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Nomes of the River Kingdom

After the TBD school, of course. And thank you to Loch for making A2A, from which I stole all the rulestext and NONE! of the mesopotamiaposting. Unless you don’t like it in which case all the stuff you don’t like I took from someone else. 😊

All that is listed below is public knowledge. In each nome there are secrets—hidden truths, resources, complications—known only to the nomarch and their advisors.

Nomes of the River Kingdom

The river kingdom is broken up into unevenly-populated regions called nomes. Each nome is governed by a nomarch appointed by Lugal Himself. Some spend their lives bowing and scraping in Uruk to get Lugal’s attention, only to be cast aside in favor of a slave who showed great valor during a lion hunt. Lugal is as capricious as He is eternal.

Most of the river kingdom is farmland—barley, planted each year and which thrives in the river’s gift without human supervision—interspersed with sudden urban developments. There is far more open space in the river kingdom than there are living human settlements; one cannot go two leagues without coming across the ruins of a long-forgotten village.

Taking Loch’s advice so as to save myself from future disaster, nomes which end up unselected will quietly tick along in the background without causing any problems, until and unless another PC shows up to claim them.

The nome’s level is a rough estimate of the human population:
Level 1: ~1000 People
Level 2: ~2000 People
Level 3: ~3000 People
Level 4: ~5000 People
Level 5: ~8000 People
The level of a nome limits the total number of each type of holding it can have.

These nomes are marked with holdings:
Law Holdings represent your stake in violence, your ability to muster forces, and to inflict laws upon your nome.
Trade Holdings represent your stake in currency, resources and other desirable things, as they are made and moved around the river kingdom.
Temple Holdings represent the prominent apparatus of a cult and your authority over said cult.
Esoteric Holdings represent numinous, weird, fucked up, dangerous or otherwise odd things which are in your nome. They make your nome stranger by their mere presence.

If your nome is the center of a cult, and you play an Obligator of that same cult, it can reasonably be assumed you are at least a high-ranking member of that cult, if not the leader.

map

Uruk

So it is known in each and every hymn of praise: Uruk, City of Cities, City of a Thousand Thousand People, City From Which the Four Corners That Make the World Were Drawn, City Around Which Orbits the Universe, City From Which Springs All Beauty and Creation, Home of All Wherever They Happen to Dwell; for it is the seat of Lugal, the First and the Last, the King who is God, God of Men and God of Gold, He who is called Waterbearer, and Master of the Divine Elephant which spouts the river which delivers unto us life; and so it is still known to almost all of Lugal’s subjects. Only those that take the days-long journey up the Cliff of the Elephant know that Uruk, City of Life, has become a city of ghosts kept pristine: palaces filled with silk finery with no one to wear them, hanging gardens with no one to wander them, fountain-plazas with no one to congregate in them. Those that remain are almost all slaves, soldiers, or priests—cogs in the grand apparatus whose sole function is to serve Lugal.

The Wall

A nome built upon and within the grand wall separating Uruk from the fearsome wilderness to its north. The only nome on level ground with Uruk, this geographic truth extends to a sociocultural perception; the people of the wall have a haughtiness about them—a sense of rugged individualism simultaneously aided and at odds with its culture of martial readiness. Just north of the Wall is the corpse of the giant Mankesh, impaled upon a spike of bronze taller than the Wall itself. Many Wall-folk venture north of the Wall to hunt the great beasts and monsters of the wilderness; many beasts are killed and harvested of their hearts and skin and horns, though the greatest warriors bring their quarry back to Uruk alive, so that Lugal might go hunting without ever leaving His palace.

The Long Stair

Built below and upon the grand cliff which holds Uruk, the sole route from the river kingdom to the capital overlooking it. Really a miles-long, switchbacking ramp, the Long Stair is free for all to use, by Lugal’s decree. The power of the nomarch of this nome comes in control of the Grand Lift: halving, nearly quartering the travel time—not to mention skipping the climb. Small in footprint, but mighty in economic power.

uruk cliff

Iyyo, called Heroes’ Chorus

A vista of sweeping hills just south of the cliff of Uruk atop which pray a thousand thousand statues of long-dead heroes on hands and knees before the cliffside elephant. They vary in size and state of preservation; some are huge and brilliantly painted, tended to by dozens of careful preservers, while some are little more than wind-swept pillars of stone. Iyyo is a popular pilgrimage location for youths struck by wanderlust; they stand before each hero’s statue, pressing their foreheads to the cool stone, and search for a sign that they are one and the same. Between clusters of statues the hills are pocked with quarries, from which great blocks of stone are ported to their final resting places above the earth. The Rememberers have their temple here, an open, airy building built atop the tallest hill; beside it is the spartan residence of Bel-Synet lu Bel-Saya na Belet-Agusaya, the greatest sculptor the river kingdom has seen for generations.

