ImmacuNES VI: Dreams and Legends

I love these camel people.

Although I admit I have trouble imagining what a centaur rape would look like., let alone came centaur rape.
 
Someone should play as Turtle people with redundant Organs, massive healing factor, Warlike society, and essential biological immortality.

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((OOC: I was hoping to start exchanging knowledge, so they'd offer things like saddle-making and other horseback riding knowhow, and the Taha'ar would offer mining tricks.
Assuming the Vahid don't already know how to mine bronze.))

Sure- they agree to that.

OOC: you'll need to spend considerable resources to develop knowledge, try it, and finally disseminate it. A stone age tech (pottery, masonry, animal husbandry, shaft-mining) would take about 5 resources but a bronze age tech (HBR, bronze working, writing, math, weaving) would take 20 resources- but you don't have to spend it all in one turn.


Lurker: I'm never particularly fond of taking over NPCs. I take a certain pride in seeing my stuff grow. Sorry for that most probably burdening your modding of course. :)

I had some ideas for the children but realized that they did not fit a larger political power - something I might actually want to archieve this time.

"Bactrian camel centaurs" (It is cool):

Ogashar

The Shazarim are a centauric people of nomads traversing the great plains. Racially, they are not part horse and man, but their beastly bodies resemble that of half camel, half man, the human part reminding one of the Turkish ethnicity of our world. They consist of several clans, in their tongue zoras, that travel according to an intricate system of herd trails, living off nomadic pastoralism. The nation is ruled through a central body by the equivalent of a high chieftain (or emperor, depending on your tongue), the Great Parsan. The zoras' clansheads elect the Great Parsan through a simple majority vote - ties are decided by the contesting parties duelling until yield and sometimes death. The Great Parsan is first celebrated as a title for life, then separated from his zora to live within the only existing Shazarim city, the shaman hold of Ogashar -which is the city foreigners usually use for the namesake of the Shazarim nation. There he lives with the blood priests of the realm and spends his time giving directives through them as messengers unless the Shazarim are actually called to war. In that case, he must meet with all zoras and bring down the enemy as the Parsan of the Plains. As has been said, the title of Great Parsan is ideally one of life; however, whenever the Parsan loses a battle, the zora clansheads will instigate a new vote where he may or may not be reelected; usually he is, but a terrible Parsan will often be removed from his post this way. Each election for Great Parsan is called a Harrim where shamans bless the tribes and customs are exchanged in high festivities; under a Harrim, it is expected by each Shazarim to tell a secret to somebody else.

The Shazarim are a strong and hardy race that spend their whole life riding, and each clan specializes in a certain area of warfare, passing down fighting techniques from generation to generation, usually making the wars reliant on the zoras functioning together in combined arms. For example, a zora may be great bowsmen while another may excel at swimming. Understandably, the zoras are often of very different traditions of one another.

It might surprise some, but Shazarim can actually mate with regular centaurs; the offspring will however be one-humped and sterile.

Suggested perks: (I don't know if these are possible)
Humps: The Shazarim race suffer less logistics issues on open land, plains, desert etc.
Harrim: Shazarim exchange and festivities during reelections engage the realm. When Ogashar's stability drops, cultural strength grows.
Lifelong journey: Shazarim units have increased speed due to, well, being camels.
Parsan of the Plains: The Shazarim have extra faith in the Great Parsan and their rule works comparably splendidly.
First of the Zoras: An early UU. The wild Ukash is a zora of old forgotten barbary, training its sons fiercely by chasing them away from the herd at a young age, then journeying for full speed, expecting the sons to keep up. The harsh training make them brutish and excellent runners that excel at scouting, raiding and raping.

Excellent- i'll have a look at the map tonight and try to place you. Once i do i'll post a mini-update to introduce your camels.
 
The Moral Art


When the children come to us for guidance, the Second Sight is the first thing that we teach. Many of them already have it, of course. Alisa was the best at it. When she thought that we weren't watching, she would often play the Game that Wizards Play. Dangerous girl. Probably the reason why the King wanted her. Same old obsessing over magical blood thing, for all his supposed wiseness.

It is cases like her that causes the Red the most worry, you know. Those are the people who would toy around with ultimate power. They get so high and mighty that they stop caring about small things. That's why we teach them the Second Sight. We make them soar up into the air and see the world with it. Everything that looked so tall before suddenly turns small, like ants.

Let's imagine that you are a child. A hovel that you are born in looks mighty, huge even. As you grow up, it becomes smaller. Eventually it feels so cramped that you begin to despise it. Did the hovel change? Did it shrink just to spite you? No, it is you who changed. The house that you are born in is the same old warm house that you were born and raised in. It has the exact same meaning and purpose as it had when you were born in it: to protect you.

It's the same thing with the Second Sight. You have to realize that even though everything looks so tiny when you look at something with the Second Sight, that they are the exact same things that you thought huge with the True Sight. They must fully understand and accept this Absurdity. If they do not, then they will begin to confuse their second, magical sight as the True Sight. It is the difference between regarding the entire world as a simple oversized game board with tiny insignificant toy pieces moving about, and regarding it as an enormous, beautiful world full of wondrous mysteries and secrets.

We call our Way the Moral Art because it is about the way we see the world, not about the world itself. Maybe magic has always been in our heads, and not in the world itself. That would mean that it's just more real to us than the world is--as real to us as we are.

I love that idea, how about you?

-Elan, Priestess of Celestis in the service of the Red.
 
Mini-Update: ENTER THE OGASHAR!

