Cyclone

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

Well, I tried to fill out the religion part of the sheet today but hit massive writer's block. I can't even settle on a name for the one god that I was going to make.

It was tempting to just name it Tengri after the Turkish god that inspired the religion I'm trying to make, but that name doesn't feel quite right. Anybody better than me at names have an idea?

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

@Sini

Just curious, how big exactly is Tanis? And by extension about how big do you think Azraca would be? Maybe around the size of Spain?

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

I just added more spoilers to my sheet for organization and explained the general military tactics used. Perhaps I'm putting too much love into this sheet, because it's already taken me a few days and I'm only about halfway done.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

@Winston Smith

A sex joke? Oh cum on.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

@OneEyedChurro

That sounds right. I'll say more or less the same thing somewhere in my sheet, maybe with the added detail explaining how the Arhusians did manage to raze one city (I want to have a ruined city for plot and thematic reasons, but feel like I need to explain how it came to be) and cause some significant damage more being repelled, and maybe add a few details about how exactly they managed to beat off the Arhusians.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

@OneEyedChurro

It's probably been so long that neither really hold the war against each other. The trade route is too profitable and a friendship is more useful than some sort of bitter rivalry.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

@OneEyedChurro

Whether or not the Azracs eventually won the war after losing that city is up to you; it would impact your nation's history much more than mine, though, as successfully pushing that claim would result in an Azrac king over either Arman.

In either case, I have an idea. While Arman was being invaded, their allies Arhus came to the rescue by mounting a counterattack against the invaders' lands that eventually resulting in that one city being razed. However, once the Dominion of Terus got pulled into the war to support that tiny little independent state, they were reluctant to waste thousands of lives and countless amounts of money and effort in order to equip an army big enough to defeat the formidable Arhusians in open battle. So they resorted to skulldoggery like guerrilla warfare and assassinations to chase out the Arhusian army before it managed to do much further damage. They doubtlessly would have used the Tarzaks for such work, which would probably lead to the Terusite military gaining a reputation as being devious.

The Tarzaks, an excerpt from my sheet

The Tarzak Tribe -
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 executed every last one of the survivors, leaving their heads in a gruesome pile before returning to their foreboding jungle.

Whether the Azrac guy invading Arman was successful during this (somewhat) failed campaign by the Arhusians would be up to you to decide.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

Sure, that sounds reasonable. If the lord of that ruined city married the daughter of the ruler of either Arman or Arhus. Then if all the princes died and the kingdom had to be inherited down one of the female lines, I could see that independent lord pushing a claim for his children against some inbred that he wouldn't consider a threat.

Of course, in the resulting war he would end up having his city razed and probably end up joining the Dominion of Terus in an attempt to keep what little land was left of his realm. At that point reinforcements from the Dominion would probably be able to repel the invaders.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

There's some rather considerable distance between your two nations, which eliminates expansion as an easy excuse for war. One side (or both) would probably have had to been very, very angry with the other in order to mount enough effort to send large armies that far.

Otherwise, a mere cold war and political interference would probably have been the more sensible eventuality.

@Terminal

A fair point, though distance did little to discourage Spanish conquistadores from sacking civilizations across the world in search of wealth. Britain (well, to be honest mostly the EITC under the name of their home country) conquered and ruled India just for its wealth. If Churro's guys opportunistically attacked and looted that currently ruined city, it could havd been for similar reasons. If so they would have gotten plenty of that gold, though probably to bad effect once there was a retaliation.

@Sini

I would imagine they have lived in the general vicinity for a long time, as I doubt their four huge cities are very new and in any case it's been long enough for them to evolve into something of a sub-race of human. Maybe if we went back far enough to when some were still semi-nomadic animal shepherds, ther could have been one or two bands that strayed farther north and encountered te ancient precursors of the Commonwealth.

@OneEyedChurro

Terus similarly has not existed as such for a terribly long time. About 200 years ago they vassalized the last regions and unifed Azraca. The further you go back from there, the more divided the region was.

An Age of Empires [Low Fantasy - Advanced]

I'm about halfway done with my sheet. I'd be glad to write some history with you, perhaps there was a war between our nations sometime between 100-300 years ago?

My soldiers are supposed to be considered devious by foreigners, and I'd like to have a historical explanation for that. I haven't written about specific locations yet, but I was going to have the ruins of a fifth city to the northwest of the current border, and a bunch of fortifications guarding the current border. A particularly bloody war sometime in the far past could explain all of these things.