Typhonian Reach Gazetteer

Brief Notes

Ashada/Bitumen Kings

No Bronze Age analog, really; probably more Wild West oil barons than anything else. Bitumen was a big deal in Sumeria, but I felt like I was putting too much into the delta and needed some stuff for the north, so I moved them here.

Comet Tribes

They're called this because their coming is like the comet (bad news). Wild hill people. Basically the Gutians and, if unchecked, will morph into the something like the Hittites and eventually the Assyrians (unless Tolundria gets there first). This is an ogre-haunted wasteland, so the Comet Tribes are tough.

Ctesh

Egypt-chopped-up-into-three Part One. Has the desert but not the river. Uses the various colored sandstones of the Wastes to build crazy multicolored pyramids.

Dagath-El and Malkut-El

Cities of the Red Dye People (forgot to put that on the map). Phoenicians but with liberal borrowings from the Carthage of Flaubert's Salammbo. In a twist on “governance by the old,” I thought I would have these guys governed by sacred child-rulers – you reign (heavily moderated by a council of oligarchs) from the time you can talk until 18, at which time you’re sacrificed and a new toddler-ruler is crowned.

Desolation of Gebel

Book of Exodus fever dream -- crazed hermits, savage tribes, ogres, jackals, scorpions, leucrottas, lamias and manticores (which are the female and male children of the Five Sphinxes). In a way it’s kind of the anti-Journeying Word in that it’s preternaturally easy to get lost there.

Flayed Lands

Yellowstone/Painted Desert on acid – wildly striated mesas, geysers, prismatic mineral lakes, towering crystal spikes everywhere, craters where meteors pounded the place. The biggest baddest tribe of Aztec-y/Zuni types dominates the others, takes them to the Great Rift and makes them mine uber-sharp crystals for use as weapons. Also dinosaurs because dinosaurs kick ass. And since many of the meteors are radioactive, you have mutants there too. Probably teenagers as well, and even some iridescent tortoises, but no ninjas.

Juggernaut Tribes

Pretty standard plains nomads of various influences (Scythians, Sioux, etc.), but they domesticate the spawn of Nur-Gur (baluchitherium, titanothere), so unlike the typical hit-and-run nomad skirmishers, these guys just run you over. If the campaign does not feature at least one chariot-vs.-baluchitherium battle like the Pelennor Fields fight in Jackson's Return of the King, I will be sorely disappointed.

Kainiso (no longer Aedifice)

Crete as psychedelic-ed up by listening to that old Cream song “Tales of Brave Ulysses” on repeat -- and because they built atop anak ruins, there's even a labyrinth. Pottery, dolphins, nautical. The pretty people of the sea-foam that everyone else hates.

Kur-et-Kur

Kubla Khan from Coleridge's eponymous poem meets Peter the Great: a mercenary Khal Drogo type who saw the wealth of the delta, went back home and is now engaging in an insane Ozymandius (Shelley, not Watchmen) project/scavenger hunt to build the Greatest Citeh Evar. He’s getting advice from a Sphinx on how to do this, which never ends well.

Locust Tribes

No particular influences, just locusts are biblical and apocalyptic and they (and their arthropod-leviathan god Girtab) are Famine writ large. Maybe a little Immortan Joe/War Boys/scarcity-porn.

Lotus Coast

It wouldn’t be sword & sorcery without some hot wet place you can go to get lotuses with weird magical properties. This is where I can get my Clark Ashton Smith on ala “The Demon of the Flower” and “The Garden of Adompha.” Although Anka will just wave her hand and say, “Behave, silly plant-monster.”

Ni Xhin

Shanghai time-warped back to the Xia Dynasty. The general region is kind of Three Kings and Five Emperors-era China, minus the emperors. I’m trying as hard as I can to keep this Bronze Age/oracle-bone/dagger-ax China and not wuxia/imperial China, with exceptions for Rule of Cool.

