Lord Agragax Presents: The Fantasy Realm of Escalonia

The Tytoss have little wooden tree houses, much like the Ewoks in Star Wars, and hide their young in those, but yes, the principle is the same.

I've thought of the concept that due to having to live in forests that are 'owned' by other races much of the time, the Tytoss race has developed the practice of 'sleep-shifting' where, rather than sleeping through the entire day or night, each individual sleeps for a period of time, then acts for a similar period of time, then sleeps again, with each individual choosing their sleep-shift periods. That way there will always be someone awake to look out for the mobs with torches and pitchforks, who can sound the alarm and send out an ambush force to deal with the threat.

This is a great point.

Tytoss still survive by hunting, mainly rabbits and other similarly-sized creatures that a humanoid owl would be able to swallow whole (owls have pretty big mouths for the size of their heads, so human-sized owls would probably be able to swallow a rabbit or stoat). They will eat fish occasionally, if land-based prey are scarce, but don't like the rough texture of fish scales. They are True Neutral.

Tarkalians have a big meat diet despite being good guys. Some in poorer communities still fish with the basic rod and line just for themselves, but most of the Kingdom's population eat fish that have been reared and sold by wholesale fish farmers whose establishments lie along the banks of the Western River, or caught by fishing boats that ply the coast to the west and the Central Lake to the very east. Some Tarkalians in more rural communities will eat venison, though communities along the coast and along the Lake's bank eat an entirely piscine diet to support the local sea fishing industry, and because they feel killing and eating their loyal cervine mounts and beasts of burden is immoral. Tarkalians are Neutral Good.

The Rhacids may be based on eagles but mainly eat fruit as part of their civilised lifestyle. They are Lawful Good.

Felinids will eat pretty much anything that moves and they have a chance of catching. They particularly like other humanoids which they torture in games they have called Chases, which ultimately result in the prey being killed and eaten. They are Chaotic Evil.

Gnolls, much like their real-world cousins, are scavengers, preferring to eat stuff that other creatures have already killed due to a mixture of Gnolls having naturally flat feet and being too lazy to kill their own prey. They use their numbers and weapons to drive off large plains predators. They are Chaotic Neutral.

The Insectoids will carry off humanoid prey caught in raids to their nests, where they will be quickly torn apart and divided between the members of the Hives most deserving of food. They are Lawful Evil.

The Minotaurs of Iotheiles were originally carnivores, but have since found they can become vegetarians with the Manidean Reforms, meaning they are omnivorous, contrary to their portrayal in the original myth and in franchises such as Warhammer. They are Lawful Good.

Lizardkin predominantly eat meat, typically roasted or as pastries, but will also eat jungle fruits as snacks. They are Neutral Good.

The Serpentines are the one race that I'm not sure about. All snakes are carnivores, but given the Serpentines have a strict martial code of honour that would not suit them. Perhaps they'd be suited to eating suitably sized jungle fruits that can be swallowed whole easily. They are Lawful Neutral.

Orcs, both Greenhide and Earthskin, are carnivores. Greenhide Orcs will eat anything they can pillage from their enemies, while Earthskin Orcs sustainably hunt the large herds of Tunka that thunder across the southern plains. Greenhide Orcs are Chaotic Neutral, Earthskin Orcs are True Neutral.

 

It's about time I answered your question given it's been almost a year since we last discussed Escalonia here. Work on my novel (which is in its last few chapters) and more recently my first job have largely detained me from producing material here or on World Anvil.

