Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

=The Western Kingdoms=

Beyond where the western Drakkath meets the rising mountains of the Sarokean range, three nations that have stood since the Dawn War hold sway.  All three are kingdoms, in that they are ruled by singular monarchs, even if not all of these sovereigns are referred to as kings (and indeed, in Grum-Tarath, those called Kings are something entirely different).  In the late Dawn Age, the Drakkath Empire held a number of watch-bastions amongst the Sarokean mountains, and a swathe of what is now Naseria was a Drakkath satrap that reached as far as the coast of the Malachite Sea; the people of the mountains are of Drakkath stock, but those of the lowlands of Naseria and Carthagia are of more distinct ancestry that sets them apart from the people of the eastern lands. 

The lowlands of the western kingdoms escaped the worst of the Dawn War's rigours, but in the centuries since they have suffered their fair share of strife and disorder.  Not only have Carthagia and Naseria long feuded with each other, sometimes going so far as outright warfare to settle their differences, but both have clashed with polities that seem quite distant to those of the eastern Drakkath - trade and maritime squabbles with Masked Kateni city-states, religious conflicts with the Irgut, raids and retaliations with the grim Steel Consulate.  All three kingdoms were affected by the emergence of the Dread Marches, and have all faced their own internal and external struggles with servitors and aggressive creatures of strange or dire nature.  Carthagia faces the Wasteland itself, while Naseria and Grum-Tarath must now contend with the renewed threat of Ascaria.

It is generally held that the echoes of the great elemental creation of the world are more visible here in the western kingdoms than in other regions of the Drakkath.  The reasons for this are disputed, but at least one widely-supported academic theory is that these lands were the site of a great workshop of energy and terraforming where the Great Elementals themselves tweaked and perfected their geological handiwork, and so as the stones of a smithy become cracked and ingrained with soot and ash, so the very fabric of reality here still shimmers with the memory of immense elemental engines.  To the eye of a layman there is perhaps little to note, except that elemental weather phenomena and volcanic activity seem slightly more common than in neighbouring lands, but to those with elemental arcane senses, the landscape is one with a rich, vibrant tapestry of raw and fundamental power.

There are several Younger Gods worshipped or acknowledged within the western kingdoms who are less commonly known east of the Sarokean mountains.  Reverence of the deities in question is largely due to influence from lands further west; the imposing bulk of the Sarokean range itself may have much to do with why their faiths have not yet spread into the central Drakkath.  There is fierce doctrinal debate over whether these gods are actually just aspects or faces of existing Younger Gods or whether they are truly independent figures within the Host of Heaven.

Temeshwun, Younger God of dance, murder and patterns, is said to have been a man from the culture that would become the Masked Kateni and who killed many loyal-mad-kings who sided with the Elder Gods in the Dawn War with his enticing dance and void-edged knives; there is argument that he may be an aspect of Churaphrat, but the Lord of Dance and Murder is commonly worshipped as an equal figure (either lover or brother) to the Lady of Death and Mercy.  Phrenesia, the Younger God of breath, metal, embers and artifice, is a powerful matriarch in western depictions of the Host of Heaven but there are very strong indications that she is an aspect of Solanthaar (or possibly vice-versa).  Finally, Ishurtar the Lady of Dust and Ashes is the Younger God of corrosion, dust, erosion and entropy - the weathering hand of time rather than the organic rot of Kevayek; she is said to be the child of Grumand and Ishrak, although it isn't clear whether she is a true Younger God or some sort of lesser aspect of Ishrak, Grumand or Churaphrat (or possibly all three), especially since she was said to be born during the latter stages of the Dawn War and only excarnated in the first decades of the Zenith Age, making her the last deity to ever ascend to the Host by a clearance of many years.


==The Sarokean Mountains==

The Sarokeans split the Drakkath from the western lands that border the Malachite Sea; a great expanse of rocky peaks, rugged valleys, plateaus and sheltering gorges.  This is no thin barrier wall; the range is wide.  In the north, it tapers off where the north-western Reaches meet the Indigo Marches; to the south, its bulky line eventually twists south-west before breaking apart into a scattering of lone peaks that pierce far into the Ascarian tundra.  Also known as the 'Wall of Sarok' or the 'Work of Sarok', whoever or whatever Sarok may have been, the Sarokean mountains are an ancient range that bear the marks of the very beginnings of the world upon their spine.

Much of the range is uncontrolled by any great polity or nation, but while it is a wild and often dangerous landscape it would be incorrect to consider it as bereft of inhabitants.  Innumerable small settlements litter the mountains, from high monasteries to small farming communities eking out an existence amidst steep terraced fields.  Many of these settlements cluster around the Trods of Grumand, the series of passes and passable valleys that wind through the range; the Trods are considered to be gifts from Grumand itself, with the claim to status as a Trod being based on particular unusual colours of rock in the passes.  Far away from the Trods, other settlements do exist; some are enclaves that desire isolation, a few whispered to be Nephian communities, while others are opportunistic prospector-towns around mines.

