Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==High Kyros==

'''Icons''':  The Frost Envoy

During the time of the Drakkath Empire, what is now High Kyros was a handful of minor prefectures of little consequence; small ports, mines and little more.  With the Empire's fall, the Zenith Age first saw nothing more than a few Drak tribes and townships clinging to existence; over the following two centuries, the bulk of what population remained migrated either north to the Drakkath or west to Ascaria.  The people who now rule this mountainous domain came afterwards, journeying from an entirely different continent.

The far northern regions of Ara largely remain a mystery, though the continent reaches far enough north for a swathe of marshlands to merge into permafrost.  Somewhere on the western coast of this region, the progenitor civilisation of High Kyros survived the Dawn War relatively intact, forming a militaristic magocracy.  The colonisation of High Kyros, a region as far south as this civilisation was north - and across the sea, to boot - was ordered by the ruling magiarchs according to particular occult and arcane designs.  The scale of conquest and population movement that they had in mind would never be achieved swiftly, not even over several generations, but the arcane organisation allowed the magiarchs to take a long term view for their grand effort.  In their judgement, the eldritch resources that lay in High Kyros were worthwhile.

High Kyros covers a region of the Storm Mountains that runs along the Marble Sea, going as far west inland as where the Kyros Plateau gives way to the lowlands of the steppe.  To the north, more of the Storms seperate the country from the Drakkath; to the south, the mountains eventually give way to a hilly landscape, then to tundra.  The first wave of colonists were no more than a handful of vessels, an expeditionary force establishing a beach-head on the eastern coast, and over the coming decades the initial Kyros settlements clung to the coastline.  A century of support from the homeland bolstered the population of the ports and their hinterlands enough that the colony began to push inland, having received an influx of new Kyrosi driven by a desire for a new life, seeking opportunity, sent there as slaves or convicts to serve as labour or just hapless enough to be in one of the provinces that were depopulated to feed the new colony's hunger for manpower by magiarch orders.  Two hundred years after first landfall, the highly organised Kyrosi military had pushed the colony's control throughout the mountainous region, subjugating the native Drak and Ascari communities and engaging in a series of battles with ogre and goblin warlords, breaking the back of local resistance to their power.  Another hundred years, and High Kyros was almost an established nation in its own right, one grown with astounding speed from almost nothing.  The jewel in the crown of the Kyrosi homeland, the rich mineral resources and - more importantly - arcane resources of the landscape were being plundered and shipped back over the sea to the satisfied magiarchs.  Their discipline and foresight had proven wise - three hundred years had passed, and the rewards of the great effort were worth it after all.

This reward, however, came at the cost to the colony itself, the payment of its dues for the resources and mapower pitched into the colonisation over the centuries.  High Kyros was indeed almost a nation in its own right, nearly as populous as the homeland, and the magiarchs who had come to prominence in this new land found that the tithe they had to shoulder was one they begrudged.  When civil war erupted in the homeland, the opportunistic arcanists of High Kyros took advantage and declared independence, protected from effective retaliation by distance - and it seems the old Kyrosi homeland has truly fallen apart, ripped asunder by brutal internecine conflict amongst the duelling magiarchs there. 

In the modern day, High Kyros is a land of stern order in the iron grip of the Frost Council, the ruling conclave of cryomancers that oversees the grand sweep of Kyrosi operations.  The power-seeking arcanists have never rested on their laurels; the generations that have passed since the independence of High Kyros have done more than just consolidate their hold on the mountainous realm, they have looked to expand it.  The Frost Council are jealous of their influence too, and magi who are not cryomancers are few and far between, watched carefully by the Frost Council if they are given license to practice magic at all.  As for the steel-masked cryomancers themselves, all are trained to hold their own in combat, and it seems that the Kyrosi mages have either unearthed lost ritual lore or developed it themselves, for Frost Council group rituals seem to be capable of far greater feats than spellcasters in other lands can manage.  The most terrifying and potent of these rites are the weeks-long incantations of entire circles of magiarchs that sculpt and animate immense ice golems from amidst the southern glacier-valleys, juggernauts of destruction that they have not hesitated to unleash on the Ascarians.

Of course, the arcane overlords of the magocracy have higher matters to attend to than the lesser functions of running and administering the nation's machinery.  The transplanted society of the Kyrosi is, in some ways, quite egalitarian - the state below the Frost Council is somewhat meritocratic, and there is no hereditary noble caste.  Centuries have given rise to prominent dynasties and families, of course, but skill and competence go at least part way in determining an individual's path to prominence.  Law and order are harshly enforced, and rank offers little protection if the Frost Council determines that an example needs to be made.  The Kyrosi bureaucracy has developed various examinations and tests for assessing potential candidates, and the cryomancers themselves also take advantage of this - certain promising examinees are taken as apprentices to magiarchs for a period not exceeding three years.  Of course, many fail to reach the level required to become a cryomancer, and after the three years of training are instead given roles as agents, mage-hunters, elemental mage-knights and assassins in the employ of the Council.

The towns and cities of High Kyros are bustling places with booming populations.  Most major settlements still lie on the coast of the Marble Sea, including Jormung where the Frost Council sits in government; here, the fjords and craggy valleys offer sheltered ports and harbours for the vital maritime trade that comes to and from the nation.  Further inland, the valleys are dotted with small agricultural villages and mining towns, punctuated by occasional administrative centres and military bastions.  The rapid expansion of the colony resulted in most of even the most important buildings in Kyrosi settlements being made from timber rather than stone and, adapting to this, the Kyrosi have evolved a tradition of very ornate woodcarving that they employ on their structures; some of the coastal cities have buildings made from great sea-beast carapace, but the local population of the massive house-crustaceans was quickly annihilated in the early years of the colony.  Much of the farmland in eastern High Kyros was originally forest, cut down to clear the land and feed the Kyrosi expansion's need for lumber.  Further inland, and even the Frost Council cannot entirely tame the wilderness; most major threats to civilisation have long since been expunged, but ogre phratries and goblin clans still exist in significant numbers and are a source of occasional raids.  Far to the south, where the mountains give way to tundra, the many-limbed and carapaced 'men of ice' and their concrete-and-chitin nests provide a vicious frontier for High Kyros interests.

