Soconatas
East of Volivat and north of the Ys Empire, along the gleaming coast of the Dreaming Sea, lies the lands of Soconatas. Here, the inhabitants of hundreds of competing city-states - the Soconatai - battle and contest each other in a patchwork of alliances that change at the speed of the wind. They are all - from militant Stone Blood to cultured Serpent Flower - inheritors to the same ancient legacy. Here, the climate is temperate, as the sunlit southern lands meet with the moderate eastern forests, while hilly and even mountainous ground cover the sprawling patchwork of islands and peninsulas that make up the terrain of Soconatas. Olive trees and oaken canopies rise above the land, casting cool shades over the bronze-skinned peoples who live upon the islands.
The Soconatai do not remember the days of great kingdoms and epic deeds; they speak of massed warfare, of pike and shield arrayed in the bronze phalanxes of the sciomarchoi. They do not remember, but in the realm of myth, nothing is forgotten. The Soconatai speak of ancient heroes, faces so beautiful wars were fought over them, burnt cities and horrific invaders from the depths of the sea. The land of the Soconatas archipelago is shrouded in stories, and is itself mutable and shaped as much by laws of geography and matter as story and myth. Forests become deeper as one walks in them, and mountains loom like giants as one approaches. The very sancti of the gods are closer, and what began the journey of a day may become the voyage of a week.
The Soconatai have never been conquered. In their liberty, they take great pride. The Unconquered, they call themselves equally as they give tribute to stronger city-states and thank the gods for their freedom, while naming what other men might call an empire, a league. They are a clannish people; quick to accept new culture, but slow to accept its people. In their own tongue, they speak the names of foreign gods, and with their own hymns, they sing the praises of the gods of the many peoples that they crush in warfare. But the Soconatai are not unified, have never been unified. In this they take pride as well; in unification lies empire and oppression.
A Patchwork of City-States
The Soconatai are diverse in allegiance, yet unified in culture. The many city-states that dot the land are a testament to this diverse unity, and the influence of some rival that of empires in other, distant or closer lands. First and foremost amongst this patchwork are the city-states of Stone Blood, Serpent Flower and Dragon Sky, binding the city-states beneath them into great leagues that inevitably tie their fates into the hands of the great cities. Thus, they are sent great contingents of sciomarchoi - spear-wielding citizen-soldiery - and leave their homes unprotected, for it is only proper for each member of the league to give the best they can.
Myth and Hymn
Many myths fill the memories of the Soconatai: they sing of a time when all the gods, led by the queen of the gods - Ancestral Sky - led mighty heroes to battle with whispers of glory, and of the subsequent downfalls of the heroes despite their glory, perhaps because of their glory. They sing of another time in darker, dissonant tones of a multitude of people - or are they perhaps a single? - sailing in black boats up and down the Dreaming Sea and causing great suffering, as they brought an end to the great kingdoms and their descendants settled in the Dark Eyes Peninsula, where they live this day today.
Every city-state of the Soconatai has it's own stories and myths, it's own gods and heroes, it's own dialect and idioms which the Soconatai use to identify each other by. Clever lingual twists in the prose of the writers of proud Serpent Flower name people and heroes by use of cultural idioms to identify their origin without even saying it. In the same way, any man can know the ancestry of a man from the city-state of Stone Blood by his slow and guttural manner of speech or the women of Dragon Sky for their rustic, rural dialect.
The myths of the Soconatai fill the land and air like thick-scented incense fills a temple. The land of Soconatas is as much a place in the world of Creation, as it is a place in the minds of those who live within it. In Soconatas, any cave leads to a hidden godly sanctum, or the depths of the underworld; in Soconatas, it is said that peaches of immortality grow in hidden groves; in Soconatas, the king who frees his nation from the grip of the oppressor, lives in the spirit of his predecessor who slew the dragon that guarded the land where he would find his nation.
Stone Blood
Once upon a time, the hero Guardian Glory, caught up in madness after slaying wife and children took upon a great journey in penance to the gods. The husband to the queen of the gods, named Celestial Crown, bid her labour until six great tasks of heroism had been completed. Over her journeys, she sired new children who bore the fire and thunder of her parentage in their blood, and they named themselves the Brémae in her honour. When the people of the sea traveled in black boats and trailed suffering and settled upon the lands of Socontas, the Brémae returned, helmed by blood-pelted great apes with eyes of fire and claws like swords. They conquered the sea peoples and bid them toil and slave underneath them, lest they come to bring suffering as once again. And when they refused, they struck them down until they had no choice but to accept. So speak the wise elders of Stone Blood.
Today, Stone Blood is a large city-state that has under it's dominance at least fifteen other city-states that must pay it obeisance and send their sciomarchoi to support the great phalanxes of Stone Blood, ruled by it's twin demiyoi that share the power between them, so as to ensure the utmost fairness. It's nobility are red of hair and their eyes are like flame, but it is thunder that dwells in their blood, and thunder that shouts when the Brémae go to war. In Stone Blood, body hair is the mark of a true conqueror, and red is the colour of royalty.