The mountains are littered with signs of the past.  Here and there, rises and valleys are littered with bones or the last, rusting remnants of weaponry - nameless battles fought in the Dawn War.  Several sites identified as Umbral have been located, though most appear to be utter ruins and look like they were destroyed by powerful siege weapons.  Ancient temples to forgotten Elders lie empty, the wind howling through their corridors.  A series of immense gouges in the earth, the Smoke Pits, mark where once Elder servitors tore vast amounts of minerals from the earth; some still smoke and fume, and travellers' report signs that they are inhabited even now by strange, chittering creatures.

Goblin clans are a widespread presence in the mountains, along with rare reports of giants; both goblins and giants are known to cluster around certain old Elder temple ruins in particular.  There are brooding, fuming volcanoes in several areas of the Sarokeans, and a number of lizardman tribes are known to make their homes around these fiery peaks.  Dreadspawn and other Dread Marches beasts are another problem; the Shadowfury's vanguard reached as far as the western kingdoms, and when defeated a great number of surviving creatures fled into the mountains.  Various winged beasts are known to roost in the mountains; hippogriffs, chimerae, drazhikar, wyverns and even dragons have been reported, though the latter claims are of very dubious provenance.

Trolls, however, are a real danger.  Common lore has it that trolls were created from part of the corpse of Hashrukk the Daemonflesh when the Elder was defeated; this may have been the fate of a younger species that was corrupted by the Daemonflesh carcass.  Consistent rumours mention some form of 'higher' or 'true' troll found in some extremely remote areas of the Sarokeans, the remainders of whatever civilisation became troll-kind.  Unfortunately, the debased, incredibly resilient monstrosities that are the trolls of today are also smart, smart enough to be a real threat to surrounding powers.  All three of the western kingdoms have battled trolls over the centuries, with the Great Ember War of some four centuries ago marking the greatest conflict of such a kind - one that scarred the entire region.  Scholarly taxonomy of trolls has identified four broad sub-species - fire, stone, iron and the very rare obsidian trolls - but the species in general seems highly prone to mutation and new breeds emerging.


==Grum-Tarath==

'''Icons''':  The Eagle King

The origins of Grum-Tarath are hazy; it appears to have existed even during the time of the Drakkath Empire, although then only as a barely-tolerated coalition of tribesmen and highlanders who lived in regions of the Sarokeans that were too remote to bother conquering.  However, the isolated mountain clans acted early in the Dawn War, throwing in their lot with the Younger Gods and beginning a campaign of terror and raiding on the lowlanders of Drakkath.  Tradition has it that Grumand spoke to the Grum-Tarathi early in the War as they were the great spirit's favoured people; even today, Iron Prophets claim to hear the faint whisperings and rumblings of Grumand's thoughts from deep below the mountain range.

Grum-Tarath spans a number of loosely interconnected valleys, plateaus and high mountain enclaves scattered through a portion of the southern Sarokean mountains; it's easy for the nation to become isolated even from itself by attacks, bad weather or geological activity.  In the face of this, the nation's culture focuses on order, a place for everyone, duty and responsibility; even if cut off from the greater kingdom for months or years, a Grum-Tarathi town will operate autonomously and yet not diverge from the wider nation's society.  Young Tarathi are assigned to a caste and role during their coming of age; aptitudes and character play a significant part in this, but so do the needs of the greater settlement.  Grum-Tarath is ruled by a Potentate, currently the wily Kurshan Umh-Drage; the royal family is hereditary in nature, forming a caste unto themselves.  Something that outsiders can find confusing is that the Five Waterfall Kings are not, in fact, kings of the nation; the Potentate is the ruler and has no equals.  Below him or her, society is governed by Elders, many of whom are Grumand clergy.  These Elders are all part of the Stone Assembly, although a full meeting of the Assembly is rare and small groups of Elders will gather and discuss matters as is necessary.  This shifting, ad-hoc nature of Grum-Tarath legislature is anchored by the Potentate, whose word is final on the Assembly's requests or demands.

This mountain nation is home to an unusually high concentration of monastic and martial traditions, particularly those focusing around the Four Elemental Paths.  Grum-Tarath has little in the way of actual military forces, raising a levy from the common people when necessary; instead, the elemental sects are expected to provide their acolytes and adepts to help deal with conflicts.  This has resulted in a certain amount of tension between the Stone Assembly and the cloister and sect leaders, in particular the heads of the five most powerful sects, called the Waterfall Kings.  The Assembly rules society but the Waterfall Kings are the most highly respected figures in the world of martial practice and elemental focus, and it is they who hold the key to Grum-Tarath's military defence.  The Five Waterfall Kings are not beholden to the Assembly nor the Potentate; and these old masters and mistresses include certain capricious or whimsical personalities shaped by a lifetime of dedication to a philosophy or esoteric practice.

Even today, Grum-Tarath remains relatively isolated.  It is not entirely cut off from the world, and there is a steady trickle of petitioners seeking the tutelage of the elemental sects and traders seeking the rich mineral wealth of the high mountains (and the ivory feathers of the rare araki-bird) but for most of the Drakkath, Grum-Tarath remains a remote and distant place.  Visitors often marvel at the major settlements; Tarathi take great pride and honour in the carving and decorating of rock and stone, and since their larger towns are generally excavated and hewn out of the rock, this can result in some breath-takingly beautiful and ornate structures.  The sheer amount of excavation necessary means that it is commonly believed that the Tarathi Elders are sitting on a cache of Elder tunneling technology or some other sort of eldritch science, and some of the deep cathedrals and defensive fortifications hint that there may be truth to this claim.  Many settlements have been designed so that, in case of great danger, the entire population can retreat into their chambers and galleries and seal themselves off from the surface world entirely, or escape via long tunnels that emerge leagues away in the mountains.  Grum-Tarath culture includes many tales of isolated settlements that held out for generations against outside threats that could not pierce the surface defences.