To recap on Escalonia humans, they are very common, but mainly stick to the regions ruled by the following factions:
Calderon - Celtic Warrior culture who have allied with the Lizardkin and Tarkalians
Xastustec - Aztec Warrior culture who have allied with the Medusae, Amazons and Serpentines
Aquileona - Definitely the most militaristic and xenophobic army being based on Republican Rome
Esworo - Protected by the Knights and thus highly militarised
Upravania - Stark-raving-mad depraved Cultists of Necromancy tend not to worry about the intelligent humanoid animals, they're too obsessed with fulfilling every sick fantasy they can think of to care and have the power to reanimate their comrades and any said humanoid animals they kill in battle
Scaramonde - Again highly militarised, ruthless, aggressive and allied to the barbarous Greenhide Orcs who often raid and pillage in their name

There are also several tribal groups who are less restricted to those regions but are less organised and coherent:
Grey Mountains Tribesmen - Tough and fierce neo-Viking barbarians that hide out in mountain strongholds which are easy to protect
Glenclans - Savage neo-Gaelic barbarians that live in fortified tower settlements based on Pictish brochs but much bigger
Coacans - Again live in the mountains, allied with Xastustec and ride massive Altotheres in howdahs
I was also thinking of adding in Plains Peoples as another loose faction that can respectfully represent either First Nations tribes or Zulus (or perhaps both, given that there will be different tribes), that ally with Gnolls and Earthskin Orcs to stay alive.

So yes, pretty much all my cultures are militaristic in some way in order to survive, mainly because Escalonia was always designed to be a wargame setting, and it wouldn't be much of a wargame setting if none of the factions were particularly fighty, but you are right in that this also lines up well with common sense to confirm that these factions would survive in the hostile, fairly dark world I'm developing.

 

Thank you for this, I'm sure it'll be useful, though I've done more than scratch the surface of Escalonia, I simply haven't had the time to publish much of it on here or World Anvil.

EDIT: I've read the most recent article. Certainly fascinating stuff, and I wonder if it has answered a significant question of mine (not related to Escalonia but still significant in my mind).

In several PC games I've played (Age of Empires and Rise of Nations immediately come to mind), monotheism is considered an 'advancement' over polytheism, in that in these games it is a technology that can be researched to give additional bonuses to your civilisation which is assumed to start out as polytheistic. As an aspiring Celtic Pagan I initially saw this as a bit of an insult, perhaps devised by a Christian who wished to reinforce the idea of the 'triumph' of his religion over polytheism, but that article may hold the key to the reason why this mechanic was included - the idea that practices and rituals in ancient polytheistic religions were practiced because they simply were 'what worked' and were perceived to ensure survival, as opposed to later religions like Christianity that aimed to encourage the following of a specific moral code with the intention of improving society, suggests that the latter does possess a certain advancement over the former.

However, the PC game mechanic is not entirely off the hook, because there are modern polytheistic reinventions of ancient religions that place a moral code at their heart (indeed I follow my own personal code that I could choose to tie in with my religious beliefs), and I imagine there were a lot of ancient monotheistic religions (like the brief period where the Egyptians abandoned all their gods to worship the Sun alone, or that in the Old Testament, the Christian God is openly murderous and vengeful at times, suggesting that in the time before Jesus lived and died, he was sometimes be a hostile deity that had to be appeased to ensure survival), that were practiced again simply because it was believed they seemed to ensure survival better than polytheistic religions. Thus a suitable alternative for this mechanic would be something like 'Moral codes' or 'Codes of Honour', because that was the real advancement, not simply swapping many gods for one.

 

I have Civilisation IV but have barely played it, having spent much more time on the Total War franchise, Rise of Nations, Legion, Supreme Commander, Worms and others. Might give it another go one day.

 

Interesting you would choose that one, because for me Civ 5 is the one I was aiming to avoid, chiefly because it shows the poorest grasp of historical accuracy and respect toward specifically the Celtic civilisation - as somebody who wishes to make clear the divide between the Britons and Gauls and the comparatively primitive Gaels and Picts, Boudicca dressed in a tartan kilt and standing amid the Scottish Highlands in the manner of Mel Gibson, with Pictish and Gaelic phrasing everywhere, pretty much epitomises the modern lack of knowledge regarding Britain's Iron Age past. In 4 you have Brennus who was a formidable Gallic commander (though getting him and his warriors to speak Irish at the same time makes me cringe) and 6 the Gallic civilisation led by Ambiorix appear to possess general all-round greater accuracy toward a specific Celtic people rather than lumbering them all together as some messed-up hybrid that embodies Scottish nationalist mythology.