The Nin-Sish/Father Torrent Delta (Lower Alluvial Delta, Nin, Neb, Zin)

The Greater Sumerian Meta-Culture, time-sliced from Ubaid through Kassites or so, and mixed with Dunsany's ever-squabbling "cities of the plain" in The Gods of Pegana. The Lower Delta people are seen as weird, especially since one city overthrew the lugals in favor of the outlander Illuminos. Nin is the most civilized/stuck-up, Zin are more backward pastoralist types who think the other delta people are decadent and effete, Neb are farmers and kind of in the middle. Each city-state is defiantly individualistic, and every city-state has horrible, obscene stereotypes of every other city-state and region (Zinti fornicate with goats, Nebites fornicate with donkeys, etc.). The plain is perennially torn apart by donkey-chariot-wars between the cities like giant rival sports teams. Bonus points for killing someone with the jawbone of an ass.

Nutu-Thep

Egypt-chopped-up-into-three Part Two. Builds obelisks with enormous Eye of Horus-type (False Sun) glyphs and has a nasty secret police/spy/assassin network called the Eyes, which infiltrate the surrounding cities and help the city’s Tyrant of the Eye stay in power. Like Ta-Waret, is into the whole snake-cult thing, but reveres the rock cobra rather than the swamp mamba of Ta-Waret.

Pariah Coast Cities

The other peoples of the Levant as seen through the eyes of intolerant Israelite prophets. Slavery, human sacrifice, Sodom and Gomorrah, idolatrous (leviathan) gods and Tehomic demons. Formerly part of the Nin-Sish Delta culture, the Pariahs were exiled into the Desolation, wandered through it at great cost, and made it to the opposite coast. This has left the Pariah cities with a bit of a grudge against the Delta. Also… and the cause of the exile… whereas the Delta Cities revere the Prophets (Order of the Bright Eye), the Pariahs heed the Blasphemers (Curse-Eaters).

Pashenj and Melu

Indus River Valley culture mixed with a bit of Petra -- rock-carved walls and the beginnings of aqueducts to get water from the river to the stone cities. Fantastic stonemasons, and while the overall area is kind of arid I think they use rudimentary hydraulic engineering to make their own cities practically gardens. I love the Indus River Valley Civs, but given their placement near the Locusts I kind of don’t hold out much hope for these guys.

The People of the Wastes

Pre-Islamic Arabians meet indigenous Australians with a liberal helping of Mad Max. Many are jinn (humans with the Common Talent Desert Survival). The Venom Clans especially were inspired by my wife’s comment while watching a documentary on Australian fauna: “Every living thing in Australia is trying to kill you.”

Scylax People

No cultural analog in particular, I just saw a documentary on mantis shrimp and how murderously vicious they are and thought, “Damn, dire mantis shrimp would be badass. And people who hunt dire mantis shrimp would be even more badass. And it’s an excuse to have one society where heavy armor actually gets used a lot. And that bay happens to look like a pincer claw, so…”

The Shaking Lands

Mycenaean + proto-Etruscan, heavy on the chthonic influences (many still worship Typhon) because of the earthquakes that periodically crack up the place. The Shaking Lands city-states are expert Cyclopean-style builders because their cities have to survive earthquakes.

Silk Tribes

When everyone thinks silk in a fantasy world they think of China, so I wanted to go a different route with various clans that domesticate giant silkworms (probably a repurposed velvet worm from Yoon-Suin) and spiders. A little bit inspired by the Worm Tamers from Nausicaa.

Ta-Waret

Egypt-chopped-up-into-three Part Three. Has the river but not the desert - I'm keeping the classic sword & sorcery snake-cult stuff but overlaying it with some New Orleans-y voodoo -- Damballah instead of Set, so to speak. They use big barges to travel the Great Apopha and try to domesticate hippopotamuses and river makara (mosasaur-crocodiles), but this often ends in tears.

The Termite Clans

Savannah dwellers who domesticate dire termites to build towering fortresses from which they hunt game and one another.

The Various "U-" Cities

Olmec/pre-Classical Mayan, down to the ballgame. Obsidian, jade, rubber, chocolate. Stingray-spine ritual bloodletting. Volcano sacrifices didn't actually happen in Mesoamerica but they're in there because Rule of Cool. Come to think of it, speaking of stingrays... since I'm repurposing/reinterpreting a lot of classic Monster Manual beasts, I might be the first GM in history to actually use the ixitzachitl.