Vedipal

Just north of the blue fork of the river, an idyllic nome of hilltop palaces, aqueducts, and paved roads flanked by cypress thickets. Everything is perfectly planned for beauty and efficiency; all the major infrastructure is entirely modern, renovated not two generations past. The Academy at the nome’s heart, a many-tiered ziggurat-temple to which all the nome’s aqueducts connect to feed its walls of holy water, acts as the home and bureaucratic center of the Stewards of the river kingdom. The Academy’s debate floor is never silent, no matter the hour.

Galbanipal

A marshy nome in a vast crater just south of the blue fork of the river, requiring constant effort to block or redirect the river’s attention. The Iron Citadel of the Justiciars, the center of the Iron Cult’s influence, is built upon a vast tell at the center of the nome: an artificial island surrounded by marshy lowlands. It is said that below the Iron Citadel lies the corpse of the god which fell to the earth to create the crater that makes up Galbanipal; it is this very corpse, those same rumors whisper, that the Justiciars butcher for the iron in their Man-killers’ swords. The prominent Obligator Lot-Vasanta lu Bel-Photion na Belet-Sheba makes many statements defining the Iron Cult’s place as entirely outside politics and rulership—but he makes even more statements loudly commentating on the ruling nomarch’s decisions.

Sunken Eilos, called Belet-Uruk

A vast alluvial plain of flooded, murky marshland. The people of Eilos reside primarily in houseboat flotilla-settlements, which travel with the lazy currents of the red fork between and around the tips of grand ruins long-sunk. Those few permanent structures that do exist do so on stilts. One such structure is the small, austere temple of the Rivertenders: their only such structure, and more a waystation for travelers than a proper bureaucratic apparatus. Eilos is also called Belet-Uruk, for it was once the second home of Lugal; the vast complex of ruins under the river’s surface was once Lugal’s second palace: many treasures can still be found beneath the waves.

marsh

Sarnai’s Garden

Greenery covers almost every surface of this hilly nome nestled in the riverbend of the blue fork. Aqueducts and canals abound, connecting hanging gardens and walled palaces exploding with exotic plants. You cannot go ten paces without encountering a different variety of fragrant flower or overburdened fruit tree. In the center of the nome, hidden somewhere in the labyrinth of verdant overgrowth, is the source of the nome’s eternal bounty: the pomegranate-sized ruby of its first nomarch, the wanderer Sarnai; it was she that turned this nome from a barren slum into the paradise it is today and became the mother of the orphans which inhabited it.

hanging gardens

The Tower-Lands

An arid grassland cut with a web of canals, throughout which herdsmen lead their flocks. It is a flat, horizontal plane interrupted by one colossal structure: the Tower, a rectangular pillar of stone and bronze and fur a mile wide and three miles high. Its heartbeat, rhythmic and steady, can be heard anywhere in the nome. It is the sacred duty of the nomarch of the Tower-Lands to collect a special tithe, as overseen by the Elephant Cult; it is the Word of Lugal that the foot of the Tower must be annually watered with blood. Level 2: Trade 1 (herd animals), Temple 1 (temple of the Elephant Cult), Esoteric 2 (the Tower)

tower

Denyas

A nome of marshy lowlands interrupted by dramatic rocky ridges, Denyas is known as a backwater nome infested by a nest of holy adders. In the time of Cunning Lot-Umashu, the first Sin-Eater, Bel-Ammitu was nomarch of Denyas. He was well-liked and virtuous, a great defender of the river kingdom’s frontier, but Lot-Umashu revealed him as an apostate with a vast collection of heretical texts. The Sin-Eaters had him killed for it. Instead of burning the library along with its owner, the Cult took it as their own.

Karash

A mixture of fertile floodplain farmland and strips of coastal grassland upon which shepherds graze herd animals. The true landmark of Karash is the towering lighthouse built upon a rocky bluff, for Karash is the first and last site of the elephants’ annual pilgrimage through the river kingdom before they begin their long ocean swim to the east, to return seasons later guided by the shining beacon. It is the sacred duty of the nomarch of Karash to tend the flame and prepare the way for the elephants’ passage. It is said that the lighthouse of Karash has never gone out since the day history began.

