kingdom. They are mostly meant for home defense in case of invasions or incursions, as well as act as border guard who keep tabs on things using scouts and so forth. They form the internal defensive backbone, though can also be recalled and moved about akin to the flexible professional military units of late antiquity in order to be used on the battlefields where they are needed here and there offensively as well. Peaceful enough areas might see their garrisons moved elsewhere where they are needed, leaving policing in the local areas in general to the existing Sheriffs and their people locally. In this regard the Kingdom can be seen as having 'gone backwards' militarily, though such a system has worked well for them thus far and been combined with better arms and armor designed to be efficient in use but good enough quality in nature...all in a carefully-kept but ever-struggling balance between cost and quality.
Overall the Kingdom's army is a rather large one overall due to its history and affairs with other neighbors and threats even through current times, and its non-living components being far more well-understood due to incidents and uses over the years. Everything from well-armed living infantry and cavalry to advanced automata with sleek and well-engineered crossbows built into their arms and golems that can provide a smoke screen or create barriers of their element to shield Kingdom forces. And more! Self-assembling trebuchets that conjure prepared ammo from storehouses or locations located far from battles lines, a magical and miraculous thing in and of themselves, are the predominant form of siege equipment given the lack of gunpowder discovery (albeit the materials to make it are present in the Kingdom's lands or are in use in other areas like alchemy or medicine).
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(As for individual battle tactics on the field, ah, I’ll think of something or use some general stuff as a baseline or something befitting a fantasy war/battle.)
~Additional Info~
(Anything else you want to include that there isn't a spot for up there. Little factoids about your nation are both amusing and welcome.)
(Note: To Be Added Eventually)
Edit: 2/4: ((Ignore The Above App, Because Yes Tort I Did The Thing And Made A New Overhauled App IN 6 HOURS, AAAAAAAAAAAAA))
Ishullrai/Ish’ull’rai Empire
~Government Form~
Centralized Imperial Monarchy
~Demographics~
Known among their own kind as the “Asu’rai” (Asu = ‘people’, and rai = ‘divine’; more specifically in context being ‘of the divine’), they are a former race of Gaia whose history before the cataclysm came about with a…rocky start.
The Asu'rai are a race that was once embroiled in endless tribal wars among their own, living in an area of fertile and vast plains defended naturally from the north and west by great mountain ranges. Those plains have been soaked in more Asu'rai blood than any can hope to recall or count, and the fight for resources and competition for dominance kept them embroiled despite pieces of peace existing here and there in their home territory. Still, the race would come to be one with the arts of war and would hone their own crafts and tools of it to match. They would ride large, six-legged beasts called “Gir’thru” (Gir = ‘beast’, and thru = ‘swift’; contextually as in ‘as swift as the wind’) and could wield multiple weapons in their six arms. Their three faces would be used to keep an eye on the world around them with acute observation, and their stature places the females’ average height in turn as being 5’9” to 6’0” tall. Females trend toward being taller than males until they reach adulthood, where males will overcome them right about the time they reach adulthood.
The race is also highly resistant to fire and heat, whilst also having notably redundant bodies and the ability to regrow lost organs and so forth over time (yet slowly, like a natural healing process). Further, the skin of male Asu’rai reddens with age, starting off a pale caucasian white, whilst females start a light pink and become pale caucasian at a young age before remaining so for the rest of their lives.
(Males)
(Very Old Elderly Male)
(Female)
((More Could Be Added Later))
The majority race of the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles, which are called the“Volrest Isles” by the locals. In the Rolvfen tongue the name means “Royal Isles”, or “The Isles of the King”. Also a race that exists on the mainland within the bounds of the Empire’s territory.
The Rolvfen themselves are a humanoid race with tough draconic scales, two arms, and two legs. Their heads are dragon-like in shape, with eyes whose pupils are round in the daylight and become a bestial-looking slit in the dark (or when they are very panicked otherwise). The species stands with the males having a taller-than-the-females average height of 5’5”-5’8”, and females’ average height being 3-4 inches below that. The scales on their bodies are able to withstand rubbing against even coarse substances, and are made to also help them get a grip when walking around on slippery surfaces. Those living on the mainland tend to have more earthy and simple skin tones as well as others like golden yellows (think harvest wheat) and blues (if their people live near enough to a big body of water like a big lake or the ocean). The skin tone changes based on where they live over the course of about three generations, reflecting it in a sense and passing on that heritage to the next generation. It is said in their most ancient legends that they were made like this to help them survive against predators in their own very ancient past. The race in regards to the mainland also has eye colors ranging from a crimson red to violet to verdant forest greens and earthy browns and golden yellows and so forth.
Yet in terms of skin tone those living on the Isles have only one of two: Red or White. In this case it does not matter where they live or for how long or how many generations, which is a major oddity among their kind elsewhere. They also stand out in that their eye colors range from gold to silver to various gemstone-like colors. This is also where their past history and strife comes into play, as the Reds and the Pales (as they call themselves) are said to be descendants of a pair of mighty and powerful dragons who once ruled the isles and led their people to them for sanctuary from a great disaster of some kind. The Reds possess a higher stamina than the Pales whilst having tougher-than-normal scales for a Rolvfen, whilst the Pales possess stronger senses and a notable resistance to magic instead.
Whilst those living on the mainland eastern coast were either semi-tribal or otherwise disorganized when it came to governance, at least before the Empire emerged and swept them in, those living on the Isles were far more distinct. They had kingdoms that warred against each other, using longbows and leather armor and scale mail chest pieces and a simple chainmail skirt and leather woven sandals for their soldiers. They had small straight shortswords, and petty grudges going back generations upon generations to when their benefactor-founders infused them with their blood and supposedly died in battle against each other over some matter or issue very much long forgotten by time. Like the other areas on the eastern mainland, and the Empire to boot, the Rolvfen of the Isles had to deal with the presence of dragons and at times would serve them or kill them or ally with them or so forth based on whatever was going on at the time.
Rolvfen in general have clutches of 2-4 eggs that are protected by the female and male in tandem, one protecting the eggs usually due to their instincts. After hatching, males tend to venture out and females rule the ‘nest’ back home as it were. Children are held as important enough that females with eggs are expected to protect them and have those egg-protecting rights respected in ancient Rolvfen law. Meanwhile females who do not have eggs can work in any other jobs the male Rolvfen can. Male Rolvfen whose mate has died are expected to step up or find another mate/wife to help by traditional law as well. However, in many but not all ways the imposition of imperial law by the Empire has changed the status quo after over a century of enforcement and revolt and other civil issues leading to the eventual reforms and certain grants and such being made to keep order on the Isles.
Mainland Rolvfen compose about half of the Rolvfen population of the Empire, whilst the “Isles Rolvfen” compose the other half of the Empire’s Rolvfen population. Differences in culture are easy to see, and despite the retained ability to have children with each other the two differing Rolvfen populations had been separated (prior to the Empire) for a very long and unknown amount of time as well.
((More Could Be Added Later))
(Example: A Young Faerur With Her Hair Grown Long On Purpose)
The Faerur are from the second biggest of the Volrest Isles, located to the northwest of the largest island that long ago housed the majority of the Isles Rolvfen population. They are beings that exist somewhere between a centaur and a fae of some kind, beings who have the grace and mystery and oddity of the fae and all of the body shape of a proper centaur. They all have silvery hair, with various eye colors that always appear in mismatched pairs with no reason or rhyme. A gold eye and a brown one, a silver eye on a green one, a chocolate brown eye and a blue one, and so forth are among the incredible range of eye colors they can possess. In fact, to find any two Faerur with the same color eyes is already an incredibly rare feat, and to find two with the same eye colors in the same specific eyes as each other is even more extremely rare. They also have fae-like pointy ears and unicorn-like horn on their heads. Their skin colors too are odd, ranging from pale whites and snowy light grays to oranges and soft reds and light pinks. In this manner the Asu’rai themselves saw a sort of distant kinship with them and tended to treat them somewhat more favorably in the initial years and decades after taking over the Isles.
