Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like 12 years ago 2010-ish!
I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.
@OneEyedChurro
The issue is that neither of us have good ships and a land route, while certainly feasible, would probably be so long that any perishable items would be gone. Still, I guess grains and the like would be fine.
Looking through your rolls, you have flax and linen though. That would certainy be helpful because Terus has little besides leather to make clothes from, and their composite bows need strings. I imagine bringing a caravan full of exotic grains and a bunch of linen to trade for metal stuff (I have lots of that), dyes, sugar, etc. would be profitable.
So BBeast, I was curious... how do I know if the Spiderettes were successful and how many humans they captured from the night?
As Kangutso said, you can determine the outcome yourself and write what happens. The rule from the OOC is:
With NPCs, feel free to control minor NPCs (eg. a village which you are raiding, random individuals, etc.). For larger NPCs (eg. a city, an entire army), you should probably consult us.
Six of them, there were. Once their stony hands at last got purchase on the edge of the ravine, they cautiously lifted themselves up into the middle of the town square. It had been a long and arduous climb even for them, with many twists and turns in the fissure before a sheer rock faces hundreds of feet high and without much to grip, but they managed it without falling.
The six bloodstone horrors contemplated their surroundings. It was a cloudy midnight, and the streets were so dark one could barely make out the outline of the nearby buildings. Still, this was what the monsters were used to; they could see fine in the dark. The creatures prowled the empty town square, occasionally stepping off the cobblestones to leave strange footprints in the muddy ground. After some time, a boisterous duo of men came walking down one street, one of them holding a lantern. The drunken friends were merely taking a short walk from the nearby tavern back to their homes to retire for the night, but they did not make it.
The one without a lantern was wrenched onto the ground and pulled into the shadows by some creature. The horrors were quick to silence him with a bite to the throat, but not before he screamed. His friend wheeled around, holding the lantern towards the scene. The man probably would have been better off without the light, for what it illuminated was terrifying. There were four...monsters gorging themselves the corpse. His knees began to shake, and he dropped the lantern. The shattering of glass startled the bloodstone horrors, and they let out their signature harsh shrieks. The man flew down the streets, running for his life. He heard the footsteps of the four monsters behind, gaining on him, but he did not see the other two that had moved to cut him off. The six made short work of the man, and dragged him to the edge of the ravine before dropping him in. Then, they climbed down themselves.
When they arrived at the bottom, they found the telltale smatterings of blood everywhere; the man they dropped had made it to the bottom and burst like a grape, but there was no flesh left to eat. The six let out an angry growl, looking for the perpetrator. In the corner of the room sat the massive Construct, chewing on the bones as a cow chews grass. Meanwhile, Moggotheddon's slumber continued undisturbed.
The scene above would be disturbing. One mangled body with several bites taken out of it, a broken lantern, strange footprints, and a trail of blood leading back to the fissure.
Bloodstone Behemoth: Moggotheddon's first construct. This one takes the form of a massive bloodstone horror, more than ten feet tall and with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks. This beast is akin to a siege engine, easily able to crush through walls or reinforced gates and knock down buildings. He is more clumsy than his smaller peers and not particularly fast, yet he still retains the ability to climb well enough. His size and rocky form would make slaying him a difficult proposition.
Thanks for pointing out that my picture was broken, I fixed it.
I haven't added this to my nation sheet yet, but the Azracs have pretty outdated ships. It is unlikely that they would be the ones going back and forth, when the Drastonians have a larger and better equipped navy to handle piracy. (Or actually haul the trade goods themselves. Using military ships for trading isn't unheard of.) As in for the sunken city full of ghosts, are they really so dangerous and vicious as to actually pose a threat to a fleet a mile or two off the coast? Still, if the sailors were superstitious they could sail just out of sight of the coast for that particular stretch of the way.
Terus is in a unique position with its crops being grown in the country several days away from its cities, which leads to high food costs. Any nation really could bring shiploads of food and sell it for several times what it is worth in their cities, especially if they are growing something other than the wheat and barley that Azracs farm.
The fact that Terus has several cities with 50,000+ in the population range means that one strength (probably the main strength) of it is the ability to process raw materials and manufacture things on a scale few others can match with their smaller towns and spread out populations. With lots of people to work breweries, dyeries, foundries, carpenter shops, etc. finished goods would probably be the main export, rather than just the dyes, leather, and sugar that are available in abundance as natural resources.
That fixed it, thanks.
On an unrelated note, @gowia@Terminal
Want to have a trade route between our nations? The Drastonian Empire has food and spices, while mine has more in terms of metals as well as some large cities that would have finished goods.
Fulmen Nati would be conveniently placed about halfway down the trade route for ships, so it could be involved too.
I'm still working on most of this. Feel free to give me any feedback though!
Name: Officially referred to as the Dominion of Terus, after the ancient dynasty that rules it. Sometimes simply called the Sultanate, the Dominion, or simply Terus. The land itself is named Azraca. Flag/emblem: The flag is a simple cloth of solid orange, with no symbols or other details. As far as an emblem, no symbol represents Terus more so than the arrow. Demonym: Terusite, sometimes Azrac Description: Far to the south of every realm of men, elves, and dwarves, there is one last kingdom before one reaches the end of the world. This kingdom is known as the Dominion of Terus. Once its people were mere nomads, wandering from valley to valley, a disorganized rabble that quarreled and waged war. Then small hamlets began to form, and great lords rose to power. These lords centralized the country and built cities to be the seats of their power. Then, over the years war and strategic marriages slowly united the land under the rule of one great dynasty, Terus. For the past two centuries the Terus have ruled a united Azraca, and the realm has never been stronger. Its growth has been slow, old traditions and backwards technology a great barrier to the wheels of progress, but at last trade with foreigners has begun to erode away these weaknesses. The Dominion of Terus has always risen to greater heights and always will, until the last of its people are dust in the wind.
Government: Feudal monarchy (Sultanate)
The ruler of the Dominion of Terus is the Sultan, who reigns as the king of the capital city of Marad, as well as the emperor over the other kings.
The Maliks, or kings as other lands would call them, are the next level below the Sultan. There are three Maliks, one for each of the other three great metropolises.
Below the Maliks are the Emirs, which administer specific districts within cities or vast swathes of countryside, in the name of the Malik that they are sworn to. The Emirs and their relatives hold most high-ranking positions under the Maliks, such as advisors, generals, and so on.
Beneath the Emirs are the Baigs, the lowest level of landed nobles. This caste could be considered similar to chieftains or knights. The Baigs live in estates and administer the local village or community, usually ruling over perhaps fifty to three hundred peasants. Traditionally the eldest son on a Baig will be groomed to rule over the area, the second eldest to serve as a backup and to fulfill some sort of position such as a tax collector of Mazman, while the younger sons seek out military careers. As such, while the majority of judges, clergy, and other low-level bureaucrats are Baigs, they exist more as a military caste.
Beneath the Baigs are the peasants. Lacking a title of nobility does not necessarily exclude one from becoming a bureaucrat under some other noble, joining the clergy, or participating in the professional military, but it is certainly uncommon for any of those positions to be claimed by a peasant. For the most part, the peasants are farmers, shepherds, and merchants; most have little desire to rule and the levy system makes joining the warrior caste of Baigs a somewhat distasteful proposition. As such, the peasants are generally accepting of their nobles and content with their lot in life. Though there is some disdain for commoners from some nobles, particularly from the Mirzas but also with some Amirs, the peasants are generally treated well enough.
Existing as an oddity in this hierarchy are the Terus (plural can be Teri). The Terus dynasty is so prestigious that their name is a title in and on itself; while the Sultan is named normally, his close relatives are all referred to by their dynasty's name as a sign of respect. Upon becoming too distant of a relative from the current Sultan, a Terus must change their name. This is to prevent estranged family members attempting to push their claim and usurp the throne, as well as to remove the Sultan's obligation to feed, house, and clothe a thousand distant relatives. In general, any relative of the Sultan close enough to hold the title of Terus is treated at least as well as an Emir, with some such as uncles or brothers approaching the respect of the Maliks. While the Teri do not rule per se, important positions such as grand vizier, ambassador, and Warlord are given almost exclusively to Teri, rather than to the relatives of the Maliks.
