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| The XaoZitec mountains are divided in to peaks and mounts of varying sizes. Mounts, sometimes reffered to as just mountains, are larger not quite as sever, something like the american rockies. Peaks are absurd twisted conical shapes, parody mountains that could not have formed naturaly. Here the terrain is as much a hazard as anything else. Each mountain and peak is it's own nonsensical ecosystem. While many of them are just to varied and bizzare to categorize, others show a cohesive theme and are well known. These are marked above. The XaoZitec's are still very underexplored and are in a constant state of change. This map should not be considered compleat in any way and may change drastically at a moments notice. |
| 1: The Edge" What could be considered the "capitol" of the XaoZitecs. It is a relatively small metropolis with an approximate population of one hundred fourty to one hundred fifty thousand with an additional ten to twenty thousand visitors, tourists, vagarants, traveling merchants, etc. It has a vauge and highly ritualistic government, which is the only XaoZitec power officially recognized by the Human Empire. Originally a small keep known as Al Amarjah which developed a suburb which turned in to a city and is still referred to as Al Amarjah by the more self-important. The city has a concentration of wealth highly out of proportion with it's size due to it's control of the place of roads and it's trade relation with the empire.This is where Hans is from. (this is essentially a medeavil conversion of "Over The Edge" with lots of magick and non-humans) 2: The Place of Roads: A circle of stonehenge style arches that are actually portals to many other planes and worlds. The portals are controled by mystic Key Tokens. These unique magik items are jealously guarded by the various trading guilds, as is the secrets to their use and creation. Each protal can be used to access several different world wth different Key Tokens at different phases of the moon. Shipments of offworld goods come through on a regular basis a lucky trader could be set for life with just a few of these trips. However the merchant caravans a subject to a huge level of depredation by pyrates and various mountain beasts. Among the worlds is connects to are Sigil the great planar city, Oz, and Tekumel. 3: Giblet Highway: A huge road paved with massive blocks of marble two hundred yards wide and three hundre long. It is the only the path from the Edge to the Place of Roads that is suitable for large caravans. Though the Edge side is relatively uninteresting but the side closer to the Place of Roads is lined on either side with dangerous peaks and mounts. From these come seemingly endless parties of monters and raiders that live off the plentifull supply trains. They are constantly on the look out for new prey but will probably not bother with small groups of individuals and similar small takes. On the plus side the high traffic tends to keep away most of the more nasty and powerull chaos beasts as they would rather not be bothered by swarming mortals. 4: Edge Gatehouse: Resembling an upside down ziggurat all people and cargo going in or otu of the Edge must pass through here. Any one attempting illegal entry or exit will be tron to peices by the millions of bone golem sentrys buried in the earth. The Gatehouse it self is run by Jean Paul, a superior form of lich made from the minds and bodies of well over a dozen willing sorcerors of great magical strength. As well as the standard minions and underlings Jean Paul has been working with a superintelligent coral that exists in five dimensions. With the coral's help the gatehouse is now larger on the inside than it is on the outside. It's internal layout is fluid and navigating through has more to do with your state of mind then your directions. Permanent residents are awarded Citizenship Tatoos that allow them to pass as they want, armies of golems or not. 5: Imperial Stronghold: At first the Empire of the Sun, the dominat millitary and govermental force in the world, waged a war of genocide against the XaoZitecs. But the deep enterior was like a black hole. No troops sent in came back. Eventually it was discovered that many of these troops had not died but rebelled against their commanders and settled down with the natives. After this the policy was not of all out war but merely extermination of the outlying communities. But every time the we'r sure that life had been erased it somehow came back. Much like a cancer they noted. After a considerable waste of men and resources the policy became that of an embargo. Nothing would go in and anythng coming out would be destroyed. All but the most fanatical troops would either revolt or go mad after any length of time in a XaoZitec tour of duty. And the immigrants flowing in to the mountains came in such number and with such determination it would have required a whole army to stop them. So they built a wall that stretched for hundreds of miles and was built like a castle. It was the largest single contruction ever. And it was tuneeled through and under so much as to render it useless in less than fifty years. So the policy changed to one of propaganda and indoctrination. If it's influx of peoples stopped it would weaken. And it worked well. Soon almost the whole empire filled with hatred and distrust aof anything even remotely magical or nonhuman. But it also served to spread the siren call of the XaoZitecs and their flow of "Reality