Two Kingdoms (II)

The Two Kingdoms! Land of adventure, faith, excitement, fate, addiction, and poetry. The present blurs into the past as ancient ruins and weathered monoliths, once hidden, come to light. Scouring sandstorms whip away the dunes to reveal the planed sides of pyramids.  Caravans gone astray on the savannah find the bones of old settlements, their inhabitants gone but their relics left behind. The tokens and trinkets of bygone Phaetia all make their way to the great city of Zep Tepi, to find a place among the stalls and shops of the city of trade. There, the battered gold necklace that once hung around the neck of a pharaoh sits scandalously in a tangle next to smooth balls of mahjoun, while one of the enigmatic Dealmakers glides by, his madness-inducing visage concealed behind a bizarre mask.

The Two Kingdoms may be many things: hostile, brutal, dishonest, opportunistic, uncivilized, pious—even beautiful. But it is never dull.  Welcome to the bazaar of the bizarre, stranger.

The Two Kingdoms encompass many different land types and climates  (especially as half of it is below the sea!)  To the east, looming mountains slope like spearheads, blocking the way to Koboro and the continent of Ndata-mbanye beyond it. Flatter foothills and mountain passes offer passage to the eastern country, but most travelers prefer to reach Koboro by ship. Gnolls live in those mountains, and they know the passes and easy crossings as well as anyone. Unprepared souls who attempt to traverse the mountains generally wind up on a ship anyway: in the belly of a slave galley on its way to the Fleshfairs.

West of the mountains, warm green savannahs stretch for miles. Clusters of tall trees, with long branches that extend only from the very tops of the trunks, stand like open umbrellas to offer moderate shade. Thin rivers and still pools provide water for the many animals that roam the fertile plains, such as camelopards, Two Kingdoms lions, gazelles, and more. At times, the savannah gives way to lush jungles that develop around hot spots: underground heat vents that warm the area, turning fresh water murky and sulfurous and fostering the growth of plant life.

Farther west still, the plains dry up into arid stretches of desert. Here lies the breadbasket of the Two Kingdoms, the heartland from which many of its citizens’ livelihoods spring. In the desert reaches, mahjoun grows.  The bulbous, spiny cacti produce the milk farmers ferment into mahjoun, the euphoric, addictive stimulant for which the country is famed (among many other things). The potential to cultivate mahjoun and make large sums of money from its sale makes the dangers of desert life—scorpions, jackal rats, sand eels, and ancient curses—worthwhile.

The Two Kingdoms are ruled by an ancient and evergrowing dynasty of half-angel ghosts with Divine Rank 0.  How can you have a dynasty of ghosts, you ask?  At some point during a pharoah's reign, Tum incarnates upon a woman somewhere in the Two Kingdoms as a flash of light that impregnates her with the upcoming pharoah.  When this happens, the reigning pharoah knows that e is in the last years of eir reign but not how many years e has left, for e has no way of knowing when that child will be violently killed, as they always are.  The people of the Two Kingdoms see this as a way of gaming the cosmological system; if the fallen world is a prison and the pharoah one of the jailers, the only candidates Neziru will accept are those the people dislike.  The best way to convince Neziru that you dislike someone is to kill them, as violently as possible.  Once the new pharoah is killed, e becomes a ghost and takes eir place among the others, who are now treated as generals and special ops agents in the hierarchy of the Two Kingdoms.