Economy:
General Overview: There exist four great cities, and these metropolises have long been hubs of manufacturing. As of the last decades, they have also grown to become major centers of trade. Great foundries exist where skilled smiths are able to work wonders with bronze, brass, lead, and precious metals. Other goods such as dyed cloth, leather, olive oil, palm wine, ale, and salt are also produced on a large scale by artisans.
Other Miscellaneous Information about the Economy:
Slavery has a long history in Azraca, and is still fairly common, although for the most part only the wealthy class owns slaves. Most slaves were captured foreigners or are descended from tribes that resisted submission to the Terus dynasty with particular ferocity, and ended up conquered and enslaved. While in some cases criminals are enslaved, they are usually treated with particular brutality and worked to death or freed after a time if their sentencing was not permanent. If a child is born into slavery, they remain enslaved unless their parents are freed.
Educating a slave is illegal, as is arming them and compelling them to fight. For the most part productive slaves are rewarded while lazy ones are given less food, as this has shown to be more effective at motivating slaves than brutality. Disobedience and attempts to escape are punished with flogging, while violence results in hanging by the rib. Slave revolts are rare, but when they do happen the punishments are unimaginably brutal.
Slaves are generally put to work on tasks that involve a lot of physical labor and are easy to learn, such as woodcutting or construction. Nearly all of Terus' miners are slaves, yet nearly all the smiths are freemen.
Plagues afflict Terus unusually often, which has been one of the contributing factors of the kingdom's relatively small growth over the past two centuries. Strong and healthy children usually survive through adulthood as the Azrac have over time became increasingly resistant to disease, but the plagues often manage to devastate the populations of elderly and infantile people in the regions that they strike. Still, the plagues have some minor positive effects. By culling the weak and elderly that need to be supported by others, it helps strengthen the economy. Still, that boon is largely offset by the decreased population growth caused by it killing infants.
Perhaps the largest and most noticeable benefit of the plagues has been in teaching the Dominion of Terus the importance of sanitation. The rulers understand the concept of quarantines and use them to mitigate the effects of plagues whenever possible, and the largest cities in Azraca maintain impressive infrastructure to support sanitation. Fountains and wells provide fresh water, bathhouses are available to the public (although there is a fee to enter), and the cities have invested in large, underground sewers. The sewers consist of large, lead pipes that are fed water (usually via pumps from nearby rivers rather than costly aqueducts). Public lavatories and trash disposal sites dump their waste into the flowing water, where it is carried away inside the pipes. Occasionally blockages occur. When this happens, the pumps that bring water into the sewers are stopped. Slaves and convicts are forced to perform the dangerous and filthy task of removing the blockage. Needless to say, this is essentially a death sentence as lead poisoning, disease, and the ever present danger of drowning tend to kill those that maintain the insides of the pipes.
The presence of the four massive cities leaves the realm with a problem, however. Feeding so many mouths would be a difficult problem on its own, however extensive use of slash and burn agriculture has added a logistical problem as well. Constantly needing to move their farmland further away from the cities in order to find fertile land, the grain and vegetables that constitute the majority of the realm's food must be shipped downriver or carted to the cities, a journey that can take several days. This state of affairs means that food is in high demand.
Similarly to the plagues, the problem of slash and burn agriculture has had some minor positive effects on Terus. The very real threat of food shortages means that the government keeps large amounts of food in store. In addition, the need for quick and efficient transport for the farmers has lead to the construction and maintenance of a good road system. Most farming villages have at least one road that has been cobbled with stones. While these cobbled roads are often still quite small, they help to lessen the hindrance that mud and potholes have on traveling carts. These smaller roads lead to larger highways to the major cities, but most farmers avoid that long journey and go small villages on the river. These river villages often buy grain directly from the farmers, and then take it by raft or boat to the cities to sell at a slightly marked up price.
To supplement their conventional farming methods, the Terusites raise herds of cattle and sheep in the rather infertile plains found between the cities and the proper farmlands. What little land within the cities and their surrounding areas that is both open and remotely fertile is covered with groves of olive and date trees. The cities have hundreds of fishers that harvest the bounty of the sea. In addition to all of those means of food production, the Dominion of Terus also imports large quantities of food. While they have no trade fleet of their own, merchant ships from distant lands occasionally come laden with exotic produce to sell for a good deal more than what it is worth in other places.
The Dominion of Terus has became increasingly reliant on trade with Arman-Arhus over the past decades. Caravans travel by land, the Armanians offering excess crops, linen clothing, and flax bowstrings in exchange for metalworks, dyes, sugar, and the like.
Within the past century, the Dominion of Terus has also established contact with the distant Ryuku Empire. The Azracs were impressed by these foreigners' advanced technology and wealth, while the Ryukuans greatly desired many of Azraca's resources. Naturally, a trade route soon developed. Opportunistic merchants from both nations began sailing between the two, the Azrac ships always flying the Ryukuan silver gear and yellow coins in addition to their own orange flag so as to receive immunity from the privateers sponsored by Ryuku.
The Terusites were glad to take Ryukuan gold in exchange for Azraca's famed leathers and the iron that they would have otherwise discarded in favor of bronze. Other miscellaneous goods such as sugar, exotic foods, and pearls are shipped by the boat as well, but perhaps the most important trade good for the Terusites is knowledge. The Emperor of Ryuku allows learned men (with the proper documentation) to bring friendly nations some of Ryuku's technologies, for a fee of course. The Terus dynasty was the first to begin hiring Ryukuan scholars and artisans to share their secrets, but now the other major lords are beginning to follow the trend. Slowly, this trade route is helping to modernize Azraca and better equip the Ryukuan army.
Religion: 98% Mazdacs, 2% other religions (the most prominent being traditional orcish tribal beliefs)
The Mazdac Faith consists of hundreds of various stories and legends from across Azraca and beyond, spread by mouth for centuries until there were too many for most people to remember. Eventually the Azracs finally developed a written language and began recording these stories as well as the stories of other lands and religions, which ended up being incorporated and mixed into the set of beliefs that now exist. Nowadays the Mazmen, as the clergy as called, teach from the holy texts known collectively as the Mazdac. These texts are the namesake of the religion as a whole.
The Mazdac Faith has no true creation story, merely believing that the world has always existed in some form and always will. Though followers of the faith believe in many various mythological and magical entities, one divine entity is considered the most powerful and venerated, the greatest of all gods. This god is usually referred to as the Lord of the Eternal Sky, though other names include the Great Hunter, Guide of All Arrows, Great Protector, Giver of Warmth, or his true name Selijuk.
According to the legends, Tanis was once a harsh, inhospitable land, filled with giants, dragons, and other even more unfathomable horrors. The devils and dark spirits found safe haven here and flocked in droves, until Selijuk cast his sight upon it. The gray skies turned blue, and the Lord of Eternal Skies descended onto Tanis atop a great horse, armed with a bow and a bottomless quiver filled with arrows tipped by pure fire from the sun itself. For nine months the Great Hunter rode across the land, firing arrow after arrow and felling the monsters by the thousand. After nine months, the world was reborn.
The shafts of those divine arrows that missed, for not even Selijuk is always perfect, rooted themselves into the ground and became the first trees. The dying breaths of the monsters and devils that the Great Protector slew turned into the winds. At last, his task nearing completion, the Giver of Warmth created a bonfire, an inferno the likes of which the world would never see again. Drawn out of the shadows, Selijuk's sons, the Azracs, arrived. With them came the other civilized races of the world: men, elves, dwarves, and so on. In their hands Selijuk left Tanis. As he Azracs were his children and had his favor, they received Azraca, the land furthest south where the sun shines brighter than anywhere else.
Once his children were settled and Tanis cleansed, Selijuk returned to the sun, his divine abode. From there, the god sits atop his steed and looks down upon the world and its people that are like ants. To catch Selijuk's eye and remind him that they are still his children, Mazdacs have a festival of eternal day. One day of each season, the temples to Selijuk build massive bonfires. Throughout the day they build the fire larger and larger, trying to rival the sun, and at night they run about with torches, lighting up their surrounding and trying to banish the darkness just as their god once did.
