150xp characters
Dawn Caste
Janna Tardeth Dawn caste a lone warrior in the East. Loner who fights from the trees and fights off slavers from her peoples therein. A match to The Nameless.
Eclipse Caste
Lavinia desVals mother of The Guild Factor who is interacting with The Nameless, she is trying to reform The Guild, to get them out of the Slave and Drug trades and to be a force of good. She is a background worker and seeks to influence the guild be staying out of the spotlight. She is working on her son and his trade franchise.
Zenith Caste
Yaage Fahi is a monk who had a crisis of faith in the middle of The Realm, right where he is in the most danger and he has decided to stay there. He is trying to destroy the faith base of the Immaculate Order. Until a couple years ago he had spent years in the Slave States, but now he wanders The Realm undermining the prevalent faith. Lucky for him, he knows a number of charms from the Immaculate Martial Arts style that allows him to appear to ignite on fire, like a fire aspect Dragon Blooded. He is still quite careful about who he converts and how blasphemous his prayers are. His intention is to slowly remove the Nation's intimacy to the religion.
Twilight Caste
Blazing Ashes is an investigator for the Varangian States rooting out Demon Cults. She is armed with flame pieces and The Righteous Devil Style martial arts. She is a break from the mould of Realm and Slaves in The Nameless' background and she lives in the South, but this may change if The Nameless chooses to move about Creation. Also it gives exposure to other enemies to Creation, namely Demons and Infernal Exalted.
Seven more to create, three Dawn Caste, three Night Caste, one Twilight Caste. Dawn and Night Caste were more likely to escape distruction than their fellows because they could hide, kill or recover quickly from surprise.
The plot threads of the the story thus far that have been ignored by The Nameless have to do with his previous first age host directly. His return to the Slave States was ignored. Fine, there are consequences. There is a Death-Lord working in one of the Slave States and it is very perceptive of the workings of the land. It has discovered the slave's information trading and he has heard of the first attempts of The Nameless and the Bloody Hand. It has decided to co-opt this bloody hand and make it his own. He has gone to the trouble of attacking Latifundia and releasing all the slaves and murdering the managers of the latifundia, leaving the tell tale bloody hand calling card. There are a few common points in each attack:
•all the slaves are released
•some of the guards are killed before the slaves are released
•some of the guards are killed killing the administrators
•all the guards on duty are killed with three other slaves, but all were disemboweled, a slow lingering death
•some of the slaves that escape are found hanging from trees, by their own intestines
•half of the slaves are killed at each breakout and half escape, but most are easily recaptured by the Jackals
•very few of the escaped slaves survive a month out of the latifundia
•all the guards die
•about 1% of the slaves can be recovered within a month of any escape by Nameless, if he is in the area
•lastly, the Black Sun seeks out and kills the god of the Latifundia.
The Deathlord is trying to weaken the bounds between the Underworld and Creation by killing the slaves in horrid ways. The breakout begins just after sundown. It co-opts the minds of the Guards off duty to kill the administrators with him and he makes sure that all involved with the attack die slowly. Then he releases the rest of the slaves and sends them at the remaining guards without weapons and in a drug haze. The slaves that were injured from their fights he leaves to die of festering wounds. He then hunts the strongest of the slaves and kills them by hanging them by their intestines. And later desecrating their bodies. He then herds 10% of the slaves away to the North where any local shadow land might exist and summons allies to dispatch and torture them to add to his army of Hungry Ghosts and other undead minions. The ones it tortured to death in the wilderness usually rise as hungry dead to haunt the forests around the latifundia and hunt any other people therein, escaped slaves, jackals, and anyone else.
The Black Sun is playing a game to draw out The Nameless. It knows that there is a Solar Exalt in the area and suspects that it is of the Night Caste. It also is hoping that it is its Solar Shard and hopes to corrupt it. Currently, it has no Deathknights, but is hoping to make Nameless his first. Having an experienced Deathknight would allow it's plans to advance faster.
****
In cannon, during the Usurpation, all the Solar Shards that died were intercepted and imprisoned to prevent their rebirth and only a few Solars lived past the Calibration Massacre, close to twenty of three hundred. Along with those Solars that died, about twenty Sidereals died from the Gold Faction and a few Lunars. The Terrestrial Exalted died in the hundreds of thousands, but they pass their exaltation on through natural means, so have no shard.
The change to this is that the means that the Sidereal Exalted did to intercept the shards was more ingenious and did not involve attacking and subduing Lytek, God of Exaltations, and simply took all the shards that died for a week after the massacre. The Sidereal shards were removed easily, but the Lunars were kept held back with the Solar Shards, reducing them by close to one hundred.
In cannon, when the Jade Prison was opened, half of the Solar Shards escaped into creation and one hundred fifty were captured by the Deathlords and split between two corrupting forces, 2:1, Underworld : Demon World. My changes will be different than this. Fifty still go to the Infernalists, but only 43 Solar Shards escape to creation, in addition to the twelve that never were captured, and one hundred ninety-five were divided between the thirteen Deathlords. The darker Creation is in more desperate straights. More Dragon Blooded died in the Usurpation than in cannon. The Lunars were reduced in numbers and so the Attack by the Fair Folk was much more thorough and there was less of creation to save by the Empress. The Contagion was wildly more successful and Shadowlands are bigger. The bounds of Creation and the Underworld are thinner. Most cities devote time to repairing the damage and keeping it strong. Creation is a wrecked place. The captured Lunars were turned loose by the powers of the Underworld and the Demon Worlds, thinking that the Solars were everything, so when the prison is opened, there are more more Lunar Exaltations 2:1 than Solar Exaltations.