Prior to the involvement of the Empire, the Faerur were a race usually picked on and pushed back by the Rolvfen over and over again as the latter tried to subjugate the former. At times this succeeded for a time, and at others the Faerur would push back and be free once more. Immediately before the Empire arrived and took over, the Faerur lands had been split in half with more of it subjugated than the Rolvfen had ever managed before. After this the Faerur found themselves in a more favorable position underneath their new overlords, with many moving willingly by themselves or Empire mandate to the mainland or taken Rolvfen land to escape the past and others remaining home.
Traditional Faerur culture would usually see them organized into groups, a kind of thing parallel to fae courts which they called ‘councils’. Such Councils would war against each other here and there, work together one day and be sabotaging each other the next, and would even sometimes target others in the Isles for actions or mischief or so forth. Only when the Rolvfen became more of a problem over the years did the Council begin to grow more in size and war less with each other than they did try to survive the enemy and toy with them all the same. When the Empire took over, many abandoned the old system due to the changing times having already begun to break it down by this point prior. The Councils system was then in final shattered for good within the smaller portion who stayed back in their homeland, though it would take a civil revolt of those last few Councils before they were crushed. Since then, the native population in the Faerur homeland has barely recovered to pre-Imperial-conquest levels as more immigrants were moved in and peoples were moved all about to mitigate potential rebellions all over the Isles.
Being natural mages in their own right, Faerur have an innate magical talent that can be honed through actual training. Untrained, their magical talent can at least do little whimsical things like hide things and switch the placement of things and small-level small-scale stuff like that.
((More Could Be Added Later))
The Gnomar, who call themselves the “Lepraus” in their native tongue, are very small, diminutive humanoids who began on the north part of the largest island of the Isles. Sharing their home with the Rolvfen, however, proved to be less than ideal to say the least. The race has an inborn talent to dig through dirt with their strong but small little hands, but would eventually come to live in hillsides and similar underground abodes that would be wrought to keep hidden from enemies and to keep one’s children and food safe from invaders. They became industrious people who came to be close to the earth itself, and whilst not tricksters they would come to embrace traps and holes and guerilla warfare from day one due to their short stature being a great disadvantage in regards to reach. Their bodies are dense and their skeletons are tough, and they can take a brutal beating for something their size. They produce a lot of heat in their bodies as well, and possess a natural and inborn green thumb that they can fiddle with. So too do they make good spies and agents, able to be hidden in things and getting into places anyone as large as a human would not be able to.
Of course, becoming known for hoarding food and other valuables they own in their hidden homes, they gained a reputation somewhat akin to dragons. It does not help this that their other inborn talent is for keeping track of numbers. Yet this secondary talent makes them good merchants to boot, albeit some break the mold through sheer personal…’lack of talent’ as they tend to carefully put it among Gnomar.
The race’s land has mostly been ever occupied by the Rolvfen, with minimal interactions with the Faerur save to trade or make deals with a Faerur Council near the coast. The ingenuity of the race led them to survive very well, but with the arrival of the Empire the occupation of their lands was generally ended in favor of taking a lot of them and the other races of the Isles and resettling them elsewhere all over the Empire. Even so, they’ve found more success on the mainland than they did alone back on the Isles. Likewise with the redistribution they can be found scattered all over the empire…even if they do still remain the smallest minority and shortest race in the whole of the Empire.
~Population~
20 million
((If That Number Doesn’t Work, I Will Negotiate @_@))
~Plane Description~
The name of this plane the Empire inhabits has been dubbed "Aiag", a reversal of a word in an old foreign tongue from a place far away from the original migrants' homeland back on their former plane of existence. A word both reversed and foreign, representing a new plane that was both familiar and yet foreign at the same time. A fitting thing in the eyes of the original Asu'rai. It possesses fertile valleys and titanic mountains, looming volcanoes and islands scattered about the seas, frozen wastes and icy depths to the far poles, rolling hills and verdant fields, great oceans and clear lakes, vast deserts and stretching savannas, and so forth in a mirrored but differing image of the "old world" recorded of in the Empire's most ancient and precious records. Yet this would not be all.
The Rolvfen sitting north of the grand area the Empire would be founded in would be brought into the fold first, and would be the first contacts of this new place. Disorganized and scattered, word and legend tell that more of their kind live far west of the pine forests and the northernmost boundary of the Empire. Rarely are some vaguely Rolvfen heads supposedly seen from those dense pines and the glint of nighttime firelight, and at times other ones that to the imagination seem to snarl back in the dark from afar. Rumor has it that a vast desert with jackal-eared humans lies far beyond to the southwest, ruling a vast nation and riding upon giant insects, but none remember for sure outside of the ancient mainland Rolvfen oral traditions and scant information or such tales that come from the rarely seen northern traders at most.
Yet to the north of the Empire, the frozen wastes and icy tunda and subzero temperatures and jagged rocky protrusions and so forth that act as home to host to life and beings that have been long honed to withstand and subsist in this place...and to survive the terrors that lurk deep underneath the layers of glacial sheets and soil of that horrific land. From this place the warrior-people of the north have long struck out invasions, sent raiding parties, and come against the Empire before being driven back. On rare occasions, however, traders arrive from this region and deal peaceably in goods and tales and stories of their homeland on the northern border. On other occasions, a dragon or other gigantic or even titanic shambling horror or mythical beast will emerge from the far north or northwest and threaten the Empire itself on their rampaging path.
To the east and southeast of the Empire's southern heartland, dubbed the 'Fertile Basin', are the vast, warm oceans that grow colder the farther north one moves. Yet from due east and northeastern directions, across the oceans, would come the occasional ship of oddly hostile island Rolvfen of a stranger sort, and even ships made of wood manned by myriad beastfolk or alternately floating etched stone platforms held aloft by magic and manned by avian peoples would come over to do trade after initial run-ins with exploratory groups in the past. Ships would be sent back in return, talking of vast lands of farms and myriad nations in wars with each other and vast stone keeps that stretched out for miles to keep hold of an area. Yet at other times such beastfolk or avian peoples would return as enemies under other banners or flags or designs made for their craft to distinguish them differently somehow, seeking invasions or the taking of goods, and would have to be repelled once more with more or less effort.
To the south, two kingdoms would border the Empire itself. One is a kingdom of demonic-looking treefolk and dryads and elf-like folk, a strange people of ancients and peculiar mannerisms who would be at on-and-off war with the Empire and their other neighbor to the south. The other kingdom, in turn, would turn out to be a kingdom of different elvish-like folk and frog-like beings and even bull-like people who would be usually a trading partner and at other times riding about on a warpath atop vulture-like beasts diving down onto their foes from the sky.
Such is what is known thus far of other inhabitants of Aiag, and with the securing of the Volrest Isles over a century ago the opportunity to seek out what else lies within this vast new world has become tempting. At the same time, however, the opening of the Rift once more has led to its own sense of awe and panic among those who know. For only the gods know what lies beyond that gate, and what other worlds and peoples and places and dangers might linger or lurk beyond that ancient magical veil...