The Mazdac also has many stories about devils, monsters, spirits, and so on. Every star in the night sky is the heavenly home of some magical entity, though of course they all pale in comparison to the sun where Selijuk dwells. The Mazdac goes so far as to acknowledge the existence of some foreign gods, though it staunchly declares that neither they, nor anything else save one's ancestors, are required to be worshiped. Not even Selijuk need be worshiped, if one chooses not to; while reverence of him in life is honorable and worthy of respect, all inevitably come under his light upon their death. One can still be worthy of respect if he or she makes the choice to not meet Selijuk until they are face to face in the heavens. In this way, the Mazdac Faith is far more tolerant than most religions.
The body of the holy Mazmen usually consist of noble elders that have grown too old to rule or fight, giving their lands and obligations to their sons in order to free themselves to study the Mazdac and preach to the younger generations. Upon his hair turning grey, an Azrac man is considered an elder and can join the clergy, if they have the ability to read. Illiterate men cannot read the Mazdac, and so they cannot become shamans. It is this rule that means most Mazmen are former nobles, though there is the occasional peasant that learns to read and becomes a shaman. The clergy enjoy positions of respect amongst their communities, always looked well after, though they do have some responsibilities. First and foremost they are expected to preach regularly and bless everything from crops and cattle to newborns and arrows. However, they are also expected to study and practice the ancient medical knowledge contained in the Mazdac, serving as healers for their local people and sometimes for the military as well.
Should a shaman live to be so old that he naturally becomes blind, he is considered holy indeed. At this point he can no longer read the Mazdac and is therefore no longer a shaman, but instead becomes a seer. Seers spend the rest of their days offering advice and prophesying the future to any who would come to visit them. After they impart their knowledge and share what the spirits have told them, a seer customarily holds out his hand. The one who visited is expected to lick it, in order to obtain the taste of knowledge.
The religion is informally headed by the Blind Prophet who dwells in Khazard, the oldest city in Azraca and the most holy to the Mazdacs. The Prophet is always ritually blinded by fire so that for the rest of his days he sees only Selijuk's brilliance and what the spirits would show, rather than worldly lies. A great archery contest is always held shortly upon a Prophet's death, with hundreds usually showing up for the honor. The bowman whose arrows fly truest is said to be chosen by Selijuk, and so the shafts of all the arrows in the contest are heaped and burned, with the High Shamans of the other three cities heating bronze knives in the flames. Then, the winner's eyes are burned, removed, cauterized, and finally replaced with rubies.
If Selijuk once again chooses that person by allowing him to survive this ordeal, he is declared the new Blind Prophet. Though the Blind Prophet is by no means a secular ruler and he holds no actual power over the nobility or even the rest of the Mazmen, his word is greatly respected, his decrees nearly always upheld and any of his prophecies considered to be the will of the spirits.
Geography:
Azraca is a land of many flatlands and rolling hills, naturally protected by several chains of large mountains. Its wilderness is largely forested and rainforests exist in some places, mainly remote valleys and mountainous regions. The entire country was forested like that, but the Azracs have changed many parts drastically. The river floodplains and flatlands have been largely claimed for farming, woodlands destroyed by logging and slash and burn agriculture. For a day to a day and a half's ride from any large city you will be in a desert, the once fertile lands farmed so much over the centuries that they are now dry and have had their topsoil eroded away. Beyond that, for a few more days one will be in great grasslands, the soil too poor for conventional farming but still useful for ranching. Here vast herds of livestock, mostly cattle, are allowed to graze. At last, upon reaching the end of the grasslands one may find the stretches of farmland that feed most of the country.
Population: Approximately 3,200,000
Demographics Azraca is the ancient homeland of the race that call themselves the Azracs, and it is this race that makes up almost the entirety of the Kingdom of Terus. What few present in Azraca that are not of this bloodline are slaves, or people from other realms come to trade or serve as ambassadors. The exception to that generalization are the orcs. Several tribes have found refuge in Azraca, living mostly in remote, mountainous regions. Usually the orcs keep to themselves, but sometimes they come to the cities to work, trade, or offer their services as warriors.
The Azrac race are really more of an ethnicity and culture group of humans, though they consider themselves a separate race. Sharp eyes and tall, lean bodies as well as their culture itself make them fine bowmen. Most men shave their entire heads as a sign of youth and to stay cool in the sun, and only grow grow beards once they have achieved a venerable age and no longer toil in the heat for many hours on end. Both the male and female Azracs wear numerous earrings and bracelets, the men preferring gold and the women silver. They speak their own language, which others simply call the Azrac tongue. Their culture is rather fierce in nature, with great emphasis on being able to defend one's self and family and fight well. Archery is a very valued and respected skill, and this along with their natural traits and superior composite bows make Azracs some of the best archers in the world, despite beings technologically or strategically backwards in most other forms of combat.
As far as a description goes, Azracs usually stand a good few inches taller than most humans and have sharp, piercing eyes. They all have more or less the same golden shade of skin, a burnt orange that can shine in the light. They are acclimated well to their rather hot homeland, and their bodies run at temperatures slightly higher than that of the other races. They lightly sweat throughout most of the day, and while this makes their skin shine golden and beautiful in the sun it has also led to them earning a reputation amongst some other races as smelly and barbaric. The feeling is mutual; most Azracs are suspicious of other races, if not outright disdainful. Aside from the color of their skin and their smell, they can be told apart from humans by the sharp, high-cheeked and angled faces. They do not grow much hair and what they do grows very slowly, but what little they have is black.
Percentage of Races: 97.5% Azrac, 1.5% Orcish, 1% Others
Language(s) Spoken: Most only Azrac, the tongue spoken by the people that it is named after. Azrac has a written form, though with a few exceptions such as merchants that keep track of their stock, only the clergy and particularly scholarly noblemen ever learn how to write.
A bastardized form of Orcish, mixed with Azrac, is the primary tongue of the small tribes of orcs. Some merchants have picked up the languages of foreign traders, and some learned nobles understand the tongues of nearby regions.
Percentage slave population: 4%
Notable Locations
The Four Great Cities:
It is said that Marad was built atop blood and bones. It was the site of a great battle in antiquity, in which two migrating hordes of ancient Azracs encountered one another. Being bitter rivals, a bloodbath ensued with the winning side camping amidst a sea of their enemies' bodies, recovering their warriors' strength before moving on to fight new battles. Noting Marad's defensible and fertile location, the tribe often returned to camp there again. Eventually, when agriculture and permanent settlements took root in Azraca, that tribe settled in Marad.
The Terus dynasty are the latest in a long list of families that have ruled the descendants of that first tribe. Marad, the Terus' seat of power, is the capital of their Sultanate. Bricks and blocks of various stones as well as fired clay are used as the main building materials. The city has large, monolithic buildings of red, brown, and orange. It has massive walls with countless archer towers and catapults, resembling a colossal fortress more than a city. Famed for its warriors and gladiators, there are fight pits, barracks, mustering grounds, and armories everywhere.
The city has a population just shy of 200,000, making it enormous by medieval standards.
Fortifications:
Quite possibly the largest fortification in the world, construction began several centuries ago after the fall of Niraq at the hands of the Arhusians during the so-called Union War. Niraq's razed lands were abandoned, and the North Pass was considered too distant and too large to defend. Now paranoid about foreign invasions, the Terus dynasty decided to protect Marad and the rest of Azraca from Niraq's fate by building an impassable wall that would split the valley in half.
At first the wall was small and earthen, manned by regiments of the city guard from Marad. Nowadays, it is the garrison and training grounds for thousands of Strazari in addition to militias from nearby villages. This is due to the lawlessness of the lands beyond, as well as the Wall's status as the de facto northern border of Terus (the de jure border includes Niraq, going up to the northern pass). The Strazari regularly send rangers into the lawless lands north of the wall to deal with bands of raiders and outlaws that grow too large or become problematic.
