Lord Agragax Presents: The Fantasy Realm of Escalonia

No, they’re a similar weight to any other humanoid. They’re different from these Kzinti in that they weigh a lot more than their inspiration.

 

When i first read the Tarkalian fluff, i imagined that they prize strength even more so than practicality, which is a pretty nice way of characterizing these fantastical otters - the nonsensical usage of this weaponry described above. I'm not very experienced on worldbuilding, but i think it's good to place emphasis on characterization rather than logic when creating races. We are selves are illogical to the bone after all.

Anyway, I may be racist and prejudiced towards paragraphs that go on endlessly, but i'd like to see some more. The races are very captivating, and i realllly liked the rivers' description and impact they have on your world.

 

I have been missing for a while, lots more stuff to read! Still only made it part of the way through the breath of @Scalenex 's mythos, but I wanted to give this one a go too.

I also noticed you took some inspiration from shad a little further down in the reading. I like the idea of serpent men, but what really shocked me was the reach that these guys would have considering how far a normal snake could jump. A humanoid sized snake could leap really far, which makes me wonder how the Serpentine Master's council has kept them in check for so long. These guys could easily become the dominant force on their section of the continent unless there was something seriously powerful keeping them in check.

Cool stuff! I do like the inspiration here, though the "stan" at the end of the name doesn't quite do it for me, calls to mind central Asian cultures instead of Mesoamerican.

I like the idea of these cultures "complimenting" each other as far as fighting style, but I have a feeling in reality they would be constantly fighting each other. Aztec lore is rife with conflict against their neighbors, it would make sense that these guys are so good at fighting simply because they are surrounded by more powerful neighbors.

Also neat, and again those humans must be pretty tough in order to keep these ladies in check.

I like the not-Bretonnia realm a lot too! I hope they have lots of colorful heraldry.

wisdom. That is neat.

Also pretty cool.

Science be praised!

Also I like the otter inclusion. Being a huge fan of redwall (and having also watched that southpark episode) I thoroughly endorse this inclusion.

I remember these guys, these were from the Starfleet Commander universe I think, also from a Sci-Fi series I read a long time ago that wound up being included into the Starfleet universe because they were so cool.

In the sci-fi series the lion-based race of spacefarers were predominantly female-run. A pride of females would go ranging off into space for one reason or another (war, conquest, trade, etc), and eventually return home. The men were mostly figureheads, at the "head" of each household compound comprised of many females of a pride, though it was the females who actually ran the household and conducted business. The male lions were mostly pampered, and the young males were essentially worthless until they proved themselves. When the males got too old they were essentially "put out on the preservation" so they could die in the wild, achieving a measure of "immortality" because while it was known they would most likely die out in the wilderness with no food, water, or old age, their ultimate fate would be unknown.

 

They were Larry Niven’s creation. Part of his “Known Space” series. Along with Pierson’s Puppeteers, Slavers, and Bandersnatch. I think the first appearance of Kzin was in the novel Ringworld.

He later wrote a screenplay for one of the animated Star Trek episodes which was an adaptation of a short story of his. That inserted them into the Star Trek universe (or at least one of them).

I think some (hopefully all) ^ of those endeavors pay license fees to Larry Niven to include Kzin in their works.

 

Southeast Quadrant initial lore and ruminations is up - note the inclusion of more paragraph spacing this time @Scalenex

And @Warden, I've had a think about what you posted concerning the Aztec and Inca kingdoms in the southwest. I've changed Xastustan to Xastustec to give it more Central American connotations. As for the potential of conflict between Xastustec and the Coacan Mountains, it is certainly likely that the two kingdoms would have fought each other a lot in the past, but I can also imagine them allying either through a particular deed of honour (such as a fight between leaders to settle a grudge or an unexpected intervention in battle) or through the idea of joining forces for the greater good (perhaps that's what's keeping the Medusae and Serpentines under control - neither has the ability to manage this alone but joining forces would give the manpower and military strength to achieve this feat).

 

Northeast Quadrant lore and ruminations are up!

