Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==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).