However, over the decades nearby villages provided their manpower, and so the wall has undergone massive expansion. In the most remote places it stands perhaps fifteen feet from its base; near the gates, garrisons, and areas that need more defense it stands perhaps thirty feet high. At its narrowest the wall allows two horsemen to ride abreast on top. As in for the materials, due to the nature of its construction and gradual upgrades, it consists of an outer layer of stone and brick, with the inside of the wall usually consisting of earth. Any tree or other cover within a fair distance of the wall is routinely cleared, and in many places there are trenches and abatis in front of the wall itself.
Garrisons and watchtowers are placed at regular intervals along the wall's length, and a system of signal-fires and gongs allows for rapid communications down the wall. In the event of a large army attempting to attack the Wall in one of its weaker positions, reinforcements would quickly arrive. The Wall mainly exosts as a form of border control and to stop medium-sized warbands; a large army would likely be able to cross by breaching it in one of its weaker points, however doing so would cost many lives and having to move thousands of men and all their supplies over the wall would greatly hinder their progress. In the regions with actual gates, large castle-like garrisons exist with much more defensive ability. Storming a gate would allow for the enemy to quickly march through, though in the process of doing so the Walls' defenders would probably manage to kill at least ten times their number.
More of a landform than a fortress of some sort, the Grey Defile is a long series of canyons and ravines that cut through an otherwise mountainous, tropical, and extremely densely forested region. This makes it a chokepoint, as it is the only real pathway an army of any size could take heading southwest from Niraq into Azraca to threaten Dhirim and its lands.
The Grey Defile, true to its name, is a defile made of bleak grey limestone. Just a small section of the canyon system, the Grey Defile is a stretch that goes on for about a mile, at some points becoming so narrow that barely six men could fit between the sheer rock faces that make up the canyon walls. This alone makes it incredibly easy to defend. However, the local villages and small regiments of Strazari that defend it have made it even more defensible.
Both naturally and due to constructed walls and tunnels, the Grey Defile has been turned into an utter labyrinth that would turn around and confuse anyone that didn't know the area like the back of their hand. Small, well-hidden ledges and pathways allow the defenders to ambush invaders at countless points as they attempt to pass through, mostly by raining down arrows from above but also by some hidden points from which infantry could charge out. There is only one path through the labyrinth that isn't filled with traps, and rockfalls have been prepared in several locations to allow the defenders to cut off parts of an army from one another and to kill any fool unlucky enough to be caught in the landslide.
It was in this point that a coalition of the Dominion of Terus (and what few sovereign entities had yet to be annexed by the Terus) prepared an ambush and decisively defeated the Arhusians during the Union Wars, luring them into the Grey Defile before slaughtering half their army. The other half that retreated was pursued by vengeful Azracs all the way to the northern pass, leaving barely any survivors. To this day, there are still mounds of the skeletal remains of fallen Arhusians, piled up along the sides of the defile or in small niches. Their armor and weapons have long been looted or rusted away, but it is said that their souls still haunt the place of their defeat.
Similarly to Grey Defile, Swampwatch makes use of the fact that all of its surroundings are essentially impassable for a large army moving on foot. It is located in the narrowest point between the mountains and the sea, with dense mangrove swamps on either side. It is located on a hill, guarding a raised causeway that leads north, joining into one of the only roads that wind through the Eastmarch.
Rising out of the swampy waters are several towers on either side of the causeway, their poor foundations making them lean like plants bending towards the sun. From within these towers defenders can fire arrows, pour boiling water, and do all manner of terrible things to foes charging along the causeway. The causeway leads to a small castle, tunneling clean through the redoubt and out the other side. However, there are nearly a dozen portcullis and murder holes protecting the path. The redoubt itself has many archers towers and other defenses itself to defend the causeway.
The easiest way to get through Eastmarsh would be to avoid it all together; sailing an army down the coast and landing south of the marshlands and Swampwatch would be ideal. Failing that, it might be possible to traverse the swamp itself using canoes or perhaps rafts, thus going through the supposedly impassable swamps and skirting around Swampwatch, though one has to keep in mind the difficulty in constructed enough such rafts for an entire army and the danger of predators, as well as the possibility of crude boats sinking or capsizing.
Unlike the above three locations, Fort Strazari is not a critical defensive position defending one of the routes into the realm. Its location is of some strategic interest, but not much. The coastline it guards is mostly empty, though it does defend and ship cargo from several large mines that supply Dhirim, and a few smaller ones owned by Khazard.
Fort Strazari takes on the form of a small coastal town, with a large shipyard and dock. Atop a nearby hill is a castle, just barely out of the range of any artillery ships in the harbor. It does have several bastion catapults and ballistae, their massive size and advantage of being higher up allowing them to fire upon ships in the harbor. A large retinue of Strazari (as well as some other soldiers, dockworkers, and other workers needed to keep a settlement going) are garrisoned in the fortress year round, as it is their headquarters.
Fort Strazari is mainly used as a training grounds for new soldiers, however it also is home to the only military academy in Azraca. What few commanders receive formal training do so either as retainers to proved men, or as cadets in the costly school here. It at times also serves as a safehouse or resort for the Sultan and other high-ranking nobles.
Strategically located in the middle of Azraca's coastline, Fort Strazari usually bases a third of Terus' warships, with one third always on patrol and the other third based in the docks of the four great cities.
Other Locations:
Personalities of Note Terus Dynasty:
Ruthless, aloof, and calculating. It was deviousness, ambition, and treachery that carved out an empire for the Terus dynasty, not such pleasantries as honor, trust, piety, or tradition. Hakkim realizes and embodies this, a master at court intrigue and plotting, and a very competent leader by all standards. Hakkim cares for his precious Sultanate more than anything, though he does love his family as well (or at least a few of them).
Though nominally an ardent Mazdac, in reality he hates the clergy and the Blind Prophet that so often undermine his authority and prove to be thorns in his side. If there are any gods, he does not worship them as it was his family's greatness, not theirs, that created the Dominion of Terus. He is not an atheist so much as an anti-theist, though he knows better than to say such things as it would no doubt cause an uprising from the zealous fools that constitute half his realm.
Piercing eyes, a heartless expression on his face, and a deliberate and confident posture combine to make him intimidating, despite his only average form. True to his hatred of tradition, he wears no golden bracelets or rings as near all Azrac men do, nor wears the extravagant jewelry of the nobility. His hair is wrapped in a simple silk turban to keep it cool, while he is almost always seen with linen robes dyed the orange of his family. This unassuming appearance makes him look like something of a peasant when seen alongside his courtiers and vassals garbed in their silk robes colored with brilliant and lavish dyes from the farthest reaches of the world. However, there is no mistaking the Sultan; his demeanor and reputation ensure that much. A fool is the man that would mock his modesty.
Hakkim has begun to show signs of his growing age, his hair the color of silver. He has a great beard, as Azrac tradition dictates a man must grow once his hair greys. Suddenly sensing that his time is running short, he has only recently taken a keen interest in his son and heir. He does everything in his power to attempt to become a part of Suhail's life, imparting his knowledge and values upon the prince in an attempt to ensure that Azraca's (and through it, the Terus dynasty's) glory only grows following his inevitable death.
The Crown-Prince, only son of the Sultan, and heir to the Dominion of Terus. He has long been a retainer to Malik Uqais of Dhirim, though he is now beginning to enter adulthood. The Malik's personality seems to have rubbed off on him to disastrous effect; while an able commander and dutiful administrator, he is in no way brilliant like his father and he lacks ambition or initiative. He has the makings of a lieutenant rather than a warlord. He has few memories of his deceased mother and distant father, though this has changed as the Sultan is growing old and finally seen the urgent need to groom his heir personally.
The Sultan's cousin, son of a now deceased uncle. His personality is vastly different from that of the Sultan, and their personalities at times chafe. Truly, their relationship is good, yet it takes the cordial form of a captain's loyalty to his general more than a friendship or family bond.
Mundhalir is the highest ranking military officer in the realm besides the Sultan, personally commanding the Atarma while his subordinates command the other divisions of the standing military. He enjoys such honorary titles and epithets such as Warchief, General, Commander of the Faithful, High Marshal, the Brute, and the Giant. True to the last two monikers, Mundhalir is a hulking figure, freakishly tall yet still muscular and broad of stature. He has earned a reputation for his dogmatic belligerence; both in personal combat and as a general, he is utterly unyielding and incredibly aggressive. Rarely is he seen unarmored, and he is nearly always followed by several ensigns and companion warriors.
