Furrin’ Countries

The Conglomerate of City States is a term for the populous lands on the other side of the Gelt mountains to the south. These states are characterised by the complex and lethal form of politics known as The Game, whereby alliances and war are declared and broken with equal ease in the continual bid for more power. The Game affects everyone from a city ruler to a street urchin who is paid to act as his ‘listener’. Unwary travellers can easily be killed as pawns in a game which they never knew existed.

The isolated valleys of the Western Isles are inhabited by a pale and stocky race of mariners known as the Noord. These people have a high regard for independence, and have been known to cause trouble by their disregard for the King’s Laws when they visit the mainland.

Between the City States and the Inner Sea is the Theocracy of the High Plateau. Their people are tall, with brown skin and a mane of hair which roots down the spine. They also have a nictitating membrane over their whiteless eyes. In this arid upland the Church maintains a strict control over the water supply and the agriculture. The church is an austere and extreme version of the cult of Daleth the Earthmother in Athion.

Between the City States and the Flooded Plains is the Land of the Children of Herne, ruled by the Abeys. This country is set between two mountain ranges, and all trade between the coast and the heartlands goes through it.

East of the land of Herne are the Flooded Plains. This is a vast area of boggy fields worked by the Babel, a small yellowish people who also have a third eyelid and the whiteless eyes. They are a race enslaved to grow food for the Empire of the Inner Sea.

The Empire of the Inner Sea is ruled by the Kinjuru, a semi-aquatic race with dappled green skin and the strange eyes. Their capital is a huge and ornate collection of floating and semi-submerged palaces drifting in the Inner Sea. It is renown as a Court of extreme etiquette, artistry and courtesy, where the business of actually running the Empire is left to an immense and bizarre bureaucracy. The Empire influences or controls all lands surrounding the Inner Sea except one; the Menteshe.

The Menteshe is a hot, windy desert only traversed by the warrior tribes who search for and mine the bedrock, which is sometimes revealed beneath the shifting sands. The valuable metals and minerals which they bring to the coast to trade are much sought after.

To the East of Athion lie the immense and impenetrable Kalkas Mountains, sometimes called the Wall of the World. To the North lies nothing but snow and ice and the Frost-Wyrms.