The Divided Nations of Mekkhor: Heirs to Ancient Empires

The Divided Nations of Mekkhor

Mekkhor

Lekkas

Lekkas was the birthplace of Mekkhas, the ancient conqueror that created the Mekkhor Empire.; It had long been an enemy of the Scale Princes before the revolution. Lekkas is known for its sheep farms. The Palatine of Astres is located in Lekkas. Most of the landscape is covered in mountains. Lekkas has a cold temperate climate. It was one of the first nations to be contacted by an old kingdom of dwarves, Gromdalia, and one of the first to receive gifts from before the Twilight. Because of this, the Lekkenics have a deep relationship with Gromdalia andt the Lekkenics have steadily traded with the dwarves for eons. Even with the rise of Mekkhas, one guarantee of the legendary warlord was that no duerthi blood would be shed by Lekkenic hands.
Lekkas did not always think of itself as Lekkas. Indeed across millennia it was host to dozens to hundreds of city-states bound together by a commonly developing language. These city-states feuded with each other as much as any outside threat. For their wars, they raised levied armies of hoplites, heavily armored warriors taught to wield long spears and round heavy shields in formation. Their style of war would lay the foundation for future tactics even when the hoplite grew out of fashion. Lekkas also found itself with the knowledge of the old-world, although a fragmented form given in bits and pieces by the dwarves. This knowledge was not exclusive to the dwarves; the elvish realms, dragons, and other ancient kinds also keep it, but much like the areas around those ancient places it gave the Lekkenics insights and different ways of thinking about the world. Many philosophers, academics, and innovators can draw back their foundations from this specific relationship and this sort of Foundational Theory has spread with trade and war.

Being a vector for old knowledge, Lekkenics value wisdom heavily. The land is littered with academies, universities, and research centers. The patron god of Lekkas, Astres, exemplifies the almost worshipful foundation of seeking questions into the unknown. When the Great Blasphemy occurred, Astresian cleric were the first to demand the ability to study what the Broken One stole from their god. They were also one of the largest hosts to revolutionary workshops making firearms using Dr. Holowitz's magitek tools. Lekkas was also one of the few regions of the world that did not contribute to the Blue Host that attacked the Republic at the end of the Skalovian revolution. Indeed, possibly just out of self-preservation, Lekkas has had a sympathetic to a cooperative relationship of the new Skalovian regime. While made up of harmonists, equitianist thought was not quashed until the events of Port Brau when the Bloody Scare set off.

Orcini

Orcini is known to be a land of romance and ostentatiousness. It is covered with fertile valleys and foot hills along with flat plains and rolling hills and rivers. Orcini surrounds the mouth of the Sea of Wine, walls off the Valarine Sea, and opens to the Green Step Sea which leads to Aizarin. Orcini is a rich port region and its fleets and control essentially gate off the majority of Lekkas, Ravois, and parts of Catarein so heavy tariffs are often paid to get past or trade gets dropped off on Orcinian land to have a native trading company serve as a medium to pick up the load and sell it themselves. Each Orcinian kingdom has a powerful navy to keep this control of the waves. Orcini has gathered a great amount of wealth from its trade and its domestic industries including dye works, wine making, and textile works. Orcinians essentially worship wealth. Many monuments and edifices have been created to this worship. Grand opera houses, great arenas, opulent palaces, grand forums, some of the largest cathedrals to the Five in the world have their home in Orcini built by princes, magnates, and others of the high classes showing off their monetary power. It is also a realm of great subterfuge, intrigue, and power struggles. Assassins, thieves, duelists, mercenaries, and spies make their home here and it is known to have at least been home to two found thieves guild and one found assassin's guild. Orcini has the monster, cultist, undead, and other issues that other realms have but even contractors are more likely to be set against their neighbors indirectly than for simple defense. 

Catarein

The Palatine of Prythe is located in Ortaset. Catarein is known for their cattle and dairy farms. The Catereinian landscape has flat plains surrounded by rugged undeveloped hills. It is a temperate land of hot summers and cold winters in the interior and more moderate temperature near the coasts. The southern fork of Catarein contains deserts in the interior which give way to the more fertile coasts. The northern section contains temperate deciduous forests. 

Catarein is no stranger to invasions, from the empire of Mekkhor to the Cold Deat to the Xhenonic Risen Empire to dragons to necromancers. Along with this, political divisions have split the land for eons from old tribal chiefs to Mekkhorsi warlords to the kingdoms at the beginning of the Epoch of Flame. The beginning split into three kingdoms is impressive in that those regions were split into near two dozen different petty kingdoms only a century beforehand.

Catareinians value machismo and status heavily. In the way Orcinians lift up wealth, Catareinians lift up the idea of face and respect. Face is won by being tough and standing one's ground. By doing what a man should do by dealing with problems head-on. By hunting large game, by winning fights against one's rivals, by commanding the respect, love, and if not those then fear of one's fellow man.

Dueling, bullfighting, prizefighting, once jousting, tournaments, contests, and more are used in games of gaining face. 

