City of Gold
Dec 28, 2016 5:43:04 GMT
Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 5:43:04 GMT
NAME: The City of Gold
KINGDOM AT A GLANCE:
The City of Gold is the mythical home of the Crokodon race, untold treasures from ages past, settled in the south-western Jungles along the equator. The Priest-Warriors of the Crokodon people hold complete dominion over the shimmering city, spending their days looking to the stars, praising and attempting to decipher the will of their living gods.
SIZE AND LOCATION: Small
The City of Gold is nestled in the heart of the western jungles on the equator, south of the Darkwood and west of the Artarran Necropolis. It is extremely isolated, with only the single city in jungles bordered on two sides by swamps.
WEALTH: High
The City is literally made of gold. Not entirely, but a great amount of city is Golden. The Crokodons have no concept of money, and thus only feriously guard their sacred places in the city, caring little for a handful of cobblestones from their roads so long as they are not taken from the Path of the Gods, the four primary roads running along the cardinal directions from the City's center.
They are much more protective of their artifacts. Star-stones being immeasurably sacred diamonds holding the light of a stellar constellation within, even including the moving light of shooting stars, dying lights as a star dies out in the night sky or is blocked by some other object. These are said to match the sky as a prophecy is becoming reality and are thus incredibly important.
STABILITY:
The City of Gold has no struggles for dominion or power. The Oldest Priest-Warrior is denoted as the Priest-King and they answer only to the Living Gods. There is no theft, no infighting. Disagreements are often handled quickly and decisively by an elder Priest-Warrior. On occasion, prisoners are ritually sacrificed to the Gods, their blood poured into basins for the Gods to bathe in and their hearts eaten by those Crokodon that would commune with their Gods.
DANGER TO TRAVELERS: High
Navigating the Swamps, jungles, the proximity to the Darkwood and the Artarran Necropolis make it dangerous to cross through the Fog. Within the fog there are occasionally whole expeditions lost in the fog, wandering it for years never finding the City of Gold which may beset upon other travelers depending on what type of psychosis their wandering has caused.
The actual City of Gold is however very peaceful most of the time, with a mild distrust of travelers. Occasional Ritual Sacrifices done by ripping the hearts out of creatures or people are done, but only to prisoners who have wronged the City or its occupants in some way. Most people that do make it to the City are treated like they do not exist, avoided by the Crokodons, or simply watched when they are near the sacred sites within the city. Travelers may find that food and water are abundant within the city, free to anyone, kept in stalls along the streets, though hoarders and gluttons may be accidently commit sacrilege by devouring too much or creating a mess on the Path of the Gods. However they are normally safe until they commit some form of sacrilege to the Gods or the City.
FORM OF GOVERNMENT:
The City of Gold is ruled by its Gods directly. In this case, five mummified corpses of the First Crokodons whose decrepit bodies still contain the connection to their spirits. These spirits are normally dormant, the Celestial Forms of the Gods residing in their Otherworldly abode as the Crokodons believe, unless awakened by preforming ritual blood sacrifices allowing the Priest-King and the other Priest-Warriors to commune with them. When awakened the Gods are prophetic, often making freakishly accurate predictions that may stretch millennia into the future or be occurring even as they speak. All that is known by the Crokodons is that their predictions always come to pass. These Prophetic communions are often accompanied by astrological patterns, causing astrology to be a key portent at determining when the prophecies will come to pass.
Beneath the Gods themselves is the Priest-King, the eldest living member of the Crokodons. He acts more as an adviser to the City and its Gatewarden. He cannot leave the city and in battle will hold the gates until he falls. The eldest Priest-Warriors hold the highest ranks, with the youngest holding the lowest ranks. There is no arguments about chain of command, it is simply understood and known.
FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION:
The Crokodons are free, only rarely advised by their gods and ruled by their eldest. Humans and outsiders are only really oppressed for a short time, and then only those the Crokodons view as criminals. And they are only oppressed long enough to have their hearts ripped out over an alter of gold.
COMMON SPECIES:
Crokodons are the only sentient species in the City of Gold, being highly xenophobic due to their leader's ancient experiences with outsiders. They are very large, muscular humanoid-esque crocodilian people with thick hides, long teeth and claws like steel, and powerful prehensile tails. They are fairly slow moving most of the time, being cold-blooded, and normally quite docile. Only when provoked by outsiders threatening, stealing, or defiling their city do they explode into action. They are all prophetic in nature, some having more complex, accurate visions of the future than others, some seeing only one or two visions in their centuries long lives, some seeing the futures of strangers they will never meet or that will not live in the same lifetime as the Crokodon.