Also I'm generally not keen on how the English civilisation is always led by either Victoria or Elizabeth I, as if there weren't any male English/British monarchs who led our civilisation to significant greatness (when we had such powerhouses as Alfred the Great, Offa of Mercia, and Edward I among others).

I'm getting all this knowledge through the wiki by the way, not from gaming experience.

 

Is your novel done? Where can I buy it and read it? This is all very awesome. I really like the Medusae having a somewhat chaotic and temperamental goddess who may just decide that today is Gorgon day!

I have always loved gnolls, and while they are chaotic, I tend to think of a PC gnoll being a bit more Baloo, carefree, a bit lazy, but still can be fierce when the time comes.

Tytoss are fantastic, though as tree dwellers, I almost wish they had a symbiotic relationship with an Ent/treeman or dryad race.

The insect people are awesome, but I always think of Inferno from Beasties or Beast Wars, calling Megatron Queen! Would be a great fish out of water to have one be found young and brought to a different settlement, and it just chooses someone inappropriately as their queen and just follows them around awaiting orders.

The Minotaurs are great, I really like the origin story here. With these magical crystals, you could see a full storyline of an usurper and their cohort stealing these crystals, slowly inflicting their awful will on the others, until mad with power demands that the other two pieces be given to him, and then explodes. A true villain story, not thearted by a hero, but by himself.

The rivers being Sky Serpents is an amazing bit of lore.

Anyway, get to work on that wargame, though I may want to also give this a 5e D&D adventure. There's a lot to play with, 4e may work better, given the wargame structure, but this is definitely a fun sandbox. Anyways..... MORE!

 

I would like to make an announcement about the state of Escalonia.


As I've mentioned before I've just been very busy with my job and with my own fan-made books for Warhammer Fantasy right now to do much on Escalonia. The first book is in its concluding chapters, so not too long to go before I finish it, and the core of the wargames rules and the unit lists for each race have been prepared so I might make some posts on that soon and I look forward to hearing your opinions on those. I'll also have a go at translating my hand-drawn maps of Escalonia into digitised form so that you all can finally see my own vision of the Supercontinent.

On the other hand, I will mention to you all now that I will not be following the same development model @Scalenex has devised for Scarterra. I have a great respect toward his prodigious world-building abilities, but much of what he specialises in discussing, all the inner trivialities of each faction's culture and behaviours, generates a distinct lack of enthusiasm within me when I consider doing the same for Escalonian cultures, because unless the triviality in question is relevant to either my novel series or wargame background, I consider it pointless - that's why I've done so little on World Anvil. I won't say it's a bad site at all, but a lot of the things they include as prompts in faction and race descriptions and so forth are just meaningless from the perspective of the way I want to develop my world (from a wargaming and novel perspective), and I just couldn't care less about developing such things for each of my factions right now. Also unlike Scarterra, Escalonia will not play host to every fantasy race under the sun - my lightbulb moments regarding the Tytoss and the Gnolls were the exception rather than the norm and I'm happy with keeping the number and nature of races populating Escalonia as they are - the only new races to appear henceforth will be the inhabitants of another continent that will be discovered later on in the novel series (I'm not spoiling anymore).

Apologies if this looks like a mini-rant, I'm not aiming this at anybody in particular, but I do seem to rather have gone on a bit of a spree in starting projects, am now strained in finishing them all in time to satisfy demand, and I cannot guarantee a post every couple of days talking about this, that and the other. However, I have not forgotten Escalonia by any means. I definitely haven't done a G.R.R. Martin and given up completely. Escalonia will always be my creation, I will never abandon it, and in time I will broaden its horizons and give it the development that it deserves, I can promise you that much - fortunately I started working on it at a pretty young age so I'm a lot less constrained for time in completing its background compared to a fair few other authors and world-builders, but it will take a long time for me to build it up. Your support means a lot to me, and I will still try and fit in something whenever I can to treat you all, but for now I would love for everyone to be patient.