Next I'll be working on the general mythology as @Scalenex has mentioned, and also will be including some draft unit rosters to give you all ideas on what the factions' army lists and playstyles will be like.

 

Reserved for gods, mythology and religions

 

Reserved for rosters

 

Looks like I’ve avoided most of those too, although I started working on the gods before I worked out the religions of many of my factions (the gods I have are largely based on the religions of some of the factions but not all of them). Is that much of a problem?

 

OK, after so long of being distracted by other things, here's a massive wodge of Escalonian Mythology to get your teeth into:

Part Two: Escalonian Mythology​

The Age of Formation
Deep in the galaxy of Chydros, the Kraken Lord of Space and Time, Cosmodoros, and one of his many wives, Seravas, the Sky-Serpent, had a powerful son - Versulinos, god of the earth. When he was born, Seravas surrounded him with her coils to protect her firstborn from her rampant and careless husband. Forever without the willingness and perseverance to help raise a family, Cosmodoros left to visit his billions of other wives and mistresses, including the sun goddess Rama, who was the Sky-Serpent’s sister and nearest neighbour.

During the next few centuries, Seravas reared her young son firmly and strictly to ensure a good upbringing, but it was not long before Cosmodoros returned, feeling the need to have another child with the Sky-Serpent. The next to be born was Andreina, goddess of the water, who Versulinos helped his mother to raise. Both of these young deities had never experienced the chaotic world outside their mother’s coils, so had spent all their childhood entertaining and playing with each other. They became close friends, and as they grew up, their feelings grew up too.

Seravas began to notice the displays of romantic affection her children started to show towards each other, and attempted to divide them, but Versulinos curled himself around Andreina’s body to protect her from the Sky-Serpent’s anger, just as she herself had done to shield them from their father, so that only Andreina’s beautiful face could be seen. This fair visage became a shimmering lake, and her brother’s body formed a solid core of earth around that lake’s water supply. The individual hairs on his body were proud and tall trees, and the contours of his body formed hills and canyons.

Believing her son had degenerated into a lustful monster, the Sky-Serpent lost control of her emotions, and began to weep for the calamity that befell her eldest children, her tears falling as rain. So many tears did she cry that seas and oceans formed over Versulinos’ body, so that only the hump of his back remained above the watermark, with Andreina’s beautiful face at the very centre of it. This solitary supercontinent became the land of Escalonia, and it is here that our story is set.

Since then, Seravas continually shifts between crying more tears that fall as additional rain, scolding her son for his carnal desires with her many-pronged tail striking him as lightning, or merely hissing to herself, her children and her husband, the magnitude of that sound manifesting as thunder. Hearing her cries Cosmodoros returned again to the Sky-Serpent, and gave her two more children, Sigrida and Mardan. The former, as a conscientious child, took it upon herself to mediate between her elder siblings and her mother, her continual rushing between them denoting her role as the goddess of the wind. The latter, the god of fire, was eager to impress his mother, and began to assist her in her punishing strikes upon his older brother. Wherever his mother struck her eldest son with her tail, Mardan lacerated great trails of flame across his skin whenever she commanded him to, yet Versulinos never yielded, for though he understood the reason for his mother’s anger, he could not surrender the love he had for his sister, and neither could Andreina reject him.

In time, Andreina became pregnant with four children, but was unable to give birth to them in the normal way due to Versulinos covering most of her body, having no choice but to expel her offspring from her mouth. Each one, as soon as they were born, instinctively ran from their mother over their father’s back in a different direction, all the way to the ocean that lay around it.

Bannordus, the eldest, strongest and most aggressive, immediately took off to the north before the others had barely emerged from their mother’s mouth. He charged across the continent of Escalonia as an irrepressible torrent, the only obstacle that stood in his way for even a second being the highest mountain in all the land, Mount Olymni. Even then he was unperturbed, tearing the mountain asunder with his bare hands and wading through the wreckage. He quickly reached Escalonia’s north coast and peerlessly dived in, his trail forming the Northern River.

