I’m not dead yet, just really lazy and bad at keeping up with my blog. The good news is that the game has started and is going extremely well! Worlds Without Number is a great little system, and my players have reported having a blast. If I start keeping better notes, I may start posting play reports. Until then, please enjoy some lore about the Lugal-fearing populations of my world. Gygax 75 is basically dead, I’ve started playing, the world is built. At this point it’ll be better to parcel out material as I make it rather than specifically write it for the blog.

A note on real world cultural inspiration: I am not trying to create a historical allegory or 1:1 cultural inspirations. I blend, mix, and shake up to the best of my abilities. However, I am but a humble history nerd, and taking heavy inspiration from history is unavoidable due to my own personal aesthetic tastes and the ease in getting people to imagine the same thing. Camask, which the Northern Hold is a colony region of, is broadly inspired by Carthage. Camask has created an empire under the rule or influence of the mother city through trade agreements, land leases, the foundation of colonies, and promises of protection. Roman criticisms of the Carthaginians portrayed them as treating their subject peoples harshly (rich coming from the Romans) and as  imposing heavy taxes on them while holding non-Punic peoples in contempt. While this is almost certainly to some extent propaganda and the Romans slinging around stones in their own incredibly battered glass house, it rings true to other mercantile empires throughout history, and I will be playing around with this portrayal. The non-Camaskian populations, both nomadic and settled, take more from the Amazigh population of North Africa, including the ancient peoples referred to as the Numidians and Mauri.

Humans

Humans are the most numerous folk in the world who are counted by the great censuses of the Lugal. Worldwide they likely make up at least 70% of the world’s enumerated population. This is largely the result of the Law’s assumption of humans as the most loyal subjects. Human rebels can have their families, tribes, or nations exiled or destroyed, but nonhuman rebels find themselves used as excuses to brand their entire species as Chaos, where they remain uncounted and outside both the protections and the predations of the Lugal.. 

Within the Northern Hold, most people have skin ranging from olive to brown and dark hair. Frequent trade with the whole of the Great Inner Sea and with the Equatorial States to the north means that no complexion or hair color is unheard of, both among visitors and natives of the region. Colorism is essentially unknown among the Northern Hold and the domains of its mother city Camask in general, while language and culture serve as primary markers for discrimination. Those who speak Camaskian and who live settled, urban lives are held to be more important by the realm’s rulers than the much more numerous population of rural farmers and herders, especially those who speak non-Camaskian languages. These villages and tribal polities have been wrapped into the Camaskian state by complicated histories of debt, land purchases, and ritual hostage taking. 

Shoalfolk

Shoalfolk are the other native inhabitants of the planet according to official histories, adapted for an amphibious lifestyle. All shoalfolk can breathe underwater as easily as air. Shoalfolk resemble many kinds of underwater life, including fish, cephalopods, and crustaceans. One may have a fishy head, another an octopus beard, yet another a crab claw for a hand. These traits are passed along as hair color would be in humans. Shoalfolk are also unique in not having proper skeletons, instead having a cartilage-like structure that can bend and compress to a concerning degree. Exoskeletal features, like crab arms, share this same feature apart from the hard gripping teeth of the claw. 

Shoalfolk make up about ten percent of the population of the Northern Hold, primarily living in coastal villages or working alongside the ships and docks of Old Tophet. For reasons of practicality, many find employment working in diving, fishing, or on the docks. Camaskian humans assume that this is the rightful role of Shoalfolk, and while no law prevents them seeking other work there is a strong cultural pressure to conform. Outside of the cities, while the majority of coastal villages have large shoalfolk communities, there is far less of a stigma against dryer work. Food is food, whether it comes from the sea or from the soil. 

Old stories and legends say that the Shoalfolk arrived from beneath the waves as emissaries from a vast underwater kingdom, the Abyssal Mandate. The Lugal’s own supporters claim that no such civilization could possibly exist for it would have also been subjugated by the Great Lugal just as the rest of the world was in ancient times. No sailor of any sort, Lugal-fearing or not, would dare deny the Mandate’s existence while at sea or deny them their sacrifices and offerings of metal tools tossed into the sea at sacred places. Such blasphemy risks calling down storms, and even those who doubt aren’t willing to take that risk. Shoalfolk and others sometimes venerate the Mandate in secret, praying for a time when the sea will open and the sins of the world will be washed clean. 