((More Could Eventually Be Added Due To Events On Aiag Itself In The Future))
~History~
Over two thousand five hundred years ago, a great and powerful Asu'rai warlord managed to unite the warring tribes into one contiguous body. With the might of his arms, the wisdom of his brow, and the light of his brilliant spirit (as the folklore goes among the Asu'rai), he was also a literal reincarnation of the first Asu'rai and had been sent by the gods to lead them to victory and greatness. With bloody slaughter he purged the ill elements preventing their unity, as well as slaughtered their enemies nearby and afar. With great knowledge he organized the people and their armies into one great throng, and took over lands unseen and places unspoken and races yet unmet and brought them under the Asu'rai heel using diplomacy, military might, and other various measures. Due to him, in the literal sense, the Asu'rai forged a mighty empire that stretched farther and wider than their homeland ever could have imagined. He lived long enough to forge a succession as well, passing on the empire he founded to his oldest son.
Holding true to his bloodline, the second Great Ach’hak ('Ach' = 'mighty' (('like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word)) and 'hak' = 'leader' ((a generic term for leader)) would make gains elsewhere and push the borders of the empire to their furthest by taking other areas and subjugating them. He would then turn more major attention to the internal affairs that had begun to backslide in his days, though his heir would die before he in turn fell ill and died along the way to his capital due to an unknown and mysterious disease From here the next ruler, his younger brother, would mostly focus on internal matters and barely maintain enough troops to keep the ‘core territories’ of the empire stable. The dramatic focus on the exponential issue of internal matters eventually led to unfavorable laws being passed to keep things in check, which would then lead to the leader’s fall to assassination by his younger twin siblings (half siblings themselves by another mother) after the loss of several periphery areas due to a lack of management. This duo took attention back to the military, pushing back out into certain lost areas and leading a purge in other internal ones to get rid of riotous elements. They would end up leading together until one died on the battlefield, and the other would become the victim of an assassination attempt he would survive but be crippled by.
By the time he died, the second twin (who was childless) had placed the only child of his twin brother on the throne and assigned the child’s mother as regent. Yet after a decade of regency on his behalf before he could come of age, the empire had been reorganized into a very decentralized form simply to try to hold itself together. In this time, however, it would also steadily crumble away to places forming into independent kingdoms and so forth on their own. It was under this last Great Ach’hak that the Asu'rai would make one last big offensive that would strike deep into trying to regain the past glories of the first Great Ach’hak. Yet with the ruler’s mother being the real power behind the throne, the current ruler being mostly a general with no political savviness, and the decentralization accelerating more and more over time, the empire of old would collapse into warring internal factions and attempted successor kingdoms and so forth.
By the time the Cataclysm came around, the most stable and long-lasting of these successor kingdoms that survived the times would become a hub of activity for many of the surviving Asu’rai once more. Refugees poured into this kingdom, with attempts to save sacred texts and old records somehow made along the way, and ultimately once the plans to make a Rift spread the move to construct one was made. Survivors were rallied underneath the last direct blood-relative of the former founders of the empire, a queen who took the throne with wisdom and grace said to have been bestowed on her by the gods themselves to ensure the survival of their people. It was under her enlightened rule in even these darkest of times that would bring the remaining population, at least those within her own lands by the time the Rift was completed, through the magical gateway and into a new home for their people.
…And what a home it would be. Great mountain basins/valleys filled with hills and vast open plains, as well as rivers weaving in and out and tributaries all over. All over there was fertile soil, with the vast mountains forming a rough terrain and a vast range protecting the western border stalwartly. To the east there was proper safe access to the sea, expanding out and moving gently downward to a sprawling eastern coastline and warm seas. A paradise that had been wrought from tumult or magic or whatever other forces of the world, but an area that would come to host the new rebirth of the Asu’rai race that was to come. The people would spread out over those titanic mountains and throughout the vast fertile mountain basins and valleys, and would fan out in time alongside the large and warm eastern coastline. They would reach from the top to the bottom, farming and mining and seeking a new future wrought from the ashes of the past. Also from this idea came the name for their homeland: “Ish’ull’rai”/Ishullrai (ish = ‘ash/ashes’, ull = ‘rebirth’, rai = ‘divine’). Rapid population growth from the plentitude of food, three civil wars, and numerous conquests (ones stretching in all directions) later, and the centralized Ishullrai Empire has become something of a powerful local force and very prosperous nation indeed.
Among the more notable conquests of the Empire throughout the last 500 years, the Kil’vush (kil = ‘scaly/rough’, vush = ‘islands’) Isles (called the“Volrest Isles” locally) in the colder seas to the northeast are among the more notable ones. Inhabited by three component races who have become part of the Asu’rai’s nation for the last 125 years, the area they live in is a land that has seen much war in and of itself as well. The treatment of the locals has changed over the years, depending on the ruler and other ongoing events, and immigration of Asu’rai to these islands and locals back to the mainland from the islands has been performed over the years to try to water down potential civil unrest to an effective point of success for the most part.
~Culture and Society~
~General~
The Empire enjoys a wide variety of festivals and celebrations, most being once a year ones held for deities or even ancient heroes. There are even specific festivals held to celebrate the harvest season and the start of a new year as the old one fades away. There are also feasts held to celebrate births, for those who can afford to put on one, and weddings and funerals more commonly so. At feasts for weddings and funerals one is expected to partake if they come to it, as it is to take in part of the bounty that symbolically represents the new life and joy the wedding rings in…or alternately the joy brought to the lives of others by the deceased whose funeral it is.
The Empire’s people enjoy the art of theater, with men and women participating, utilizing exaggerated gestures and masks and set pieces and songs. It is also a passion that began with the Asu’rai and became a general staple of the Empire in the end.
The smaller the theater the less the background pieces would be, leading to the idea of ‘simplified theater’ that focuses more on the actors. It is more dependent on the individuals, where actors can more splendidly shine individually but are relied on to tell the story of the piece/play. They go about being entirely minimalist in scenery and setting pieces, sometimes having nothing but a platform and seating all about to watch it in the most bare-minimal cases, by current times.
The larger and more wealthy the theater the more one can find, such as clockwork mechanisms and fancy backdrops and such, which in time has led to the idea of ‘epic theater’ that seeks to enthrall the senses and where the actors are a part of the fantastic scenes and so forth going on as part of the story. This form of theater can also make use of subtle details or such included in a scene, requiring one to have a keen eye to notice or best appreciate the occasional hints at the plot or little subtle cues and clues here and there which tie back into the story or help accentuate a scene. The fine details in both actors and the stage set apart ‘epic theater’ from the other form, and the use of clockwork karakuri-style dolls or such is also mixed into this form of Asu’rai theater.
People of the Empire also enjoy dance, which is common for certain festivals or celebrations such as one’s coming of age. Guests or not, one’s skill and accuracy does not matter when it comes to the dance. It is an expression of joy and jubilation and the fire of life when it is a public thing, though dancing in regards to a performance is a whole other thing requiring training and skill and grace to perform.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Religion~
A people who lived upon the land of their original home for longer than they have memory of back on Gaia, the Asu'rai were also religiously acquainted with the land. Mountains in their religion are seen as conduits to the divine, protecting them from harm as a shield from many foes and reaching up to the skies like a great pillar built up from the world itself. To live on one is to live upon or within a holy place, and to show proper respect to it. The eternal sky above stretches out like the ground below and also like unto vast bodies of water, and it is believed the gods/goddesses live beyond it and beyond a far more vast ‘sea of darkness and light’ which conceals their presence. During the night, this ‘sea of darkness and light’ can be seen if the skies are clear enough during that time.