The elderly uncle of the Sultan, Lakhem's beard is long and white, his face wrinkled, and his body growing feeble. Still, he is sharp of mind and fiercely loyal to the family. A kind and trusting figure, he is of course not very well suited to intrigue or cutthroat politics, leaving that for others. He is one of the Sultan's foremost advisers, serves as the steward in charge of the palatial Redfort, and occasionally handles internal issues or more trivial matters of diplomacy.
A young man and close relative of the Sultan. Decadent and hedonistic, he is a disgrace upon the family. His debauchery and poor representation has earned him the loathing of the Sultan, while his arrogance has managed to win the hatred of Mundhalir as well. Still, this seems to be of no concern to Nuwas as he has resisted all demands and attempts made towards making him straighten up. He grew alongside Malik Dhashwal as a retainer to Dhashwal's now deceased father, and as a result is a close friend of the Malik. Nuwas spends his time away from the rest of his family, living as a permanent guest of honor in the palace of Alaba's rulers, the Hasan dynasty.
Twin sons of the Grand Vizier Lakhem, both embody the typical noble. Their personalities and demeanors are so similar that it is hard to tell them apart. Arrogant, prideful, and pompous, they embody the typical nobility. They are always wearing golden bracelets and earrings, jeweled rings, and exquisitely crafted amulets and talismans to represent their faith. If that is not enough to show their outrageous wealth and high status as members of the Terus dynasty, they each own countless silk clothing, no doubt having a robe for every color in the rainbow and every festivity or occasion imaginable.
Their main penchants carousing, courting women, and other 'noble' wastes of time such as poetry and hunting, they nonetheless both have silver tongues. Their persuasiveness, combined with their knowledge of several languages, makes them useful enough for the Sultan to at least tolerate them, unlike Nuwas. Currently Ayyam serves as the Dominion of Terus' ambassador to Arman-Arhus, while Amdar is the Ambassador to Ryukyu. Though they will doubtless impart some wise counsel if asked, they mainly spend their time wasting the family's money on local vintages until given messages to deliver or terms to negotiate with the local ruler.
The Maliks:
In short, Dhashwal is slothful, gluttonous, spineless, and obscenely rich. He sits in his great palace living in the lap of luxury, for the most part leaving the governing of his lands to a council of magistrates consisting of his friends from other wealthy merchant families. Dhashwal is a corpulent man that wear billowing silk robes to hide his form. Both he and the Sultan have too much wealth to even quantify, but for all that it matters Dhashwal very well might have more money than anybody else in Terus.
Dhashwal gets along well with Terus Nuwas. Sultan Hakkim and Terus Mundhalir both terrify him.
A middle-aged man and an able warrior and commander, Hizdahr has many virtues. He knows the virtues diligence and temperance, but his pride is his curse. His line stretches back more than a thousand years. His ancestors built the oldest (and once, greatest) city in the land, the city of Khazard that his family still rules to this day. Yet through the sloth and weakness of his last few fathers, the wretched Terus managed to climb their way to power and now the Khalils are mere vassals.
Hizdahr loathes the fact that Khazard seems to be on the decline, no longer commanding anything near the glory, prestige, and fear that it once had. Rather than emperor of the world, Hizdahr is a sworn lapdog of the Sultan, and rather than the greatest city in the world, Khazard is now regarded as the weakest and most worthless of Azraca's more metropolises. Though he is certainly competent of a strong temperament that the Sultan would like, their relationship is nonetheless strained by the fact that Hizdahr's hatred of the Dominion is a commonly known fact.
Hizdahr respects the old ways and traditions of the Azracs, barely able to tolerate the presence of the orcish tribes, much less foreigners and the modernization that the nation is undergoing. He burns with religious fervor, his zeal terrifying to any that see its true extent. He holds a great deal of respect for the Blind Prophet, often seeking the wise Mazman's counsel and seeing the Mazmen as the only ones that he can trust.
Hizdahr's only son was taken as a retainer by the Sultan. While this would normally be seen as an enormous honor, Hizdahr was clever enough to see it for the plot it was: raise the heir of Khazard away from his father, so that the Terus would have a loyal vassal. Seeing his son as essentially one of the Terus, with no hope of ever being able to imprint his values and beliefs into the boy, Hizdahr has made the painful (and secret) decision to disinherit his son and designate his like-minded nephew as heir to the city of Khazard.
Uqais is a soft-spoken man of a calm and loyal temperament, not quite a sheep yet still preferring to be a follower than a leader. The perfect vassal, he holds great respect for authority and is loyal to his liege. His passive friendliness means that he gets along well enough with nearly everyone. While some such as Terus Mundhalir or Malik Hizdahr look down upon men without fire and a spine, Uqais can only be pushed so far before taking a stand, so he has earned their begrudging respect as well.
Intrigue and plotting are not things that Uqais will take part in, and he is only a mediocre commander on the battlefield. His greatest strength lies in his kindness and charitable nature; the peasants love him for it, and he and his bureaucrats effectively rule Dhirim and run one of the largest industrial centers in the world, and one of the safest. He is considered a masterful administrator, though he lacks initiative he is able to effectively serve as a manager and mobilize the populace to work on projects that the Sultan orders. Unfailingly, he has managed to provide the Dominion of Terus with a steady supply of weaponry, armor, and other goods (mostly other forms of metalworks) for the duration of his reign, despite plagues and any other imaginable disasters that would bring progress to a grinding halt if anybody else were in control of the massive production chain that is Dhirim and its holdings.
Dynasties: Terus Hasan Khalil Akram Azam
Other Characters:
The current Blind Prophet of Khazard is ancient, having been old even in the elders' earliest memories. Some attribute this to black magic, a curse, or some other evil, whereas others interpret it as the opposite: Selijuk's will, and the Blind Prophet's divine powers and importance allowing him to live for stay on Tanis a bit longer than normal men are allowed. The Blind Prophet's name has been long forgotten, his white hairs all fallen out, his voice turned hoarse and his face turned resemblant of leather. He is rarely seen outside his temple and has not declared any great omens or prophecies in decades. Still, he will speak with those that he takes an interest in, and Malik Hizdahr greatly respects the prophet.
An Azrac spoken of only in whispers, his very existence doubted by many. Supposedly a descendant of the family that the Terus overthrew centuries ago when they took control of Marad, this would give him a righteous, and irrevocable, claim upon the Sultanate itself. According to the whispers of peasants, Fareed lives in the shadows, him and his secret supporters supposedly about to attempt overthrowing the mighty Terus after centuries of preparation and hiding.
The self-proclaimed Malik of Niraq and Sultan of the North, Ali is the warlord of a group of brigands occupying the land north of the Old Kings' Wall, supposedly based in a hideout somewhere within the sprawling ruins of Niraq. There are countless tales of his doings, but actual information is scarce seeing as there is one real account on the man and his doings for every thousand tall tales. Escaped slaves and convicts flock to his side, and his horde of bandits make a living out of the Sultan's reach.
As of late they have grown bolder and bolder, beginning to raid entire guarded caravans rather than lone travelers. Concerned that he will scale some part of the Old Kings' Wall and raid something of actual importance, the warlord Terus Mundhalir has decided to be proactive in handling this threat. He offers a bounty for any confirmed attacks on Ali's men, and has offered a title of nobility and a hundred pounds in gold to any man that brings the head of Ali himself. Mundhalir's attempts have thus far been embarrassingly futile; the Strazari have been unable to find Ali's base of operations, no offers of wealth or mercy have enticed defectors to reveal information about the bandits, and there have been numerous unsuccessful attempts by bounty hunters at bringing a random head and claiming to have slain Ali.
