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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9645481" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I cannot promise that it is highly historically accurate; as noted, it's strongly inspired by stories like Sinbad and the Thousand and One Nights, but I have tried to draw on real stuff as much as I can (and have listened to advice from someone of North African ancestry who cares about the history of their ancestors' lands.)[SPOILER="The Tarrakhuna"]The Tarrakhuna is a region varying from semi-arid plains to outright desert wastes, where the winds shift the sands and ancient secrets are slowly being revealed.Around two thousand years ago, the ancient Genie-Rajahs ruled this land as magical tyrants. Some were benevolent, some were horridly cruel, but pretty much all of them practiced slavery of the mortal races. Those mortals who didn't live under the tyranny of the Genie-Rajahs eked out a hardscrabble existence in the lands between the cities. Among them, those who learned how to embody or speak to the spirits of wind and wave, sand and sun, beast and spirit, aided or even led them, developing the two sides of the Kahina, the druids who embody the "living" spirits of beasts and elementals, and the shaman who parley with the "dead" spirits of archetypes and forms in Al-Barzakh, colloquially called "the spirit world". They held great influence in this time since they were kinda the only other option for mortals who wanted to survive in this harsh land.Then a Very Big Something happened (we're still figuring out what!), which altered the world in such a way that the Genie-Rajahs elected to leave it--which they assure historians had nothing whatsoever to do with the widespread slave revolts/mortal rebellion against their enslaving despots. So the genies retreated to the elemental otherworld, Al-Akirah, to a land that geographically corresponds to the Tarrakhuna and has come to be called "Jinnistan", divided up amongst many feuding nobles and their city-states. As a result, slavery of all kinds is a HUGE no-no in this land, and nearly all mortal races are considered "part of society", even many that would be excluded in other lands, e.g. we've seen ogre caravanserai owners, minotaur potters, and many many orcs and half-orcs. Although there is a division between city-dwellers and the nomad tribes, the nomads are pointedly NOT considered "barbarians" because they were part of the rebellion against the Genie-Rajahs.In the wake of the genies' departure, a new religion sprang up which, paired with the united front mortals had made against their enslavers, helped to establish the cultural identity of the new mortal culture developing in the Tarrakhuna. This "Safiqi Priesthood" established the first human-built city, Kafer-Naum, which is the religious capital of the region, located near the eastern mountains at the headwaters of the region's largest river, the Sadalbari. The Safiqi revere "The One", and they claim They are the monotheistic creator and sustainer of all things, but the One is infinite and thus incomprehensible in Their entirety to a mortal mind, so they focus on specific facets or aspects of the One--it's all one being, but people focus on a particular conception of what the One's power is or means. By far the most commonly revered aspect is the Great Architect, the One as planner-builder-ruler of the cosmos, but several others exist, such as the Soothing Flame (healing and social work, strongly associated with healers), the Stalwart Soldier (popular among soldiers, guards, and the Temple Knights aka paladins), the Unknown Knower (popular among Waziri mages and ne'er-do-wells), and the Resolute Seeker (not as popular in general, but valued by those who hunt monsters of all sorts, humanoid or otherwise, in dark or perilous places).Because the One is pre-gender, that is, theologically understood to predate the very concept of gender, the Safiqi priesthood does not care about the gender of prospective priests. Certain orders have vows of celibacy but it isn't required for priests in general. We haven't officially established a single head-of-religion so I'm inclined toward a collegiate/council type government for the faith. The Safiqi shoulder a significant amount of the healing and social-work of the region and sponsor childhood education so that all people of the Tarrakhuna can read the scriptures.But the Safiqi and Kahina (who only sometimes get along!) are far from the only magical traditions of this land. The most influential--or at least tied with the Safiqi--is assuredly the aforementioned Waziri Order. The Waziri are an academic-scientific-magical society that assists with both non-magical stuff (e.g. Waziri-run colleges teach law, medicine, alchemy, etc., things that don't require a person to develop what I call "magical senses"; Waziri libraries are commonplace; they maintain museums of both natural history and magical phenomena; etc.) and with, as one would expect wizards to do, actual magic education and research. Waziri magic is extremely powerful but very, VERY dangerous if mishandled--as in, if you do it wrong, "blowing up the building you're in" is one of the nicer ways to go out. So the Waziri have this quixotic love-hate relationship with other forms of magic. They look down on it for being "untrained" (even though training is almost always required...), for being "unthinking" etc. etc., but they also depend on such magic for advancing their field--blind experimentation is almost completely useless to them, so they have to dissect or imitate the magic of others and then reconstruct it via esoteric mathematics and arcane geometries. But their magic is powerful and lucrative, so they'll always have a place--even the hardliners among the Safiqi can't truly dispense with them.At the other end of the Sadalbari, we find the titular "Jewel of the Desert", the city of Al-Rakkah, the largest and most powerful of the city-states of the