Epunara, the eldest daughter, boldly set off in the opposite direction from her headstrong and tactless brother, not as quickly as he but with her own confidence and knowledge on where she was going. She travelled south in a leisurely way, and found that much of the land there was sparse and barren. She planted many of her hairs into the ground here, and encouraged her grandmother to weep upon this area more frequently, so that the landscape transformed into a sprawling rainforest, except for the easternmost regions which, bathed as they were in Rama’s light, were too hot for any of Epunara’s trees to survive. Otherwise pleased with her handiwork, she slipped into the ocean as soon as she reached the south coast, her trail forming the Southern River.

Her twin brother, Cataros, staggered to his feet and yawned quietly, for he had spent the entire time inside his mother sleeping and dreaming. He started to wander off to the west, curving off into tangents as he got lost in his own imagination, before turning back again as he would momentarily return to reality and realise he had diverged from his path. The most peaceful of the four younger gods, Cataros always avoided any obstacles that got in his way, rather than attempting to cross or damage them, and he took longer than any of his siblings to reach the ocean, his trail forming the Western River.

Finally, Erestia, the youngest child, crept from Andreina’s mouth and looked around her. Already exhausted from simply being born, the frail fourth child saw that her siblings had already gone their separate ways, and reluctantly set off to the east. As she journeyed further and further, she became hotter and hotter as she exposed herself more and more to Rama’s scorching aura, and grew weaker and weaker. When she finally reached the eastern coast, she collapsed, but did so before she could enter the sea, and thus could not be nourished by its cooling waters. Unable to do anything but watch her youngest child die, Andreina began to weep, her tears travelling over the Aquius Falls, the tallest waterfall in Escalonia, and filling the furrow made by Erestia’s trail anew. The Eastern River, now as fast-flowing as its siblings, reached Erestia’s prone form and carried her the remaining distance into the sea, allowing the heat to fade and her strength to return.

With this, Escalonia as a habitable land was born, for the Central Lake and the four great Rivers that stemmed from it helped to moisten the dry continent, encouraging plants to grow, so that in time it became a verdant paradise.


The Age of Evolution
So pleased at the sight was Andreina, that she wished the first animals into being to inhabit the world she, her siblings and her children had created, yet so tired was she from birthing her children that all she could hope to manifest were single-celled creatures that drifted listlessly within the waters of the Central Lake. Versulinos, in his position curled around his sister, raised his head to look upon her for the first time since they formed the world together. Seeing her weakened state, he lent his own power into her creations and drove the organisms to awake from their obliviousness to the lives of others around them, so that they now actively competed with each other for survival. As the millennia passed they started to branch into different species that became more and more complex in the effort to outdo their rivals. Where some feasted upon the bountiful vegetation at the bottom of the lake, others started to feast upon their fellow creatures. To better protect themselves, the herbivores developed thick armour plating or tough inner skeletons, which the predators evolved to counter. Some vegetarians emerged from the Central Lake onto the land, developing lungs for breathing in air, but were followed by carnivores eager to profit from this new arena in which to practice the hunt.

Soon every inch of Escalonia’s surface played host to ecosystems of all kinds, from the miniscule arthropods scuttling across branches in the southern rainforests, to titanic megafauna battling for dominance of the fertile grasslands in the central regions, to the secretive and eerie inhabitants of the bleak northern heathlands. Yet Versulinos grew concerned. He feared that if the gods’ existence were ever terminated, the world of Escalonia would fall into perpetual chaos. He believed that the continent needed inhabitants that possessed some of the intelligence of the gods themselves, a quantity sufficient to not only know that the world needed careful management, but would be able to perform that management themselves, so that it could exist without the Gods’ continual supervision.

So it was that the Earth God searched the world for a species that could act as a template from which he could design his World Guardians. Every animal and plant was meticulously analysed, yet of them all, he chose one of the weakest - a species of ape that had evolved with virtually no means to defend itself - no horns, no venom, no claws, no protective armour, a nearly non-existent tail and teeth that were small and blunt. He reasoned that this species, because of its frailty, would be the most understanding of the need for protection for which they were designed, and so he fashioned a brain more complex than that of any other beast, and gave it to this hairless ape, resulting in the creation of man. The first of the newly-blessed incarnations of this species immediately began to display an ingenuity and ability to adapt beyond that of any other animal, which told Versulinos that they were ready to learn, and so he took it upon himself to guide and teach this species how to fulfil the goal he had intended for them.