Dissidents" only increased. Then the Place of Roads was discovered and the first merchant caravan came rolling out. So the policy became an uneasy cease-fire. Those wishing to immigrate to the XaoZitec were let through unhindered and merchants are allowed to enter the "Civilized Lands". But it was generally acknowleged than anything inhuman or of an obviously magical nature would be killed by the populace it self if not the military. In the hundred years since then the fear and distrust of the norms has not decreased but the empire, having run out of new places to conquer, has become increasingly dependent on the XaoZitec offworld traders. The XaoZitecs have become one of the most important places on earth and the edge is inhabited by some of the worlds richest and most politically powerfull individuals. Their tendrils reach everywhere and their covert wars and schemeing conspiracies touch almost everyones life with out their knowledge. 6: Traboc Woods: The archetypical enchanted forest, traboc woods is the nicer friendlier rural version of the Edge. Sure there are some monsters but their no where near as dangerous as the people in the Edge. Traboc has a high population density for a forest and it seems like there's a neww fairy tale creature around every bend of the trail. Magic people, magic animals, magic trees, magic streams, magic rocks, magick sticks, magick lichens, magic logs, magic outhouses, magic bird shit, magic everything can be found here. additionally every third person you meet will attempt to convince you to complete some sort of quest. Also not a bad place to retire or raise a family. Low crime, high dueling. 7: Ganja Fields: One of the most popular wonders of the XaoZitecs these are miles and miles of low rolling hills absolutley covered with a veritable sea of marijuana. The plants are on average ten feet tall and have buds two to five feet long of the most wonderfull, beautiful, delicious weed. It can smoked directly from the stalk and provides a more energetic high when picked from the top of the plant and a super relexed mellow stone when picked from near the bottom. The weed is know for giving huge penalties to combat when smoke and this makes the fields an intersting experience. You never know who or what you might find there but the chances are good that it will be in a friendly and hospitable mood, even if it would normally try to kill you. Wandering Rastas dominate the southern portion while pygmies and balrogs lay a mostly unenforced claim to the north. What few habitations that can be found here are usually temporary tent villages and the occasional Rasta Crash Space. During long dry spells the rastas perform controlled burns to prevent fullscale field fires. On these day's you can catch a buzz from as far away as G'dharn just by smelling the air. These day's are impromptu holidays and huge street parties break out everywhere. 8: Rasta Shrine: Rastafarians are sect of druidic-philosopher-shaman-priests who practice a form of magic based around ancestral spirits and the injestion of Ganja. They mostly stick to themselves tending the fields with their divine lion companions sleeping in small three walled huts called Crash Spaces that are scattered through the Ganja fields. Their one and only temple is constructed almost entirely of bamboo and weed stalks and is large enough to house over a thousand Rasta's at a time. The Rastas are either very generous or very mercantile with their powers depending on how you look at it. They can perform great healing, blessings and exocisms and even the occasional ressurection, though theey are not mere ly healers. Some rastas go on "walkings" or "pimgrils" where they expand their skills and mental horizons by traveling the world. Many times this involves joining up with adventuring parties or tour groups. 9: Skylla: Also known as Tentacle Town, Skylla is a major shipping center. The continent of Amorica is held in an iron vise by the Empire of the Sun.who have a mindbogglingly large number of walls, fort, and patrols covering the land, sea and air. Nothing enters or leaves the continent without their knowledge and permission. Unless it comes in through the ports of Skylla. Virtually all illegal and black market goods enter Amorica through here. Every kind of drug, perversion, and bizzare cultural artifact can be found in the surplus markets here. The population of skylla is only fifty percent humanoid while the other half is wide variey of alien forms mostly resembling exotic sealife or amorpheous horros. The Humanoids are given only the most lowly and servile or jobs and many of them are indentured servants. Humanoids cannot own land without a granted pass by the Phylum of Trade and Zoning. These are usually given to only most prominent and wealthy citizens of the Edge. Even then these humanoids are only considered to be "borrowing" and any real estate will be seized upon the owners death. Also humanoids cannot own or run businesses but most work through a duly liscenced non-humanoid proxy. The city itself is very inhuman. It is carved entirely from one monstrous piece of strange grey-green marble that is warm to the touch and almost seems to pulsate. This marble is seemingly indestructable and so Skylla can never trully exand or shrink, Corridors and doorways seem unusualy wide. Canals of salty brine twist through the city in place of roads, many times through underground tunnels or flowing impossibly uphill. There are no chairs or windows in Skylla. The normal ecological niches (rats, seagulls) are