City-States

[Gilladian]

Not Chocobos, Elephant birds: Elephant bird - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think their cattle may just be BIG standard oxen. Island giganticism, but nothing special...

I LOVE the idea of the wizard city being a bit isolated and very scholarly, inward-focused and wary of actually DOING magic in the world. Adventurer wizards can be looked down on as "dangerous" and "reckless" folk who don't understand the higher arts and their "deeper meanings".

There DOES need to be one good theocracy city. I have a pantheon of gods of my own for my world, but I can EASILY introduce a new one/variant of an old one. I'm thinking most of the islanders worship the sea goddess because of the constant proximity of the ocean, the goddess of agriculture and farming because what peasant wouldn't? And maybe one or two others would be important.

My campaign world's gods: Vishteer Campaign / VishteerGods

 

[Gilladian]

Okay, a theocratic city-state.

The god: Aragh, god of death and the dead (also war and bloodshed, but we could skip those aspects here).

How they arrived: the followers of Aragh arrived fairly late in the island's history. They are humans who have now forgotten when and why they began worshipping the god of Death, but remain devoted to him. They arrived about a thousand years ago, long after the island was cut off by the fall of the First Empire.

Aragh's followers arrived in five ragged black ships, limping into the elvish harbor on the south-west of the island. The elvish wizards there immediately tried to drive them off; their own racial history with Aragh being quite negative...

However, the humans were desperate, and they simply moved up the coast, seeking for a new landing spot. Eventually they found a suitable harbor on the northern end of the island, and settled there. This area of the island is swampy, low and sheltered; today their main crops are rice and cattle on the slopes above the coast.

The highest point on the island looms above this area; the theocratic city-state has come to believe that the top of that mountain is a dwelling place of Aragh during their most holy weeks, and they are quite hostile to outsiders arriving there, especially at holy periods when Aragh might be disturbed.

The followers of Aragh were few when they arrived, and have been attacked and nearly driven out a number of times. In turn, they have found ways of defending themselves which other peoples find shocking and offensive. The use of animated skeletons as simple foot-soldiers is common here; the walls of their city-state are well defended. Even zombies are not unheard of; some of the larger rice plantations use them as laborers in the fields.

 

[Razjah]

Alright, so you have a mageocracy with about 50% elves, theocracy, swamp city-state, dwarven city-state, jungle dwelling wood-elves, I say just use some cultural analogs for the human city-states to fill out your city-states. Hand of Evil had the hobgoblin idea which can work pretty well. If you need a cultural analog I suggest Rome.

 

[Gilladian]

Well, if anyone is interested, here's what I've written up so far on my new campaign region.

Known as Raksed, the island is very loosely stolen from Madagascar: Vishteer Campaign / Island of the City-States

This is about 1/10th of what I'll need to develop before setting a campaign in the area, but someone else could certainly "borrow" it, if interested, and take it from here in their own direction.