Institutions:
With the arrival of man in Tanis, orcish civilization has declined. Faced with distrust due to a past of violent encounters with nearly every other race, the orcs find safe haven in few lands. Azraca has been one of these few lands, willing to at least tolerate the presence of orcs if not warmly welcome them. Various small orcish strongholds exist subsisting themselves in remote locations of Azraca, and there are some nomadic bands that travel the countryside finding work as they go.
The orcs are usually not sworn to any lords, existing as oddities outside of the feudal system of vassals that controls nearly all of Terus. To avoid overstaying their welcome and maintain decent relations with the Azracs, orcish warriors often offer their services to any good cause that will accept their help. They do usually ask a modest payment upfront for their assistance, in addition to a prize for every enemy head that they take. Most lords are more than happy to pay the orcs' price to enlist the aid of some of the most ferocious warriors in the realm.
Located in a remote valley that consists of a hilly rainforest full of all sorts of predators, the Tarzak still live what is essentially the same hunter-gatherer lifestyle that they have had for the past thousand years. This hard lifestyle has created a fierce tribe of hunters, experts in guerrilla warfare. Their tribe is practically as old as the valley named after them, and yet they have always managed to resist subjugation.
The famous Tarzak Night Raiders, as their warriors are called, are a living legend. They earned their name and achieved this fame more than three centuries ago, when a great lord demanded an oath of loyalty from their chieftains, the ability to make use of their valley's natural resources, and the right to tax the tribesmen. The Tarzak's high chief replied by sending a parcel of tiger feces. Enraged by this insult, the lord declared war, raised a large levy, and moved to conquer the Tarzak. The issue was that the Tarzak had no true settlements, the lord's army marching in circles through a rainforest taking massive attrition in the hopes of finding a chance to engage the entirety of the much smaller army of the Tarzak's and win a decisive battle. The Tarzak never gave them that chance, preferring to stalk their enemies through the jungles in small groups and ambush at any opportunity.
Reinforcements streamed in as more levies were called as needed, and this dance stretched on for a period of months. Eventually the army was forced to retreat from the forest and plan for another invasion, as the harvest time came and the levies were needed on the farms. Stopping to rest in a castle on their way home, the army was utterly unaware that hundreds of Tarzak hunters had followed them out of the forest. At night the came, silently assassinating the watchmen with their bows and then scaling the castle's battlements in the dead of night. The Tarzak then proceeded to set fire to the wooden keep full of sleeping soldiers. It is said that the Tarzak's chieftains laughed as their enemies burned alive, some jumping off the battlements to their deaths. Those that made it to the gates and escaped the blaze, the lord himself amongst them, were quickly captured. As the legend goes, the Tarzak beheaded every last one of the survivors, leaving their heads in a gruesome pile before returning to their foreboding jungle.
To date they have never lost a single battle against any other group in Azraca, yet they are now sworn to the Terus king who can call upon the Night Raiders to fight his wars. This ironic twist came about when the Terus dynasty had managed to unify nearly half of Azraca under their rule and create an army the likes of which the realm had never seen before. At this point they would likely have been able to succeed where the ill-fated lord from the legends failed, and finally subjugate the Tarzak. However, the Terus wisely sought out a different approach; hiring the Tarzak as mercenaries and creating trade ties with them. Over time the Tarzak grew ever so slightly more civilized, retaining their lifestyle and traditions but trading for the bronze tools and hunting knives of the modern era. Eventually, once relations were close enough, the Terus offered the Tarzak a deal: join the Dominion of Terus, but retain the ability to govern their own lands with absolute autonomy and regulate trade with other parts of the realm as they saw fit. They were also exempted from all taxes, under the one condition that a contingent of the Night Raiders would always serve as an elite unit in the Terusite military. The Tarzak, after much talk and many gifts, eventually agreed to these terms.
Military
Terusite armies consist almost entirely out of levies, with what career soldiers that exist serving as elite units. This levy system makes their armies somewhat inferior, as their forced recruiting brings the economy to a grinding halt and keeping the levies for long periods of time is difficult and leads to problems. This does have some benefit, though; having a small standing army saves the realm huge amounts of money, and the part-time levies are generally of good quality. A martial culture and religion combined with the ability to easily manufacture bronze weapons and armor on a large scale make the levy soldiers formidable enough to hold their own against most armies.
While the Terus dynasty have used unconventional tactics and warfare to great success in the past, there still exists a deep-rooted, traditional strategy that generals mainly use. Traditional Azrac armies consist of five main parts: the reserves, the rear skirmishers, the phalanxes, the sideguards, and the front skirmishers. These are arranged with the reserve a fair distance to the side and away from the fray, the front skirmishers ahead of all other troops, the phalanxes behind the front skirmishers, the sideguard on the phalanxes' flanks, and the rear skirmishers safely behind the phalanxes.
The reserve usually consists of all cavalry. If possible they are strategically placed on both sides of the army, ideally hidden from the enemy's view but still relatively close. The reserve stands ready to flank the enemy, draw out the enemy, reinforce weakening sections of the friendly army, protect the front skirmishers from a cavalry charge, or cover a retreat. Since the reserve is often out of sight they usually are summoned to the fray with some sort of sound, often a gong or horn.
The front skirmishers are the scouts ahead of all other parts of the army. They consist mainly of light footmen, mostly peltasts, but with some horse archers and other various troops mixed in for support. Inside this division one will find the Royal Skirmishers bodyguarding the general, who is generally expected to fight here on the front lines. They, sometimes with the assistance of the reserve, will be the first to engage an enemy. They sometimes fight the enemy's skirmishers in close quarters, but their main objective is to attack the enemy's heavy melee troops from a range and then retreat, breaking their formations luring them in towards the phalanxes.
The 'phalanxes' consist of levied pikemen. Each individual phalanx can consist of 280 pikemen, 8 ranks deep and 40 men abreast. At the start of the battle the individual phalanxes are spaced out so that there are gaps in the lines for the front skirmishers to retreat through. Once the front skirmishers are through the phalanxes quickly move together to form a spearwall. The pikemen use shields that are strapped to their left arm, leaving both arms free to hold their massive pikes. When raised upright the pikes resemble a forest, with each of the weapons being over twenty feet long and ended in a leaf-shaped bronze head, with splints of bronze going a way down the shaft to prevent it from being easily broken. The incredible length of the pikes mean that it is not simply the first row of men that fight, but also four behind them. The fact that there are five individual rows of pikes that must be passed before one is able to even get within range with a shorter weapon makes a frontal assault on the phalanx suicidal. Decent armor, the shields strapped to their arms, and the upright spears of the back rows all combined render projectiles surprisingly ineffective. The phalanxes' one weakness is their flanks and their utterly worthlessness in individual combat; break their formation or flank them, and the seemingly invincible pikemen will have met their match.
The sideguard mainly consist of the rich and the nobles, as they are very heavily armored with bronze plate armor and large shields. Their weapons can vary from division to division, but swords and spears (much shorter than the pikes of the phalanx) are common choices. The sideguard, as their name implies, protect the extremely vulnerable flanks of the phalanxes' spear wall.
Lastly, the rear skirmishers stand behind the phalanx, mainly consisted of archers ready to arch their projectiles over the friendly pikemen and into the midst of a charging army. Their also fulfill a second purpose; if the phalanxes are somehow broken, the rear skirmishers cover their retreat, giving the pikemen a chance to regroup and form a new spearwall further back. Once the front skirmishers retreat from the oncoming enemy and make it behind the phalanxes, they join up with the rear skirmishers.
While Azrac strategy has changed so little over the past centuries that half the world probably knows its ins and outs, it is flexible enough to not be wholly obsolete. Indeed, part of the reason that it has survived so long and become such a deep-rotted tradition is because of its effectiveness. Even if an enemy general knows what to expect, without a massive advantage, stroke of luck, or some sort of trick, decisively defeating an Azrac army without taking massive casualties would be a difficult task.
As Azraca is feudal, all men are required to pay tribute to their lords, and all lords to the monarch. During times of war, this tribute takes the form of military support. Citizens are obligated to go to war if conscripted. Some equipment is provided for the levies, but much of it also has to be purchased. In this way, the caste system is preserved; the wealthy can afford to be heavily armored, able to join the cavalry or sideguard. As a result, they have a better chance of survival than those that can only afford the equipment to join the phalanx, or worse, the skirmishers.