To die is to be buried near the conduits of the gods, a mountain, or at least have a metal or stone-wrought mountain-like headstone called a “Rai’ach” (rai = “divine”, ach = 'mighty’ but ‘like unto a mountain' in the context of this particular word) to place over the grave to the same effect. ((This term is also the name of their chief deity, who presides over the endless sky that stretches out over all.)) The idea of this is of one’s spirit being transmitted out to the gods to either lay at rest with them if one was righteous, or to be cast down into a hellish realm of punishment if one was evil. Rebirth is also possible and seen as a thing, mostly being for those who are sent by the gods to again touch the mortal realm for some divine purpose or another. Evil people can also be reborn if their evils are weighted and judged as lesser enough to be given a ‘second chance’, in this leading them to hopefully live a new and good life so they may achieve rest within the gods’ divine realm. One might have to live multiple good lives to burn away the negative evils and sins of their first life, but it is a struggle the traditional Asu’rai faith holds to be an eternal one until all redeemable souls pass into the pure realm of the gods and those who remain purely evil burn away in the ashes of punishment.
((More To Eventually Be Added))
~Random Additional Cultural Notes: Asu'rai Linguistics~
Asu'rai language uses a constructive or 'building block' style of formatting to convey ideas. They use an apostrophe to combine 'simpler words/terms' into more nuanced and detailed 'complex words' that are chained together to make sentences. Individual context of these simpler words, as well as the order they are used in, will ultimately affect the end meaning when the language is either written or spoken. Misordering simpler words can make larger words mean wholly different things.
Likewise, very complex things or very alien/new things can result in very long and highly complex words needing to be used. This can be highly tedious for speakers or writers, but the Asu'rai language is admirably flexible enough for it at the same time. Very long complex words can also be the result if new simpler words are needed to describe things which don't already have a term or concept for them, resulting in new simpler words being made over time to adapt.
Further, multiple different simple words can all refer to and signify the same base concept (like 'strength'), but will each have different nuances attached. This is also important to understand when trying to write or speak their language, as these nuances can also very readily affect the meaning of complex words.
((More To Maybe/or/Eventually Be Added One Day))
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~Governance and Politics~
Has a breakdown of organization from the smallest to the largest: Local, District, Regional, and Provincial. Then there is a great senate/council of experienced and well-seasoned governing individuals, including in their ranks the most wealthy and influential people of the empire.
Officials are paid by the state and are made part of it, with state organizations for tax collection, census taking, and so forth being set in place. The bureaucracy formed from these officials all over is basically what forms the day to day machine of the imperial government, with governing individuals being chosen via examinations held to help choose fitting people for positions throughout the Empire. Even governmental organizations use these examinations as a rule of thumb, and being proven unworthy of the position or corrupt and not doing your job is not going to lead to a ‘good’ end to say the least...
The monarchy remains hereditary, but monarchs will have multiple children who are educated and raised and eventually take their own exams to test their mettle and strength and intelligence and so forth. Among them, the most qualified will usually be chosen by the monarch. Otherwise the monarch does choose who their successor will be among their children, though if they die before doing that then the great senate/council chooses from among them instead.
~Technology and Magic~
The Empire has also not been lacking in terms of advancements over the years.
Crop rotation is utilized in order to help maximize the fertility of the soil and production of food. These ideas began in the more mountainous and fringe areas, as well as in a few areas where fertility in the soil seemed to start dropping, before eventually coalescing together as the concept was pieced together and came to be adopted formally about 275 years ago. Since then it has become a big hit, with the scholar who brought up the idea in a book about farming he wrote being credited with it publicly.
Methods of preservation such as pickling, dehydration (such as sun-drying), some curing done by hanging meats and such in dry/salty air blowing up on mountain slopes closer to the sea, and even mountainous root cellars are the types of preservation utilized within the Empire. The people of the Empire also actively make use of certain kinds of oils to store some foods, weighing them down with chunks of salt in jars of oil (the jars being sealed with wax or beeswax or similar sealants) in order to preserve them and use them for cooking later. Sometimes heavier foods might be covered in a thick coating of preserving spices and salt before being buried in the oil as a precaution, which also flavors the oil in the long term. Both versions of oil preservation make a generally useful byproduct for cooking called “Chu’ihs” (Chu = ‘long’, ihs = ‘meal’) due to how they flavor the oil in the containers of preserved foods. Chu’ihs is useful for adding calories and fat to even dishes with little meat and substance to them, as well as imparting meaty flavors and so forth secondarily that might be more of a morale thing than not. In areas with not as much fresh food access year-round, such as mountains, making food with Chu’ihs is a very common and reliable staple indeed to stretch out one’s food stores and improve one’s meals.
Further, the Empire has most notably emerged into the creation of gears and clockwork-style automata/mechanisms. Both magical and non-magical designs exist, utilizing anything from mana-generating ‘magic cores’ to power them to a series of levers or manually-operated means. Bridges that can be lowered or raised using gear-based mechanisms to cut off access during times of war, palace and city gates able to be opened and shut with cool mechanisms, dancing automata in the richest theaters, and so forth have had time to proliferate throughout the Empire in its major cities and many smaller towns. Naturally this doesn’t mean such things exist everywhere within the Empire’s lands as a standard, as the most distant and fringe areas or generally rural enough places of habitation don’t usually see them at all unless traveling elsewhere. For such people and foreigners traveling in or through the Empire, the sight of such things is a fascination and novelty that brings forth gasps of awe and gazes of wonder to the forefront. These advances also have extended to the military to boot, with auto-firing ballistae operated using easy-to-spin wheels to fire ammunition from atop carriages or on the field, as well as things like enchanted self-assembling automata trebuchet and well-improved crossbow-cocking designs, have become integrated inherently into the military.
Windmills and waterwheels also exist as technology made use of within the Empire, far more commonly so in the simple running of mills and grindstones and such. These things are also far more uncommonly used to help move or operate certain clockwork mechanisms in certain places in particular.
In terms of magic, most of it is rather standard to the ideas of casting spells using mana and using one's own mana or from the environment itself. Spells that call forth elementals or other beings from alien planes to serve as familiars under a magical contract, the creation of fireballs and magic missiles, and so forth feature among the vast array of generally but not entirely standard fantasy-magic faire. Artifice is also a very major area of magic-craft within the Empire, creating items and automata and golems and tools and weapons and so forth to make use of, and is a very well-developed area of magic use within the Empire to boot. There is also the use of uniquely movement-based magic called 'Ahtma', which uses symbolic movements to cast spells by drawing on the 'meaning' of said movements and the content created by using various movements in sequences. Ahtma looks a lot like martial arts or yoga or other such things, with anything from simple movements to complex ones being utilized within it. However, Ahtma users must train in the arts of using it and bringing effects and understanding to those magic-casting movements themselves in order for it to function in the first place. Simply imitating Ahtma moves isn't going to work, as the art requires its own sort of education and training and learning and so forth to be grasped or acquired in order to make use of it.
~Military Overview~
~Professional Living Army~
The former has evolved from what was once a thing controlled by nobility and knight-like warriors into what a professionally-trained force paid for by the Empire and not any particular person or group elsewhere. The food production of the Empire is its biggest and most prosperous area of its economy, that much cannot be denied, allowing it to fuel and keep moving a large standing army even far away from its heartland However, having a lot of food does not make a big army pop into existence either. Garrisons of troops exist across the Empire, helping put down any unrest and rotating here and there during times of peace…and taking on any threats that arise within or without the Empire. Monsters, enemy invasions from the north and south and at times the east, bandits, and so forth have become the usual long-term problems of an empire that controls a very wide swath of land as the Ishullrai Empire does. Highways act as major transit routes as well in order to keep goods and troops and so forth moving in good order, usually with a ‘route only for troops and messengers’ and a ‘route only for all other civilian traffic’ being built next to each other to facilitate this.