Another common claim about the Tarathi, this one far less savoury, is that they practice ritual cannibalism.  It's true that in such remote landscapes, the supply of food and resources is a tenuous thing that must be carefully balanced; it's also likely that, at some point, towns and villages that have been cut off probably have resorted to such in desperation.  However, these claims probably stem from the Tarathi custom of bone-carving and ancestor ivory.  There are various ways by which the dead are reduced to bones; some Tarathi ethnicities offer their dead up to the beasts of the skies atop small sky-burial towers, while other settlements undertake ritual mortuary rites to boil and strip the flesh away.  The resulting bones are taken by family members or friends and carved with marks of reverence and memory of the life of the dead figure; these are installed in subterranean ancestor galleries, carried as charms or used as adornment on furniture and other decoration.  Promising one's skull to another person not of the family is a major Tarathi show of respect, love and gratitude; several Potentates have, through history, promised their skulls to heroes in thanks for their actions.

Tel-Turathun, the most holy of sites in Grum-Tarath, is said to be where Grumand spoke to the first Iron Prophets and ordered them to take up the banner of war against the Elders.  Tel-Turathan is where the Stone Assembly itself is located, an immense subterranean parliament-chamber hewn from the rock (by Grumand's own hands, as per the legend) and is also site of a large temple-complex that makes up the largest centre of Grumandic worship in the entire Drakkath and probably far beyond.  It is one of the most accessible and most visited by outsiders of all the Tarathi settlements, and offers a host of wonders for those who come to pray; glorious stone temples filled with gleaming gemstone decorations, vast carved trenches and chasms that split the city into tiers, the rising bulk of the Potentate Fortress and, most shockingly of all, the Conquered - four massive orbs of rock and metal hovering in the air over the settlement, with no obvious means of suspension.  The Tarathi say that the Conquered were hurled by the Elder Gods, but Grumand's mastery over iron and stone exceeded even theirs, and he caught them before their moment of impact.  Now, the Conquered serve as the most holy and protected of Grumandic sanctuaries, accessed by balloon or the lifts that have been built into them; inside, they have been hollowed out into structures, rumoured to be filled with secure vaults, warded meeting rooms and the personal chapels of the Iron Prophets themselves.


==The Iragian Plateau==

In the northern part of the range, the Iragian Plateau is a notorious expanse of high land that is widely avoided by travellers and, upon occasion, referred to as 'the Western Dread Marches' as a macabre joke.  Once, in the Dawn Age, a small civilisation known as the Iraji dwelt here, making their home on the high plateau.  During the Dawn War, a particularly ferocious series of battles erupted across the Plateau that reduced it to a ruined battlescape, littered with the carcasses and detritus of thousands of humans and servitors and apparently wiping out the Iraji in the process; now, the ruins of their cities and vaults stand as great monoliths of obsidian, mementos to a long-dead people.

In the aftermath of the Dread Marches' rise and defeat, a great number of the surviving creatures of the Shadowfury's western armies scattered throughout the Sarokeans; many of the undead amongst them made their way to the Iragian Plateau, where now they haunt the bone-littered wilds - tormented ghosts, feral ghul-packs and lumbering warp-husks roam the wasteland.  Most sane souls keep far from the blighted Plateaul, but a few reports from particularlty brave or foolish travellers indicate that there are a few signs of organisation emerging against these unshackled undead, and that at night one can see baleful lights glimmering amongst the ruins of the ancient Iraji fortresses.


==High Caldera==

High Caldera is a mystery - a vast, fortified city besieged by trolls, its inhabitants completely unknown to the outside world.  The city is the actual rim of a caldera lake that fumes and steams with chemical mists; the entirety of the ridge around it has been sculpted and carved into a huge defensive position, presumably protecting underground galleries and chambers wherein the defenders dwell - if any still live.  From the reports of travellers and Naserian scouts, the valleys around High Caldera play host to a great number troll clans, some of which dwell in settlements wrought from the shattered husks of similar, smaller structures to High Caldera.  These trolls are said to undertake irregular and futile assaults on the city's massive fortifications, never gaining any sort of purchase or breaching the vaults within.  There is no sign of any military force sallying out to fight them; whoever was within, they are either dead or utterly reliant on the impregnable bastion in which they dwell.

The background of High Caldera is disputed.  At first, travellers who discovered this dangerous location assumed it to be a Grum-Tarathi settlement cut off from the kingdom, but the Tarathi themselves deny this and the style of the fortress is unlike that of the Tarathi.  Another tale has it that the caldera is where one of the corrupting fragments of Hashrukk's carcass came to rest, and this was the cause of the creation of the trolls; that whoever dwelled in High Caldera were the precursors to troll-kind, utterly warped into the monstrous creatures that now roam the mountains.  This, however, does not explain why the trolls are besieging High Caldera.  Some accounts indicate that, like the Iraji, the people of High Caldera were a small civilisation that buried itself away during the Dawn War, utterly isolated from the outside world but, unlike the Iraji, successfully surviving.