Koels and Tsali

One cannot discuss Tsali without discussing Koels, and Koels without discussing Tsali. Koels are a species of great size that somewhat resemble a giant cat with disconcertingly human faces and hands rather than front paws. Their long prehensile tail terminates in another hand. Koels are weird. They are also tremendously psionically gifted, able to float about or even drain people of their psychic essence. A fully grown Koel is a dragon-level threat. Most surprising of all, those who have met one describe Koels as quite affable for the most part, and appreciative of a good box to sit in. The Koel noble houses have an exclusive trade arrangement with the Lugal, exporting luxury goods to other worlds and in turn importing rare and valuable materials needed to maintain the aging technological wonders of the world. To accomplish this task, Koels have been granted the right to establish pockets of land, called factories, across the globe and to recruit locals as employees. Each factory is led by a Factor, a single powerful Koel who has constructed a noble household around themselves to assist in business. 

Serving these Koels are the Tsali, which in the language of Koels means something like Changed. Merely being around a Koel is to be changed by their immense power. For most citizens living in and around a Factory, this change goes no further than a fondness of sunbathing and perhaps a longing look given to a suitably comfortable looking box. Someone who has spent the whole of their life living around a factory may in their old age find whiskers or the very slight nub of an overgrown tailbone. Favored employees receive both promotion and induction into the mystery cult of the Koels, becoming Tsali by accelerating the changes and taking on more and more Koel-like features that range from altered ears and spots of fur to an appearance akin to a weretiger all the way to demi-Koelhood. One such enlightened soul differs only from a full Koel by their size and degree of their psychic abilities. Defeating and psychically consuming the Full Koel would complete the transformation, but this information is not widely advertised for obvious reasons. At each stage, more of the deep cosmic truth of the Koel trading empire is revealed, turning the mind from earthly thoughts to unspeakable blasphemies of intergalactic capitalism. Many Tsali are dispatched as agents to facilitate trade and ensure it goes smoothly, but many others flee to escape the restrictive life of subservience to barely comprehensible corporate masters. The Northern Hold has no factory, but its position along the trade routes of the Camask Sea means that agents and traders are frequently found, as well as runaways seeking to get as far from a factory as possible.

Trolls

The people known today as trolls were brought by the alien Magog Empire to work in the more dangerous and inhospitable regions of the world. Hailing from a world of higher gravity, even trolls born on this weak world are inordinately strong. The comparative wimpiness of the planet’s gravity also allows them to grow quite tall, so the average troll cuts a deeply imposing figure. Despite this advantage, they are not fully adapted to the world. The sun’s light is harsh and unforgiving and causes rock-like growths on their skin. Trolls effectively petrify in the sun over the course of weeks, unless these growths are periodically shaved down. Martially minded trolls, the sort that end up in adventuring parties, sometimes will allow a stone coat to grow out a bit and trade flexibility for a fine suit of natural armor. 

Trolls were on the front lines of the revolution against the Magog, and hold a position of heroic reputation in the myths and legends of the Northern Hold. Trolls avoid the deserts for obvious reasons, however, favoring heavily forested areas and extreme latitudes with less sunlight. Some even have taken to the underground, claiming or carving out caves to establish underground homesteader Trollholds where the sun is no longer an issue. The only trolls in the Hold are those who have to be there, those who are passing through, and those who are stranded. 

Finally, a scrap of gameable mechanics. I’m not fully happy with my foci for these groups since I want to move away from simple ability score bonuses and penalties, but my stone armor solution invented with the help of the Worlds Without Number Discord has gone over really well.

Kin Focus: Troll
Gain Exert as a bonus skill. Your Strength or Constitution modifier increases by +1, but your Charisma modifier decreases by -1. Trolls have a base unarmored AC of 12. For every two weeks you go without trimming your stone growths, you receive +2 AC, but also a -1 to Evasion saves.