Military academies in the capital and other great cities of the Empire fuel the creation of new officers and so forth, and the training of soldiers properly and the implementation of regular pay is something that has created a highly-disciplined and well-drilled force to be reckoned with indeed. Such academies also prepare military engineers, logistical corps training, and so forth to add support roles. Other supporting units include mages and clerics and herbalist healers, who can be brought in to help assist wounded after battles and so forth, as well as messengers whose job it is to assist in sending messages back and forth.
Crossbows are deployed as the far more common type of projectile armament of choice, useful in both open areas and closer spaces depending on the size of crossbows used. Greatbows are the lingering remnant of what was once the dedicated archery core of the Empire’s armies centuries ago, being giant in size compared to a normal bow and being fired with all six arms of an Asu’rai (three to hold, three to draw back the string to fire) and firing powerful arrows a rather far distance (think more handheld ballistae in a sense). Clockwork ballistae can be used to fire larger bolts or rapid-fire many much smaller ones, and larger trebuchet who sometimes incorporate a bit of clockwork are usually manually operated and put together or taken apart to help in greater sieges to boot. Gunpowder components are something that exist within the Empire’s lands, but outside of the schools of magic in the greater cities and capital tinkering with materials no one has really come across the concept at all in the first place. However, enchanted ammunition and things like somewhat hollow oil-filled siege projectiles that use a stored fire spell to set the unfortunate impact area alight have been invented among other attempts to be creative.
In terms of melee weapons, one-handed, curved scimitar-like blades with strong cutting blades are used as the standard infantry weapon to cleave through lightly-armored or unarmored targets as a standard. A secondary spear, also a standard weapon, is used to help deal with armored foes and cavalry. These are paired with a shirt of chainmail, plate helmet, treated leather pants, a cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, boots, and a shield for all light infantry. Heavy infantry utilize the same armor and shield as light infantry alongside an additional plate cuirass, light plate pauldrons, and proper plate greaves. In this manner both heavy and light infantry can act as both an anti-infantry and anti-cavalry role depending on the battlefield and its needs. However, in return for the versatility there is a lack of proper specialization to boot outside of how heavily an infantry unit is armored or not.
Shock infantry are a rather small minority force in the professional army, rather small but having their potential uses against very lightly armored or unarmored foes and other less-protected targets. They utilize the same cushioned leather ‘shirt’ with a soft cloth interior layer, the same pants as other infantry, and a plate helmet. For a weapon, they make use of a small selection of weapons. A large two-handed blade able to cleave through beasts and people alike, axes, and flanged maces are weapons they utilize. These weapons are two-handed as a general rule of thumb, but one-handed maces or axes might be paired with a shield in certain scenarios. These troops are meant to slam into the enemy and deal damage, as much as possible as quickly as possible, before letting the other infantry come in and handle the rest of the battle with superior armor and tools for a drawn-out clash.
In terms of cavalry a similar level of standardization has been used. Light cavalry utilize lances and light armor, moving fast and well-protected from most lighter weapons and blows in key places. They charge into and fight vulnerable enemy units, charge into enemy flanks for hit-and-run attacks, and sometimes might be equipped alternately with crossbows and used as an effective moving hit-and-run mobile ranged detachment. Heavy cavalry, meanwhile, have more dedicated armor and less mobility but are far harder-hitting on the charge. They do not go as far as being cataphract-level armored, though do have extra frontal armor as a matter of note. The heavy cavalry are meant for charging into enemy lines decisively with a heavier but more lethal lance, before pulling their secondary swords as arms and engaging in extended melee. Fast-moving and light carriage-mounted ballistae might also be used in a battle, firing in on enemy formations and troops before skirting back and being protected by the light cavalry depending on the particular battlefield.
~Automata/Golems~
Kept and maintained in long-term warehouses during times of peace, and constructed as needed during times of war as losses are sustained, this army differs from the professional army in far more than just what it is composed of. It costs notably more to build up this so-called ‘second army’ as compared to the professional one, but to maintain it over time and make use of it is far cheaper and exceptionally easier than any living army in comparison. That is where this army comes into play best, able to be used to supplement and assist and fight alongside living forces as well as to alternately supplant living forces when the Empire is stretched out too much militarily. It can also be used as an elite gut-punch of a force, using raw force, the self-repairing automata, and the heavy-hitting golems composed of various elements or builds or such to attrition and hammer into the enemy to buy time or do so for other strategic reasons. This secondary army is just that, secondary, but its uses are made to be rather potent when they are brought into play. They’ve slain large dragons and great monsters alone or alongside other living troops, and the corps of magic who attend to them and work with them and so forth are very skilled and drilled and trained by the military to boot.
The automata are generally equipped with enchanted weapons ranging from swords to spears and more when it comes to melee weapons. They can also use crossbows that use magic to draw in more ammo from vast storehouses kept filled way back home behind friendly lines. They move incredibly fluidly and smoothly down to the minute level, far more than most average civilian automata in this regard at least, and this has been noted as ‘creepy’ and ‘disturbing’ by those who have seen them in action on either side of a battle. This is also because they possess a humanoid-style appearance, four arms, and a peaceful but stoic-looking ‘face’ on their heads. They can rebuild each other and repair themselves in the field, even scavenging materials for doing such and adapting them to their own bodies as needed, and can be sent on magically-automated patrols or such things without the need for constant supervision and guidance/care. Among their ranks are also automata cavalry as well as self-assembling automata siege weapons or ballistae and such.
The golems are similar, possessing two to four arms and having the ability to be used in battle and even sent on magically-automated patrols or such things like with the automata. However, their construction tends to vary quite a bit. They can be generated locally for a battle by the Empire’s military mages, allowing them to be crafted from the local area and local materials, and can be stored away for war as well to boot. They are usually crafted elementally, using water, fire, earth, air, and even wood or metal to forge their bodies into something powerful and mightily strong. For what they lack in sheer numbers, which the automata and even living armies better make use of, they make up for in raw, pure power. Earth golems creating stone barriers and collapsing nearby cliff sides, water golems engulfing enemy forces and drowning them, fire golems tearing a hot red scar through formations, metal golems throwing oversized javelins or metal chunks generated from their own bodies to hit enemy placements, and otherwise are not something to underestimate on the battlefield. They are few, which makes the loss of them bad for an ongoing battle, though they can be more easily recreated between or outside of battles (not during battles). They can also be armed with weapons, sometimes ones magically wrought from their own element, in order to try to give them another advantage. However, this is mostly seen as a waste and is set to the wayside.
The title and enduring nickname for this ‘secondary army’ is “The Silver Army”.
Personality: A generally active person when it comes to both her work and outside of work life, being someone who seeks out knowledge and tends to be found tinkering with potions or writing something or so forth. An intellectual of sorts who enjoys learning something new of some value or other, and can usually be found in her work when she’s not doing company work. Would most likely ‘geek out’ talking about things if someone got her going on a topic she enjoys, though outside of this particular sort of case she has the proper social graces to try to read a room and so forth in general otherwise. She knows how to hold herself before a noble and such, and can put on a full and proper face and tone for such things. At the same time, such things also exasperate her somewhat and drain her more than it would ever seem to at the time.
