Fantasy cultures

[battlestar]

Some races I've been planning for a campaign project:


Grycians: A mountainous gryphon rider tribe.

• Geography: Though centered in mountainous areas due to the location of gryphon breeding grounds, they are found roaming far beyond reaches of the mountains. The Grycians lay no claim to land, instead they claim the all of the sky as their rightful sovereign territory.

• Social structure: Entirely elven females. In childhood, Grycians quest to gain trust of a gryphon mother so she chooses an egg to bond with the young elf. The Grycian children are then initiated to be a citizen of the Grycian nation when they return with success. If a Grycian's gryphon dies during their lifetime, or if the elven gryphon partnership ended for any reason, the Grycian in question would be banished to live with the Skloans as a slave, and she is forbid to seek partnership with another gryphon.

• Politics: Queen is elected annually among tribal leaders. Elections are held at a predetermined location, determined at each previous meeting. The tribal leaders are inherited by kinship. However, the tribal leadership can be challenged in a duel to the death.

• Culture: Seen as savages by outside cultures due to their unruly ways and ruthless raids. All the properties Grycians own are carried on gryphon back. Many Grycian items have patterns of gryphons. To Grycians, freedom is more valuable than their own lives. Almost every Grycian is a bard to some level of skill. It is their way to pass on education and culture. The number of tales and amount of wisdom in Grycian tales are enormous, but all are strictly verbal.

• Religion: The Grycians worship a single god and many demigods. The god is an anthropomorphic gryphon, standing for creation and freedom. Religious ceremonies are held at stone circles on mountain tops.

• Architectures: Wooden structures are rarely built, and these persisting structures are not claimed by any Grycians as personal properties. Tree tents provide shelter most of the time. At mountain tops, Grycian stone circles stand for ceremonial and sheltering purposes.

• Productions: Mainly air magic imbued items, and items made from animal parts. Their high quality magic imbued bone weapons are tougher than steel.

• Military: The queen is the supreme commander of all Grycian armies, as all tribal leaders are obligated to answer to her orders. In wars against other nations, the Grycian forces proved to be extremely united around the Queen. In battle, they are fierce and strong. Grycians utilized their mobility in air and monstrous strength to overwhelm their opponents. Grycian warriors are expert archers, and a few are mages with capacity for air magic. Their mastery of gryphons allows them to stay in flight for days, and this makes them very difficult to be fought off by melee weapons. Gryphon knights are their strongest melee units, who swoop down on their victim, and only in the instant when they reach their victim, they can be retaliated by melee fighters. If a Grycian’s gryphon is killed in battle, the rider would almost certainly enter a suicidal berserk.

• Relation with Skloans: Grycians are all female while Skloans are all male. Mating season is held once a year between two nations. The young, both boys and girls, are cared by the Skloans. Pregnant Grycians are also under the Skloan care. Skloans depend on Grycians for far reaching trades, while Grycians rely on Skloans for many productions and commodities.

• Relation with others: The Grycians established several trusted trading partners, while others are their raiding targets.

Units:
(all flying, on gryphon back, all have bows, various singing ability)

Gryphon Trainee (lvl 0) > all

Tribal warrior (lvl 1) (claw attacks flying units, bow)
• Standard Bearer (lvl 2) (leadership lvl 2 “Song of courage”)
• • Tribal Leader (lvl 3) (leadership lvl 3 “Song of gallantry”)

• Grycian Lancer (lvl 2) (no bow, single hit charge, retaliated on attack)
• • Grycian Knight (lvl 3) (no bow, single hit charge, retaliated on attack, Battlecry)

• Grycian Javalin (javelin, "turbulent riff")
• • Piercing Rain (javelin, "mist riff")

• Grycian Bow (no melee, "Focusing hymn")
• • Grycian Sharpsight (no melee, "Fixation hymn")


Grycian Wailer (Weak archer, no melee, "Wail of Fear")
• Grycian Siren (Weak archer, no melee, "Shriek of Terror")