High Kyros society and culture is rather strange in many ways, due in part to its nature as a rapid-grown colony and nation.  Almost in challenge to the ordered, stern nation, the placid and lawful surface of Kyrosi society masks an simmering confusion of cults, conspiracies and mysteries that the Kyrosi seem to take a certain glee in indulging.  With few internal barriers from caste or nobility, the Kyrosi have instead given form to a clutch of alternate, adopted secretive subcultures known colloquially as the Red Societies - often tending towards the religious, philosophical or outright criminal, Red Societies unite the Kyrosi members in a group to which they feel a sense of belonging and which offers them purpose in the form of the Society's agendas.  The Red Societies thread through all levels of High Kyros; officially the Frost Council opposes their existence, but some cryomancers belong to Red Societies and the Frost Council probably makes active use of these secret societies as political pawns.  The thriving power of the Red Societies probably stems from the growing tensions within High Kyros; the population explosion taking place is straining the landscape's ability to support them, and the common people seek to use philosophy and faith as means to understand their place in the world and whether the magocracy that reigns over them is truly what they want.  In the long term, the development of the Red Societies, and the growing social awareness surrounding them, may threaten Frost Council authority.  This perhaps explains the Council's drive to establish the national idea of the Kyrosi as rightful rulers and conquerers, that they have a manifest destiny - through conquest and aggression, they can stem the tide of unrest within their people and sate it with the spoils of war and rule over other, 'lesser' peoples.

High Kyros also includes some rather more exotic people within its society.  Some of the inland basins and valleys of the mountains hide marshes or lakes, and here the initial Kyrosi colonists encountered well-established communities of lizardfolk.  Rather than conquest, these swamp people were taken into the fold of Kyrosi society, offered full rights and trade benefits through a series of treaties that has since caused small lizardfolk quarters to spring up in the major High Kyros cities.  In return, the lizardmen are highly respected for their service in Kyrosi scout units and, on very rare occasions, lizardfolk have reached the high status of the magiarchs themselves, finding a place on the Frost Council.  The other, more mysterious side of the Kyros people is also somewhat reptilian but far more secretive than the publically embraced lizardfolk - there appear to be certain bloodlines amongst the Kyrosi, lineages stemming back from the Ara homeland, that are for want of a better description serpentine.  Even the Kyrosi themselves seem to have little knowledge of these reptilian bloodlines and investigation into the rare sightings of such figures are heavily discouraged.

The Kyrosi are not, as a rule, inclined towards the reverence of ancestors; instead, they believe in a minor pantheon of national spirits that have guided their nation throughout the ages, and these twenty or so patrons are worshipped and petitioned as a more worldly, lower caste of divinity below the true Younger Gods.  Amongst the Younger Gods themselves, the Kyrosi naturally tend to revere the deities of sea, storm, mountain and war more than others, and Ishrak's church in particular has become a prominent power in its own right.  Most Kyrosi see Ishrak as the foremost and most powerful of the Younger Gods, one who is a natural fit to their harsh mountain homeland and the seas that crash against their shore.  In recent decades, both Urazel and Toran have seen a surge in petitions as well, mostly due to the military expansion west into Ascaria.


===Kyros Lowlands===

West of the mountains of High Kyros lies the steppe of Ascaria; here, the armies and settlers of the Kyrosi have carved a new dominion, their provinces expanding over what once were the lands of Ascari blood-clans.  The military machine of High Kyros has rolled inexorably westward, sacking settlements and chaining communities as it has gone, a decades-long expansion that leaves pallisaded towns, dirt roads and farmlands in its wake.  For now, the lowlands run as far as the broad, deep Praga river, a border guarded by outposts and mustering grounds for Kyros raiders to stage new attacks from.

The invasion has been driven by several factors; the growing population of High Kyros, the general desire by the once-colonists for expansion and wealth, and the Frost Council's hunger for arcane resources - the Ascarian lands hold many sacred sites and spots of elemental energy, all of which the cryomancers wish to take for themselves.  Unlike the early stages of Kyrosi colonisation, where Drak and Ascari tribes were assimilated, many of the Ascarians conquered in the current expansion end up enslaved, with the most unfortunate or rebellious sent to Thunderbreak.  Mines and industries erupt across the lowlands like a rash, tapping into resources that the blood-clans have not fully exploited.

Central to the lowlands provinces is the city of Verdigris Hold, formerly a major Ascarian town before the Kyrosi conquered it and rebuilt it.  Sitting amidst a network of hot springs, geysers and mineral lakes that are awash with copper-rust and other chemical substances, Verdigris Hold taps into the heat and steam of the earth through a series of complex thaumineering engines.  Now a centre of trade with expansive slave-markets, Verdigris Hold as attracted a burgeoning population of mercenaries, merchants and opportunists clustering at the skirts of the Frost Councillors who rule over their new domain.  It seems that whatever elemental energies run under the region, the cryomancers have found a key focusing point under Verdigris Hold and the city regularly shudders and groans from the arcane powers that are being called together in the subterranean ritual-chamber that the Council have drilled down at the heart of the settlement.