History: A noble scion to one of the most prominent members of the Nohrian Diet, she was born into the chaotic winds of the world of Windmire politics and began education in the matters of becoming a lady of the Nohrian court. Her family’s estate exists within Windmite itself due to tactical purchases and a lot of shady deals, though she was kept present within the palace for the first ten years of her life in an effort to try to get her closer and closer to the most prominent of King Garon’s noble children and other potentially influential figures in the succession of the Nohrian Throne who were around the same age. She struck friendships and general relations and such as many a kid might, though the taint of adult politicking and so forth was an ever-present reality around her. Nina began to learn magic at her mother’s insistence, though her parents’ desire to bring her into the court alongside them in time was placing more and more pressure on her.
Ultimately, however, the choice of her future would be made for her in part. A Hoshidan ninja took her in the night, attempting to use her as a bargaining chip against her noble family in return for information. Her parents refused to hand anything over, however, and the young Nina was abandoned and left for dead by the ninja in the mountains many miles northeast of Windmire as worthless collateral. Here she would have died, save for the fact that someone seemed to watch the whole event from afar before magically appearing before her. A witch, hiding back up in the mountains, saw the sight and took up the child underneath her wing afterward. Not that Nina had much of a choice at first, or was in much of a mind to choose after the slew of things that had happened to her. Still, she proved a bright student and would come to emerge as a rather skilled magic user in her own right by the time she turned 19 years old. It was also at this time she was let loose from the care of her ‘adoptive mother’, and headed out into the world out of a desire to see it initially. She would take up making and selling medicines and various potions, and at times poisons, though it was of note that her second ‘mother’ hadn't fully isolated her over those nine years. Mostly the witch taught her how to hide when in public by taking her to places, and about making and peddling medicine to those who’d be willing to buy, since the older witch herself was somewhat of a ‘former criminal’ who had once been part of a political assassination and taken the fall for it back in Windmire.
Taking to the roads, Nina would mull about and pose herself as a traveling merchant and herbalist for those first six months to try to make some coin. Yet after these first months she would run into the Silver Hawks Mercenary Company and would take up with them readily. It put her skills to good use both in and out of battle, and frankly made enough money and saw enough travel to boot to satisfy her.
Since then, Nina has risen up to become a Tactician of the Silver Hawks themselves, having an apt enough mind for tactics, whilst making use of her prodigious skills in teleportation to flit about the battlefield, camp, and even back and forth from very far away places to get supplies or information or such for the company. She can’t teleport others by any means, just herself, but combined with her capability with medicines she at least has had a sort of versatility to bring to the company as a whole.
Skills:
-Potions/Medicine (Can use magic to make these due to being a Witch, stemming from the Witch’s Brew skill, but this encompasses her mundane capabilities to make these things as well. Pertains to making vulneraries, elixirs, concoctions, tonics, poisons, toxins, medicines, special witch brews, and the like.)
-Writing/Reading and Drawing: Skills honed from her earlier youth education, and useful indeed for a tactician. Has a tome or few she jots notes in from time to time at camp or in private, mostly about magic and concoctions and tactical concepts or other information.
-Magic: Wielding magic such as Nosferatu, Lightning, and Ragnarok, she is an adept witch and spellcrafter who knows a good bit in both dark and ‘standard’ areas of magic. She is familiar with various areas of spellcraft as well. One can say that spellcraft is her bread and butter, and is the area of particular skill she can best apply aside from her potions/medicinal capabilities. Does she know everything in the world? No. But when it comes to magic she is more like a walking encyclopedia.
Personality: A generally active person when it comes to both her work and outside of work life, being someone who seeks out knowledge and tends to be found tinkering with potions or writing something or so forth. An intellectual of sorts who enjoys learning something new of some value or other, and can usually be found in her work when she’s not doing company work. Would most likely ‘geek out’ talking about things if someone got her going on a topic she enjoys, though outside of this particular sort of case she has the proper social graces to try to read a room and so forth in general otherwise. She knows how to hold herself before a noble and such, and can put on a full and proper face and tone for such things. At the same time, such things also exasperate her somewhat and drain her more than it would ever seem to at the time.
History: A noble scion to one of the most prominent members of the Nohrian Diet, she was born into the chaotic winds of the world of Windmire politics and began education in the matters of becoming a lady of the Nohrian court. Her family’s estate exists within Windmite itself due to tactical purchases and a lot of shady deals, though she was kept present within the palace for the first ten years of her life in an effort to try to get her closer and closer to the most prominent of King Garon’s noble children and other potentially influential figures in the succession of the Nohrian Throne who were around the same age. She struck friendships and general relations and such as many a kid might, though the taint of adult politicking and so forth was an ever-present reality around her. Nina began to learn magic at her mother’s insistence, though her parents’ desire to bring her into the court alongside them in time was placing more and more pressure on her.
Ultimately, however, the choice of her future would be made for her in part. A Hoshidan ninja took her in the night, attempting to use her as a bargaining chip against her noble family in return for information. Her parents refused to hand anything over, however, and the young Nina was abandoned and left for dead by the ninja in the mountains many miles northeast of Windmire as worthless collateral. Here she would have died, save for the fact that someone seemed to watch the whole event from afar before magically appearing before her. A witch, hiding back up in the mountains, saw the sight and took up the child underneath her wing afterward. Not that Nina had much of a choice at first, or was in much of a mind to choose after the slew of things that had happened to her. Still, she proved a bright student and would come to emerge as a rather skilled magic user in her own right by the time she turned 19 years old. It was also at this time she was let loose from the care of her ‘adoptive mother’, and headed out into the world out of a desire to see it initially. She would take up making and selling medicines and various potions, and at times poisons, though it was of note that her second ‘mother’ hadn't fully isolated her over those nine years. Mostly the witch taught her how to hide when in public by taking her to places, and about making and peddling medicine to those who’d be willing to buy, since the older witch herself was somewhat of a ‘former criminal’ who had once been part of a political assassination and taken the fall for it back in Windmire.
Taking to the roads, Nina would mull about and pose herself as a traveling merchant and herbalist for those first six months to try to make some coin. Yet after these first months she would run into the Silver Hawks Mercenary Company and would take up with them readily. It put her skills to good use both in and out of battle, and frankly made enough money and saw enough travel to boot to satisfy her.
Since then, Nina has risen up to become a Tactician of the Silver Hawks themselves, having an apt enough mind for tactics, whilst making use of her prodigious skills in teleportation to flit about the battlefield, camp, and even back and forth from very far away places to get supplies or information or such for the company. She can’t teleport others by any means, just herself, but combined with her capability with medicines she at least has had a sort of versatility to bring to the company as a whole.
Skills:
-Potions/Medicine (Can use magic to make these due to being a Witch, stemming from the Witch’s Brew skill, but this encompasses her mundane capabilities to make these things as well. Pertains to making vulneraries, elixirs, concoctions, tonics, poisons, toxins, medicines, special witch brews, and the like.)
-Writing/Reading and Drawing: Skills honed from her earlier youth education, and useful indeed for a tactician. Has a tome or few she jots notes in from time to time at camp or in private, mostly about magic and concoctions and tactical concepts or other information.
-Magic: Wielding magic such as Nosferatu, Lightning, and Ragnarok, she is an adept witch and spellcrafter who knows a good bit in both dark and ‘standard’ areas of magic. She is familiar with various areas of spellcraft as well. One can say that spellcraft is her bread and butter, and is the area of particular skill she can best apply aside from her potions/medicinal capabilities. Does she know everything in the world? No. But when it comes to magic she is more like a walking encyclopedia.