The first humans originated in the central regions of the supercontinent, where the climate was especially temperate and most suited to their needs, and it was here that, under Versulinos’ supervision, they formed fifteen tribes based upon their location, collectively called the Ogmani in their basic tongue. These peoples lived in simple villages of small stone or thatched huts, and lived simple lives with simple tools of stone and wood, but they were happy. Versulinos spoke with their priests in visions, and these men passed the wisdom they would accrue to the rest of the community. He taught them to respect each other, to care for the young and old with especial dedication, to harvest only the resources they would need to live comfortably, and, above all, never make the mistakes that he himself had made, for the Earth God still had his own flaws as any other being would, and wished his mortal children to live lives with less strife than his own had been.


The Age of Separation
Yet the emergence of mankind had not gone unnoticed by the other deities. As the tribes found quantities of bronze and later tin and iron in their native regions and became stronger and more populous, they became far less easy to conceal. His four children, each curious of these new beings halfway between animals and gods, emerged from the oceans once more and took their form to interact with them.

Bannordus felt that he could have done a far better job at governing these creatures than his father ever had, and encouraged two of the tribes to leave the Ogmani homeland, smiting any who stood against him, including many of their priests who preached their loyalty to Versulinos. Leading them north, he bade them found their own kingdoms. The first of the tribes to leave, the Eirbi, settled in the very north-west of the supercontinent, and founded the Kingdom of Eirban. The second, the Upri, settled further east, along the northern shore of the Central Lake, west of the Northern River, which became the city-state of Upravania. Bannordus supervised them both, and even went so far as to teach them magic, something even Versulinos had not dared try, believing it was for the good of his worshippers to learn such skills to their advantage.

Yet he possessed the same minuscule attention-span as his grandfather, and abandoned both peoples, ultimately believing they were not strong enough to survive in the cold north. With this in mind he advanced the evolution process of the wildcats that hunted mice and rats in the northern heather until they possessed sentience and height that rivalled those of humans. Praising the fierce and ruthless nature of this new race, which he called the Felinids, he led them to a territory between Eirban and Upravania for them to call home. They then repaid him by attacking and slaughtering the Eirbanae and shunning their creator, their love for mindless violence surpassing even his own capacity. To make matters worse, the Upravanians began to use the magic he taught them for evil, raising the bodies of their dead and granting them malign intelligence. Their priests abandoned him, and developed a new religion revolving around this abhorrent act, becoming the first Necromancers. Howling in rage and hatred, Bannordus retired to the river he had created, swearing to this day to drown any of his creations who dare to cross it.

Epunara also wished to educate her father’s creations, and gained the sympathies of another of the tribes, the Esweri, who had settled to the east of the others on the southern shore of the Central Lake. Unlike her older brother, who had become obsessed with the primal qualities of strength and dominance, Epunara emphasised teaching the values of protecting the weak and punishing the wicked, and the noble caste of the Esweri took these qualities to heart. Skilled horsemen, they formulated a code of chivalry that placed these tenets at its core, and from this developed their famed Knightly Orders. These brave bands of nobles helped the king of their tribe to oust a faction of usurpers, in return for him ruling as a constitutional monarch whose rule was decided by the knights.

When she was confident that her faithful could protect themselves, Epunara travelled south and east, where the lush grasslands and swamps became harsh, wind-blasted deserts. Compelled to develop the most advanced civilisation she could to cultivate and store all the wisdom in the world for the Esworoans to find, Epunara drew a circle in a sand dune, and placed her hand in the middle. Channelling all of her knowledge and wisdom, she fashioned it into the first of the Rhacids, an avian creature that was formed from the very sand she had enchanted, yet lived and breathed as if it had been born from parents. Pleased at the creature’s intelligence, she summoned more and more from that circle of sand, until enough existed to establish the kingdom of Phorus. She taught them how to mark and consecrate more of these ‘hatching circles’ in the sand, and to this day she herself governs how regularly new Rhacids are to be born from these enchanted areas. The Rhacids themselves, however, govern themselves as all the other races have learned to do, and because they have no need to eat or drink as all other humanoids do, they have the power to devote far more of their energy into experimenting and developing new technologies and constructions far beyond the comprehension of any of the supercontinent’s other inhabitants.