A very, very few tales of people who claimed to have entered High Caldera exist, mostly presumed fictitious (especially as they regularly contradict each other).  Stories speak of galleries of gold and jewels, of a strange human people dwelling within who breath smoke and fire, of some sort of 'noble troll' species within, of massive Elder machines or of crude, primitive caverns covered in paintings, of thick flows of tar and ooze channeled through the city like canals; one fanciful story, probably entirely the creation of a playwright, has it that High Caldera is the domain of the Mephit-King, to whom all mephits pay homage (ask a mephit about the Mephit-King and they're likely to be utterly bemused, though that's not much different from the usual mephit state of mind).

The region around High Caldera is incredibly rich in minerals and the wealth of the earth, but the trolls here are well organised and watchful.  Naserian nobles would direly love to claim the region, drive the trolls out and profit from the industry that would follow, but the military might needed to achieve such a goal would be massive; hard to justify with the looming threat of Carthagia.


==Carthagia==

'''Icons''': The Manipulator-General

Land of the Dark Saviour, Carthagia is a grim, mountainous land to the north of Naseria and the Indigo Marches.  To its east lie Huron and the north Drakkath; north and west stretch the unforgiving Wasteland and the Wreck Shores that cling to the Wasteland's southern edges.  This is a land of ancient refugees and exiles, a people led through the worst tortures and trials imaginable to find a new home.  Outsiders generally see the Carthagian people as reflected in their domain - high mountains and sheer crags, rugged valleys and steep hills, rushing rivers and cascading waterfalls that pour down gorges to the lowlands around.  It is an unforgiving land with bitter weather, a hostile landscape and wild creatures roaming amidst the peaks, but the Carthagians do more than just survive - they prosper.

The true origins of the Carthagians are hazy, lost to time and trauma during the Dawn War.  Their homeland is believed to lie somewhere in the Desolation, the expanse of ruined landscape north of the vast Myrmec desert that was reduced to its current state during the War; unfortunately, even Carthagian records are poor as their culture, at the time, had little to do with the written word in preference for aural history traditions.  During the War, faced with their annihilation if they remained, the Younger God Toran led his people in search of a new place to live.  They suffered the worst excesses of the raging War and then, even worse, the harsh embrace of the desert itself; it is believed that around nine in every ten Carthagians perished during the journey.  Eventually, they passed through the warring, collapsing Huron provinces and pushed further to the unclaimed mountains where now they dwell; after the perils of their journey, Carthagia seemed welcoming and its threats paltry.  This Great Journey has left scars on the national psyche of the Carthagians and has shaped their culture greatly; they are a toughened, resilient people who have undergone the worst and lived.  There are rumours that some enclaves of the Carthagian people survived in the north, although most people discount such a possibility.

At odds with the plight that it once faced, Carthagia is an incredibly rich country.  The mountains and highlands of the nation are abundant with mineral wealth, and the ores and metalsmithing of Carthagia are one of its greatest assets; it is so metal-rich that men and women of the warrior-caste are known for their heavy plate armour, making up the intimidating warbands of armoured infantry that form the body of the Carthagian military.  This is combined with the creations of the Manipulators, the institution of flesh-twister magi who craft and shape bizarre creatures for a myriad of purposes and trade them on to outsiders who are willing to pay great sums for the privilege.  As such, Carthagia is a major trade power in the region, particularly with the western lands, Huron and the White Bay.  This prosperity is reflected in the homes and practices of the people of the nation; they take great pride in not wallowing in the luxuries that they have won, but rather prizing them and appreciating them greatly as the rightful earnings from the Great Journey, torn from the earth with hard toil and determination.  Although outwardly imposing and grim, the bastions and settlements of Carthagia show a different side in their inner chambers, often richly decorated with tapestries, stonework and metal goods.  Carthagian art and song tends towards the mournful and the abstract - dirges for the dead of the Great Journey and memorials for the great suffering of the nation that served as its backbone for a new power to rise upon.  Glory is in serving one's vassals, one's lieges and the nation with duty and honour, not in making the ''individual'' great.  Every Carthagian stands on the shoulders of the dead.

Carthagia is ruled by a King (currently Colchis Toranshannur, or Colchis IV) - never a Queen, due to traditions surrounding Toran's sacred role as the First King.  Because the royal bloodline is hereditary, this has caused certain practices to deal with situations where the heir is a woman.  In such cases, the female heir undertakes a ritual to officially become a man, and must take on the culturally approved roles of a man - they will marry a woman, and so forth, although liasons with men are approved on the basis that there needs to be a new heir coming from ''somewhere''.  This practice has trickled down through the tiers of the Carthagian castes, wherein women can, if they desire, officially become a man and be treated as such legally and culturally from then on; currently, this is acceptable amongst the royal, noble and warrior castes, and only rarely amongst the lower castes (where it is considered an oddity).  The reverse is not true - men cannot become women, except for in a particular branch of the Toranite church where all castes are acceptable.  These practices are generally considered a one-way trip, but a folk hero of Carthagia is Carlovargus the Twin-Bodied, a warrior and slayer of horrors who switched between being male and female some seventeen times in their life - finally, if the legend is to be believed, receiving a blessing from Toran that let them ''physically'' switch between male and female at will, leading to a series of tales wherein fools who treated a stranger badly because of their apparent gender were undone upon realising that the stranger was in fact Carlovargus.

