History TabletopGame / EmpireOfThePetalThrone

* AfterTheEnd: ''multiple'' ends actually, including the "Latter Times" (sometime after the "Time of Darkness" when Tékumel dropped into a pocket dimension nearly 50,000 years ago), to the more current (5,000 or so years ago) collapse of the worldwide empire of Engsvan Hla Ganga.

* ScienceFantasy: The combination of a far-future setting, lashings of ClarkesLaw, {{Psionics}}, actual gods, and general weirdness makes this a non-standard fantasy setting with ''some'' ScienceFiction underpinnings.

[[StandardFantasySetting Highly nonstandard]] [[TabletopGames fantasy game]] created by M.A.R.[[note]]for Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman[[/note]] Barker. First officially published in 1975.

The setting is Tékumel, home of the Tsolyani Empire and several other civilizations, both human and not.

* AliensNeverInventedTheWheel: Actually, humans forget about the wheel for the most part, in their decline from technological civilization to agrarian culture. They have the wheel, but they have nothing like a horse for wheeled vehicles, and lost the idea for the [[NoBikesInTheApocalypse bicycle.]]

* NationalGeographicNudity: Modesty is not a thing on Tékumel, nor is it in any way affiliated with sex. Clothing is more of a costume that denotes your clan and social status, as well as job, rank, religious or political affiliation, and so on, that you wear outside of one's clan house, otherwise people are [[HomeNudist home nudists]].

* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: ''Humans'' are the ones who did this when they invaded Tékumel. The native Ssu and Hluss were living together in peace, and had about the kind of technology that we have now in RealLife. Humans had developed far a more advanced starfaring civilization, so "obviously" the Tékumelani species were inferior. Humans had no problem allying peacefully with other advanced starfaring species, but they terraformed the hell out of Tékumel, rearranged its orbit and even gravity, and tried their best to genocide the "primitive" natives. [[HumansAreBastards It's even noted that the other starfaring races wouldn't have bothered invading at all, if humans hadn't spearheaded the project.]]

* FormalFullArrayofCutlery: The governor's court in the distant land of Mihállu.

* HiveCasteSystem: One of Tékumel's native intelligent species, the insect-like Hlüss

* VastBureaucracy: Tsolyánu, Mu’ugalavyá and Livyánu are (in differing ways) all quite bureaucratic. Salarvyyá's bureaucracy is limited by feudal Balkanization. Yán Kór is too newly-established to have a really well-entrenched bureaucracy.

* TheTheocracy: Livyánu is completely controlled by the priesthoods of the Shadow Gods. The temples of the Tsolyáni Imperium itself also wield considerable political power, but they are constrained by the aristocratic clans, the Imperial bureaucracy, and the military.

* WarriorPrince: Eselné and Mirusíya.

* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: The Tsolyáni like displaying of social status and affiliation visually, and each of the twenty gods in their pantheon is associated with a color, or a combination of colors. Likewise, each of the Five Empires has its own heraldic color (the Tsolyáni Imperium uses blue, Yán Kór uses green, Mu’ugalavyá uses red, etc.)

* {{Colour-Coded For Your Convenience}}: The Tsolyáni like displaying of social status and affiliation visually, and each of the twenty gods in their pantheon is associated with a color, or a combination of colors. Likewise, each of the Five Empires has its own heraldic color (the Tsolyáni Imperium uses blue, Yán Kór uses green, Mu’ugalavyá uses red, etc.)

* {{Colour-CodedForYourConvenience}}: The Tsolyáni like displaying of social status and affiliation visually, and each of the twenty gods in their pantheon is associated with a color, or a combination of colors. Likewise, each of the Five Empires has its own heraldic color (the Tsolyáni Imperium uses blue, Yán Kór uses green, Mu’ugalavyá uses red, etc.)

* Colour-CodedForYourConvenience: The Tsolyáni like displaying of social status and affiliation visually, and each of the twenty gods in their pantheon is associated with a color, or a combination of colors. Likewise, each of the Five Empires has its own heraldic color (the Tsolyáni Imperium uses blue, Yán Kór uses green, Mu’ugalavyá uses red, etc.)

* TheConqueror: Through warfare and diplomacy, Baron Áld united the city-states and petty principalities of Yán Kór.

* TheConquerer: Through warfare and diplomacy, Baron Áld united the city-states and petty principalities of Yán Kór.

* BlindSeers: Arsála hiChagotlékka, one of Prince Mirusíya's advisors, deliberately blinded herself to enhance her ability to perceive magical energies.

* BeneathTheEarth: Cities in the Five Empires are deliberately leveled every five hundred years and then rebuilt upon the ruins, a process called "Ditlana." Important locations, however, are often spared this periodic renewal, and thus end up buried beneath the city's current street level. Since cities in the Five Empires are often thousands of years old, they may stand atop multiple subterranean levels, connected by labyrinthine tunnels to one another and the surface.

* ClarkesThirdLaw: Most magic artifacts (called "eyes") actually are objects of highly advanced technology, of which all memories have been lost [[AfterTheEnd in a cataclysm]].

* TheConquerer: Baron Áld united the city-states and principalities of Yán Kór into a single country.

* DerelictGraveyard: The Plain of Towers, west of Mu’ugalavyá, is named for the stripped and abandoned hulks of ancient starships left standing there since Tékumel fell into its own pocket universe.
* DrugsAreGood: The inhabitants of the Five Empires use a variety of recreational drugs (collectively known as "Powders"), which are legal, socially acceptable, well-understood, and generally have no serious side effects.

* HumanSubspecies: The N’lüss are considerably taller and more robust than the rest of Tékumel’s human inhabitants, and may have been produced through genetic engineering, prior to the collapse of technological society.

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Tékumel's native vegetation, known as "The Food of the Ssu," is so poisonous that even touching it kills human beings. The "Chr-melon," a staple crop for the reptillian Shén, gives human beings indigestion. In most cases, however, members of different species can safely eat one another's food.

* TheStarsAreGoingOut: Actually, the stars went out thousands of years ago. There were stars, but now only the local sun and the planets, because the system fell into a [[PocketDimension pocket universe]].

* TheUndead: The worshipers of Sarku ("The Five-Headed Lord of Worms") are rewarded for their piety and devoted service with eternal "life" as undead beings. While most Tsolyani people consider the worship of Sarku strange and unpleasant, his cult is well-known, widespread, and legal.