In a land swept by dry, cold winds, in the shadow of a giant mountain that seems to rise forever into the clouds, there exists a plateau of scrubland, stone, and blowing snow. It is a land of heat and cold and so dry that water freezes during the night and quickly steams away during the day.

The steppes drop away rapidly from high cliffs in the east and south, giving way to salt seas and chilling breezes. In the east the steppe seems to go on forever. The mountain to the north-west is the primary source of water, spring runoffs flooding a major river and doubling its depth and tripling its width and giving life-giving moisture to the lands. To the north-west, the lands get more humid and the winds die away. Trees begin to grow in clusters and finally in thick forests if one ventures far enough in that direction.

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Here a people who call themselves the Shazarim make their home. They are centaurs but with the bodies of Bactrian camels instead of horses. Their thick fur keeps them warm in the cold wind and their camel-features keep thirst away in the drylands.

They live lives of semi-nomadic shepherding and trading, each clan, or zora, following their herds of sheep and goat across the steppe with the season, seeking the river beds in the summer and the steppe in the spring. Near their capital Ogashar, at the base of the great mountain near the great river, they farm barley and millet. It is here too that their elected leader, the Great Parsan, makes his home and where the blood cult provides guidance and leadership.

The Ogashar have met a neighbor to the north- from beyond the forests. They are a species of bipedal creatures with lizard like features and small feathers. They are almost entirely dull earthen colors or shock white and are highly nocturnal. They call themselves the Slàine. The Slàine are timid and quick to skitter away in the face of danger or threats of danger and do not seem well-suited to battle- being thin of build and not naturally courageous. They do however use a variety of well crafted weapons including ubiquitious blowpipes, slings, and a short thrown spear called a Djerid.
 
I mean yes you should send orders.
 
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The Wall of Faces, one of many Images carved by Barahelen Shamans. The Lines carved into the tree serve as a pathway for Spiritual energies. The Wall of Faces is believed to depict a Barahelen Shaman playing an instrument as a number of spirits watch.
 
Make that yourself or find it on the internet?
 
well done TB. I like the forest spirits and the orc's tusks.
 
yellow.
 
Yellow shows up better against the background.
 
not really.
 
The four of them had gathered in a clearing to see what Trothgl had been working on. The Padubblin had traveled high upon the mountain, settling into a cave far from the central city, far from the discussions and debates of Padubblin society. Far from the new friends who now visited with their golden trinkets on display.

Throthgl did not celebrate the new trade route that had fostered such growth in the manufacture of pottery. He had travelled to the lands of these strangers and watched their people. He had seen their ritualized battles and watched the great skill and power these people had at their beck and call. He watched, and was frightened.

“My friends, we are lucky that the Danaans are friendly towards us. We are lucky that their people are focused on dominating each other rather than looking beyond their borders. Even with that, their forces are much larger than ours, especially with our warbands wandering. We have been lucky so far, but who knows what lies to the East? Or to the south? We must prepare for the worst, for an enemy that is as strong as the Danaan and as organized as we are. We must seek new ways to arm ourselves, and new ways to defend our lands.” Trothgl waved his appendage over the rocks he had been shaping for months in the mountains.

“First, the armor. I found the hardest rocks I could, and have designed an interlocking shifting pattern that can take several forms.” Trothgl Incorporated the many pieces of rocks into himself, easing them into his body. The hermit Padubblin, an expert at shifting Incorporated items, quickly rearranged the rocks into a cylinder of protection around his body, as every warrior does before battle. His four friends looked on, getting impatient. Trothgl liked a good show though, and slumped slightly, waiting for the perfect moment, the moment before they would turn away.

When Athroel twitched, Trothgl rapidly stretched his torso thin, faster than any Padubblin had ever been able to before. The four gasped in shock at the speed with which Trothgl had shifted his form. The rocks moved within him, overlapping to form a large, flat rectangle from just above his tail to right under his upper head-like appendage. His “arms” now extended from behind the large shield sticking up over the top of it, still able to hold a weapon.

“I’m not done.”

Trothgl reverted his rock formation to the more common arrangement and moved over to the rest of his rocks, sharp obsidian from the volcanic fields he had found. He quickly Incorporated them as well, smiling at his friends as he shifted two of the sharp rocks into the warband arrangement, protruding from the ends of his “hands”. Trothgl flipped his hands around, whooshing the blades through the air with a flourish. “We possess the unique ability to adapt to every situation. If the enemy is trying to stab at us, we can form a shield against them out of our very bodies. But shields only stop weapons for a time. To stop an enemy, they must be dead. And we’ve got to kill them before they kill us. So, we have several options.”

Trothgl’s eyes narrowed in concentration, and he thrust forward both of his appendages. They oozed out to their full length…and then kept going. His torso flowed into his “arms,” and they extended further and further out, longer than any spear.

“We can hit them before they can hit us. We can reach farther. Or…” He flourished again as he retracted his pike-appendages and extended them at normal length behind him. The obsidian glass pieces started poking out of his arm as well as his hands, dozens of them lining the ends of his appendages. He whipped them forward, slashing through the air.

“Effective, but only at spear range. We have a final option.” Trothgl turned away from his friends and whipped his appendages like ropes again, jerking them back at the last moment and disIncorporated two of the obsidian knives, launching them across the clearing and into a tree on the far end. Trothgl led them over to the tree, where they all observed the depth the weapons had penetrated into the wood. “With these new skills and tactics, we can defend our people.”
 
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