## Flurydians The Flurydians are an aggressive, expansionist human people of the coast, governed through a system best described as managed anarchy. Their rise began with the discovery of X-crystals, volatile minerals that can be refined into explosive powder and used to power firearms, explosives, and steam engines. Magic can be channeled through X-crystals to intensify their effects, but doing so is dangerously unstable, and Flurydian history is filled with spectacular accidents, failed experiments, and weapons that worked far better than intended. Their settlements reflect this temperament: Flotta stands under constant threat from several nearby titanic monsters, while New Flotta was built long ago over the ruins of a platapus tribe destroyed during Flurydian expansion. The island city of Soggy Feet serves as the nation’s principal manufacturing center, producing weapons behind formidable defenses that include enormous kraken-busting turrets. At the heart of Flurydian society is America, the most chaotic city in an already chaotic nation and, improbably, its center of government and research. Its laboratories have produced numerous monstrosities, including the infamous horsadile. Nearby New America is devoted to the cultivation and refinement of X-crystals; magical contamination permeates the city, and entire districts are perpetually being rebuilt after industrial accidents. Far to the east, hundreds of miles from the rest of Flurydia, lies D-Days, an isolated city founded by separatists. Above this disorder sits an authority almost no one recognizes: Captain Steven, the secret leader of the Flurydians. He lives alone on a hidden island roughly a hundred miles from the nation and has contact with only a handful of intermediaries, who periodically ask him questions and use his answers to guide national policy. Captain Steven himself does not realize that these conversations make him, in practice, the ruler of all Flurydians. ## Botta The Botta _(bō-tă)_ are anthropomorphic grasshopper-folk of the Golden Plains, an industrious and highly coordinated people linked through a vast communal consciousness. Each Botta retains an individual personality, but remains connected to the thoughts and instincts of the greater hive. They are ruled by Hive Lord Kyren IV, who teaches that Botta should pursue their own lives while prospering through cooperation. Naturalists by tradition, the Botta draw sustenance and strength from ambient life force and regard the land itself as sacred. Their capital, Central Hive, is connected to outlying settlements through subterranean hive connections that maintain both communication and the flow of resources. Connection A gathers materials from the Gondwin Mountains and Azure River, while Connection Y harvests timber from the sacred Oasis Woods; gathered goods are sent through a central resource depot before reaching the capital. Botta have also traditionally ridden related, less-evolved species into battle, though new technology is beginning to produce alternative steeds. For generations the Botta remained largely isolated, but recent events have pushed them toward the wider world. An expedition into unexplored territory vanished after transmitting only a confused impression of something immense, and the creature responsible was later driven toward the Central Hive, provoking a major battle on the frontier. Soon afterward, an unknown force destroyed a newly established hive connection by collapsing its subterranean shaft, though the Botta rebuilt nearby within days. These threats convinced the hive that isolation was no longer sufficient, and ambassadors such as Prince Nigo Kamen have been sent abroad to build alliances and investigate dangers beyond the plains. Each summer solstice, the Botta gather for the Alignment Festival, celebrating nature, life, and their shared bond with the hive. ### The LDN — Loos Destiny Network - Deep underground, an ancient threat awakens, ready to destroy their foes. - Report by EOS: the Last Extermination Offensive Spire. ## Gorr, Masters of Mountain The Gorr are a pious hobgoblin people of the western highlands, centered on Greatest Mountain. Their skin is commonly blue, green, red, grey, or tan. Deep within the mountain lies Marn, their capital and the highest city in the world, while smaller settlements cluster around rich deposits of gems and precious metals and are linked by an extensive network of tunnels. Wealthy but martial, the hobgoblins are lorekeepers, monster hunters, and treasure seekers who prize strength, renown, ancient knowledge, and service to their king and god. Within the Moon Cave, near the moon pool and the city of Kong, the hobgoblins discovered the symbiots: friendly, nearly mindless, formless creatures found nowhere else. Symbiots may be black, red, orange, yellow, purple, white, grey, gold, green, or blue. Their bodies resemble living goo, allowing them to change shape, heal almost instantly, and bond with a hobgoblin host, most often transforming into weapons under the wielder's mental direction. This bond gave rise to the Symbiote Force, an elite order of paired warriors and symbiots who hunt monsters, recover treasure, and carry out distant missions for the mountain. Symbiots reproduce by mitosis, forming an egg that takes roughly a year to mature. ## Platapies The Platapies are an amphibious, expansionist people whose society prizes collective honor, discipline, and survival. Sturdy by nature and heavily equipped, they favor tough armor, shields, chainswords, and venom-tipped spears, supplementing these weapons with natural stingers capable of paralyzing a human. Once organized into scattered tribes, the Platapies gradually concentrated into fortified cities in response to pressure from neighboring Flurydia. They are brilliant tacticians, especially in defensive warfare and close combat, but notoriously poor strategists and often display little imagination outside their specialties. Even basic matters such as cooking, decoration, and naming are approached with blunt practicality. Honor is earned through contributions that strengthen the nation rather than through individual glory. Their cities are powered by enormous "noo-clear" engines, which boil water to drive great turbines. Platypus Thing, the capital, contains the schools and infrastructure