Each Deathlord has fifteen Solars to play with, but fewer Deathlords use their resources well, they are more petty, they are flawed and they are not team players. The Infernals are sharper though and have more training. They are more directed.
Additional benefit of this story would be to have details on a few of the returning Circles — five Solars, one of each caste is considered a Perfect Circle, but any grouping of Solars is called a circle, whether it has three or more than five. It is rare for more than five to be in a Circle, but in cannon, Bull of the North has seven or more Solars in his circle.
Some things that weaken the boundary between the Underworld and Creation. Suffering is a big one. Killing things is actually not something that weakens the shroud, if it were then animals killing animals for food would punch holes in creation all the time. Death is a natural part of Creation and so does not weaken Creation. Diseases don't normally, but unnatural diseases do, like the Contagion. Actions of the Fair Folk do not damage creation either. Suffering is key, so torture is significant. Slavery and the suffering that it causes is another, which is why the Slave States of Dehenna regularly practice rights that reaffirm Creation and dispel the damage that the slavery causes. This is why the Immaculate Order has such a large presence in these fallen states; they keep the land from falling into the Underworld.
The Dragon Blooded in this scenario suffered nearly as much as creation did. The Contagion affected them as much as the mortals and the Fair Folk invading Creation on its heels nearly wiped the rest out. From the glory days of the First Age, the million Terrestrials were reduced to barely 100,000 from the Usurpation alone. The five hundred years of rule after that, they were able to repair those numbers to almost half a million. But after the twin hammer blows of The Contagion and the Fair Folk invasion, they had dropped down to a little over a thousand in total. Half in The Realm and half of the rest in Lookshy. The Empress began a mad breeding program where all Dragon Blooded were required to produce one child every five years minimum; it has only been in the last couple of centuries that this requirement has been dropped, but still the population of Terrestrial Exalted has not recovered to Shogunate levels. There are roughly 300,000 Dragon Blooded in The Realm and 150,000 in the rest of Creation, half of those in Lookshy. The Realm background and the Lookshy background Breeding have reversed effects, the Realm it produces more, and Lookshy it produces better. In cannon there is about a hundred thousand Dragon Blooded, so once again a little tougher for the Solar Exalted, sucks to be them.
First Age cities are in deeper ruins, chiasucuro has no intact towers, half of them are torn in two and the rest are scattered in the ground. The most complete First Age city is Whitewall.
***
The tapestry of the North has almost more holes in it than terry cloth and the actions of the Black Sun are weakening the land so that any severe atrocity might rip a hole through Creation into the Underworld.
Ascending Fire one year before the Empress vanishes, one year before the Jade Prison is broken
Amber River
Amber River is lush by comparison; the hinterlands forested and the river plain fertile. The average latifundiae has about three thousand slaves, more in the river valley and more toward the coast. Four cities line the river valley, three averaging 30,000 and the capital, Amber River 100,000 on the coast bring the population to in excess of fifteen million slaves.
House Peleps owns Amber River, and while it does not get to choose the satraps, the Empress would appoint a satrap only from that House.
The forests are dense hardwoods to the East and lighter in the West. Even in the North it is tall pine that have use in timber. In addition to the fertile lands there is a trade in wood and nuts. By far, more wealth comes from this state except for the mineral wealth of Dehenna. Better quality Drugs are grown here to for export to the Realm as well as the other states. The easy access raw materials means that it is an ideal place to set up a large shipyard for the Earth, Air, and Water fleets. It is close to Cherak where finer work can be done.
Pop. 15M
Cities 190k (100k&3x30k)
Military 1.5m
Farmers 13.31m
Trades 171k
18 DB
150 Pat fam 15DB
1500 Admins 15 DB
6 Dragons of troops 20 DB +3DB
1500 monks 36 DB
710 clusters each with 7 latifundia of 3000 slaves
Each latifundia has 10% guards and 1% administrators and 89% farmers
300, 30, 2670
Each latifundia cluster has one Realm Administrator and two monks
Each secondary city has 30k people, 89% tradesmen, 180 Realm Administrators, 35 Patrician family Administrators(3DB), 3 District Administrators(3DB) and 1 Dragon of troops (5DB), three monks (3DB)
Amber River 100k people, 89% tradesmen, 180 Realm Administrators, 45 Patrician family Administrators (6DB), 6 District Administrators 6DB), Governor and staff (3DB), 3 Dragons of troops (15DB + Commander and two aides (3DB)) and 25 Monks (25DB). Amber River includes an extensive Phelps Shipyard with a permanent fleet based out of it that patrols the waters between it and Cherak.
72 Dragon Blooded part of the regular administration
28th legion Commander and two Aides = Governor DB, DB Admins
10 Dragon Lords and 10 Aides = DB admins, Pat DB
20 Wing Lords = Pat DB
40 talon Lords. 10 DB = admin DB
53 Dragon Blood as part of the Army
2000 monks 40 Dragon Blooded (1 in 50)
5 immaculate Martial Arts experts with 10 aides
55 Dragon Blooded Monks
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