The Magic Lands Reclaimed! (Interest Check)

• Name: The Rikitas Dominion, AKA the Menace of the Cold Hills.

• Government: Matriarchal monarchy; technically multiple matriarchal monarchies, though they all answer to one supreme one.

• Capital: Hazzag, a small, entirely fortified city on a mountaintop; almost more of a large monastery than a city proper, it nevertheless holds nearly ten thousand individuals despite being almost constantly covered in a few inches of snow.

• Ruler: High Queen Ruziig of Hazzag.

• People: Klackontyr. (Singular: klackon) An insectoid race with visual similarities to ants, especially their heads. Their upper half stands upright and has two arms, while their lower half, comprised mostly of an insect-like abdomen, stays more horizontal and has four thin legs. The klackontyr possess less strength and endurance than a human, though they do have a slight advantage against slicing weapons due to their natural exoskeleton. Their real strength however, besides reproducing in vast numbers, is that klackontyr are extremely tolerant of differing climates, and most will be perfectly comfortable without clothes in anywhere from a maddeningly hot jungle to a bitterly cold tundra. They also have wings in their abdomen, but cannot use them for sustained flight; instead the wings allow them to jump extremely high and make short glides. Klackontyr men stand at about five feet tall on average, while the women stand about six feet tall. The gender ratio is massively skewed however, with there being only one woman for any number of hundred of men; this is offset by the fact that klackontyr women will typically lay multiple dozens of eggs every time they give birth.

• History: The Klackontyr have squabbled among themselves and their neighbors since near the dawn of Urth, but remained in disorganized tribes until just over 600 years ago. The queen of Hazzag at the time had obtained the Branch of Kiszeth, a somewhat-ironically named magical jewel that was prophesied to entitle the holder to be ruler of the Klackontyr people. Thus the Rikitas Dominion was founded as the other Klackontyr queens bowed to her rule, though things remained mostly unchanged for more than two hundred years as the Klackontyr queens continued to battle each other where they could justify it and use subterfuge and sabotage where they couldn't; the Branch of Kiszeth changed hands many times through illegitimate means during this time.
  • Over 300 years ago, this finally changed; the latest High Queen of Hazzag and thus holder of the Branch of Kiszeth at the time put an end to the infighting through a series of high profile executions and bold, ruthless elimination of the more subversive fortresses. With the Dominion finally stable, they turned their eyes outward; the Klackontyr had always fought and raided outside countries and villages, but this had always been disjointed, or the act of one single queen sending her own personal militia towards whatever end. Now they were capable of fielding large armies as the whole nation worked together, expanding their territory steadily as they overwhelmed nearby provinces.
  • This continued for about a hundred years, until the Rikitas advance was halted as they encountered larger kingdoms and nations that were capable of holding them off. But, rather than be deterred permanently, the Rikitas Dominion went for truces, withdrew to build back up, and then went to war again, this time against only one kingdom and again stopping after a year or two with whatever territory they could gain in that time. This cycle has been repeating for the last two hundred years, with Rikitas targeting a different neighbor each time. The dominion is insatiable for expansion, and would see all of Urth belong to them if they could.

• Infrastructure: Rikitas seems to have a very crude, medieval, European-style infrastructure, with Klackontyr craftsmanship being infamous abroad for being cheap and easy to break. This is true for the majority of their crafts as used by Klackontyr men, but anything made for Klackontyr women is just the opposite, expertly crafted and very dependable. All Klackontyr settlements are built around or composed entirely of a castle/monastery, and as such upwards of thousands of these fortresses dot the landscape of forests, hills, and plains that they've conquered. The overall population is somewhere in the hundreds of thousands.

• Geography: The center of the dominion holds a few small, snowy mountains, the original territory of the Klackontyr, but that has since expanded to hold a number of taigas, plains, hills, forests, and savannahs. The borders are whatever works best for them relative to the other player nations.

• Culture: Klackontyr culture revolves entirely around their women, as being so rare they are vital. The men are simply commoners, treated as peasants and soldiers by their own mothers unless they distinguish themselves or be one of the lucky few Klackontyr men to get married; (These two things tend to coincide, as Klackontyr women tend to prefer distinguished suitors.) the women however are automatically considered royalty from birth, and as such hold certain royal titles depending on their status. A Klackontyr woman who owns her own castle or monastery is a queen, and any of her daughters would be princess; a Klackontyr woman who does not own her own fortress but instead lives in the fortress of another is a countess, while any of her own daughters would be a baroness. The exception is the High Queen of Hazzag, who is the ultimate ruler of the Dominion, while her daughters would be a high princess; the high princesses who do not inherit the title of High Queen become a duchess, whose own daughters would then be either a princess or a baroness depending on if the duchess has her own fortress or not. Klackontyr men who do get married simply get the Male equivalent of their wife's title. Most Klackontyr men are illiterate, but almost all Klackontyr women are well educated. The Klackontyr believe in a deity called Kiszeth, who is actually depicted as some kind of giant bee supposedly living inside the sun.