Grycian Adept (Weaker archer no melee, arcane mage)
• Sky Nymph (Weak archer, no melee, arcane mage, "ethereal lullaby")
• • Thunder Sylph (Weak archer, no melee, arcane mage, chain lightning, "ethereal lullaby")


Gryphon Racer (speedy, archer)
• Wind Slicer (speedy, archer)
• • Song Chaser (speedy, archer)


Flying Bard
• Soaring Poet
• • Cyclone Oracle


Storm Pack
• Tornado Troupe
• • Tempest Carrier


Winged Harpy (shuriken, weak bow, “Howl of Frenzy”)
• Winged Fury (throwing axe, weak bow, “Scream of Fury”)

Note: Gryphons from Wesnoth core files for consistency. Riders are my work.


Skloans: Co-existing in the mountains is another culture.

• Geography: Mountainous areas where Grycians roam.

• Social structure: Entirely elven males. At birth, males are accepted as citizens, while female children are carefully cared for before their joining with Grycians. The Skloan youngs undergo strenuous, tiered education system, with tedious examination processes. The universities produce specialized experts in vast numbers of scientific and magic fields. The society is built around advancement in both magic and science. Their economy is based on capitalist free trade.

• Politics:A democratic system, where citizens directly vote for the different tiers of executive officials. All elected executive officials vote on judicial officials. The two branches of government check and balance each other.

• Culture: Philosophy, art, science, and magic are integral parts of Skloan lives. Large universities exist for the sole purpose of advancing the Skloan knowledge. Much of Skloan knowledge is stored in writing, held in libraries. In Skloan libraries, what Skloans know of Grycian knowledge is also stored. To their own people, the Skloans are most civilized of their time. To outsiders, Skloans are demonic beings that will tear them limb to limb with fancy contraptions. Skloans will even consume elves of other nations. They kill only for food, so this puts their fallen enemies on battlefield onto their dinner plates. Skloans do not eat Grycian or another Skloan. Many Skloan art, architectures, and daily items incorporate cannibalistic images and items, such as bones of their victims within decorations.

• Religion: The Skloans accept that there is a Grycian god, whom they find no interest in worshipping. Their targets of idolization are famous past Skloans. As time evolved, many of these idols became saints in Skloan society.

• Architectures: Structures of grand scales, reminiscent of gothic style. Splended cities are built in mountain valleys and on mountain tops. Their irritation systems are unrivaled for the next hundreds of years to come, which provided abundant water for agriculture.

• Productions: Capable of a vast variety of productions in both high speed and quality.

• Military: Small but powerful. In times of war, the entire population could become armed and mobilized with astonishing speed, thanks to their supreme transportation and communication systems. Their ability in logistics are sublime. Fear often strikes at the heart of their enemies, due to their reputation of cannibalism. However, Skloan army prefers to stay their distance in a fight and utilize their superior technological capabilities and magical bombardments.

• Relation with Grycians: See Grycians' Relation with Skloans.

• Relation with others: Interaction is rare with outside nations other than Grycians. Who talks to their food?

Units:

Minelayer • Explosive Expert • Detonation Maniac

Mind Slayer

Flame Thrower • Blazing Dragoon (area of attack unit line)

Mystic Grenadier • Void Launcher • Annihilator (sublime ranged attack and long range abilities, no melee)

Medical Adept • Medical Graduate • Medical Professor (healer lineage, with critical melee strikes)

Mountain Spider (mechanical, suicidal bombs)

Goat Rider • Armored Goat • Mountain Cataphract (Mountain cavalry with excellent defense)
Goat Rider • Fox Knight • Leopard Knight, Mountain Lion Cavalry, or Snow Tiger Paladin (Mountain cavalry with strong offenses)

Carrion Carrier • Gutting Chimera • Meat Grinder (machines that crush enemies, collects dead bodies and sells them to villages)
Carrion Carrier • Blazing Grill • Inferno Executioner (machines that grill enemies, collects dead bodies and sells them to villages)

Too bad I can't post unit images yet.

