The People: Humans

The City of Kings and the great desert which stretches soulthwards all the way to the edge of the world is home to many different people of many different races. A stranger travelling the great market of the City is likely to meet people from a dozen different cultures. Those daring to travel the night market are in for even greater surpirses. Here we take a brief look at some of the major races active in the region.

Humans

Without a doubt humans are the most numerous race throughout the entire region. They are split into four main groups:

The Pasthun, also known as the people of the desert. A dozen different tribes wander the hidden pathways of the desert, their lands denoted by the Oases they control. Each tribe has its own myth about how the world came to be and their place within it but all of them revere the spirits of the desert, representing wind, heat and scouring sand.

While a nomadic people no true Pashtun will ride a horse for they are the animals of Reptos the Enslaver. Instead the Pashtun ride a variety of desert animals, camels, zebra and antelope being the most common. One tribe of Pashtun is even said to ride the giant lizards of the deep desert but they are held in great suspicion even by their own people.

It is said that the tribes maintain hidden strongholds in the depths of the desert from which they conduct occasional raids against those merchants greedy enough to travel their territory without paying their due.

The most foolish or desperate traveller might be tempted to use a Pashtun watering hole but such transgressions are inevitably noticed and the tresspassers will quickly find themselves lost in the desert with their water supplies poisoned.

The City Dwellers are drawn to the City from dozens of different cultures, from the frozen lands to the north to the great expanse of the western oceans. These however are not the people of the City. The true Citizen of the City of Kings knows he is favoured by the gods and it is considered, mostly by the inhabitants of the City, that the lowliest beggar born in the City is accorded greater respect than the wealthiest foreign Prince.

Many of the ancient laws of the City granted significant rights only to true Citizens. Only they could own land or slaves within the bounds of the City and if a Citizen slew or harmed a foreigner he would be assumed innocent unless guilt could be proved. With the fall of the Empire and the rise of the Cabal most of these laws have fallen into disuse but many of the great Houses still consider them binding and do not treat kindly foreigners who break them.

Of course it is possible for one to purchase Citizenship and many have, but a native Citizen must sponsor the applicant.

The Slaves. The Empire of Reptos was one built on an army of slaves drawn from every city, kingdom or continent that fell under his sway. Their descendants remain to this day, a homogenous mass of people who once were the scions of a dozen different civilisations crushed into subservient obediance.

However, rumours continue to circulate about secret cults, strange rituals and dark shapes moving through the city at night. Somehow, amongst this downtrodden group of people, some spirit still remains.

The Lokarnos are the people of the great oceans of the world. Ship builders, monster tamers and weather wizards they ply their trade in vast city sized ships. Their society is one of rigid hierarchies and castes and is bound about by ritual, ceremony and rules of etiquette.

Once they were the backbone of trade in the Empire of Reptos but with his fall they found themselves coming under increasing attack from those who were oppressed by the Empire. The Captains of the seven great City Ships came together to protect their people and created The Sundering, an enourmously powerful magical ritual that sealed the oceans to travel by any but themselves.

The Sundering failed two years ago. No one knows how it happened or who was responsible but now the ships of many nations once again sail out into the Ocean. As a result Lokarnos society is undergoing something of a renaissence. Their rigid society is being exposed to new ideas, beliefs, religions and ways of life for the first time in four thousand years and tensions are mounting. Change is coming, it just need a spark to set the fire blazing.