Marleath #1
[spoiler]Marleath is a fairly twisted society, in many ways bent back in on itself. It is the only kingdom in Arhosa that exists underground, and the exact area of its spread is not even known to most of the Marleath population. It is generally insular, although violently so. It does not maintain any sort of diplomatic contact with any other country, although most of them are at least generally aware of its existence. The primary form of contact is raiding small towns and villages from hidden underground passageways, stealing the living population at night to transform them into skeletons and zombie labourers.
Marleath will always disavow knowledge, regardless of whether it authorized the raid or not. If it thinks it can gain from supporting the raid, it will. If it does not, it may kill the participants so they can speak of nothing. The kingdom is sprawling, and there is much petty infighting in the kingdom, although any major attempts that threaten the structure are crushed by the ruler, who controls far more of the undead than any other family. It is assumed that there is some artefact or something that allows him to control the near limitless hordes of undead.
Marleath has no interest in ruling the upper lands, instead preferring to spread wider and wider through the caverns of the earth and steal breeding stock and servants from the surface. However, because of the deep and dark caverns and twisting passages, counterattacks from the sundwellers are almost unheard of.[/spoiler]
Marleath #2
[spoiler]It was dank and dark in the caverns of Marleath, and the muttering and chittering from the undead creatures lining the walls created a dim echo that fled from cave to cave and room to room, reverberating down the tunnels and creating the harsh noise that all amongst the living learned to ignore, to put out of their minds. For when a man or woman reached the age of 50, they would be brought to one of the many ritual chambers that dotted the city and surrounding areas of Marleath, and upon their birthday they would be slain, to rise again as a mindless servitor to the lords of the Dread Caverns. Those of suitable nobility or skill would be given a greater role in their next life, perhaps a lieutenant in the army or a new-born priest in the service of the dead god. A select few would even be granted that pinnacle of undeath, and retain their knowledge and their skills as a born-again lich, invited into the ruling council of the Dread Caverns, and engaged in the power games that wracked the eternal lords.
Those among the living who served Marleath were divided at a young age, taken from their breeder parents and given into the cold and heartless care of certain intelligent undead, who would teach and prepare the children for their appropriate task in the great necrotic machine of Marleath. Many of the least intelligent were taken to the mines and the tunnels, constantly forced to dig and build and carve the heavy, heartless stone of the caverns. They would be worked until they died, and then transformed into zombies and skeletons, idiot creatures that could work yet longer hours. Those with a special spark were gifted into the ranks of the defenders, the undead taskmasters, or the ritual-bound priests. Once drafted, those children would be trained and forced and beaten and abused until they had learned all that was necessary for their given duties. From the age of fifteen, they would take up those duties and carry the weight until their death upon their fiftieth birthday.[/spoiler]
Hauthar
[spoiler]The sun broke the horizon in the tribal village of Hamaethwr, the seat of power for Mormaer and his warrior chieftains. Huddled in the bowl of the mountains, and against the far end of the valley, the town sits around the tarn that gathers from the spill of the tors, and flows down in a mountain ghyll to the moraine below. Short cropped green grass dominates the landscape, with patches of heather and ferns comprising much of the rest of the vegetation, and across the hills and tors roam white dots, sheep owned by the farmers of Hamaethwr and the surrounding countryside. A cluster of tumuli covered the ground behind the village, circling round from the left to the right, an arc only half complete. Here lay the graves of all previous rulers, buried with suitable pomp and circumstance. The newest of the mounds still showed marks of fresh-turned earth, and it was but one turning of the moon since the king had been laid down. He had been struck down by Mormaer in a dispute, and men about the town still wore bandages and fresh scars, for the fighting had lasted the full turn of the sun, and death had come to a few.