Carthagian society is highly feudal, in that every level is built from the personal relationships between people.  The highest of the noble caste are the king's vassals; the lower nobles are the higher nobles' vassals; and so on down the great pyramid to the lowest levels of society.  This tight network of personal duty binds the entire nation together in a web of mutual responsibility and reciprocation.  The warrior caste are something of an oddity, in that they are a special caste maintained at the expense of patrons (usually the nobility) but who do not themselves possess vassals; they are entirely subject to the requirements of their lords without any other duties or responsibilities diverting their attention.  Unfortunately, this means that sometimes warrior-caste Carthagians end up unable to find a new master in the wake of an old patron perishing or rejecting them, and these masterless men and women can turn to banditry or mercenary work to keep themselves alive.  Caste mobility is possible but generally a slow affair involving the acceptance by figures in the new caste; a warrior-caste cannot simply decide to take up trading one day, as the merchant and administrative caste will not take kindly to dealing with him or her and will not accept the once-warrior so easily into their ranks.  In their view warriors should keep to matters of battle, not bead-counting.

Carthagia is a highly fortified nation due to the dangerous landscape and the threat from outside.  All sorts of creatures are a threat within the Carthagian wilds, including goblins, servitors and several identified dragons; the Wasteland is an ever-present source of more migrating creatures.  Even the least of villages or quarries is walled and guarded.  More than that, the Carthagian military is a surprisingly well-oiled machine for such a feudal arrangement, capable of calling together hundreds or even thousands of heavily-armed warriors remarkably quickly, forming serried ranks in their distinctive dark armour.  The lower castes also serve as soldiers under certain circumstances, generally skirmishers or light infantry, serving for pay from their liege; only small numbers of lower caste serve permanently as soldiers, most often as scouts.  These forces are buttressed by the Manipulators, who provide battlemagi and terrifying flesh-twisted creatures, and the Church of Toran - the churches host a great number of elite temple guard, as well as the infamous Fleshtearers, blessed beasts of Toran wrought by the Manipulators and made sacred by the temples.

The patron deity of Carthagia, Toran, is venerated to a level unmatched amongst other national patrons in other countries.  Toran led the Carthagians to survival, and they love the Dark Saviour for his own ultimate sacrifice.  A grim deity associated with strength, endurance and battle, Toran's temples and churches are grand but intimidating structures, intended to show power and strength rather than ostentatious wealth - for such a rich nation, the shrines to their beloved god are generally bereft of adornment.  The Carthagians see this as a sign of respect, rather than trying to buy Toran's favour with the very wealth that his death, and that of their ancestors, bought for them.  Ancestor worship is an equally important part of Carthagian faith as well, although often without involving any physical remnants of the dead - perhaps in echo of the thousands of bodies left to wither and dessicate on the desert sands.  The rest of the High Host are worshipped in Carthagia, and their shrines are widespread, but they definitely take second place to Toran, King of the Host.  The Church of Toran is immensely powerful in both social and political terms, as well as maintaining large numbers of temple troops and great treasuries of wealth; all castes of society are encouraged to donate to the church and the noble caste in particular see it as a duty of their status.  The savage templar zealots of the churches are terrifying foes, filled with fervour and fanaticism, and there have been times when it was the Church, not the Crown, that truly ruled the nation.

The Manipulators are perhaps the best-known face of Carthagia outside its borders, not because they travel but because their handiwork is so highly prized.  The flesh-twisters hold several fortified bastions throughout Carthagia, within which their arcane laboratories and training halls produce the next generation of mages - and the next generation of their biothaumaturgically engineered creations.  The Manipulators breed a dizzying array of horrors, from minor alterations to common stock animals (like horses grafted with more muscle or hounds with rows of shark-like fangs in their maws) to entirely new species.  They breed augmented draft animals, pets, war-beasts and the like, as well as a number of strains of strange plantlife.  These they sell on to the people who desire such things, usually for vast sums of money - Huron, in particular, has been a major market for flesh-twisted creations in the past decades.  In turn, the Manipulators need great volumes of resources for their work, including alchemical ingredients, test subjects and animal parts.  The Fleshtearers, divine warriors of Toran, are constructed from a patchwork of parts in Manipulator labs; drazhikar claws are needed for their talons, and hence a high fee is payed for anyone bringing in a drazhikar, preferably alive (a very difficult task indeed).

Of course, before the Carthagians, these ancient mountains stood tall and strong for a long age, and there are still signs here and there of past masters of the landscape.  Several ancient Umbral ruins have been thoroughly looted and picked apart by Manipulator teams and, during their delvings into the mountains, miners have regularly come across strange subterranean spaces - some just small constructions of a few chambers, others vast galleries and networks that stretch for miles.  Some of these finds have been placed under lockdown by the Manipulator-General and the Church of Toran; whatever they may have found down there remains under lock and key for now.


