I like and have adopted the less-is-more approach to detailing the Khanate for my home games. Here's the main entry. Regional Traits entry, etc. to follow.

The Khanate
In the North-Eastern Ice Wastes, bordered by the vastness of the Great Forest and the wall of the Axos Mountains, is the Khanate, a land of tough nomadic tribes loosely united under the rule of the Great Khan.

Short and compact, with pale tans and brown, black or blue almond eyes, the people of the Khanate are tireless runners and superb archers, and skirmish and trade with the men of Valgard frequently. The tribes drive goats, sheep, and woolly aurochs across the tundra, hunting game as they travel.

The Great Khan - it is forbidden to know or speak his name - rules from Khansan City, a sprawling settlement of elaborately-carved, spired wooden domes surrounded by the yurts of the many nomads who meet there to trade. It is whispered that his chief advisor Fuling, a eunuch said to wield sorcerous power, holds the Great Khan in his thrall, though rumour also has it that Edarra, his chief consort and a Valgardian by birth, is the real power behind the throne. In either case, it is held to be true that the Great Khan casts a covetous eye to the South.

Rumours and adventure ideas for the Khanate:
* No one is sure why Wise Man's Wood is thus named. Some hold that an immortal oracle of great power resides within, willing to grant insight into the past, present, and future for a price. Others that no wise man would set foot beneath the forest's benighted boughs, such are the horrors it contains.

* The Low Hills are covered in ancient and primitive stone cairns. Some say they can hear the drums of the dead echoing within the cairns, though the nomads give the dead their due rest while grazing their herds.

* Tor Xian and Liu are small trading towns, little more than small collections of wooden meeting halls and a field of visiting yurts. Their relatively close proximity has led to some rivalry between them, however.

* Bei Wei is a walled monastery, its tall, carved stone-and-wood towers being home to an ascetic sect of monks dedicated to Sa'Tel. They do not welcome outsiders and refuse to bend the knee to the Great Khan; a stance that could cost them dearly.

 

Last edited by Jargogle (7/20/2015 6:36 pm)