Erestia, inspired by her older sister’s approach, guided yet another tribe away from the Ogmani heartlands and took them beyond Esworo, travelling east until they reached the Eastern River to settle in a distant land. At first this country proved a perfect paradise for her willing flock, with proximity to both the Central Lake and the open ocean and a pleasantly warm climate, but this tribe had been ridden with dissention, divided between those who worshipped a great eagle and those who revered a gigantic lion, and the presence of so many bounteous resources to hoard brought these tensions to the surface. The two halves ultimately split after a brutal battle, forming two peoples called the Aquilli and the Leonae. However, the two peoples soon after made first contact with the Minotaurs, omnivorous bovine humanoids created by Erestia's uncle, Mardan, to thrive in the harsh rocky landscape around the Central Lake’s northeastern shore, which soon descended into violence. Fearful of the threat of mutual destruction, the two camps felt bound to make amends with one another, and accepted both the eagle and the lion as patrons and guardians. Thus was the nation of Aquileona born, though to ensure survival against its new enemy, Erestia's chosen people abandoned many of her teachings that guided them upon building a society, and turned into a military-driven republic dedicated to protecting and expanding its borders at all costs.

Cataros, concerned that his siblings’ meddling would rouse the anger of their father, did not attempt to manipulate the sentient beings Versulinos had created, and instead attempted to develop his own. Using his powers to accelerate the development of the water-predator Gigantolutra that had become common in his own river, he created the Tarkalians, bipedal otters with strength and height considerably greater than that of humans. However, having witnessed the carnage inflicted by the Felinids upon their creation, Cataros spent concerted effort into teaching his own creation a culture and customs founded upon order, respect and mutual cooperation, much like that established by his father for the Ogmani.

Besides the Minotaurs, other races were created by Versulinos' siblings in their own attempts to foster a mortal presence upon Escalonia's surface. Sigrida, having witnessed the triumphs and failures made by her brother, nieces and nephews in developing mammalian civilisations, turned to the invertebrates as a source of material from which to develop her own mortal children. From tiny sky-dwelling arthropods evolved the Insectoids, which swarmed down from the skies and constructed great mud hives in the scrublands north of Phorus and south of Aquileona, using water and sludge from the Eastern River. Fast, relentless and carnivorous, these emotionless monsters began to aggressively raid their neighbours from the outset, attacking in vast flying armies to steal resources and capture specimens to feast upon back at the hives. Soon, though, they found that the Rachids were inedible as far as they could tell, for the avian inhabitants of the southern deserts possessed no flesh or blood to sate their ravening appetites, so the Insectoids were driven further afield to feed, and to this day the communities of Esworo are also regularly beset by Insectoid swarms as well.

Mourning the dark path undertaken by her first creations, Sigrida tried again, and chose the humble owl to take over the role of being her winged messenger. She gave a group of the creatures a keen intellect and a desire to work together to achieve a common goal, and thus created the first of the Tytoss race.

Eyeing the ever-changing state of the world, the Sun-Snake Rama, jealous of her sister's success, sent her only son Manchuna, the malevolent god of shadow, to infiltrate her rival’s rapidly-increasing pool of descendants. Descending to Escalonia's surface, Manchuna stalked across the supercontinent, analysing and studying every race to be found there, before slipping into the jungles of the deep south to enact his plan. Creating his own race of mortals in his mother's image, he gave them his own stealth, cunning and athleticism, to enable them to become masters of subterfuge. These were the Serpentines, a race perfectly designed to act as his eyes and ears and assist him in his meddling with the affairs of the other mortal races. Unfortunately for him, he overestimated his creations' capacity for evil, as Stheraza, one of their number with an especial disliking for the Shadow God's treacherous ways, betrayed him and had him evicted alongside others of her kind. To avoid being taken in by his lies again, she helped her people devise a code of honour which is instilled in the upbringing of every Serpentine born to this day. There are still those of her kind who are tempted by Manchuna, those that continue to work as mercenaries and assassins, but even then their imperative to honour their race's code means he has rarely been successful in recruiting them to his cause.