used to raise and train young Platapies; Platypus Thing #2 is a spacious agricultural center that supplies much of the nation’s food; and Platypus Thing #3 serves as a major residential and cultural hub. Platypus Thing #4 has become notorious as a refuge for incompetents, rejects, and assorted nitwits, while Platypus Thing #6 was founded by residents who fled even that city’s ridicule and has somehow developed an even worse reputation. By contrast, Platypus Thing #7 is the nation’s principal intellectual and scientific center, populated by the engineers, researchers, and other “smarty-pants” responsible for many of Platapie civilization’s advances. ## Nayas The Nayas are a reclusive merfolk people whose culture is shaped by art, water magic, and the rivers and lakes they inhabit. Their civilization includes merfolk of nearly every known form, and their mastery of aquatic magic is unmatched. Sculpture, music, architecture, and ritual are all shaped through currents, pressure, ice, and flowing water. Though generally withdrawn from other nations, the Nayas maintain close ties with the hobgoblins. They have also learned to refine luminous stone found near the Prismatic Spires, allowing merfolk to breathe and fight on land for limited periods. Their capital is Nexico, while several other cities are built around unusual magical phenomena. Mevada, the Conduit, lies roughly 20 miles from Nexico and enhances the speed, strength, and creative abilities of water-breathing creatures, with its influence weakening over distance. Prismatic Spires is surrounded by colorful particles created by an ancient coral explosion; their effects remain poorly understood, though some Nayas display heightened artistic abilities within them. Hydro Chasm is enclosed by a barrier of lethally cold water that must be bypassed from below. Fontain is stranger still: its native water is deadly to most life, including ordinary merfolk, but the inhabitants have adapted to it and wield toxic and non-water forms of magic. Recent disappearances near the Prismatic Spires and Fontain, combined with unexplained interference affecting the Conduit, have driven the normally isolated Nayas to send investigators and envoys into the wider world. ## Daegorans, "Sun Elves" The Daegorans are seven-foot-tall desert elves who live in semi-nomadic tribal bands across the deep wastes. They are traders, raiders, livestock-keepers, and exceptional runners, crossing vast distances on foot rather than relying on mounts. Their culture is shaped by scarcity, and both water and blood are treated as precious resources. They are hedonistic and reluctant to spend any time thinking about the past or future. Daegoran magic draws power from living things, extracting water and mana from blood, flesh, and sap to fuel spells. This can leave victims weakened, desiccated, or dead. They domesticate glitterwings and antopedes. ## Tradum The Tradum are a goblin people organized into tribal mercantile societies, known across neighboring nations as enthusiastic traders, negotiators, and collectors of gems and precious metals. They are not especially advanced in technology, but their financial systems, recordkeeping, contracts, and bureaucracy are remarkably sophisticated. Tradum are also notoriously reluctant to exert themselves unnecessarily: they travel by mount whenever possible and consider walking a sign of poor planning. Despite their reputation for greed, they are rarely attached to wealth for its own sake; to a Tradum, the value lies in making the deal. Bargaining, leverage, exchange, and the satisfaction of a profitable negotiation matter more than keeping whatever was acquired. Tradum settlements reflect this obsession with commerce. Nearly every dwelling also serves as a shop, warehouse, counting house, or place of negotiation, and private life blends freely into business. The mark of a truly successful Tradum is to live beyond the crowded city and still have customers make the journey to their door. Most Tradum prefer goods imported from other civilizations, though the few who become craftsmen often achieve extraordinary technical skill. Their creations are typically gaudy, brutally functional, and bafflingly designed: a Tradum-made coat may keep its wearer perfectly warm and dry while also being stiff, edged with metal fittings, covered in unnecessary buckles, and almost impossible to wear comfortably. ## Ion Prime Avians, High Tech, Very Reclusive City of Ion Prime is built around a gigantic metallic tower. Ionians are almost never seen outside their tower and never seen outside the city. They wear strange uniforms of unknown material and have magical devices more strange and powerful than can be found anywhere else in the world, and nobody else can use. There is no mention of Ionians in ancient history. They appeared about 100 years ago in the middle of an explosion or eruption at the site of the current city. Other peoples built the city around the Ionian tower because it can be seen from far away. Ion Prime is a "melting pot" of all nations. Magical Ionian constructs patrol the city to ensure peace, but only act in extreme circumstances. Most people believe the constructs are to protect the tower, not the people in the city. ## Yotun Giant humanoid, fallen empire, ruins and remnants The Yotun were a race of giant humanoids, typically standing between ten and fifteen feet tall, who once inhabited the central plains and surrounding badlands. Rather than building great cities, they lived in scattered communities of a handful of massive stone structures, suggesting a culture organized around small settlements, clans, or isolated households. Their surviving architecture is oversized by modern standards, with doorways, chambers, and furnishings built for creatures far larger than any of the peoples who occupy the region today. Very little is known about Yotun civilization beyond these ruins. Many sites have been quarried for stone over the centuries, leaving only foundations, broken walls, and fragments of worked masonry. No clear record survives of when the Yotun disappeared or what caused their decline, and scholars disagree on whether they died out, migrated, or suffered some sudden catastrophe. Their abandoned structures remain among the oldest visible remnants of civilization in the central wastes.