The jungles surrounding the City of Gold holds many jungle creatures, insects, poisonous frogs, venomous snakes, large cats, jungle boars to name a few. The swamps surrounding the City are filled with all sorts of dangerous things, Piranha-Mosquitoes being the most notorious tales that have been told, a swarm capable of stripping a man into a pile of bloodless scraps of flesh and clothes in a matter of moments. Immense Titanoboas roam the swamps and rivers, capable of crushing canoes and the people riding them all at once.
MILITARY FOCUS:
The City's primary defense is its remoteness. Not only is it hard to get too, but it is surrounded by a fog stretching for miles. Only the most stalwart traveler can pass through the fog without becoming lost and confused, and prolonged time spent wandering the fog can cause amnesia and psychosis. It is rumored that only those with pure hearts and honest intentions can navigate the Fog unhindered. This has additional effects on Undead and Dark beings, causing them to fall apart, their masters to lose control of them, and a noticeable decomposition of their constructed forms. The Fog obscures the city from view from all directions and is magically maintained by unknown means.
As for Military, the entire Crokodon species consists of Eight to Twelve foot tall humanoid-crocodilian lizard Priest-Warriors known for wielding large Macuahuitls and Atlatls in combat. They are relatively few in number but quite ferocious when provoked, though are normally quite docile. Sometimes they make use of domesticated beasts in warfare, such as large predators, avian creatures, and on even rarer occasion Dragon Turtles.
TECHNOLOGY LEVEL: Bronze Age
Most of the Technology used by the Crokodons is primitive. Armor is merely ceremonial, consisting of gold and stone tablets, feathers, leathers, semi-precious stones, and the like. Their weapons are simple, Macuahuitls and Atlatls, with even more primitive clubs and axes being used alongside these.
It is their script-writing, astrology, artistry that is most advanced. Brushes, chisels, each Priest-Warrior seeking to find and catalog omens in their own way. Their speech consists of gutteral grunts, growls, roars, and body language with similar sounds meaning vastly different things. Most verbal communication is based around situations where haste is required, such as combat, fleeing a volcano, an earthquake, and the like. Normally, in everyday conversation they will write their conversations, with different members of the species using different styles. Some may communicate in free form poetry, others only in iambic pentameter, others in song, some exclusively with metaphors and similes.
HISTORY:
The City of Gold's history is shrouded in myth to most. The Crokodons believe that Totutl the God of the Sky descended to the earth and called out to his four brothers and sisters, Grom-taq the God of the Earth, Tehaun the God of the Seas, Jag-gar the God of the Beasts, and Hexuatl the God of Time who came to him from the North, south, east, and west gathering together in the jungles. Together they blessed the lizards of the jungles around them with the Strength of the Earth, the Ferocity of Beasts, the Breath of the Sea, the Vision of Time, and the Wisdom of the Sky, forging the Crokodon species to serve them during the First Age.
The Great Pyramid was built from solid gold, towering over the jungles to house the Gods as they entered their slumber and the City was built around it, the Four Paths of the Gods paved with gold stones. With its completion, the Gods locked themselves within their Celestial abode, only venturing into their mortal coils when called upon by their servants and then only to reveal some prophecy of the future, leaving the Crokodons a Star-Stone with each prophecy they tell. They are said to be responsible for the Divine Fog that surrounds the City, said to thwart the wicked and unholy and protect the pure of heart.
The Second Age began when the Gods sealed themselves away, and for centuries it was tranquil until the first Cataclysm. The War of the Dead was fought for centuries, an entire generation of Crokodons raised and born into war for the entirety of their lives, causing the creation and founding of the Priest-Warriors which came to dominate the Castes of the Crokodons. After the War of the Dead spent fighting the Undead of the nearby Necropolis, the Priest-Warriors supplanted the other Castes in the City, dominating them in a brutal night of blood.
The Third Age was born from that night, the Horned King, the Oldest Son of Totutl, claiming utter dominance over the City. The Voice of the Gods spoke through the Eldest Son, and with its thundering righteousness the Priest-Warriors became the only thing within the city, and the Bounty of the Gods flowed within it. Since then there has been no hunger or thirst to the Priest-Warriors, and no war they could not win. Fruits and fish are easy to find and grow in huge abundance, freshwater wells only require shallow pits, and disease hasn't plagued the city.
With the Collapse of the Mapheri Empire, marking the beginning of the Fourth Age. A time of unrest as more and more prophecies from the gods come to pass, and fewer and fewer new prophecies are made has begun. Faith in the Priest-Warriors remains, but only the most stalwart of the faithful are without doubt. Several Crokodons have predicted a second Cataclysm, though these have been thus far dismissed by the Elders. The current Priest-King Taun-Lok the Mage Slayer, has outlawed all magics that do not flow from the divinity of the Gods themselves. Any traveler in the city seen to be using magic is swiftly dealt with.