The Great Escape was bustling with patrons. The success of both Gemini and the Mavericks meant that they were gaining influence in the area. They were starting to carry out more operations, and they needed external help for a lot of that. Naturally, the heart of all freelance activity was thriving because of it. They might not have seen eye to eye on a single thing, but they all loved money and they all liked the business.
This also made it a relatively safe place for meetups. Needless to say, the life of a freelance esper can get pretty dicey, so they tend to frown on people stirring up shit in their outposts. The Great Escape was one such outpost, and nobody was allowed to hurt anyone else.
Viper had said that she would meet with Lilliah and/or Silmeria later to pick up a box, but she had been attacked. It was not evident if she would return or not, and no specific time had been given. There wasn’t any sign of her, but Viper wore a pretty uncanny suit last time she appeared, so who knew?
Lilliah looked about the crowd as she walked along, clad in her usual sleeveless suit and having a more stoic expression on her face as she read the crowd with the best poker face she could manage. Not too hard if she imagined…less pleasant times in her life. She was looking and listening for anything that might indicate Viper was around, the gift kept safely in an inside pocket of hers, though she also sought to keep her guard up in case of anything…going sideways. The increase in business for her patrons was good, but at the same time the Mavericks had some influence here too. It was a two-way street, and one that left her somewhat nervous but also trying to keep neutral in a place like the Great Escape for a good reason as well.
She had no idea if Viper was going to even show up after Merry’s, admittedly empathizable and relatively justified, attack on the other female esper. Viper seemed the sort to stick to business and keep it at that, and Lilliah was under no foolish preconceptions she could change it otherwise. It was more a thing initially done out of stupid monkey-like curiosity, one she silently swore at her esper form in her mind for pushing on her, and yet now she was hoping to satiate that curiosity without reaching out to get bitten in the hand either. Truth be told, she wanted to see why Viper wanted it so bad. If it got her information, then it was good for the future if she ever ran into Viper again. If it didn’t get her information, she wasn’t going to stick her hand in the serpent’s mouth for it one bit…
While snakes had a reputation for being stealthy, it was hard not to notice Viper’s neon colored hair sticking out from under a black baseball cap. She had her hands shoved into pockets in her jean vest and was staring across the table into space. Or at least her head was pointed straight ahead, her yellow eyes were scanning everyone who walked past her table. Though Viper would have no realistic way of spotting Lilliah, as she had only ever seen her in the esper state.
Noticing the familiar hair, Lilliah pretended not to notice at first before making her way slowly over there and taking visible notice the second time. She sat down at the table across from Viper, looking at her right back in those yellow eyes. It was a far different situation than being in her esper form for this, with the caveat that she was more serious and stoic here than her esper form ever allowed. Looked totally different too. Even so, the Gemini Esper was not going to play all of her cards in a single hand either…
“Are you Viper?” she asked in a rather formalized tone, albeit with a little exasperation tinting her words, lacing her own fingers together as she rested her forearms on the table, “You match the description I was given well enough by my client. I was paid to bring something to you.”
Lilliah pulled her left arm back, reaching into a side pocket on her vest before pulling out the package itself. A small gift wrapped green and tied off in a gold and red bow. She gently pushed the package itself into the middle of the table, right between the two of them, without even batting an eye.
Viper hadn’t budged an inch, even after Lilliah presented the box. Though her eyes were moving all over the place. Before long, she turned to look at the box.
”Is that what they’re calling me?” Viper had never stated what her alias was. Though given that “viper” was written across her armor, it was probably a title she understood.
With cautious hands, Viper pulled the ribbon off of the box. The sight of such a pretty gift attracted attention from other tables, but that didn’t seem to bother Viper. She set the lid aside and pushed past some red tissue paper to get at the item inside. What she pulled out was a plush of a tiger.It had a big head with a cat smile stitched onto its face, and big marble eyes. Viper’s brow jumped when she revealed the contents. But after a quick inspection, she set the plush off the side and looked across the table.
”So that’s it?” Viper folded her arms. ”No other instructions? You were just paid to bring it to me?”
Lilliah looked at the tiger plush with a raised eyebrow for a moment, but as Viper asked a question she let out a small but exasperated sigh. However, her face did not change its expression otherwise. She looked Viper back dead in the eyes afterward.
“For the most part, though the client offered a bonus to learn more about the package and yourself if I got the chance. They were curious to ask about why this package matters to you, and the nature of its contents. Yet around here, and many other places, looks can be more than deceptive. They can be a serpent ready to bite your hand with lethal intent if you reach too far into that enticing-looking hole in the ground.
So pardon my caution, but I’ve had such a ‘bonus’ opportunity like that bite me in the ass for not feeling out the situation first. A dumb mistake, but one I wish to not repeat again in the most blunt sense. Hence my disclosure of these things at this venture.”
The female esper ran a hand through her own bangs before resting her forearms back on the table once more.
“…Though I will freely admit I feel somewhat more curious about this myself now, though, given it seems to be simply a plush toy of a tiger. Also given the very curious nature of how you and my client ran into each other, and the fact that they arranged for me to come to this meeting at all in the first place in their stead.
To that end, may I ask what this package is to you and the nature and purpose of it in the first place?”
Viper Stared at Lilliah for a moment. But her serious exterior broke when she chuckled. ”What is this?” She put her hand on the tiger and pulled it closer to herself. ”I told two people about this meetup, and I knew damn well they were Gems. If they did their job, they’d already know what was inside the box. I expect the government to stick its nose into everything.” She sat back in her seat. ”Come to think of it, what is it with the ‘they paid me to drop this off’ shit? Gemini has operatives for that. It doesn’t make any sense. Unless…” Viper squinted her eyes. ”Unless one of them decided to work outside the system?” After a moment, that guttural laugh that was more fit for an older man escaped her mouth. ”If that’s the case, this is really spicy.” She tugged on her mask and adjusted her seat. ”I’m Afterglow. The ‘Viper’ thing was just an alias I used to appeal to Cobra’s ego. The proudest people are the easiest to manipulate. Just gotta fangirl hard enough and make them think they stand a chance to get some. My goal was just to fight the government espers, retreat, and snag the box once Cobra fled his office. Things got complicated.” She held up the plush. ”As for this? It’s a grimoire. Now, that ‘someone’ who hired you is probably well aware I can just blink out of the area. If you want me to stay, you’re going to need to keep things entertaining.” Afterglow pointed across the table. ”Enter the esper state. Now.”
For a moment Lilliah was silent, pulling her arms down beneath the table…but then a brief shine of transformation glimmered before the visage of Wukong sat before the merc’s very eyes. It was good they were in an isolated part of the establishment, though it wasn’t an ideal situation to be seen transforming. Now, however, as Afterglow’s eyes looked where the girl talking to her had once sat…Lilliah was wearing a grin, propping her legs up on the side of the table and crossing them with her hands behind her head and a cheeky grin on her face. The most idiotic, stupid, and foolish entrance she could have made, smiling into the face of certain danger right in front of her.
…But for once, she had to swallow her pride to agree with her monkey-brained esper form. If she had to do this, because why not, she had to play along as best as she could. Even so, she gave a small chuckle as she swiftly picked up the grimoire-toy and began to look it over curiously. She made no moves to run away or any such thing, just simply to sit and look at it carefully without a visible care in the world.
“I just couldn’t resist! But it lasted longer than I’d hoped, so there’s that much. Was curious why you wanted that box so bad, and wanted to see how you’d react to a ‘third party’ being sent. Not sure if you are much willing to humor this all of course, or if I’m inherently screwed!”
Afterglow sighed. ”Damn, I would have bet money you were the sniper.”
