Tekumel
Categories: Fantasy, Campaign Resource, Tristat Derived, Tekumel
This set of pages relate to the MAR Barker's world of Tekumel, as depicted in the online game 'Shrine of Petrified Wisdom'.
Contents
What is Tekumel?
Tekumel is a planet far, far away in a very, very distant future.
After much of dear old planet Earth got nuked civilisation was re-established by people from Central America, India and the Middle East. The civilisation that followed acheived interstellar travel and, with its alien allies, colonised numerous worlds throughout the galaxy. One such was Tekumel. When it was discovered it had two intelligent native species and was barely inhabitable by humans. The Humanspace Alliance wanted this world however and conquered and terraformed it with relative ease. For many centuries Tekumel was a luxurious pleasure planet and centre of interstellar trade. Then matters changed - the stars went out. Tekumel was wrenched from mundane reality and placed in a pocket universe of its own. The Latter Times followed, an age of chaos and destruction during which the high-tech culture of Tekumel decayed and faded from memory and finally became myth. Thirty millenia later Tekumel still struggles in a medieval quagmire of superstition abd despotism, but here and there the ancient ways survive and the nature of the catastrophe and the universe that the planet have been thrust into are remembered.
Tekumel owes comparatively little to the European cultures that dominate most FRP settings, the inspiration came from Professor Barker's interest in Indian and Central American languages. The Empires of Tekumel are more like the Incan, Moghul and Chinese empires than a European kingdom, its religions are reminiscent of Aztec and Hindu beliefs and the monsters are bizarre Lovecraftian nightmares. This is a planet that will bend your head.
For more details see Tekumel.com
House rules and General Background
Chaigari Sunrise Campaign
A new PBM, being played on RolePlay OnLine.
The action starts in the mountains between the Dry Bay of Ssú'um and the valley of the He'éka River. The mighty Illakma tribe are in trouble, their hmélu have been going missing without trace. They know it must be one of their neighbouring tribes, but who? The pathetic Uchúmun, from whom the Illakma stole much of their flock and two of their pastures? The crazy and theiving A'úl, desertmen from the north who stole the valley they now inhabit? Or the aloof Kraikmá, fine warriors who allegedly worship demons? Or have the Hláka revived an ancient war or the fat priest of the God Under the Mountain from the south invented a new way of exacting his mysterious 'tax'?
Places
Clans
Player Characters
People
Gods and Aspects
Creatures
The Shrine of Petrified Wisdom campaign
A group of priests from the Temple of Ksarul in Tumissa have been given a task; re-establish a shrine lost in the wild forests of Do Chaka centuries before. Given the propensity of the Temple of Ksarul to lies and subterfuge, the recent spate of wars and rebellions in the area and the mercilessly hostile nature of the wilderness this is not going to be a straightforward task.
Update: Sadly this game had to be abandoned a long way short of the Shrine itself, and the motley set of priests are in limbo in the small town of Zechni on the Turina River.
Places
Clans
Player Characters and their Henchmen
Vinchan hiMeshkutane of the Black Stone
- his slave, [[