Epoch 2

The Catareinian Civil War

343 PR

In 343 the aftermath of the Grush War set off a wave of tensions in Catarein. This region had one of the last gasps of aristocracy and a great change was occurring across the world that would see the old blood toppled. This gave rise to three groups. The Liberadors, an equilibratist faction; the Patrianos, a harmonist faction; and the Guardias de Sangre, a Tierian faction. The civil war would be one of the more wild ones and underneath the surface opportunists, grifters, and malefic types rose from their dark cracks into the light of day. War has broken out and near all able-bodied men have either volunteered or have been drafted into the army of one of the sides. 

Ravois

Ravois is a land of rolling green hills, beautiful forests, and quaint cottages. Ravois was the first region invaded by the Cold Death and is also the birthplace of Velassian feudalism. It is also the originating point of Chivalry. Ravois as a region has long seen itself surrounded by enemies and rivals. Even back before Mekkhos the Conqueror brought it to heel, the original tribes often had to fend for themselves against all manner of threats. This has led to a long history of warriors that stretch from woad covered tribesmen to fully plated knights to professional men at arms. As a central location in Mekkhor, however, it is also home to many trading ports and receives a great deluge of different influences from across Mekkhor. Much of the world outside of Mekkhor is locked off by the heavily taxing Orcinian navies and Wakunan being a massive profitable trading point for Aizarinian merchants to stop at a long way before Ravois. Where Lekkas is home to vast repositories of wisdom, Ravois is home to art and culture across the regions. It is also home to a special martial art and kah style that has an emphasis on kicks called Pied Rapide style. Ravois three kingdoms are much longer established than other Mekkhorsi regions and this is due to the heavy centralization of administration duties the three have established. This centralization has power centered around the kings themselves rather than having lords running their autonomous regions with their fealty paid by levies and tribute. This has been found necessary as Ravois' divisions go deep and even one kingdom could hold host to essentially hundreds of petty counties and baronies feuding with each other. To the old way's credit, these lords did levy their forces when the kings needed them. However, they also often threatened the kings. The absolute monarchical system created is a result of decades of gradual change and it has rewarded the kingdom in a much more swift and responsive military force. It has also made repression of dissenting ideologies much easier. Religious power has long been a source of tension between clergymen and aristocracy even past the Great Unburdening. Outside of the great palatinates, Ravois holds the greatest amount of church-owned lands by the beginning of the Age of Flame. Clergy also do not have to pay taxes to the king and they are not required to levy manpower. This can make them popular with the lower classes where often peasants on church land are squeezed less for tithings and they do not have to fear being called up for service. Ravois is also a hotbed of harmonist sympathizers and amongst them is a minor league of equilibratists.

Malkabir

Malkhabir is a land of lush green coasts that give way to high mountain and parched deserts. It was one of the most difficult lands for Mekkhos to conquer and for good reason. Its harsh inner land has given rise to tribes of well-trained horsemen that have history in warring with each other and hunting great beasts like giant scorpions, deadly marid, and in ancient past the valleymen or qareen in old Malkhabiri. Malkhabir is also considered the birthplace of djiin and as such the birthplace of the djiinari peoples. It is known for the beautiful ancient architecture of its cities along with the style of flowing dress that saves the Malkhabiri from the fury of the sun. It is a land of feuding beys and emirs that war at a tendency similar to the southern Xatlan empires but without the history of bloody sacrifice. Malkhabir is the birthplace of the Pentaphany where the Five gods were united first. The religion spread from the peasants up to the governor generals of the Mekkhorsi Empire and to the rest of Mekkhor. It is also a region that plays host to a massive amount of trade as it serves as a gate to the inner Dancing Sea and a common point of rest for ships travelling abroad from Aizarin, southern Velas, and Xatla. Part of this trade has made the region a repository of knowledge from across the world. It rivals Lekkas in the amount of seminaries, academies, and great libraries it has built. Rather than the dwarves of Gromdal helping them along their way, they were given a worse crash course by dragons of what is now known as Samdiria attempting to control the region. Along with this, they trade with the local elven enclave of Syldania which similarly parceled out ancient knowledge. It is the birthplace of Uslariyah, an ancient martial art practiced by mounted warriors. The Pentaphany was first formed in Malkhabir.

Ashriq

Ashriq is host to fertile highlands and grasslands and is another major trade center. Less warlike than the emirates of the Malkhabir, Ashriq rivals Orcini in the scale of political intrigue both have. Ashriq is another region with vast repositories of knowledge but in Ahsriq, knowledge is power and it is home to some of the most secretive but also the most resourceful information brokers in the world. Ashriq is home to one of the oldest assassin traditions in the world and its tsalal agents are some of the most proficient spies and killers in Mekkhor. Ashriq is home to a heavy infantry and mounted cavalry tradition due to its wealth, mineral deposits, and fertile lands. It is also home to an ancient mixture of kah and heka tradition known as Altheanya where a mastery of the body was mixed with beseechments to djiin and other supernatural creatures. The Ess'Wun Kinship and those that practice Altheanya have a friendly rivalry and between them they created the world's first kah martial arts tournament that is still manually run. The Palatine of Liestra lies in Zakariyya and it shows. Around lake Nafi is a vast garden of fruit and greenery kept in perfect order for the patron mother. Yuduliya is strange region that has hosted a unique religious tradition for many eons.