The levies are entitled to compensation for their services, which often takes the form of a temporary tax exemption for their families or a share of any loot. This expectation, combined with the levies' aversion to long campaigns and the toll this takes on the economy, means that lords generally try to levy only as many men as they need and dismiss them as soon as possible.
The levy system is decentralized, meaning that the lords possess the right to control their own armies, rather than have the king simply put their troops under the command of some other general that would lead them to their doom. There is a fine line with this rule; they must still do what they can to support the war effort, and disobeying direct orders from a higher noble would have consequences. This rule generally only applies when the lords' armies are acting alone; if they join up with the army of a higher noble, that noble would command the force as a whole with the lesser lords taking leadership of the flanks, vanguard, et cetera.
Sapping has never been done extensively by the Azracs and artillery is largely used for defense rather than offensive purposes. Instead, when attacking a fortified position, Terusite armies usually either storm it or infiltrate it.
From the beginning of the siege to when the surrender or infiltration occurs, the Terusites will seek to demoralize their enemy and deprive them of any rest. They do thing by making the bulk of their forces camp a fair distance away from the walls, and then having small groups approach the fortress as close as safely possible. These small groups will make as much noise as possible, subjecting the defenders to the sound of warhorns, gongs, shouting, the hammering of rocks and metal, and occasionally the screams of butchered livestock (or captives). The groups only stay for a short time before returning to camp; in this way, the siegers do not exhaust themselves but the defenders are denied rest due to the incessant sound, day in and day out. The objective is to either provoke the defenders to the point of surrendering or making a move to sally out. However, sometimes particularly stubborn defenders will resist these efforts, and the Terusites must resort to infiltration.
Their method of infiltration is as unorthodox as it is brutal. Specialized groups (the most notable being the Tarzak Night Raiders) will choose a random, dark night. It might be a day after the siege begins or a hundred days, but eventually when the defenders have left their guard down the stealth troops will come in the dead of night. Longbows (or sometimes siege crossbows, with such technology now starting to become available) are used to snipe any watchers atop the battlements. Then, a small group scale the walls with the aid of grappling hooks, and then drop bundled rope ladders down for the rest. Within minutes there can be hundreds of soldiers atop the walls. From there, it is usually a slaughter. The fortress gates are usually opened and the main army storms in while the infiltrators simultaneously move to kill the unprepared defenders. Throughout this entire time, the tired, nearly-broken defenders are continually subjected to the horns and gongs, which means they often do not even hear or see the infiltrators until it is already too late.
The massive savings from keeping a rather small standing army means that the Dominion of Terus can afford to hire mercenaries when needed. These 'mercenaries' are usually auxiliary soldiers recruited from the citizenry of any nation that will allow Terus to do so, but the Dominion of Terus keeps an open mind about such matters and would not be opposed to simply paying another nation to use their actual army, or dealing with organized mercenary companies.
Standing Army Troop Total: A standing force of 40,000 soldiers is maintained (1.25% of total population). The composition is as follows:
The lords of each of the four major cities maintain a few large retinues of guardsmen, not only to keep the peace and suppress urban unrest within the walls of the city, but also to hunt down bandits and other criminals throughout the entirety of the surrounding lands administered by the city. However, in times of war these guardsmen are sometimes sent on campaign, leaving the cities with a skeleton police force or sometimes even forcing them to use vigilante justice for the time.
They can be considered medium-heavy infantry, usually armed with a falcata and shield. Their standard wear is thin boiled leather armor topped with bronze chainmail and then a white tabard to deflect heat. They also have leather boots and bronze helmets. In the hot clime that is Azraca most humans would get heat exhaustion in this armor by merely standing around, but the Azracs' higher body temperatures and tolerance of heat mean that such fatigue is usually not an issue.
These soldiers are the closest thing to constables in Terus, and are generally loathed by the peasant class. Suspected criminals are often brutally punished without trial, the captains play politics and attempt to use their influence to gain bureaucratic positions, and the soldiers are not the best of detectives, which means they often put little effort into investigating minor cases. They are still good enough at suppressing crime, although they do so mostly out of shear brutality and intimidation. Overall, it is they more than any other division that contributes to the local unpopularity of the military.
Atarma is an Azrac word that translates roughly to 'despoiler', 'pillager', or 'butcher of men'. They are feared and respected by all, their commanders answerable to none but the Terus dynasty. Anyone rich enough to afford a few warhorses and a suit of armor for both himself and his mount (this is no small cost, easily enough to buy a house or two) can join this elite division of the army. Though the Atarma are subject to grueling training year-round, they are taken care of very well during their service, and upon eventually being honorably discharged they are granted titles of nobility and awarded a very large sum of money by the king, far more than what they originally invested in their horses and armor.
The Dominion of Terus' military is often deemed inferior to those of many realms in Tanis, for a variety of reasons. The Atarma are not so, however, and with their training and unique composite bows they are not so antiquated as one might be led to think by their bronze equipment. The Atarma are very heavy cavalry, with the horses covered by scale armor. The riders are armored from head to toe as well with bronze chainmail.
They are armed to the teeth as well. Their main weapon of choice is the composite bow, a deadly weapon capable of outranging most conventional bows. The Atarma carry multiple quivers full of both bronze tipped arrows, bodkins for their good armor penetration and broadheads for their devastating effects on lightly armored enemies. On the sides of their horses the Atarma carry shields and large bronze sabers, allowing them to cut down fleeing enemies or break apart formations by charging in. While the blades are certainly deadly, their large size and awkward curve make them unsuitable for prolonged swordfighting.
The Atarma are often the first to engage an enemy force. They usually do so by quickly moving to scare off or kill any skirmishers ahead of the melee infantry. Then, they begin to barrage the enemy with arrows. Well trained, they are usually able to loose six to ten arrows per minute, even while moving. Even if most of the arrows miss, the horse archers are able to wreak havoc. Formations are often broken as hundreds fall wounded or dead with each barrage. The maddened soldiers often resort to a disorganized charge, which the Atarma will respond to with the Parthian Shot, a technique where they retreat while continuing to fire backwards. In this way they attempt to coax the enemy into a disorganized charge towards the Terusite skirmishers and infantry, which would ideally be able to easily overpower the demoralized and winded rabble that reached them. Sometimes the Atarma will take opportunity to further break apart formations through charges of their own. When this happens, they will attack the flanks of the formation, cutting down or trampling a few footmen before hastily retreating, as prolonged melee is risky and generally not worth it.
(Yes, I know that my rolls say the infantry to cavalry ratio is about 15:1. Keep in mind that this is just the professional army, though. In war the vast majority of the army would consist of levies, which would be almost all footmen, so that ratio would be accurate.)
Their name is somewhat misleading, as they do not necessarily serve the Terus family. Rather, the Azrac kings and other nobility have the unusual tradition of leading their troops in battle, not from atop a horse or behind the lines, but amongst the lightly armored skirmishers that engage the enemy before the melee infantry. This is by far the most dangerous and visible place to be on the battlefield, so a general fighting with the skirmishers demonstrates his bravery and makes the soldiers confident in their victory (unless the general is slain before his entire army, which has occasionally happened to disastrous effect). The Royal Skirmishers are the general's best men and personal bodyguard unit, so needless to say they are a force to be reckoned with and much more dangerous than the rest of the thousands of levy skirmishers that fight in any major battle.
They are lightly armored by the standards of normal infantry, but exceptionally heavy for skirmishers. They wear bronze helmets but the rest of their armor is made of thick, layered cotton hardened by brine, very light but still just barely sturdy enough to stop an arrow some of the time. They carry and shield and two throwing bronze javelins in their left hand, their first throwing javelins in their right hand, and carry a shortsword on their hip.
Their bronze javelins are deadly even against heavily armored enemies, and with their sword, shield, and helmet they are usually able to win a close-quarters fight with the enemy's skirmishers if they must. They never attempt to engage heavier infantry in melee if at all possible, and once they run out of javelins they retreat back behind their side's infantry.