Three of those men who had supported Mormaer sat in the central broch, hands wrapped around tankards of mead and ale. It was their first meal of the day, and all rubbed their eyes, still groggy from the celebration the night before. The conversation was quiet, for the thumping heads and sore bodies would stand only a small noise, and also due to the subject, for these men plotted already against Mormaer. He was not a strong king, and relied greatly on the support of the men underneath him. However, he was still popular and in his first blood of ruling, and few wanted to risk more bloodshed now, for it was the planting season of early spring, and each man tended to their farm, and put their weapons away to sit beside the fireplace. And so their conversation had a waiting to it.
Soon enough, they turned to the summer months, those great days of glowing sun and charging wind, when the Hauthar would fly down out of their mountain fastness, rush down from their tors and out of their roundhouses, and prey upon the people to their south, those soft and weak men of the plains and open lands, who had once built a wall to keep them out. That wall was breached now, stones taken away to build homes and brochs and halls, and often only the foundation remained, no counter to the raiding parties of the Hauthar. This year, should they gain enough support within the village, the three men might lead their first charge down from their dun, and into glorious battle.[/spoiler]
Hania
[spoiler]The city of Yn adeinio Dref floats among the clouds of the Ogleddol Fynyddoedd mountains, a great span that covers the north-eastern expanse of Arhosa, and is inhospitable to almost all life. Peaks permanently covered in snow and ice rise from the mists that wreath their noble shoulders, and even the birds do not frequent these icy slopes, preferring warmer and softer climes. Small creatures dash across the snowy covering, sleeping away the winter and reviving in the summer to eat of what little food grows down in the secret valleys that nestle in the confines of the tors, full of cold and hard earth, barely fertile. These valleys are the lifeblood of the Hanian people, for, scattered and weak, they farm amongst the rocky hills, providing the grains that will feed their floating cities.
There is little of life here, up amongst the crown of the world, and it is life that gets smaller every year, for the population of Hania breeds slowly, and is dying at a faster pace. Once some of the greatest mages who travelled the lands in their flying cities, they are now reduced to little more than maintainers of the past, hold on to the best of what once was theirs. Their libraries are full of old texts on manipulation and modification, on making a stone as light as the air or a feather weigh the same as a boulder, yet almost none of the mages can manage those spells, as the shrinking brotherhood tends to part after part of their flying homes, watching the unused sections crumble into the mountains below.
Yn adeinio Dref, today, saw several young men together, their heads close in conversation. Their goals are noble, but it is a long and daunting road ahead.[/spoiler]
Gyntar
[spoiler]Hunkered down in the dell of rolling plains, Hynafiaeth was not a city, or a town, or even really a village. It was a mere smattering of huts around the rim of a large pit, dug deep into the earth. Earth piled up around the walls, a crude form of insulation against the wind that whipped from the east, carrying down across the plains from the great ocean, a thousand miles with no hills or mountains to stop the gathering speed. It was bitterly cold, the deepest nights of winter, and howls and cries of beasts rang down upon those huddled at the bottom of the pit. Those creatures of the plains occasionally ventured past the banked earth that shielded the scattered buildings, tearing into the stores and stealing food, making off into the night with necessary items. A pest, to be sure, but nothing compared with the tornadoes and flashfires that ravaged the plains. For those, the diggers had built chambers deep into the walls of the chasm, accessible only through narrow crawl-ways.
It was a strange and lonely existence for those who worked upon the earth of Hynafiaeth, for only two men cut holes in the ground now. All others were gone, long dead, or missing, forgotten as the challenge to dive deeper swarmed over the minds of those that remained. By hand, by tool, by magic, the earth was shifted and the tunnels went further, went deeper, crawled onwards towards the goals that lay nestled within the ticking crystals and hidden minds of the two burrowers. It was towards the artefacts of the Liara that the chambers led, a race of those dead and gone, now simply plunder to be gotten from the earth, provided those who search found what they searched for. Those burrowing into the earth were men of metal, able to continue their search long after any others had failed, and is is here that we join them in their quest for the artefacts of the Liara.[/spoiler]