Thank you for listening.

 

Inspired by @Scalenex's experimentation with heraldry, I have come up with some of my own as the national symbols for the twelve factions of Escalonia, plus some of the weaker races:

The Coat of Arms of Draghis Staltor, Lord of Calderon:




The bull emblem of the King of Wodristan:





The Coat of Arms of the Knightmaster Bernardt Chulthark of Esworo:




The shields carried by the Rhacid Pyramid Guard of Skardak, the most skilled soldiers of Phorus:



The Grey Tower of Scaramonde:



The Arms of the corrupt Howardi dynasty of Upravania:





The shield emblem of the Minotaur state of Iotheiles:




The arms of the dying Elven kingdom of Abral:



The royal emblem of the Kingdom of Tarkalia (part of Calderon):






The arms of the emerging Elven province of Dhaverroth:



Apologies for the huge size, I couldn't see how to attach them to the site any other way than downloading them through my free account and uploading them here.

 

The emblem of the hidden jungle kingdom of Xastustec:






The Senatorial emblem of the Aquileonan Republic:




The crude symbol of the Felinids of Seri:






The emblem of the united Gnoll clans of the Plains (which is rarely displayed due to that race's regular distrust of other clans):





The separatist arms of the Dwarf and Gnome Fiefdoms opposing the sovereignty of Wodristan:




The sigil of the primitive Ardloch Clan, most powerful of the Glenclans:





Emblem of the Ulfordsson Tribe, dominant among the Grey Mountains Tribesmen:






Mark of the Chukata Plains Tribe:






Grand Treeflag of the Fastflight Tytoss Enclave:




The emblem of the Blackclaws Tribe of Lizardkin:

 

I took your advice and altered the picture I had for the diamond shield version in paint, and the result looks pretty good. Thanks for that tip!

 

While I have had a map of Escalonia drawn roughly on bits of paper and in my mind for a long time,I have managed to use an excellent map editor called Inkarnate to create the first digitised Map of Escalonia!



Explanations (and likely revisions) to follow!

 

I'm rather miffed that the free version of Inkarnate is so restrictive on the buildings you can choose to include on your map - there were some great Dwarf buildings that would have fitted well to mark settlements in Wodristan and the Fiefdoms, and similarly a good selection of Elf buildings that could have been used for Abral and Dhaverroth, but the team at Inkarnate seem content to keep those behind a paywall so, being conservative with my money and blooming proud of it, I had to do without. Fortunately the buildings I was able to choose from do an adequate job at representing the main settlements across Escalonia, though I will add the following explanations:

• All the Dwarf settlements in the Feifdoms are strongholds in the style of Warhammer and Lord of the Rings Dwarfs/Dwarves, while the Gnome settlements are less fortified, so I simply used the Fortress symbol for the Dwarf holds and the village symbol for the Gnome settlements (though a fair few of them are bigger than villages in actuality). The towers in the north and east of the Fiefdoms represent the Brochs of the primitive Glenclans.
• The fortified cities on hills in Calderon are meant to represent hillforts, as per their neo-Celtic culture.
• The 'Orc Strongholds' in the Great Plains are meant to represent a mixture of Greenhide and Earthskin Orc encampments, Gnoll and Plains Human villages.
• The Grey Mountains Tribesmen live in holds dug into the mountains themselves, and rarely have any visible external buildings or constructs - the fortresses and towers on either side of the range represent the fortifications built as a result of the ongoing stand-off between Wodristan and Calderon over who gets to own the mountain range (with the Grey Mountains Tribesmen caught in the middle as a neutral party that launches raids against both sides).
• The fortified city markers in Iotheiles represent the Labyrinth Cities.
• In Abral, all the smaller communities of Elves were forced to flee to the remaining cities when the Freezing set in, and most of these cities are naught but ruins, cracked and crumbled by the perpetual cold. Only the four cities present on the map remain inhabited, and most ordinary Abrali Elves instead live a nomadic existence as hunters.
• The 'Orc Strongholds' in the south of Aquileona and north of Phorus represent the Insectoid Hives of Szharar, which is itself named as a region of the map.
• The 'Orc Strongholds' in Suri are the few known Felinid camps to exist, in their last known positions, for these regularly move across the land due to the Felinids' tendency to wander for many weeks at a time with no sign of their return (sound familiar?).