region, albeit not so powerful as to directly rule beyond its official territory. Ruled wisely and well by the young Thuriya Salah al-Din bint-Karim Zaman sitt-Rakkah, Padishah Sultana of Al-Rakkah and its Islands and Environs, "the Sultana" or "Sultana Thuriya" for short, youngest daughter of the "Old Sultan", Iskandar, who was a brilliant leader in his youth but went kinda bugnuts crazy in his old age. Al-Rakkah is still recovering from the damage inflicted by his last decade of rule, but the Sultana has done well in putting things back together--in part because of the aid of adventurers who prevented a plot to assassinate her shortly after she began her formal reign (there was a roughly five-year regency following her father's death, at the hands of a popular uprising that included a significant chunk of the city's military.)Al-Rakkah, like the Tarrakhuna in general, is a place of secrets and danger, but also immense wealth and opportunity. By far the largest trade hub on the western coast of its continent, it trades all manner of goods from both the eastern steppe beyond the mountains and the vast Sapphire Sea, with its Ten-Thousand Isles full of mystery and treasure and long-forgotten societies. On the far side of the Sapphire Sea lies Yuxia, the Jade Home, whence comes many other exotic things as well; Sultana Thuriya has only recently had a trade delegation return from there with lucrative trade contracts and hopes of long-term diplomatic ties.Of course, this land is beset with trouble on many fronts. A mysterious gang of alchemically-altered thugs has been disrupting business in Al-Rakkah for years. Rumors rise that the Zil al-Ghurab, the "Raven-Shadows", were not destroyed two centuries ago as the Safiqi believe, but instead went underground yet again and are now ready to return. Strange whispers seep from the catacombs and underplaces in Al-Rakkah and beyond--signs ancient and recent of a "Cult of the Burning Eye". And the Shadow-Druids, once thought to be little more than superstitious nonsense even to the Kahina, have been recently proven to exist--and be far more powerful than anyone realized.[/SPOILER]There's way more I could talk about, but honestly that much is probably enough for now.Semi-relatedly, something I've often struggled with is valuing the presence of truly evil Devils and Demons, but wanting them to be genuinely sapient beings with moral agency. So I solved the problem with a different idea![SPOILER="LONG digression about faith, devils, and demons"]So, just to lay out an important note first: indirect revelation via a loyal celestial Servant has revealed that the One openly admits They cannot prove Their divinity beyond all doubt. There is no magic which could verify it without possibility of being fooled or inaccurate, the limitations of divination magic mean that it can't look back far enough to see the dawn of time with anything even approaching reliability, and absolutely EVERYTHING that is old enough to personally know the truth has a massive conflict of interest on the subject. So whether They are in fact the one true god, or just a god among many, or not even a god at all, is purely a matter of faith--you can look for what evidence matters to you, but ultimately you have to decide what, if anything, that evidence means. Many Waziri secretly don't really believe, for example, and a fair number of "orthodox" Kahina think the One is merely an extraordinarily powerful city spirit.Anyway. Back to Devils and Demons. The One has a Divine Plan and celestial Servants to help bring that plan about. But They also command Their Servants to never, EVER use force to make mortals obey that plan; the free will of mortals is an essential part of that plan and cannot be sacrificed. However, some Servants became immensely frustrated by the stupid, selfish, destructive disobedience of many, many, many of the mortals they were trying to help...so they broke that one directive and tried to coerce mortals by force. This sparked a War in Heaven. To any being outside of this War, it was over instantaneously. To every being involved in it (read: every celestial that has ever existed), it was infinitely long. During the War in Heaven, a portion of both sides, both Servants and Rebels, came to enjoy the War itself, reveling in the destruction and chaos.So, in the end, all three factions remained--and all three believe they won. The Servants believe the One placed curses on both the Rebels (Devils) and the "twice-fallen" (Demons): the Rebels were cursed to be bound by the very coercive laws they championed, while the "twice-fallen" became consumed by their base instincts and incapable of escaping them. The Devils believe they won by tenacity the right to prove that their way is in fact the correct way, and that the chains of law are their tool, not their prison. The Demons believe they won by conquest the right to slake their unending, everburning desires wherever they want for as long as they want.Because it was a literally infinitely-long war, if ordinary persuasion COULD have convinced any particular devil or demon to depart from their chosen course, they already would have. No argument based on logic or reason or entreaties could ever work on them because they've heard every possible variation of every possible argument too many times to count. But it is still--at least in theory--possible that experience could change their minds. It essentially never does, but the party knows at least one case where this did happen, and a former succubus has become...something else. Nobody really knows what she is. She has surrendered her succubus powers to her (mortal) tiefling descendant, but somehow managed to keep the one thing she loved most, her beautiful singing voice, which she takes as proof that the One has forgiven her and will permit her a mortal death so that she can join her mortal husband in the afterlife.[/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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