Thank you for your interest, please feel free to criticize and let me know what you think.

We're looking for writers in this project (user-made-campaign in Wesnoth), significant art and coding work has already been done for it. Thanks.

 

[Jadeynot]

this is wonderful, so much info. good job.

 

[Saigonnus]

I like the overall concept, though the name Grycians kind of throws me off... makes me think they are olive skinned and from a mediterranean country famous for olives

 

[battlestar]

Interesting, the Grecians? I only tried to make it sound like "gryphons", any suggestions?

Thank you for your support, these two nations will eventually become playable factions.

There will eventually be other factions of dwarves, humans, elves, and other beings... to populate this map:

(Above is a very rough draft, I was trying out cartography in various styles)


Dwarven nations will include Runic Confederacy, Clockwork Dwarves (not my creation), etc.

Elven nations will include Kalendor Empire, Eipeik States, Elrfalas, etc.

Many human kingdoms and other forms of governments.

Other races will include Plague Swarm (bugs), troglodytae, etc.




Troglodytae is WIP atm:
The shadows fell from the sky and infested the land. Living on the land was an ancient and powerful race, who purged the entire continent with magic, killing themselves along with the shadows. Only a stock of embryos was sent deep underground to survive the purge. Centuries passed, the survivors of the ancient race stayed underground, their damaged vessel never told them who their ancestors were and where their ancestors lived.

Centuries passed again, troglodyte territory grew as their population grew, leading to their encounter with a hibernating shadow that survived the Purge. The shadow renewed its plague on the troglodytes. Brave troglodytes explored the area where the shadow was found, and discovered ancient artifacts of ancient origin that told ways of fighting off the shadow. By a stroke of brilliance, a troglodyte general lured all of the infected into destruction at once, while capturing the original shadow. With aid of ancient texts discovered from the underground ruin site, they studied the shadow and found ways to manipulate mind. With the shadow captured, troglodytes adapted a hibernation system that limits their consumption and growth.

Due to losing a war against elves and dwindling resources near the surface, dwarves had no choice but to dig deeper. A band of dwarven adventurers dug deep into the earth, and discovered mysterious chambers. A hideous monster lurked in the dark, and it lunged at the explorers. Though taken by surprise, the dwarves mortally wounded the monster. To their surprise, the monster spoke to them with its last breath, a foreign tongue they could not understand. As it died, the dwarves saw the entirety of their assailant, under flickering torch lights. The creature was tall, perhaps even as tall as the elves; its body is slim, but muscular; its skin pale, covered in black robe; its hands large, with clawed long fingers; its head large, completely bald; its eyes... Where the eyes should have been, there were two raised skin patches with color matching the rest of the body.

Strange creature, the dwarves thought, and moved on. Soon they discovered caverns full of mesmerizing crystals, which they decided to take home to show their fellow dwarves of the new discovery. The crystals were harder than any materials encountered by the dwarves, leaving the stubborn dwarves laboring over a single crystal for hours, finally making a crack in the crystalline structure. Before the dwarves could rejoice, the crystal exploded.

Death of the troglodytae keeper by the hands of dwarven adventurers magically triggered the emergency awakening of troglodytae nation. From the smoldering chambers the awakened troglodytes discovered the charred hibernation crystals which contained their loved ones, along with several blackened corpses of short stature.

Retribution came swiftly, as the troglodytes put the entire dwarven nation to sleep.



Again any comment welcome and we're still looking for help from writers. Thanks.

 

[Saigonnus]

They don't need to have gryphons even close to the name just because they ride them and basically can't live without them. I think it would be well enough to have gryphons on their flag and royal emblems etc. Perhaps a name based off the region that the live; like Lhurrian who live in the Lhurr hills. Perhaps have a race name, but they generally use a tribal name like barbarians. Since they are militaristic, clans would be like the unit of a greater military body.

"I am Nevala of the Orish Clan and this is my speaker Daris and we are here for the girl."