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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 6013208" data-attributes="member: 2205">Besides Porto Liure, the following are some of the nations and peoples of the surrounding area.• Terrasa is the large power that surrounds Porto Liure, in many ways.  While it styles itself an Empire, in reality, it's a fragile dynastic union between half a dozen fracteous city-states or smaller countries, and the control the King in Terrasa wields over them is very loose at best, and loosening quickly, as the king is a vain, and foolish man who pays little heed to matters of state.The Terrasans are kinda like Renaissance Italians, or Spaniards from right around the time of the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and the uniting of Castille and Aragon into the country that would become Spain.• The Northmen come from the mountainous shores north of the Mezzovian sea.  While many of them are subjects of the Terrasan Empire and have integrated and hybridized with that culture over generations, many of them pay little heed to politics, and wander the wilds as their ancestors have done for many years.  Northmen are not too unlike Vikings of Cossacks, and names from this group will sound Norse or Slavic.• Even further to the north, where the weather starts to get warmer (Southern Hemisphere, although that's neither here nor there) is Baal Hamazi.  Once a mighty empire, ruled by the unearthly hamazi (although populated by many, many humans as well), Baal Hamazi is now a memory.  The Empire collapsed about two hundred years ago, and now is fractured city-states and smaller kingdoms, each trying to reclaim the legacy of their grand forebearers.  Between them, hostile nomadic tribesmen claim the land, making travel often difficult and dangerous.  Think of ancient Egypt combined wiht the Wild West, except that instead of ancient, the fall of this kingdom is relatively recent.  Between the city-states is not unlike the Comancheria or the lands of the Huns or Mongols.  The hamazi themselves are hellkin, mortal descendents of some angel or demon, they claim.  With sooty black or gray skin, yellow "wolf" eyes, and a small ring of horns on their heads forming a crown, they have the appearance of the Black Pharaoh himself, a sign of nobility.  They claim.  Think Nightcrawler combined with Darth Maul, or perhaps a slightly more human-like Graz'zt.  Conceptually, the hamazin are not unlike tieflings, and rules for such can be used to represent them.There are other hellkin besides just the hamazin, although they are rare, and their appearances are much more varied.  Nobody knows exactly what causes them, although since the day that the moon's face changed and it rose in the sky looking like a grinning skull-faced visage of death, the birth of them has been more common.  Many believe that they are cursed.• Far to the east is the caliphate of Qizmir.  Qizmir is, as you can imagine, loosely styled on an Arabian Nights kind of theme.  However, it's also too far away to play a direct role in this campaign.  However, many Qizmiri come to Porto Liure, usually far-flung merchants, ambassadors, merchants, adventurers, or pirates.  Far to the east (although on the westernmost fringe of Qizmir's orbit) is the small semi-independent sultanate of Sarabasca, a city-state that is a hybrid of Terrasan and Qizmiri culture.  In many ways, Sarabasca is a rival to Porto Liure, as it is also a major harborage of Barbary pirates, and some captains indeed put in at both ports as the occasion requires.In addition to the human inhabitants of Qizmir, the ruling class are the jann, mortal descendents of inhabitants of the City of Brass, so they claim.  Some of these have made it as far west as Porto Liure (and beyond) although they certainly are rare, still.  With brick red skin, fiery yellow eyes, and wild blond hair that occasionally reminds viewers of a dancing flame, the jann also have a common appearance.  Conceptually, they are basically fire genasi, which in Pathfinder are mirrored by the ifrit (although curiously, I'd already been using ifrit as my preferred transliteration of the word better known to D&D players are efreet.  Oh, well.)  You can easily use the stats for these if you wish to play one.• Northeast of Porto Liure, between the easternmost city-state of Terrasa and the wild place of Sarabasca is another kingdom, Tarush Noptii, the benighted kingdom of vampires.  It is said that over the capital city it is always night, although few have been able to report this reliably, as few leave the capital.  What causes this astronomical improbability is unknown, and why it should be is similarly unknown (vampires in my setting are not necessarily vulnerable to sunlight--although they don't like it, of course.)  Luckily for everyone else, the vampires tend to be fairly insular, and rarely venture abroad.  Many of the Tarushans, however, escape as they can.  They are rarely trusted by outsiders.  Although rare, it has been reliably reported that vampires or ghouls have traveled with wandering Tarushan gypsies, feeding on the folks that they pass by.  Tarushans often have names that would sound Hungarian or Romanian to us.  And hey, Pathfinder has rules for a dhampyr!  I hadn't actually considered integrating them into the setting, but why the heck not?• There are a few other nations and peoples, although I hadn't quite gotten around to converting any of them into Pathfinder directly.  Some of the wild forests are home to the vucari or changelings, the descendents of werewolves who's wild blood has lost much of its potency over the years.  They also live in ghettos in many cities of the southlands, and some of them have an association with organized crime.  Conceptually, they are not unlike shifters, first debuted in Eberron.  For a quick and dirty conversion, I'd represent them mechanically with half-orcs who have the Bestial and Forest Walker alternate race traits.  We also have the nephilim, also the descendents of outsiders; fallen angels who followed their leader Samyasa into forbidden union with women of mortal birth.  Occasionally, their progeny still pop up, seemingly at random.  They are best represented mechanically by aasimars.  Since my tone is much more low fantasy sword & sorcery with a dash of horror, it's important to note, however, that unlike aasimars normally in D&D, the are not the blessed progeny of righteous angels, they are the cursed progeny of fallen angels... and the cynical often point out that there is little difference between angels and demons anyway other than that angels are better looking and have better PR.</blockquote>

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