Two Kingdoms Calendar

The Two Kingdoms divides the 320-day year into 12 months of 26 days each, plus 8 extra intercalary days at the end of the year. The months are divided into 3 weeks, the first two of which are 9 days long and the third (the "robbed week") 8 days long.

Months:

1. Thoukelphaophi (Before The Rain)
2. Kelphaophi (The Rain)
3. Kelphaophyr (The Rainbow)
4. Koikelphaophi (After The Rain)
5. Matbaya (Childhood)
6. Mamshara (Adolescence)
7. Mamhata (Adulthood)
8. Marmada (Elderhood)
9. Nābiskelpashons (Killing the Weak)
10. Nābiskelpaoni (Killing the Average)
11. Nābiskelepip (Killing the Strong)
12. Nābiskelmutnābis (Killing the Immortal)

Years are counted in regnal and dynastic years, making the present year the 23rd year of the Pharaoh Menmātra, the ??th Pharaoh of the ??th Dynasty.

Two Kingdoms Currency

The basic unit of Two Kingdoms currency is the copper coin known as the akchē (128 to the pound). 3 akchū are equal to one silver pārah (64 to the pound); in turn, 40 'apprāh equal one gold gurrûsh (160 to the pound) and 100 gurārish equal 1 platinum aril (80 to the pound).

To summarize:
1 akchē (a) = 1/3 pārah (p) = 1/120 gurrûsh (g) = 1/12,000 aril (ar)
3 akchū = 1 pārah = 1/40 gurrûsh = 1/4000 aril
120 akchū = 40 'apprāh = 1 gurrûsh = 1/100 aril
12,000 akchū = 4000 'apprāh = 100 gurārish = 1 aril

When looking at published costs:
1 cp = 1 akchē
1 sp = 10 akchū = 3p1a
1 gp = 100 akchū = 33p1a
1 pp = 1000 akchū = 8g4p

The Rainy Season

The Two Kingdoms enjoy a hot but consistent climate most of the year.  In early spring and early fall, however, changing winds and the collision of hot and cold weather fronts cause a torrential rainy season that lasts up to 3 weeks. During the rainy season, storms constantly thunder overhead. The rain may clear up for an hour or so, but always pours down again soon.

Without the rainy season, the Two Kingdoms would dry up and most of its creatures would die. The rain fills the numerous basin lakes that hold water but have no external feed; without the rain, the lakes would be but shallow depressions. Once filled, these basin lakes sustain the plant and animal life of the country for months to come.

Celebrations mark the rainy season whenever it arrives. In the city of Zep Tepi, vendors raise brightly colored awnings of oiled canvas over their stalls to shield them from the rain. Most hang chimes of brass or silver from the awnings, and their musical chimes sound constantly as they sway from the weight of rain on the canvas. Hawkers travel the stalls with buckets of steaming cider or mulled wine for sale, and young people gather in mobs for barefoot dances on muddy street corners.  Though Haon’s presence in Zep Tepi is limited most of the year, during the rainy season his faithful conduct parades, hand out shells for good luck, and receive special treatment from merchants, innkeepers, and citizens alike.

Zep Tepi

South of the lands of Aporuë, sprawling across a valley of blazing-hot sand, is one of the most incredible and wondrous cities in all the world: the great desert metropolis of Zep Tepi. Within its sandstone walls, anything one wishes can be bought, sold, or traded—for the right price. Zep Tepi is a city of organized chaos where cash is king and commerce is the highest god.  Perhaps only its long history of trade with both Aporuëna and Ndata-mbanyiti traders (and do not forget the occasional Aprasahami or Haeno, even!), balanced against the novelty of the goods one can acquire in the Free City makes the latter a larger trading city.  And novelty, of all things dreamed of by kel-Biann in his wandering sleep, fades.

Through all of the trials and tribulations Zep Tepi has weathered, from its beginnings as the “Golden City” to the bustling metropolis of today, it has retained its mercantile importance no matter who or what has occupied it. Some believe that it is Zep Tepi’s divine purpose to one day become the greatest center of commerce in all the world.

The city holds more than 200,000 souls, and each one wants to sell you something. At first glance it appears there are more businesses than residences in Zep Tepi, because so many merchants sleep in their shops, as they are there most hours of the day anyway, and it provides a deterrent to thieves.