==The Indigo Marches==

The contested lands between Naseria and Carthagia are known as the Indigo Marches, a patchwork of fiefs and shifting boundaries, wilds and unclaimed territory over which the great powers bicker.  The Indigo Marches bear their name from the heath-plants and trees that grow here, known for their purple-hued blooms and leaves during early autumn; it's a major source of dyes of such colours.  There are also veins of indigo-coloured rock that stretch through the earth here, sometimes breaching the surface to form entire hills and promontaries of colourful stone.  Legend has it that Dharummut, the Great Wolf, stole a large portion of the spectrum of light in his mouth during the Dawn War so that the Elders could not see the stealthy approach of blue-skinned Naskha, and the Wolf hid in the shadow of the Carthagian mountains with his prize; where he drooled, his blue and purple saliva discoloured the stone and the plants.

The Indigo Marches have been the subject of sporadic wars between Naseria and Carthagia for centuries now.  This appears to date back to the origins of both nations, wherein they first settled themselves and did not encroach on one another at that time - but both began to move into the Marches during the same period about two hundred years or so after the Dawn War.  Since then, an unmappable tangle of grudges, casus belli, claims and accusations have formed an ongoing clash between the two nations that mostly restrains itself to political posturing and the occasional outbreak of hostilities in the Marches, but from time to time one side or the other raises a more significant force and tries to force the issue; most recently, during the Fang Wars about a decade ago, Carthagian armies attacked northern Naseria with the support of a new breed of draconic beasts called 'fang dragons' that had been bred in the Manipulator biothaumaturgy laboratories - and a significant cadre of Flame Guild mercenaries hired on for the assault.  This assault reached as far as Corvus itself, besieging the city and breaking its defences, but supply issues, the turning of the seasons and the manoeuvering of other Naserian forces made the Carthagians retreat before they could properly sack the province capital.  Since that time, Carthagian interests have dominated the Indigo Marches.

Due to the divine stories associated with the region, there are several religious enclaves devoted to the Great Wolf in the Marches; commonly wearing indigo garments, these adherents and priests are less focused on the wild savagery often associated with Dharummut and more on appropriate veneration of the Younger God for its role in the Dawn War.  Generally, these communities remain aloof from the regional squabbles, but since the Wolf Rising of over a century ago, the border lords of Carthagia have agreed to cease deploying fleshtwisted canine breeds in battle through the Marches.


==Naseria==

'''Icons''':  The Truth-Seeker

Like its neighbour Carthagia, Naseria directly owes its existence to one particular Younger God - in this case, the Laughing Sorcerer, Naskha.  After the Dawn War and Naskha's excarnation, his large retinue of cultists and sorcerers settled in what is now modern-day Naseria, establishing their own arcane nation in place of the crumbling wreckage of the Drakkath administration that remained.  Thus built by a priesthood of sorcerers, Naseria has evolved into a land of magical bloodlines ruling over the people, wherein sorcery is the highest display of Naskha's blood and the source of elevation to the highest status.  Its ethnicities are a strange blend of the Drakkath people who originally lived there and the weird mixture of different peoples who had gathered under Naskha's banner, but these days the population is distinctly ''Naserian'' above all else.

Naseria itself is a wide land, mostly lowlands and forests.  Its southern reaches, where the lands of House Fayn give way eventually to the wilderness that precedes the Ascarian tundra, are more hilly and wooded than elsewhere, while its eastern regions meet the Sarokean foothills.  To the west, the curve of the Malachite Sea's eastern end provides coastline along which several ports thrive and prosper.  Much of the lands of Naseria are extremely fertile and it produces a vast amount of agriculture, in particular the shining fields of wheat that cover the central plains from horizon to horizon.  A myriad of rivers flow through the land, feeding into major arteries that lead to the Malachite; Naserian bridgework often involves structures that can be easily collapsed, turning these rivers into key defensive lines in case of invasion, particularly in the embattled northern lands of House Corvus.

In Naseria, one is either a noble or not; and one is either a sorcerer or not.  The noble Houses are descended from the original orders of the Naskharite sorcerer-priesthood at the time of the nation's founding, and it is from these sorcerous bloodlines that the Houses claim their legitimacy.  Numerous amongst the nobles are, of course, not actually sorcerers, as even the strongest bloodlines do not always produce those with arcane power; however, those born to sorcery amongst the common caste are usually offered House membership swiftly.  Sorcery is the mark of Naskha's favour and his heritage, and in Naseria that is ''everything''.  There is, however, a broad division in the nobility between the Great and Lesser Houses - the Great Houses rule the larger provinces of the land and descend from the inner circle of Naskha's retinue, with House Tarravus supposedly descending directly from Naskha himself, while the Lesser Houses control smaller regions or are vassals of Great Houses.

In theory, all of Naseria is dutiful to the Sorcerer-Queen of House Tarravus, but in practice rivalry between the Houses, both Great and Lesser, dominates internal politics and even erupts into outright conflict from time to time.  The Great Houses keep a lid on the worst of it, but as each House is expected to provide its own complement of troops in times of war, this also means that each House has a complement of troops to cause havoc with in feuds, struggles for economic gain or just petty malevolence against rivals.  Naseria is a large land and much of it is far from the guiding hand of the Great Houses and the grand cities, and so in the provinces there are plentiful examples of petty corruption, near-lawlessness and other such problems.  The emergence of a new sorcerer amongst the common caste is often an instigator in change in some way, as Houses attempt to snap them up or they lash out against local injustice with their new power.