filled by large insect equivalents. starting about a thousand feet from the outer walls of Skylla is a humanoid shanty town that sprawls for miles. Any shanty town structures built closer than a thousand feet will be torched by the citys Crustaceon Guards. Most of the citys humanoid laborers live here in crude structures made from driftwood and debris.There is a very high rate of alcoholism and suicide here but Skylla wages are so high that a frugal person can retire after only ten years of work. However the prices in Skylla are also abnormaly high and the varietys of luxuries and indlugences is eemingly infinite. Also Skylla has wholehartedly inbraced the concept of "credit", thus the indentured servants that are so common. Skylla os protected by an anciet pact with the Elder Things or Titani that live deep within Karkon Bay and so is immune to attack by all the most powerfull and near godly entities. 10: Karkon Bay: Unbeknownst to the empire Skylla is merely the mercantile sector of a much larger community that exists below the waves. Here great machines are used to control the currents keeping shipping lanes open and cutting of or destroying would be invaders. The farther from the coast one goes the more giant and alien the buildings become. By two hundred feet deep the buildings are easily mistaken for strange and twisted corals and growth. By six hundred feet deep no sunlight reaches the bottom. This is good as by this depth the city is comprised of shiting non-euclidean forms and angles that exist in twenty dimensions at once. A good look at one of these can drive a normal man to maddness or even death. Any farther and you will enter the territory of the Elder Things or Titani. Here the buildings seem more like caverns, valleys, and mountains of unearthly hugeness. The Titani are said to be the descendents of the generals of the divine pwoers themselves. They stand any where between six hundred feet, the smallest Titani is Grendel who stands at only 450 feet and is usually seen riding on the backs of his larger brethren, to Karkon himself whose brain/facial section measures 26043 feet in diameter and whose mighty tentacles stretch for over ten miles in length! The Elder Things once waged a war the Great Chaos Demogogs and triumphed sending the ancient horrors back to brood for eternity on their respective mountains. Since that time most of the Titani have entered a chrysalis like stasis mode where they can rebuild their mighty energies and, if all goes well, slow metamorphisise in to beings of truly cosmic power. Untill that time only a small group of Titani remain to stand guard of the XaoZitecs. There are thirty three Titani exactly and when the rare fall in battle occurs a new Titani will be awakened to take its place. However most of these Elder Things keep a close watch on their slumbering kin and only a few are relegated to "border patrol" or interaction with the outside world. These are, in no particular order; Kunga, a gorrilla like Titani with six long boneless arms ending in wickedly clawed webbed cat claws, he attacks with constriction and wrestlin techniques and has poisonous blood; Grendel, a tiny (in comparison) green humanoid not dissimailar to a deathly gaunt troll with iron hooks for hands and double jointed legs, his jumping skills are legendary and he is known to burow within his oppenents flesh for vital organs and such, his long black mane of hair can be used as a whip when braided, Ultra-Gammeron, a mighthy dragon-turtle-woman-ufo, she can fly through the air on jet like flame blasts from her leg holes that can be used as short range weapons, when spinning she has been known to fly faster than speed of light, His breath weapon is actually a supernova blast of two dying stars ripping each other apart and is know to cause major geographic changes when used (ie, new seas or valley, missing stretches of mountains, melted glaciers), her spiked shell is unbreakable; Battaros, like a cross between a manta ray, a vampire bat, and a beatle, Battaros is esential a giant armored wing whose leading edge is all one long toothy mouth, his many laser attacks have expert aiming, Gyros; a humanoid insect type with curving blades for fore arms and a rotating saw blade runnin the lenght of his torso, can you say bear hug, in place of eyes he has a red visor that can emit deadly radiation beams; Jostra a snake bodied procupine with the head of a venus flytrap and the tail of a thousand giant scorpions, it's ice breath attacks and Swirling Hyper Poison Beam are a lethal combination, though considered one of the strongest and largest of the Titani (second only in size to mighty Karkon) Jostra is of only animal intelligence and is considered a sort of evolutionary throwback, the other Titani treat much like a pet and it's loyalty to them is unbreakable; Bulgrawth; a squat blue man made of living metal, he seems of asian descent with a long white beard, spiralled rams horns, a lizard like tail ending in a bladed wedge, feet like a crows and a joyfull potbelly covered with thorns, He is never with out his long metal which almost half as big as him and he can use the smoke from the sweet herbs within to daze his opponents or swing it like a mighty burning hot mace, making him the only Titani to use weapon, Bulgrawth is the most civilized of the Titani and the most likely to interact with lesser mortals, he is even known to strike off on his at times in something he calls "walking tours"; and of course Mighty Karkon himself a giant floating eye attatched by a glowing sivler cord to an even larger floating brain sporting an array of 666,666,666 powerfull tentalce that go on for miles, he is considered one of the most intelligent beings in existence, if also one of the most shallow having no interior life beyond his duty, he can attack individual targets with each of his tentacles as sepperate attacks even if those targets are miles apart, if one of these tentacles is severed it will regenerate os Two tentacles, it is said that if the silver cor between eye and brain were severed his tentacles would begin to reproduce uncontrollably and consume the world is not stopped. 