Even after all of this interference, more events occurred to spoil Versulinos’ plans. Two more Ogmani groups became unsatisfied with life under the Earth God’s tutelage and left the confederation. One travelled south, deep into the jungles of the south west, where they were not seen again for many centuries, while another ventured north to the Grey Mountains to build strongholds carved deep into the rock, but were careful to avoid travelling into the Felinid-infested highlands, so that only nine tribes remained to serve their original creator. These renamed themselves the Pretani and lived in a loose cooperation with each other that was only marred by the occasional tribal disagreement. The first other species these tribes encountered were the Tarkalians, but to the shock of their creators the two races fought each other in bloodthirsty conflict, intimidated by the obvious differences between their peoples. So it was that Cataros and his father agreed upon a measure to prevent a second iteration of the war between the Felinids and the Eirbanae - Versulinos expanded the role of the Pretani priesthood to form the Druid Order, which dedicated itself not just to worship but also the accumulation and preservation of knowledge of all things. Cataros then presented the idea to the Tarkalians, who valued the wisdom the movement encouraged, and the first Tarkalian Druids were soon inaugurated.

Amidst this turbulent period, other beings also began to emerge in ways unpredicted by the main pantheon. Accounts are unclear as to whether they were demigods created as unions of the true Gods and mortals, spirits that awoke as embodiments of the environments in which they dwelled, or even minor deities in their own right that were born to unknown parents, but these also lent their hands to the creation of new inhabitants. In total there were six such individuals, each of whom emerged from secluded places all across the supercontinent to participate in the population of the world. Crathan, the reptilian guardian of the swamps and rainforests, sired the Lizardkin as the ultimate protectors of the southern jungles, perfectly adapted to fight in this sweltering arena. Jorgnir, a spirit of the mountains, carved the first Dwarfs out of stone and breathed life into them, before teaching them how best to survive in the range and foothills of the Grey Mountains. Theidera, aware of the prestigious position of Versulinos and his offspring, attempted to create the Elves to outdo him, and settled them in the bountiful north-east land of Abral where she herself had awoken. Sthizia, a goddess who emerged in the jungles, encountered the lost Ogmani tribe in the jungles and guided them to a location where they would in time found the nation of Xastustec, in return for half the tribe's womenfolk adopting her mantra and becoming the first Amazons. Finally the twin brothers, Knaraugh and Odakota, emerged in the south-eastern regions. The former, a barbarous deity obsessed with chaos, created the bloodthirsty race of Orcs, while the latter, by contrast the most peaceful of the Gods, enchanted groups of both men and, to spite his twin, Orcs to abandon the warmongering and indulgence of modern lifestyles and embark upon a more basic existence that was harmonious with the world around them in the grassy plains of the mid-south.

At last Versulinos became enraged by the other deities trying their hand at mimicking what he alone had devised, and he cursed all those who had attempted to meddle, forbidding them to create any more living things in Escalonia upon pane of death. Afraid of the unparalleled wisdom and power of the Earth God, the lesser deities all departed from the supercontinent, one by one, leaving their mortal children to fend for themselves, until finally Versulinos was satisfied. Having taught the Druids all he knew, the Earth God now felt it was time for him to practice what he preached, and closed his eyes to join Andreina in an eternal sleep. With the Gods no longer getting involved, the time of mortals upon Escalonia was ready to begin.



After this comes the Age of Expansion, which is where the mythology ends and recorded history of all the factions begins - I'm working on this part at the moment.

Any comments would be much appreciated

 

Fantastic reading nice to see more is being done on this world