There are no citizens in Stone Blood. In the minds of the Brémae, they are conquerors, but never citizens. Citizens grow decadent and lose themselves to indulgence, but never Stone Blood. The conqueror-city is watchful, for it must forever punish the descendants of the sea peoples that brought with them great suffering, and they must be ready, should the bringers of suffering come from the sea again to torment them. Thus, the helotry pay the price of alleged ancestors in whiplash and humiliation, their bodies lack the body hair of their conquerors, and thus they can never be true adults of the conquering state.
But the Brémae grow restless. The old nobility has not conquered, and the sciomarchoi march but do not war, the demiyoi command but they do not lead. The younger of the Brémae insinuate that perhaps the old rulers have forgotten how to lift their blades, perhaps they have become citizens and not conquerors. Is it perhaps time for a closer inspection of their military austerity?
Serpent Flower
In the chaos of the ruining of the old empires, the people of Serpent Flower tell a tale that the serpent-legged goddess Sovereign Soul laid with a mortal king before the sea peoples who trailed suffering ushered in the age of heroes, and before the gods led the heroes into their decline. She bore to him two children, and they were brother and sister; serpents both. And when the time came, and the people from the sea that trailed suffering came, they slithered from the earth, and took off their serpentine cloaks, revealing themselves as man and woman. There they laid with each other, and their children would be the citizens of Serpent Flower. Thus did the Sarpátoi come to be, and Serpent Flower with them.
Serpent Flower dominates the sea; the triremes of this proud city-state and the league that it rules with a velvet-soft, yet iron-hard fist have repelled the attacks of the Empire of Ys time and time again. The weavers weave charms to be hung from ships and painters paint them with auspicious colour to bless the departed sailors with good luck. The many island city-states that swear obedience to it must send their naval charms, incense and silver to Serpent Flower for it's great ceremonies to the twin gods that it worships. Here, the Kaseios - the Grand Assembly of married women that determines city-state policy - distribute it across the many temples that fill Serpent Flower to the brim, where priests hang flower garlands on painted marble. Likewise, do the many Soseioi - the local district judicial councils of married men - determine the fates of lawbreakers as is only proper in the self-appointed city of justice.
At the center of Serpent Flower lies the Sovereign Soul School where sorcerer-philosophers debate the true unknowability of everything and beguile the gods with marvellous tricks to conjure flames from nothing. The old city centre was the sacred grove of olive trees that stand by the School, tenderly cared for by the Sarpátos-priesthood. Here, the elders and young women of the city meet alike on dark nights, masked and cloaked and tell stories of great deeds to the assembled holy men and women of the Sarpátoi. Their stories will rebirth the city when morning comes, and the wisdom of serpent-legged Sovereign Soul will stay with Serpent Flower forever.
Essential to Serpent Flower is the venom-blooded Sarpátoi; the sacred prostitutes of the many temples of the city. The blood of Sovereign Soul is in their veins, and that blood is the venomous blood of dragons. The Young Men of the Flower Wreath and the Snake Maidens that lead them guide the powerful men and women of the city with honeyed whispers in the smoke of incense. Especially in these troubling days when the great enemy of Stone Blood seems to ready itself for war; rare is the admiral who has not enjoyed the comfort of this most profane and holy embrace.
Dragon Sky
In the Sea of Meadows, where a hundred thousand broken breastplates lie like gravestones side-by-side with stone tablets of indecipherable, ancient script, the swift-fooded hero Shining From the East slew the great dragon that guided the sacred spring. In recognition of this great deed, the war godddess Bane Feather bestowed upon him her son to take as lover. And the son of Bane Feather, who was named Amity for he had always been the one to speak calmly and play the lyre when his mother radged, furious, showed Shining From the East how one cut the belly of the dragon and sows its guts in the grass-green soil. And from the earth grew five men and women, who gave birth to the nobility of Dragon Sky: the Ámyoi.
Blessed by the earth, are the Ámyoi, and therefore it is only just, say the citizens of Dragon Sky, that the land is owned by them. The Ámyoi are a rustic, land-owning farmer-nobility; rather than live in the city-heart, it is in the rural countryside that this wheat-tending nobility of soil and stone is found. Here, they perform the sacred rites that keep the land fertile and abundant. In times of war and peace alike, the Ámiyoi are a council of elders to the people; if not in body, then in spirit.
The society of Dragon Sky is parted in sacred three: the elder farmer-nobility keeps the city fed and employ the less fortunate to serve on the farms as serfs; the priesthood please the gods and stand between the world of men, and the world of spirits and administer the sacrifices; and the warriors that trace their origin to a far older one than that of the other city-states, take part in the Wolven Rites, binding soul and blood to a greater whole. Once upon a time, Dragon Sky had a king, and who would negotiate with the greatest gods and was the highest of priests, but the last king of Dragon Sky died in the great wars against the people who came from the sea.