11: Zaiban Peak: Zaiban peak is a civil war in slow motion. It is home to a variety of humanoid and nonumanoid insect people. These a divided in to to seperate yet interconnected civilizations; the fearless and regal Samurai bugs known for their ornate exoskelton armour who live in armored forts, constructed from metal casts of the exoskeletons of fallen brethren, that jut out from the west side of the peak, and the fearless and cunning Ninja bugs known for their speedy wings and deadly stings that live have dark and twisting hives in the many tunnels that riddle the east side. The two factions had a great war many centuries ago that was won by the Samurai using their divine gifts to overpower the Ninjas dark secrets. The Samurai made the Ninja sign a magical aggrement that no idividuals from one factions could ever fight thos from the other and that the Ninjas would defer to the Samurai from now on. The Samurai have since made a deal with Skylla and patrol the way to Zappa Bridge with fervent vigilance slaying evildoers and the disrespectfull. Those that stray from the path however are vulnerable the depredations of the ninja, who are also known to send frequent raiding parties to the relatively undefended Miigo Bayou. 12: Miigo Bayou: The Miigo are a race of small crustaceans that were once the greatest technicians and inventers in all Skylla. But they underwent a massive cultural revolution centering around a newly concocted psychedelic renowned for it's "enlightening" effects. They became enamoured with all kinds of artistic and spiritual philosophies and began to preach various forms of socialist-anarchism, libertarian and free-thinking ideals, even interspecies equality. They were of course arrested, murdered, banished, and denied access to their sacred breeding pools till they were almost extinct. But they did not all die out. Those that survived and those few that allied with them fleed to the uninhabited swamps that had grown out of Skylla's ancient dumping grounds. They felt this terrain best signified their union of land dwelling humanoids and amphibious/aquatic nonhumanoids. Here they hid and began to wage a cultural guerrila war centered around flashy stunts and performance art/activism usually followed by a quick escape. To their surprise many XaoZitec residents came to their aid and in a short time they Bayou was transformed in to a lively and vibrant community. It is considered a less touristy sister of the Ganja Fields. It is impposible to tell whether humanoids or nonhumanoids are a majority but the numbers seem roughfly even. Unlike their scholarly inventer founders the nonhumanoids are intensely primitive and eschew clothing, private property and any technology above a stone age hunter/gatherer level. They follow a druidic religion centered around hallucinogens and fertility know as Fecundiasm. A Fecundist shaman can litteraly become a spiritform while in the throes of a psychedelic delerium. They are invisible to all those who are sober and clear of mind and cannot be harmed by physical means. When in this form they have many unusually properties the most famous being Spiritual Impregnation. Living beings that that are touched, ever so slightly, by these spirits may become infected by the chaotic power of the swamp. These people, animals, or plants will then later give birth to a freak, an amphibous nightmare swamp thing, that will instinctively make it's way to Fecundiast holy spot for parenting. These swamplings, those blessed with sentience, and Boglins, those that are as beasts, can only breed with other results of Spiritual Impregnation leading to an ever stranger array of freindly, good natured monstrosities. Miigo is known for its many many many artists, musicians, performers, poets and other such layabouts as well as it's many many many mind altering drugs and it's annual Days of Orgy, a drug fuelled festival similar to mardi gras and unnequalled in the realms o perversion and promiscuity. Travel by boat of raft is reccomended as swimming in the wrong places can be dangerous. Most buildings are treehouses or houseboats, though are some artificial islands that host their own little villages sometimes complete with names and strange nonsensical customs. Additionally there is an intricate network of elevated wooden pathsways know collectively as the Boardwalk. The board walk is constantly changing, losing and gaining new areas as they are built or decay. The seems to go on forever but peters out as it gets to the more insular, less humanoid areas adjacent to Karkon Bay. Different sections are supported either by long poles emerging from the water, liked because of it's sturdiness and level surface, or suspended from the many trees by ropes and vines, liked for it's relative immunity to sudden rises in water level and for areas where the depth of the swamp or aggressive water life make poles impractical. 13: |