• Military: With the nature of infrastructure and culture as it is, especially for the Klackontyr men who comprise the military, the Dominion tends to never make armor for their soldiers, just weapons; usually spears, axes, bows, slings, and other things that do not take much metal to make. Their tactics, if they can be called such, are generally just to rush the enemy and attempt to overtake them in sheer numbers. Klackontyr women are usually taught some magic, and thus sometimes are adapt magical combatants; but since the Dominion never, ever fields women because they are considered too valuable, this is never seen unless the Dominion is on the receiving end of an attack.

edited 19th May '15 3:26:07 AM by FirockFinion

Can you use a kingdom that's already made in a book?

No. This isn't a crossover, so it has to be an original nation. You can make an Expy though, just make sure to make it at least a little bit different.

Accepted.

edited 18th May '15 1:26:47 PM by kagescorpionakki

Sweet. Also, made a minor technical edit to their geography; nothing that should actually affect the game. Now for the character, the answer was staring me in the face the whole time: A runaway magical girl pretending to be a disgruntled veteran dude! (Non-Klackontyr would be pretty much unable to tell the difference between the genders in physical terms anyway, besides the height.)

• Name: (Baroness) Inkerna.

• Age: 22.

• Gender: Female. (Pretending to be an abnormally tall Male.)

• Nation/Race: The Rikitas Dominion, Klackontyr.

• Appearance: Stands at 5'10", exoskeleton colored a deep red. As most Klackontyr, tends to never wear clothes, but being a Klackon this isn't really a problem. (They also completely avert Non-Mammal Mammaries so even her being a woman isn't really an issue in this department.) She does however have a few sacks, pouches, and water flasks attached to her person by various straps and belts, some on her torso while others on her rear abdomen. She also has armor bracings on her forearms, upper arms, all four of her shins, and the front set of thighs.

• Magic/Special Abilities: Inkerna is mainly trained in fire magic.
  • The simpler spell she knows is a spray of fire she can project from one or both palms, which can typically reach out about ten feet before dissipating.
  • The more advanced is a head-sized fireball which she can launch at high speed from a hand that will travel for about a hundred feet, or until it hits something; in either case it then explodes into a larger plume, though this fire has no special properties.
  • She can also do pyrokinesis, though this also has an effective range of ten feet. Inkerna has however honed it to the point where she can be practically fire-proof through subconscious control, though of course she must still be conscious for it to work at all.
  • On a side note, smelling with antennae as a Klackon, her sense of smell is much more sensitive than that of a human, but despite that does not ever really distract or incapacitate her in any fashion. (The "range" is about the same, so she wouldn't be picking out dudes a mile away, but she could point out a bug in a corner of a room she's in by smell.)

• Skills: Inkerna is also a skilled fencer, and is adept at deflecting incoming melee blows with one of her armor bracers. She is fluent in the Rikitas language and common tongue, (Though most of the time she will be Obfuscating Stupidity via You No Take Candle and other methods.) and while she cannot speak or understand other languages vocally, she can read and write in almost every known language on Urth. She's skilled in mathematics, celestial navigation, architectural design, and knitting. She also knows how to paint, but is not very good at it.

• Items/Equipment:
  • Among her various pouches and sacks is a sextant for celestial navigation, some knitting needles, some rolls of paper, a quill, and a sealed ink well. She also has a small collection of gold coins and valuable jewels.
  • Her only weapon is a rapier, artfully crafted through magical means to have the shining brilliance of silver while being lighter and sturdier than steel. (For reference, her bracers are the same.)

edited 19th May '15 4:51:03 AM by FirockFinion

You didn't know which option to go with, so you went with both. Sounds like a interesting character. Even if none of us will be able to tell your true gender.

Well it'll come up when the party goes to Rikitas. (Assuming she gets accepted, that is.) She might be able to pull a "yeah I'm just a weirdly tall dude" with other races, but other Klackontyr would see through that instantly.