In the growing coldness between Stone Blood and Serpent Flower, Dragon Sky is ally of none, enemy of none; the Ámyoi do not wish for a longer war, they merely wish for Serpent Flower and Stone Blood to tire each other out so the leagues will weaken. Then, the Sacral Wolves; the sciomarchoi of Dragon Sky, and true inheritors to the warriors of old shall prove themselves on the field of battle. They will not speak of a league, but of an empire.
Sunken Silver
Not all men who live in Soconatas breathe, and not every man whose lungs are full of water cannot praise the gods that saved him. In the before-time, in the realm of myths, lived the fair-haired people of Sword-Clamour Lonely-Sea. Their wealth was great, their riches were vast, their heroes were many and the young men were beautiful. They had come from a far-away place and they named their highest god Aláthos, and they were mighty warriors who slaughtered cattle in the honour of the horned deity that granted them strength in battle. The young men who held their shields and rode their chariots wedded themselves to him, and they conquered the isle from the previous inhabitants with great military prowess. Many cities belonged to them; not a city-state, but a nation. They grew proud, and the mountain that their great capital rested upon became flame and fire, and the fair-hared men and women of Sword-Clamour Lonely-Sea were no more.
Now, the islands are still inhabited; the folk of Serpent Flower came on triremes to found a city, and found a much older place to call their home. Wealthy Spring, they called it for the great riches it brought them, and its place by a mountain spring, but they found the island already inhabited. They listened to the inhabitants' words and found them not unlike their own, but in differing tone and tenor; an older branch of the same language.
These are the descendants of the fair-haired men and women of Sword-Clamour Lonely-Sea, and occasionally, wooden script of an older kind ends on the sunlit island beaches like driftwood afloat. Those who live on the island know to read it and follow it's instructions, for to do otherwise is to risk the wrath of those who turned against their god; the Palace Unnameable. For though the men of Sword-Clamour Lonely-Sea may have burnt for their pride; ashen ships still sail, and a dead king holds debate with the Kaseios of Serpent Flower. For the folk of that city-state has found a great kinship with the sunken city that used to call all of Sword-Clamour Lonely-Sea their kingdom.
In these depths within the caldera that once brought them to their end, they still worship their strange horned god. Their prince was once a god-blooded champion who could wrestle with sharks and gore any foe with his mighty horns, for he bore the aspect of the bull. Now, he wanders blind and screaming within the labyrinth that his own people have made for him. He will forever walk in penance for his defiance of the bull-god.
War on the Wine-Dark Sea
War is inevitable. Stone Blood desires conquest, Serpent Flower will rule all trade, Dragon Sky demands empire and recognition. Outside powers, too want to intervene; the Ys Empire sees the city-states as valuable additions to its own burgeoning power, and the sorcerers desire the resources and soldiery of the city-states to support their own war against distant Prasad and Dragon Caste of wealthy Kamthahar.
A Sworn Kinship of Dragon-Blooded could find great glory in Soconatas; Dynasts from the Realm might back one city-state over the others to create an ally of the Realm in the far-off Southwestern reaches, or Prasadi Dragon-Blooded may find kinship with the Sárpatoi, Brémae, Ámyoi or perhaps an even more disparate lineage of Dragon-Blooded. An alliance of these two powers might even crush the burgeoning Ys Empire and bring about a new power on the Dreaming Sea. Dragon-Blooded from one of the city-states could also make a great name for themselves as war-leaders, advisors or even peace-brokers; could the fury of Stone Blood, mercantilism of Serpent Flower or imperialism of Dragon Sky be turned against the Ysyr, a great power could be formed of the unity between the leagues.
Celestials find plenty of room to make a name for themselves. Solar Exalted might be interested in unifying the city-states and spreading their culture around the whole Dreaming Sea or even further beyond. There is very limited worship of the Immaculate Faith in Soconatas, but the competition between the city-states is so intense that this makes little difference in lethality for a newly minted Solar Exalted. While the favour of a city-state might be valuable, great expectations will also be placed on the Sun-Chosen in question, and they will receive no small degree of hero cult worship. But the Soconatai are not dumb; if the Solar does not benefit them, or actively hurts them through their actions, they may quickly find themselves expelled or exiled from a city-state or perhaps an entire league. Finally, a Solar might be interested in the figments of ancient culture hidden in the myths and legends of Soconatas, for it is an ancient legacy that reaches back to the Shogunate, and even further back if followed well.
Lunar Exalted of the Silver Pact can find plenty of pawns in their war against the Realm here, but only if they are capable of navigating the treacherous competition that threatens the most hardened Exalt. Independent Lunars might also find plenty of reason to stay amongst the Soconatai, such as access to the easily accessible sancti or the old Wolven Rites of Dragon Sky. Sidereal Exalted might find themselves attracted to Soconatas for the powerful destiny of warfare that hangs in the air; they might have an assignment here, or they might attempt to prevent faction rivals from fulfilling their own assignments. They might also be delegates from the Bronze Faction trying to introduce the Immaculate Faith among the competing city-states, or Gold Faction members attempting to introduce the Cult of the Illuminated as a foreign mystery cult.