PLAYER CONTROLLED: Taun-Lok | Mage Slayer
KINGDOM AT A GLANCE:
The City of Gold is the mythical home of the Crokodon race, untold treasures from ages past, settled in the south-western Jungles along the equator. The Priest-Warriors of the Crokodon people hold complete dominion over the shimmering city, spending their days looking to the stars, praising and attempting to decipher the will of their living gods.
SIZE AND LOCATION: Small
The City of Gold is nestled in the heart of the western jungles on the equator, south of the Darkwood and west of the Artarran Necropolis. It is extremely isolated, with only the single city in jungles bordered on two sides by swamps.
WEALTH: High
The City is literally made of gold. Not entirely, but a great amount of city is Golden. The Crokodons have no concept of money, and thus only feriously guard their sacred places in the city, caring little for a handful of cobblestones from their roads so long as they are not taken from the Path of the Gods, the four primary roads running along the cardinal directions from the City's center.
They are much more protective of their artifacts. Star-stones being immeasurably sacred diamonds holding the light of a stellar constellation within, even including the moving light of shooting stars, dying lights as a star dies out in the night sky or is blocked by some other object. These are said to match the sky as a prophecy is becoming reality and are thus incredibly important.
STABILITY:
The City of Gold has no struggles for dominion or power. The Oldest Priest-Warrior is denoted as the Priest-King and they answer only to the Living Gods. There is no theft, no infighting. Disagreements are often handled quickly and decisively by an elder Priest-Warrior. On occasion, prisoners are ritually sacrificed to the Gods, their blood poured into basins for the Gods to bathe in and their hearts eaten by those Crokodon that would commune with their Gods.
DANGER TO TRAVELERS: High
Navigating the Swamps, jungles, the proximity to the Darkwood and the Artarran Necropolis make it dangerous to cross through the Fog. Within the fog there are occasionally whole expeditions lost in the fog, wandering it for years never finding the City of Gold which may beset upon other travelers depending on what type of psychosis their wandering has caused.
The actual City of Gold is however very peaceful most of the time, with a mild distrust of travelers. Occasional Ritual Sacrifices done by ripping the hearts out of creatures or people are done, but only to prisoners who have wronged the City or its occupants in some way. Most people that do make it to the City are treated like they do not exist, avoided by the Crokodons, or simply watched when they are near the sacred sites within the city. Travelers may find that food and water are abundant within the city, free to anyone, kept in stalls along the streets, though hoarders and gluttons may be accidently commit sacrilege by devouring too much or creating a mess on the Path of the Gods. However they are normally safe until they commit some form of sacrilege to the Gods or the City.
FORM OF GOVERNMENT:
The City of Gold is ruled by its Gods directly. In this case, five mummified corpses of the First Crokodons whose decrepit bodies still contain the connection to their spirits. These spirits are normally dormant, the Celestial Forms of the Gods residing in their Otherworldly abode as the Crokodons believe, unless awakened by preforming ritual blood sacrifices allowing the Priest-King and the other Priest-Warriors to commune with them. When awakened the Gods are prophetic, often making freakishly accurate predictions that may stretch millennia into the future or be occurring even as they speak. All that is known by the Crokodons is that their predictions always come to pass. These Prophetic communions are often accompanied by astrological patterns, causing astrology to be a key portent at determining when the prophecies will come to pass.
Beneath the Gods themselves is the Priest-King, the eldest living member of the Crokodons. He acts more as an adviser to the City and its Gatewarden. He cannot leave the city and in battle will hold the gates until he falls. The eldest Priest-Warriors hold the highest ranks, with the youngest holding the lowest ranks. There is no arguments about chain of command, it is simply understood and known.
FREEDOM AND OPPRESSION:
The Crokodons are free, only rarely advised by their gods and ruled by their eldest. Humans and outsiders are only really oppressed for a short time, and then only those the Crokodons view as criminals. And they are only oppressed long enough to have their hearts ripped out over an alter of gold.
COMMON SPECIES:
Crokodons are the only sentient species in the City of Gold, being highly xenophobic due to their leader's ancient experiences with outsiders. They are very large, muscular humanoid-esque crocodilian people with thick hides, long teeth and claws like steel, and powerful prehensile tails. They are fairly slow moving most of the time, being cold-blooded, and normally quite docile. Only when provoked by outsiders threatening, stealing, or defiling their city do they explode into action. They are all prophetic in nature, some having more complex, accurate visions of the future than others, some seeing only one or two visions in their centuries long lives, some seeing the futures of strangers they will never meet or that will not live in the same lifetime as the Crokodon.