The faith of Naskha is dominant in Naseria, but often in a less fervent way than that of Toran in Carthagia - the people of Naseria are comfortable in the knowledge that they are Naskha's favoured children, and while they pay him homage as their patron, other gods are given appropriate deference and due worship.  Veneration of ancestors is also commonly practiced although with a twist from other regions; it is of vital importance to know the lineage of the ancestors from the original Naserian retinue of sects and orders, as important as the actual ancestors themselves, and there are a number of official lineages to which people attach their ancestral line to - sometimes regardless of the actual veracity of such a claim.  These sacred lineages form the backbone of ancestral worship but also form links between families and communities that share them, and can even become a significant factor in the wrangling and arrangements that surround marriages or even business contracts. 

There are, as one might expect, a great number of Naskha sub-cults in Naseria that exist as children to the primary cult of the god.  One of the best known are the Cerulean, priests who tattoo themselves with the holy scripts of Naskha in a blue ink, written so finely that from a distance they look like they are actually blue-skinned in mimicry of the Great Sorcerer himself.  Of course, some are less accepted; splinters and heresies have been common over the years, and occasionally have thrown up some particularly malign groups like the Godling Blood (a group who believe in the extermination of non-sorcerers) and the Azure Mouth (biothaumaturgical heretics with some strange ideas about the nature of sorcery and its inheritance).  Matters are made more complex because Naskha, having been a mortal sorcerer, wrote a great deal of arcane and sorcerous tracts alongside later philosophical treatises, orders and instructions for his retinue, teaching guidelines for the apprentices he took and his personal diaries.  Only some of these are officially holy texts, but there are always cultists eager to latch on to the others as holding some divine truth as well, spawning new little schisms and schools of thought (epitomised derisively in a line from a work of the great poet Seranius Fayn, who famously said 'the desperate will find truth even in the contents of the Great Sorcerer's chamber pot').  Rumour has it that the High Golden Seat, the grand temple to Naskha in Tarravus, has a particular holy book hidden in a secure vault which apparently includes truths and concepts that are considered too dangerous to be publicly known.

Naseria generally prides itself on being a civilised and learned land, even with the bickering and rivalry amongst its Houses.  Indeed, this nation is home to a number of major libraries, academic guilds, scholarly fraternities and so forth.  The widespread use of sorcery and magic has given the Naserians great opportunity to further their understanding of the world around them, and there is much to be learned in their storehouses of knowledge. In particular, the most prominent crafts-guilds maintain their own specialist scholars in the subject matter of their work, an unusual step in maintaining their own lines of craft and advancement.  Donations and favour from the Houses to such guild academics is a common and approved way for nobles to buy themselves some respect from the artisans.  Books, scrolls, crystal memory records, god-inked leathers and other sources of recorded lore are generally considered high-status gifts amongst Naserians, given to show off wealth or indicate respect and love for the recipient.  Literacy is extremely widespread, well beyond that of other nations, and the writing of prayers and offerings of worship is a key element in showing reverence to the gods; Naserian shrines to the gods are usually hung with great reels of prayer-script.

Economically, Naseria is a strong nation sitting on the major trade routes that come eastwards from the Malachite Sea.  Trade goods and wealth flow through its ports and towns, and rivalry with Carthagia on this front is a significant source of tension between the two nations.  In the face of powerful rivals on the Malachite, Naserian naval strength has been slowly bolstered over the years; in the modern age, the nation has a significant maritime military presence, reinforced by the elite sorcerous practitioners of the Tide Knights.  In general, the maintenance and protection of the trade routes through Naseria is a key focus of the administration, and so the highways are well preserved and well patrolled; messing with the routes is generally considered a step too far in internal squabbles amongst the Houses, likely to result in harsh sanction from uninvolved Houses or even the royal line itself.

The mage-knights of the elemental orders are famed well beyond the borders of Naseria - the four elite organisations of elemental sorcerer-warriors provide specialists for the Naserian military, a reliable force that will answer to the royal family's commands, and a stabilising element that is not tied to the Houses and their power struggles.  The Iron Knights watch to the east from their great bastions and serve as heavy infantry in battle; the Flame Knights mostly watch the north and south borders and operate as elite strike troops during war.  The Tide Knights shore up the naval power of Naseria; the Storm Knights offer elite light cavalry for the armies of the nation, as well as serving as secure and loyal messengers and lines of communication across the nation's heartlands.  All four orders combine elementally-channeled sorcery with martial prowess in a devastating combination, and in times of strife entire units of these warrior-magi take to the field.  They are popular figures in Naserian culture as well, both due to their hallowed status as loyal servants of the line of Naskha and also because of the practice of knight errants, knights who undertake personal journeys as individuals or small bands in search of enlightenment or on particular missions for their Orders.  Folklore and stories often include the noble Elemental Knight who deals with a corrupt official or unjust local headsman; their apparent seperation from House politics makes people generally idealise them as incorruptible.  The truth, of course, is rather different, but the Knights have generally remained a loyal and reliable tool of the state over the generations rather than devolving into House factions or becoming embroiled in such squabbles.

