The Kingdom of Sarine
Name: Kingdom of Sarine
Brief Background [local era only]
The kingdom is a monarchy. The current king is the elderly Grant the Bell Ringer; he has fallen ill recently however, and is unable to attend to his duties since eight months ago. Since then, his would-be successor, Prince Nero of Lancing Wings more or less runs the country. The order of succession seems to follow the system of equal primogeniture, meaning that the heir to the throne is always the eldest member of the royal family, with no distinction between genders. Prince Nero, being a self-proclaimed pacifist, wants to contribute the nation's peaceful traditions with an emphasis on academic growth and hopefully a tradition of full literacy in the next three or four generations, he's wise enough to know that such change will take time.
Not all of his relatives agree with this, however; plotting and assassination attempts serve as a constant reminder of the family feud since decades, with more and more members of the royal family dying. King Grant seems to be powerless to resolve the conflict. In general this is just politics, as with any kingdom under the Empires thumb or not, the most dangerous form of politics but still just simply a part of the world. The general populous are just hoping that this transfer of power won't be anything like eighty years ago when Grant had to take the reins from Gwen, his mother, by force of a civil war.
Art and culture growth in Sarine is a core piece of the kingdom's identity as the surrounding kingdoms have take to more or less stagnating. A deep tradition of ancestor worship is widely practiced, and the local small gods have shrines as long as they obey the laws set down by the ruling body. Artists are free to work their best but the market is a dangerous one with enough competition that men and women have starved trying to make a living out of their work, but spread of the written word is something that Prince Nero has taken an interest in and thus some funds have been set aside for writers who take up chronicling history or replicating manuscripts.
Excessive usage of wood can be seen in the architecture though the structure carries aspects more or less following a medieval trend, with some anachronistic elements such as public libraries thrown up by the Prince's wishes. The Academy of Alchemy is the second most impressive single building open to the general populace and it known for it's eighteen stores of stone and mortar just as much as the learning that can be found within it.
Thaumaturge was, up until seventy-two years ago, a practice only seen in the military. The King took down the old ruling that Thaumaturge was only to be used in application to war and has since worked to spread the teachings so that the kingdom would prosper in the use of mortal magics. Nowadays the King's motions to create a strong kingdom has bore fruit as even the smaller villages in the Kingdoms have a Master-Apprentice pair of practitioners. The Academy of Alchemy teaches its titular Art to anyone willing to devote three years to its study as well as a dozen other lesser subjects.
The kingdom is protected by the League of Guardians, a militia for locals born of volunteers, in addition to the kingdom's standing army. The League is made up of human's and is supported by the kingdom. A Guardian is one who has taken up arms to defend the local people from the creatures of darkness and act as the front line while the Army acts as to counter the other kingdoms, all of whom have at one point or another annexed the kingdom of Sarine in the past hundred years.
The non Essence use forms of the Golden Janissary style are well known and well respected by many groups groups and anyone with a captain rank or higher in Sarine's army is expected to be trying to attain enlightenment, though few have attain it the idea is that if you are that high in rank the next best thing is to have an awakened Essence, but it is funnily the Guardians who have the largest number of Awakened Mortals in their ranks, this is mostly in thanks to the the Guardians founders, as brotherhood of Dragon-Blooded 'Lost Eggs' and their Half-Caste offspring. A number of Terrestrial Styles have found niches in the kingdom but it is the Knights of Smoke that has been most concerning, a clan of supposed assassins who are said to practice Ill-Lily and Night Breeze.
The capital city is Iyo, City of the Magic Circle with good reason. The city's layout was designed by a trusted adviser of the first king Sarine. The thaumaturge, a sage of incredible intellect, managed to build the great marble walls throughout the city to resemble a giant magic seal, or a hexagram. These along with a massive ritual known as the Movement of Thirteen is the source of the cities status as one of the strongest local cites in memory, it has never fallen to enemy hands save through treachery. All other thaumaturge is suppressed within the city, unless you are wearing the special uniform of he Thaumaturge Officers which is acts as an attuning tool to the field and allows free use of thaumaturge. This, along with the fact that the hexagram also provides the capital with multiple layers of reinforced walls, makes the city nigh impregnable. The main thoroughfares of the city are actually upon the walls themselves, as seen on the picture to the right. Unsurprisingly, despite the the city's overall wealth and prosperity Iyo possesses a slum district, with its fair share of bandit gangs and brothels.
Special Rules for my Campaign
I happen to be using a bit of nWoD in this game, an experiment me and my Players are finding fun. I've take to using the Size+ Stamina to calculate Health levels, meaning that if a person has Stamina 5 he basically has the benefit of a watered down Ox-Body as any health levels past the initial seven gained this way are automatically -4 health level. Also the group voted and I'm allowing the use of Fighting Styles, though I hold the ability to change rules as I find some of the original write ups a bit overpowered at the worst of times and just odd at other points.
Additional Content (WIP)
Discussion
Direct any criticism and such here. Talk:The Kingdom of Sarine