“Hmm? If I had sent her, this place would have been leveled. Don’t think she even heard you back there either, given the murderous rage understandably going on.”
The simian esper felt the softness of the plush and stared into its little eyes, her grin fading into a look of curious examination. Likely it wouldn’t react to her anywho, but all the same she was simply indulging her esper side to help play up the act in part. Not that it wasn’t at least partly genuine, her esper form made it easy, but giving into that influence was not something she did normally for a reason.
“Still, even though all of this could bite me in the ass or worse right now, I’ll hand this back in a second while we're both still here. So no rush. Not like you couldn’t kill me here or blink away with this thing anyways if I tried to run with it, and we both know that well enough by now~”
Viper’s hand briefly surged with magic. A yellow mist encapsulated her hand before she relinquished the tiger back to Lilliah.
Lilliah’s eyes looked back up into Aftertglow’s, that stupid shit-eating grin coming back onto the simian’s face as she sat properly in her seat now. The grimoire was placed back onto the table with noticeable care, sitting equally between herself and the merc. Wukong then rested her elbows on the table, placing her curled-up hands underneath her own chin as she rested her chin on them. The grimoire, for what it was worth was just sitting there staring back at the other esper as only an innocent plush could seem to. Not that it was just a mere plush, as that much was more than obvious by now.
Viper’s eyes swung between the plush tiger and Lilliah. ”So what? You trying to turn this into a date or something?”
“No no no! Not unless you think I’m that good-looking~”
The simian esper gave a teasing wink, before seeming to calm down a little more. This was met with a low growl from Afterglow.
“Truth be told I just wanted to ask about the story behind this grimoire and why you wanted it. The story behind it all. That was all I’d be after here if I can get it.
…Maybe even ask a bit about yourself beyond that, but I figure that would be a bit too dangerous to ask about unless you felt like sharing something extra. Don’t wanna get bit for reaching ‘too far’ down the rabbit hole.”
The female esper sat back and stretched her arms before resting them back on the table, casually this time, but keeping a general positive grin on her face.
Afterglow stared at Lilliah in silence. Her mask may have hidden her mouth, but it was clear by her squint eyes that she wasn’t really sure what to make of the ape esper.
”Fine.” she layed one of her arms along the backrest behind her head. ”My family was really good friends with the police commissioner in precinct eleven. Workaholic, never took a day off. Even on days he wasn’t supposed to be working, he’d be in there filing paperwork or whatever it is they do. ‘It beats sitting at home all day’ he’d say. Jeff really didn’t fit the stereotype of a loud, angry commissioner. I don’t think I ever saw him yell at anyone.” She pointed at the plush. ”My cousin had that plush right there. He used it a few times, but he had a bad habit of leaving it around. It’s kind of big by grimoire standards, but he didn’t like the idea of crushing it inside his pockets. So when we ate with Jeff, he set the tiger down and just forgot about it.” She sighed. ”I said Jeff never got angry at people, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t fuck around from time to time. He knew damn well who that tiger plush belonged to, and he also knew he had a birthday coming up. So he dug through last year’s leftover Christmas supplies and wrapped it up like a gift. He was going to make my cousin wait two weeks for his own plush tiger. He had this whole skit planned where he was going to pull the tiger out of his safe and say he found it at a crime scene or some dumb shit like that. We were all in on it, my parents saw more humor in the situation than I did. But it was just a plush to them. They didn’t know how important it was.”
She reached for a cup of coffee she had set off to the side, and held it up to her mash. Afterglow tapped the center of it, which opened a small port. She poured the coffee into the mask before pushing the cap on her mask back closed. Her filters puffed traces of yellow smoke out of the seams.
”Days before his birthday, Cobra Gang shows up. Jeff was killed, and I may have known just where to look to see where people like him go to hire. I tried to charm my way into King Cobra’s favor. While he did give me my own security detail, it was impossible to enter the commissioner’s office without him leering at me. It wasn’t until big bad gems showed up that I might have had a shot at recovering it. And, well, you know how it went from there.” Afterglow seized the plush tiger and pulled it up to her chest. ”Satisfied? I’m not gunna tell a fuckin’ gem any of my personal details.”
Wuknog nodded in response, her attention having been rapt and admittedly more serious during the entire explanation process. It was a hell of a story to be sure, and even more a hell of a situation to imagine. Yet whether she could trust it as the full truth or not, it was satisfying enough of a tale to help soothe the simian-like curiosity that had pushed her into this situation in the first place. Not a pretty story, but far from the worst she’d seen or heard or frankly experienced thus far…at least from her perspective. Then again she wasn’t going to hold everyone to the bar of that last category in terms of severity...
“Fair enough! Sounds like a hell of a situation to come about to be sure, so at least you have the plush back if nothing else. Cute little thing though~
But hope your cousin does not lose it again. Or, er, however ownership of it goes at this venture.”
The female esper let out a small sigh.
“You did what you felt you had to in order to get it back, plain and simple. Not that I don’t feel at least a bit peeved about the nearly dying thing, but that wasn’t the first time death and I have flirted with each other. Probably won’t be the last either. Though maybe we won’t end up on opposite sides of the battle one day, eh? Haha! Ah, depends on what jobs we both get really.
But I won’t press for more info about you anyway. Your life is yours, and my life is mine. More trouble for everyone than it’s worth to prod any further.”
Wukong leaned back in the seat, putting her elbows on the back of the bench seating behind her before talking again. She didn’t seem as absurdly peppy, more relaxed now after hearing it all, but even so she seemed to pick back up a bit. However, the edges of her mouth seemed to turn up just a bit. Noticeable, but not too much. That simian silliness would not leave her alone in this form, would it?
Afterglow grumbled through most of Lilliah’s closing thoughts. ”I don’t see us fighting together any time soon.” Her eyes briefly scanned her surroundings. ”But you’re one of the more respectable gems I’ve encountered.”
Her body, and the plush, faded into a yellow dust before dissipating into the air.
Wukong
-Carmine Hall-
"A Bloody Nightmare In Barovia"
To say that the situation was something out of an old Hollywood horror movie would be an understatement. Dramatics, lightning, the pile of bodies, the blood, it all screamed of pure and utter theatrics to the female esper's mind. The blood tunnel had been a nice touch, the promises of help were at least something unless the blood mage tried to pull a trick, the gunfire on the way in had been expected. Yet all the same something felt peculiarly 'off' about this mission so far.
It was too perfect a setting for all of this, almost as if they'd been expected in the first place and were being treated to the theater show meant to stall, stop, or kill them to avoid the utter and sheer nuisance of the master of the house even thinking of descending to their level. Had someone asked her to guess the plot point coming next, she'd have guessed things would go downhill until the master showed up with a limp Binky in tow and got defeated on the eve of his bragging victory speech. Or something along that sort of lines of 'hey this was all a ritual, and by shedding blood we summoned a demonic beast or whatever else'.
Or perhaps she was overthinking things, which was very possible.
To see this all on a movie screen, however, was far removed from the real thing and the reality of it all that sat before them. Those were real bullets, real blood, and now a real vampire on an organ acting as if he had control. Truth be told he did in a sense, really, it was his home territory and he has hostages. One of her teammates, on the other hand, seemed ready to just blow his heart out of his chest with the pull of the trigger. Fair.
And yet...
"Permission to cull the vampire?"
"Something feels off about this," Wukong said over the team's comms, her body already poised with a readiness to move in whatever direction she needed to by the time the vampire finished talking, not wanting to be ill-prepared for the scenario by standing around gawking or such, "It's too theatrical. Too...neatly organized even. Like they were ready for us, or something else of the sort."
Xaltwind
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