In past ages, the land that would become Naseria was under the yoke of a changing roster of rulers and masters.  The immense but ruined Gedastrian Road marks what was once a major Drakkath Empire route for the movement of troops; now, House Corvus seeks to rebuild it once again.  The famed ruined temple-city of Xaifun, consumed by the forests that have grown through and around it, is a surprisingly popular site for scholars and academics who wish to examine Empire-era structures; its beautiful carvings, wrought by the hands of thousands of slave-labourers, are a reminder of the grandeur and decadence of that fallen civilisation.  The Sunrise Pillar is an immense, flowing structure of marble-like stone that erupts up from the western plains, an isolated, huge structure that looks like it is fluid frozen in the moment of its fall; the origins of the Pillar remain utterly mysterious.  The Forever Pools, on the other hand, are known to be of Elder make - a series of eerie wells of what appears to be petrified water, solidified (but not frozen) with the very ripples and waves preserved on the surface.  These weird installations are clearly arcane in nature and a myriad of theories have sprung up around them, including that they are locked portals (and the arguments about whether the strange, silvery things spotted a little below their surface are fish go some ''very'' weird directions).


==The Malachite Sea==

The green waters of the Malachite Sea reach out for leagues to the west, ending in Naseria's coast to the east and enclosed to the north and south by other lands.  Eventually, the westward reaches open out into the expanse of the Garnet Sea, and thence can a ship reach other, distant oceans and continents.  A great deal of trade and commerce runs along the sea, particularly due to the influence of the mercantile Masked Kateni city-states along its southern coast.  This can also sometimes result in blood muddying its viridian depths, as privateers and raiders spar on the waves for supremacy over the flow of coin and wealth.  Worse, there are powers in those depths; the sahuagin septs are few, but submarine servitors seem to have survived and thrived here, and some are sentient and mighty enough to influence events that occur on ''their'' sea.

The sea is scattered with many small islands; some are home to minor communities or island nations, but many are uninhabited or home only to Dawn-era ruins.  A series of immense, toppled skytowers, originally the handiwork of the Elder God Ephras, dot these islands; their half-submerged bulk makes them a great danger to passing vessels.  Consistent rumours speak of largely intact Umbral ruins still standing on some particularly remote islands.  Solid land is not the only feature to break the monotony of the waves in the Malachite Sea - this is the home of the weird sea-forests, great tangles of wood and branch that rise up from sheer water and which can stretch for miles of timber-floored 'island'.  These sea-forests are said to be the hair of Lliras, rising from her scalp deep below the sea; above the water, the tangled timbers create an entire forest ecosystem, with only the occasional boulder tangled and lifted from the sea floor by growing trees as a source of stone.  A number of sea-forests are inhabited by odd lizardman tribes; the forests tend to have an eternal layer of mist below their canopy, rendering the lower levels gloomy and slick with moisture, while over the mist there is an eruption of colour amongst both the native flora and fauna.  Upon rare occasions, sea-forests have broken from their timber root-moorings and been cast adrift, eventually ending up slung ashore as an entire swathe of new woodland.


===The Wreck Shores===

Running along the northern edge of the Malachite Sea where it is closest to Carthagia, wedged between waters and Wasteland, the Wreck Shores stretch for dozens of leagues before civilised lands once again claim hold.  Fierce battles that were waged in both the Wasteland and the Sea during the Dawn War (and before it) have caused this shoreline to be littered with debris and detritus of long-forgotten empires and ancient feuds.  Vast, rusting hulks, toppled obsidian towers, immense dredging systems bound by broken chain-links the size of elephants... the salt-encrusted, corroding Wrecks run miles inland along shallow, flat grasslands and dunes, split by innumerable rivulets that dribble out of the southern Wastes.  Despite its inhospitable nature, the Wreck Shores are an important land-based lifeline of trade from the western lands to the eastern, and a number of small, fortified communities and ports have grown up along the coast here; most are independent trade-towns, but many in the eastern reaches pay at least lipservice to Carthagia (if not outright tribute payment) in return for which Carthagian troops aid in the patrolling and protection of the Shorelands.

Life clings to existence rather precariously in this region.  The Wastelands occasionally cough out raiding goblins or wandering servitors; the waters themselves play host to other dangers, including tribute demands from oozing, flopping sea-beasts that communicate with their thoughts, the servitor-children of either Hashrukk or Shauku.  The Wrecks themselves offer danger; rusting vessels serve as crude fortresses for bandits to operate from, while some still hold payloads or cargoes that are slowly corroding over the years, spilling out toxic or arcane materials that warp and contaminate the surrounding landscape.  An entire wreck-town was destroyed only five years ago when an intrepid band of scavengers hauled a number of containment pods out of an Elder warship mostly buried in the sands; unfortunately, when opened, it turned out the contents were a weaponised servitor-species held in stasis, still fully alive and operational after the centuries that had past.

Despite the desolation, the Shores do produce goods; scavenged materials are the best-known, but so are a number of seaweed-based products, strangely transmuted sands and water found in the vicinity of crumbling old wrecks.  Most notable, though, are the glass shards taken from the Vitrine Streams, which are resilient and fashioned into glass-pages by Shore artisans that are highly prized in the Drakkath.