Though surely if there was ever an ownership dispute, one could prove that your Inkarnate maps were created by you by proving that you alone can login to the account on which you developed those maps?

I'm pleased with it, it suitably captures the vision for my fantasy world that has existed in my mind and on scrappy hand-drawn maps for years.

Sounds good, I'll see if I can try that in my Escalonia World Anvil with this map I've made. Inkarnate have smaller-scale maps for battlefields and town plans as well, so I may well be drawn toward making some maps for the capital cities of the different factions.

I'd like to see your digitised map of Scarterra, it'd be great if you uploaded it to your RPG thread - currently with your world I see only a couple of drawn examples of maps very much like my own that I refused to scan and upload here because I didn't think they'd look presentable enough.

As an aside, did you nick my idea of a supercontinent with a central lake for your First Age Scarterra?

At least you had the decency to make the lake smaller and turn the orientation to Landscape.



Anyway, I wonder if you've noticed anything different about my map to my initial descriptions at the beginning at this thread?

Namely, this:


This was a new idea for another playable lesser faction in my game system that will also feature at some point in one of my later novels - Feornost, the last free city of Upravania:


As the Cult of Necromancy began to sweep Upravania at the behest of the malevolent Howardi dynasty, lynch-mobs and armed patrols commanded by the ruling family's allies swept the land, murdering (and subsequently resurrecting the corpses of) those who objected to the rise of the new religion. Soon, only four dissident nobles remained, principally due to their objections being hidden from the public eye. These brave men sought each other out, and dubbed themselves the Swallows, after their desire to migrate south from the land of madness and misery to any free place of plenty they could find. They had attempted to flee to Wodristan, and from there south to the human lands of Calderon and Esworo, but the Howardis' reach had extended across the land, and all routes out of the country were blocked. The men were forced to retreat to the port city of Feornost, the dominion of Lord Krall, the eldest and most respected of the Swallows, to which the Cult of Necromancy and its legions of Undead lay siege by land and sea for three months. During these dark times, those soldiers who had chosen loyalty to the Swallows over the fear of the Howardis gradually dwindled, but those who remained had become impeccable fighters, clad in thick plate armour developed in response to the Undead threat. However, even their spirited defence would have failed were it not for a large army of Abrali Elves, who emerged without warning from their Winter-bitten realm at the same time as an alliance of Dwarfs, Gnomes and Glenclan Humans from the Wodristan Fiefdoms arrived to relieve the beleaguered city. Between these three forces, the Undead were driven back, and Feornost freed from damnation.

Since then, Feornost has been a thorn in the side of the Necromancers of Upravania, for it has successfully blocked the land's undead fleets from accessing the Central Lake, and the city has been subjected to regular sieges and assaults ever since. Three quarters of the city's population had died during the great battle that birthed its freedom, but many of the Dwarfs, Gnomes, Humans and Elves who came to its aid that day chose to stay and help rebuild, in particular the Abrali Elves, who saw the opportunity to escape from their chilled homeland once and for all. Not only did this result in the construction of concentric rings of ever-more insurmountable defensive networks over the following centuries, to solidify the city's independence from Upravania, but also Feornost has become the most cosmopolitan place in Escalonia, with all four inhabitant races dropping all inhibitions for the sake of survival and feeling no qualms about intermarrying and blending cultures. The current Prime Minister of Feornost, Lanceoth Mesdocrow, is a distant descendant of three of the four Swallows, the chiefs of the Gloamuir Glenclan and the Royal House of Abral, and has married a woman of mixed Elf, Gnome and Dwarf parentage. Though there are some Dwarf, Glenclan and Gnome words and traditions that have been preserved in Feornost, the vast majority of the language and most customs are a combination of Upravanian and Abrali, such that the city's current flag now bears the White Swan emblem of Abral alongside the four red swallows of the four founders of the state.