Tangled Anirayah

A tangled mangrove forest shrouds the brackish water of the river delta in darkness. Low-hanging branches heavy with curtains of moss and lichen prevent sailors easy passage; a seer is more at home here: subtle patterns are woven in the tapestries. Forest-dwellers subsist on mostly fish, lines cast into the murky water from their settlements built in the great mangrove canopy, tree-platforms connected by rope bridges. Serpents and worse slither through the water and the trees alike, and it is whispered that the people of Anirayah long-ago made a bargain with the trees themselves; it is impossible to traverse the tangled forest without one of the people of Anirayah leading the way. Anirayah is where one goes to disappear—either the living or the dead.

dredge

Upper Wanesh

A strip of arid highlands separating the delta of the river’s red fork and the central grasslands; terrace farms and mechanical presses abound, with staple crops including grapes, olive trees, and cork oak. Small red deer are a common sight, nibbling on anything they can reach—incorrigible pests. Geographically elevated out of the river’s reach, the people of Upper Wanesh are considered just as insular and removed. It is an open rumor that heretical astrologers hide from the elephant’s gaze on the nome’s southern slopes, moongazing; some consider all the people of Upper Wanesh among their number.

terrace

Lower Wanesh

A vast swath of bountiful fields fertilized by the river silt flank both sides of the river’s red fork. It is the abundance of Lower Wanesh that feeds and waters the Thousand Isles; the two nomes have thus always been closely tied. A hemispherical hill protrudes from the river’s bank near the nome’s borders, upon which a perfect circle of ancient cedar trees grow: the Hill of Belet-Nisa, taken to Uruk in ancient times when she caught Lugal’s eye. The most prominent families of Lower Wanesh all descend from her children, sired by her mortal husband; they bicker constantly and sabotage both each other and the nomarch in their quest for power. They currently fight to host Euphemet lu Bel-Kalle na Belet-Erejsunat, a newcomer who has caused quite a stir. A warrior famed for her expeditions north of the Wall, she has come to Lower Wanesh to live out her days in quiet retirement.

Tjaret and the Thousand Isles

A sparsely-populated nome that consists of one large, arid island and a thousand thousand others—most barren hunks of rock inhabited solely by seabirds. No one has bothered to count how many islands there really are; at the most conservative, there are three islands for every one person. A nome entirely disconnected from the river, half of the Thousand Isles’ drinking water comes from purified seawater, but it is never enough. The Thousand Isles rely on the Rivertenders and Lower Wanesh for the difference. The Rivertenders are thus beloved, but there is an understanding of life on the isles that the riverbound Obligators can never comprehend. Every so often someone goes missing: an empty boat is found tied to an isolated island pier, not a trace of its captain. No one looks for them. All know they were called by the sea. Infants are born with patches of silver scales and webs between their fingers.

Zarakesh

A nome cut entirely into the side of the great cliff, in and around the skeletons of the giants fossilised in the bands of stone. The nomarch of Zarakesh holds court in the hollowed skull of the mightiest of the giants, a colossus almost as tall as the cliff face itself. The cliff-folk mine the fossils for their metal marrow; the peal of hammers and the acrid scent of forge-smoke are constants in Zarakesh.

kizil

Erebos

A wasteland of karst pillars belies the life hidden underground: the people of Eerebos dwell in a labyrinth of underground palaces sculpted from flowstone caverns following the path of the black fork of the river. Each and every surface is decorated in vivid paintings, preserved in the shadowy vaults; they must tell the entire history of the world. The only sunlight is that which shines through the natural skylights which open above the vast underground aquifers. Only a fraction of the caverns have been explored and mapped. Who knows what lurks in the darkness?

cenote

Lu Tiket

The nome is named for the people: the Lu Tiket. Nomads and wanderers, the Lu Tiket have no permanent homes; they reside in tents pitched each night along the coast, gathering water for themselves and their pack animals from the thick ocean fog with stretched-out nets. It is a life of harsh extremes—the aquifers of Erebos provide ample water, but there is scarce food; the coasts have fish aplenty, but water is limited to cactus fruit and fog-collecting. It is said that the Lu Tiket have an ancient pact with the great beasts of the desert and are treated as part of the concord of the animals, not as men.

Litbala, called Lugal’s Cock

A coastal nome of pebbled beaches and brisk sea breezes, called Lugal’s Cock behind closed doors for its appearance on a map. Every few years, Litbala is attacked by horn-cursed raiders who emerge from the sea during a terrible storm. Their eyes glimmer with a strange intelligence and they shout to each other in a cursed tongue; many in Litbala have lost their lives and their livelihoods to them. On clear days, a colossal white pillar can be seen reaching from the sea to the sky. They must come from somewhere!, the previous nomarch, Bel-Nagar lu Bel-Usuramassu na Belet-Mashda, was known to shout. He took a fleet of sturdy ships and sailed toward the distant pillar. The last time anyone saw him was when the first ocean storm hit his fleet; once it passed, his ships had vanished. So goes the common saying: the sea wants you dead.

#MEGsopotamia