Thievery isn’t as big a problem as one might expect in Zep Tepi. Crammed full of stores, stalls, tents, warehouses, hawkers, and purchasers as it is, the teeming city seems a thieves’ paradise. The edicts of the Dealmakers, however, make it clear that anyone interfering with trade in the city faces death—or worse. While the occasional petty theft is to be expected, organized or chronic crime threatens to disrupt a merchant’s everyday business. The Dealmakers come down hard on those who endanger the city’s economy (sometimes using constructs powered by the souls of slaves, called alumu, when necessary), and ignore everyone else.

While the Dealmakers maintain control over the city, day-to-day business and governance is left to Dealbroker Hashmot-ib-Diyyas. Hashmot-ib-Diyyas has a reputation for upholding the Dealmakers’ judgments and enacting their laws, whatever his personal feelings. Some suspect Hashmot-ib-Diyyas has a personal agenda that will someday come to light, but for now he enjoys a stable and respected position.

Hashmot-ib-Diyyas also presides over the merchant council, which makes decisions about Zep Tepi’s trade policies and ensures the market remains free. In practice, the merchant council rarely interferes in citizens’ daily lives; their attitude is laissez-faire, if not downright apathetic.

The Nightstalls garner the most attention in Zep Tepi.  The bazaars there sell items that are more than unusual—they’re immoral, addictive, or ephemeral. The Nightstalls is where one can buy a dragon’s tongue, feathers from a couatl’s wing, drugs and poisons of all kinds, or a devil’s regret.

After mahjoun, Zep Tepi’s biggest export is slaves. Though some slaves are available in the Nightstalls, most are sold through the Fleshfairs of Okeno.

KATAPESH
Size Metropolis nonstandard (plutocratic merchant council with alien overseers); AL N
GP Limit 100,000 gp; Assets 1,075,000 gp
Demographics
Population 215,000
Type mixed

• 63% human = 135,450 souls
• 6% ratfolk = 12,900 souls
• 6% halfling = 12,900 souls
• 5% asherati = 10,750 souls
• 5% bhuka = 10,750 souls
• 4% half-elf = 8600 souls
• 4% gnoll = 8600 souls
• 2.5% miscellaneous (including ifrit) = 5375 souls
• 2% elf = 4300 souls
• 1% dwarf = 2150 souls
• 1% orc = 2150 souls
• 0.5% half-orc = 1075 souls

Authority Figures
Hashmot-ib-Diyyas (Dealbroker of Zep Tepi); Angruul, Jivnar, Krimiltuk, Morvithis, and Tzandarkon (Dealmakers of Zep Tepi)

Creatures of the Two Kingdoms

Many animals on the plains and in the desert are native to the Two Kingdoms, known in other lands only because of the luxurious pelts traded in the marketplace. On the plains, the most common creatures are Two Kingdoms lions (great golden beasts with white manes), gazelles, zebras, blink dogs, camelopards (a variety of giraffe), and small, beautiful antelopes called calopi. Jungle areas include such wildlife as alligators, giant snakes, lizards, stirges, and rare tribes of lizardfolk. In the desert, one finds camels, sand eels, basilisks, behirs, wild horses, scorpions, and buzzards. In the mountains, giant frilled lizards known as razorscales prowl next to mountain lions, wild goats, dragonnes, and gnolls.  Gnolls are the most common monsters in the eastern portion of the Two Kingdoms, and arguably the most dangerous.  Gnolls are feared and reviled throughout the land (an opinion tinged with not a bit of xenophobia regarding Ndata-mbanye, widely considered their homeland), but the Dealmakers’ open trade policy means that gnolls may freely enter the city of Zep Tepi, so long as they come to barter and behave themselves.

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.

Merfolk (I)

Only the merfolk knew the secret of tanning whaleskin into parchment that could outlive centuries, and it had been long years since honest folk learned that a deal made with mermaids was no simple thing. They deemed it their right to demand a favor from anyone who used or even carried their goods. Such favors usually resulted in bloodshed and sunken ships. No honest man would be willingly beholden to a mermaid, and any wise ship captain would toss anyone carrying such a map into the sea—after dumping a load of bloody chum to draw sharks.