Though Feornost has a population greater than most other cities in Escalonia, its manpower is still far less than that of any of the Twelve Great Factions, and has replied upon the combination of its impenetrable defence network and the elite skill of the troops of its private army. Feornost's Trained Bands are extremely well-armoured and benefit from a powerful mixture of Human courage, Dwarven toughness, Elven speed and Gnomen ingenuity to prevail. Their favoured weapons are long spears, heavy broadswords and lethal double-handed blades and flails, as well as the lances of the deadly Paladin cavalry squadrons. Bows are rarely used in the army of Feornost, for these weapons proved useless in conflicts against the Undead, but citizens of Dwarven and Gnomen stock have engineered powerful artillery to deliver lethal fusillades of shot to cover the charges of the infantry and cavalry.

To fund this small but dangerous military, Feornost has gained its income through trade across the Central Lake (mainly arms and armour for food and coin) and, in particular, banking. In amidst the slate-grey fortifications, Feornost is home to the biggest financial institutions in Escalonia, including the Grand Palmate Bank and the Audium School of Commerce. Anyone with a talent for bean-counting may apply to the Audium for expert tuition, and students from as far south as Esworo and Scaramonde have enrolled to learn commerce and money handling from the Financiarch Elders. However, only those who have lived in Feornost for ten years or more may be allowed to seek employment at the Palmate, as a high-security institution that incorporates the Ministerial Treasury of the city among other vaults. The Prime Minister is elected from the Commune Mayors via sponsorships from corporate bigwigs and Financiarchs, based upon the number of sponsorships gained and the power and influence of each of those sponsors. The city is only a partial democracy, but this is seen as for its own protection, for it requires a strong leader, approved of by as many of the city's great and good, and the most prestigious among them, as possible, to keep it safe from the ravening hordes of the dead, and one act of dissentious treachery or foolhardy madness on the part of a weakling could cost the entire populace their lives. The people of the city hope that Mesdocrow will have the strength of will to strike a blow back at Upravania, and if he were to succeed, there is a chance that he could be the one to cure the Deadlands from the sickness that currently infects it once and for all.


During the development of my map, I thought it would be fun to develop a small city-state with impenetrable defences that was holding out against the legions of Undead the Upravanian forces had at their command, and for it to be a more multicultural place than the rest of Escalonia. I also like the idea of a highly elite humanoid alliance army that place emphasis on tanking enemy attacks with armour and then hitting hard back to win the day (currently the most 'elite' factions in the setting are the Tarkalians, who are less humanoid and have relatively little armour, the Aquileonans, who are infantry-based and still don't have as much armour as could be possible, and Iotheiles, whose Minotaurs again have less armour and are more about the offence - by contrast Feornost will be focused primarily on defence with some of the best armour in the game). For its aesthetics and models to be used in my Escalonia wargame, I was inspired by Mantic's Basilean range, though without the angels and big cats, and its unit roster and background being more the style of a Medieval Italian City-State with more money and story politics than is good for them.

 

I was inspired by the B-Man's experimentation on this NightCafe site and came up with this lad here:

https://creator.nightcafe.studio/creation/rx2l11pjmw6xtKRwpG1t

Of course he needs to be dressed, but otherwise this is pretty much what I have envisioned a male Tarkalian to look like.

Not a bad platform, but the algorithm is limited to very basic searches (it didn't understand what a Celtic hillfort was for example), and when I first joined up I only got 8 credits instead of 25 + 5 = 30. Fiddle.