Young orcs, eager to prove themselves and with a natural talent for violence, often leave their tribes to form warbands that offer their services to the various lords of the realm. These orcs have been influenced by Azrac warriors, adopting the fearsome and widely used composite bows in addition to bronze weapons and armor. These orcish warbands are far less uniform than all the other divisions of the standing army. Some auxiliaries consist of berserkers that fulfill the role of heavy shock troops, whereas others use traditional orcish tactics and weaponry to fulfill the purpose of raiders and outriders. In any case, all of the orcish warbands are well equipped and good at what they do.
Strictly members of the small yet fierce Tarzak tribe from the remote rainforests of an equally remote valley, the Night Raiders are experts at guerilla warfare. They serve as scouts, rangers, assassins, trackers, ambushers, and almost always are the ones sent to infiltrate enemy forts via grappling hook during sieges. The Tarzak wear dark green clothing that blends in well with vegetation and blends in with the shadows at night.
Living a dangerous hunter-gatherer lifestyle in dense rainforests, the Tarzak possess a talent for moving undetected as suits their role. They make use of the longbow rather than the composite bow favored by the rest of Azraca, as the humidity of their jungle home damages the glue in composite bows and renders them worthless. Regardless, they are capable or using their considerably larger longbows to snipe with great accuracy. Lightly armored, aside from their longbows they usually fight with nothing more than their large hunting knives. This is rarely a problem, as primarily they rely upon stealth and shining armor and huge weapons would only hinder their work.
Strazari is an Azrac word that translates roughly to 'watcher', or 'guardian'. The Strazaris are the wardens of the realm, patrolling the borders and dealing with any who would seek to enter the Dominion of Terus. The Strazari, along with some local militias from border villages, man the many defensive fortifications scattered throughout the realm.
In terms of equipment, the Strazari wear a combination of bronze, leather, and cloth tabards, their uniforms almost identical to those of the city guards. However, the Strazari are widely considered a step up from the city guard, as they are both better trained and better paid. They are trained to be proficient with shields, spears, swords, bows, riding, and occasionally even sailing and maritime warfare. This makes them rather flexible in terms of tactics and abilities, which is good seeing as they must fulfill a variety of roles. They patrol the borders on horseback, skirmish with bands trying to cross the border, defend fortresses when the realm is invaded, and hunt down pirates.
Army: The land forces consist of the aforementioned standing troops, in addition to levies. In the most dire of times, such as defending the realm during a foreign invasion, the Dominion of Terus could levy nearly all of its male population and raise an army of over a million, but arming, supplying, and directing them all would be difficult and the sheer amount of lost manpower would halt most work and devastate the economy for years to come.
Navy: The Dominion of Terus maintains a small fleet of less than a hundred ships operated by the Strazari, mainly used to hunt down pirates. This miniscule fleet would be no match against the navy of most nations; however all of the four major cities happen to be ports. This means that between the fishing vessels, merchant ships, and small transport boats that travel up and down rivers, the Dominion of Terus can conscript thousands of ships with all of their sailors if needed.
Since the Azracs are not known for being good shipbuilders and most of these ships were not designed for warfare in the first place, their wartime navy is considered inferior. Their ships are not meant for ramming and very rarely have mounted artillery of any sort. In naval battles the Terusites try to win with overwhelming numbers, placing dozens of soldiers on the decks of each of their ships. These soldiers either attempt to board enemy ships or set them ablaze by firing burning arrows or throwing fire pots.
Because they are not built for warfare, many of the ships would be sunk if they were simply rammed by an actual warship. Naval warfare is so dangerous and so many boats sink that it is generally avoided if at all possible. When it must occur, the Azracs usually bring small rafts and lifeboats aboard the larger vessels, so that there is at least a chance of survival for those that have their boats rammed.
Other:
Other Special traits, remarks, boons and flaws
ESSENTIALS
Population Density (Population - 3,200,000) - Regionally Dense; A good amount of manpower for the military and economic purposes, with social infrastructure strained more at a regional basis. Civic projects range from affordable to expensive. The nation requires a stronger economy to sustain itself.
Economy - Stagnation - The economy is performing adequately, though there is room for improvement. There are certain limitations on the economy that are bottlenecking real growth, such as a restriction in investment capital or insufficient demand, however. There is some unemployment and economic unhappiness among people in the lower income brackets, and there is a degree of criticism in what can go wrong, even if it hasn't gone wrong yet.
Urbanisation - Large Cities: There are a few very large cities with population in the tens of thousands; however, the rest of the land is mostly rural. Some smaller towns are dotted across the map, with population of several hundred to one or two thousand.
Technology - Slowly Modernizing: The industrial infrastructure is in the process of improvement, and this is a teething process. But the economy is seeing increased activity because of this investment. New technologies are becoming domestically available. However, there is a degree of dependence on imports, including in terms of the expertise to modernize the economy. Metallurgy is limited to bronze products.
Domestic Political Stability - Urban unrest
GEOGRAPHY Largely consists of hills and forest, some tropical areas
RESOURCES
Mineral Deposits - Rich deposits of metals and minerals such as copper, lead, coal, usable stone.
Valuable Mineral Deposits - Trace deposits of rare earth metals.
Unique Materials - dyes, leather, sugar
Agriculture - crop and cattle based, food surplus that is decreasing over time
MILITARY
Military Focus - inferior army and navy, ranged focus, bad infantry and cavalry ratio (15:1)
Military Recruitment - Forced recruitment
Reliability - Levies are of decent quality; generals play politics, decentralized
Military Size - small core of professional units: requires some upkeep, easy to equip/supply quickly, seasonal levies
Military Technology - Antiquated, your nation lags behind the rest of the world, and stubbornly clings to ancient traditions.
Military Training and Morale - Highly Trained; Low Morale, levies are of decent quality but low morale
Military Leadership - Competent; Rose to their positions through experience and battlefield exploits; decadent
Military Reputation - Unpopular domestically; considered devious by foreigners
Siege Equipment - practically non-existent, instead your army relies on grappling hooks and infiltration
I'm assuming you want us to run them through you. These are what I came up with:
Pro: Healers of the Faith: Most holy men and other members of the clergy are adept healers. Ancient knowledge of various medicines and treatments has survived, passed down as a part of the holy texts. Still like other places in that a mere cut can be life threatening due to infection, knowledge of antiseptics and various herbal treatments, as well as some forms of crude surgery, mean one's chances are substantially better here.
Con: Slash and Burn Agriculture: As the most common form of farming, this is unsustainable and bad for the longevity of the nation. Valuable woodlands are rapidly destroyed to make way for new farmland, and overfarming soon exhausts the soil's fertility and forces the farmers to travel even further away to find new woodlands to burn. Many of the forests in the country are already gone or under threat, and as the years go by the farmers are bring forced to move farther and farther away from the cities that need their produce.
Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like [s]12 years ago[/s] 2010-ish!
I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.
[center]Word of my splendor:[/center]
[hider=My messenger's letter][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019b0090-4706-75b9-bfe5-fd4ef6737466.webp[/img][/hider]
[hider=My fellow monarch's response][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019b0090-a418-774f-a117-1ae23ac670fd.webp[/img][/hider]
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, I got started with writing online on the Spore forums. Man, those were the days. We're talking like <span class="bb-s">12 years ago</span> 2010-ish!<br><br>I've been here on and off for almost as long, and have GM'd a bunch of different things to varying success.<br><br><div class="bb-center">Word of my splendor:</div><br><div class="hider-panel"><div class="hider-heading"><button type="button" class="btn btn-default btn-xs hider-button" data-name="My messenger's letter">My messenger's letter [+]</button></div><div class="hider-body" style="display: none"><img src="https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019b0090-4706-75b9-bfe5-fd4ef6737466.webp" /></div></div><br><div class="hider-panel"><div class="hider-heading"><button type="button" class="btn btn-default btn-xs hider-button" data-name="My fellow monarch's response">My fellow monarch's response [+]</button></div><div class="hider-body" style="display: none"><img src="https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019b0090-a418-774f-a117-1ae23ac670fd.webp" /></div></div></div>
Lord Zee
Vec
JFK
Fetzen
Thayr
BingTheWing
Member