The jungles surrounding the City of Gold holds many jungle creatures, insects, poisonous frogs, venomous snakes, large cats, jungle boars to name a few. The swamps surrounding the City are filled with all sorts of dangerous things, Piranha-Mosquitoes being the most notorious tales that have been told, a swarm capable of stripping a man into a pile of bloodless scraps of flesh and clothes in a matter of moments. Immense Titanoboas roam the swamps and rivers, capable of crushing canoes and the people riding them all at once.
MILITARY FOCUS:
The City's primary defense is its remoteness. Not only is it hard to get too, but it is surrounded by a fog stretching for miles. Only the most stalwart traveler can pass through the fog without becoming lost and confused, and prolonged time spent wandering the fog can cause amnesia and psychosis. It is rumored that only those with pure hearts and honest intentions can navigate the Fog unhindered. This has additional effects on Undead and Dark beings, causing them to fall apart, their masters to lose control of them, and a noticeable decomposition of their constructed forms. The Fog obscures the city from view from all directions and is magically maintained by unknown means.
As for Military, the entire Crokodon species consists of Eight to Twelve foot tall humanoid-crocodilian lizard Priest-Warriors known for wielding large Macuahuitls and Atlatls in combat. They are relatively few in number but quite ferocious when provoked, though are normally quite docile. Sometimes they make use of domesticated beasts in warfare, such as large predators, avian creatures, and on even rarer occasion Dragon Turtles.
TECHNOLOGY LEVEL: Bronze Age
Most of the Technology used by the Crokodons is primitive. Armor is merely ceremonial, consisting of gold and stone tablets, feathers, leathers, semi-precious stones, and the like. Their weapons are simple, Macuahuitls and Atlatls, with even more primitive clubs and axes being used alongside these.
It is their script-writing, astrology, artistry that is most advanced. Brushes, chisels, each Priest-Warrior seeking to find and catalog omens in their own way. Their speech consists of gutteral grunts, growls, roars, and body language with similar sounds meaning vastly different things. Most verbal communication is based around situations where haste is required, such as combat, fleeing a volcano, an earthquake, and the like. Normally, in everyday conversation they will write their conversations, with different members of the species using different styles. Some may communicate in free form poetry, others only in iambic pentameter, others in song, some exclusively with metaphors and similes.
HISTORY:
The City of Gold's history is shrouded in myth to most. The Crokodons believe that Totutl the God of the Sky descended to the earth and called out to his four brothers and sisters, Grom-taq the God of the Earth, Tehaun the God of the Seas, Jag-gar the God of the Beasts, and Hexuatl the God of Time who came to him from the North, south, east, and west gathering together in the jungles. Together they blessed the lizards of the jungles around them with the Strength of the Earth, the Ferocity of Beasts, the Breath of the Sea, the Vision of Time, and the Wisdom of the Sky, forging the Crokodon species to serve them during the First Age.
The Great Pyramid was built from solid gold, towering over the jungles to house the Gods as they entered their slumber and the City was built around it, the Four Paths of the Gods paved with gold stones. With its completion, the Gods locked themselves within their Celestial abode, only venturing into their mortal coils when called upon by their servants and then only to reveal some prophecy of the future, leaving the Crokodons a Star-Stone with each prophecy they tell. They are said to be responsible for the Divine Fog that surrounds the City, said to thwart the wicked and unholy and protect the pure of heart.
The Second Age began when the Gods sealed themselves away, and for centuries it was tranquil until the first Cataclysm. The War of the Dead was fought for centuries, an entire generation of Crokodons raised and born into war for the entirety of their lives, causing the creation and founding of the Priest-Warriors which came to dominate the Castes of the Crokodons. After the War of the Dead spent fighting the Undead of the nearby Necropolis, the Priest-Warriors supplanted the other Castes in the City, dominating them in a brutal night of blood.
The Third Age was born from that night, the Horned King, the Oldest Son of Totutl, claiming utter dominance over the City. The Voice of the Gods spoke through the Eldest Son, and with its thundering righteousness the Priest-Warriors became the only thing within the city, and the Bounty of the Gods flowed within it. Since then there has been no hunger or thirst to the Priest-Warriors, and no war they could not win. Fruits and fish are easy to find and grow in huge abundance, freshwater wells only require shallow pits, and disease hasn't plagued the city.
With the Collapse of the Mapheri Empire, marking the beginning of the Fourth Age. A time of unrest as more and more prophecies from the gods come to pass, and fewer and fewer new prophecies are made has begun. Faith in the Priest-Warriors remains, but only the most stalwart of the faithful are without doubt. Several Crokodons have predicted a second Cataclysm, though these have been thus far dismissed by the Elders. The current Priest-King Taun-Lok the Mage Slayer, has outlawed all magics that do not flow from the divinity of the Gods themselves. Any traveler in the city seen to be using magic is swiftly dealt with.
PLAYER CONTROLLED: Taun-Lok | Mage Slayer