Hashbalxa
The barony of Hashbalxa is a huge region of arid savanna, salt wastes, and swampy spillover from the Malash. It includes the lower part of the Hashab peninsula and a 150km stretch of the eastern bank of the Malash, being in total about 400 km N-S and 130 km E-W. The human rural population of about 25 000 is concentrated in the SW, around the capital of Abakkar and the edges of the Malash marshes, and consider themselves closest to the folk of Kalmahar.
A scattered population of fairly lawless herders raise goats, oryx, and cattle on the savanna, and there are some few villages of pearlers and fisherfolk along the Bay of Maktab coast, where the main road runs from Hasaba to the Maktab valley (4000). Salt and natron are gathered by Lake Lake Shjaa, an eerie expanse of silvery green water on whose shores is the little town of Gulxa (1200), dependent on rainwater and the Thudunish caravans from Hasaba. The Bay of Malash coast is uninhabited, with vast tidal flats spilling into salt wastes dotted with mysterious ruins whose builders passed into legend even before the great cataclysm.
Abakkar has 4000 people and is an overbearing city of hewn stone ringed about with gardens and watered by an underground lake. Flowering red talbani vines cover the city walls inside and out. The main export of Hashbalxa is salt - besides that cut at Gulxa, great amounts come from the salt wastes nearer to Abakkar and are sent inland by river. From the marshes come papyrus, birds, and reeds, which last are made into musical instruments in the Kalaman town of Sem (1700). About 8000 Kalamen dwell in and near the marshes, producing tolsty tubers which are processed across the delta in Gotla Am. From the savanna come hides, preserved snakes, oryx powder, goat's wool, ant's honey, opals, and lincobia, a brilliant topaz coloured gemstone found nowhere else. This stone is jealously guarded by the savanna herdsfolk, who wear necklaces of it beneath their clothes and rob or slay foreigners they find with it in their possession.
The baron of Hashbalxa is a great soldier who is not unpopular among his subjects and has travelled throughout his extensive barony. About 500 other Tixrynish folk, mostly traders and administrators, dwell in and around Abakkar. The standard of Hashbalxa is a sailing ship in white depicted against a background half gold and half blue.
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Great Quaman
Great Quaman is an extensive barony, roughly 150km on a side, stretching SE from a 50km frontage on the Malash. It is mostly savanna inhabited by nomadic Kitabans (20 000), with a strip of woodland and cropland that is Asjhadi to the west (25 000) and Kitaban to the east (10 000). The capital is Qamandu (5500) which lies roughly at the junction of these three regions, 135km E of Godsbridge. The nomadic peoples are pacified and pay taxes in goat's wool and opals annually at the great fair in Qamandu. There are extensive iron mines at Nishi Gahra, 90km E of Qamandu, that are well fortified and make up the second largest settlement (3000, 1000 of these Thuduni). This is not a natural deposit, but an exceedingly ancient city long since crumbled to rust, and from time to time strange objects turn up there.
Dream melons, stew melons, and tolsty tubers are grown along the Malash, while the southern croplands are devoted to subsistence agriculture.
Great Quaman is under the control of the baron of Lesser Quaman, the previous baron of Great Quaman having been removed by the emperor for malfeasance. A wholly subservient but grasping and greedy vicebaron has her seat in Qamandu. The standard of Great Quaman is a mighty red snake reared to strike on a gold field.
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Red Asjhad
The Red Asjhad is a large and populous barony watered by two great rivers, the Malash and the Blil. About 200x100 km, it supports a dense rural population of 180 000 Asjhadis and 40 000 Kalamen in what was once verdant woodland. In the north, the great dry lake of Gavat Wa is the only unusable land. It has two important cities- Godsbridge, a tixrynic foundation of palmlined straight avenues and white faced brick buildings, and Dasshur, the ancient war capital of Asjhad.
Godsbridge (16 000) is situated at a bridging of the Malash famous for its grandeur, and is a great centre of river trade. It is petitioning the emperor to become a chartered city. Godsbridge is 30% Tixrynic and is the seat of the baron of Red Asjhad, who dwells in an extensive citadel that broods over the town. The bridge is a wonder of engineering, and many rivermen are drowned every year trying to pass beneath it. As well, it is the seat of the Archimandrite of Godsbridge, an eccentric ecclesiastical individual responsible for the spiritual well being of Red Asjhad. He lives in an ordinary mansion in the Darxan style surroudned with thorn hedges.
Dasshur (18 000) is very old, built all of brick for there is no stone nearby, and 95% Asjhadi. Its ruinous palaces, public buildings, and walls are painted a garish red. It is 50km E of the Malash and 45km N of the Blil - the lands S and W of it are largely given over to plantations of waxtree, stewmelon, sugar, and genseric. These lands are also the centre of silk production. Dasshur and the town of Bahkt (3000), 42km SW, are the main silk weaving centres.
Farming is on a subsistence basis throughout most of the rest of the country; red dye wort and chillies are grown around Godsbridge, and there is extensive fish-farming downstream of that city. There is much grazing as well in lands not taken up by cultivation, of both cattle and sheep - many fine cheeses are produced in Red Asjhad, notably those of Qilash (1400), 24 km SE of Godsbridge. The Baron is anxious to curry favour with the Emperor, and for that reason spends much of his time in Agdarxes. He has a large number of relations who operate plantations and industries, together forming an oligarchy that runs the barony for their own profit; they are one of the mighty families of the Empire, and own many fine palaces in Agdarxes.
The standard of Red Asjhad was formerly a red pennon with three silver skulls drawn upon it; it is now a silver crown on a field of red and green diamonds.
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Lesser Quaman
Lesser Quaman is a barony approximately 50x100km, bordered to the north by Great Quaman, to the west by Red Asjhad, and touching the Blil in the south. It has a rural population of 60 000, mostly Asjhadi with about 10 000 Kitabans in the north and 5000 Kalamen near the Blil. Its capital is Ishri (6500), a compact town of green stone perched atop a hill and surrounded by beautifully landscaped gardens. The residence of the current baron of the Quamans is a gleaming tower at the base of this hill; and the Archimandrite of Ishri dwells at an estate some distance to the west.
Lesser Quaman is a poor region, devoted mostly to subsistence agriculture and herding. Genseric, waxtree, and silk are grown along the Blil. Lesser Quaman's chief claim to fame is the medicinal mineral waters of Korvla Springs, 15km E of Ishri. These are bottled and exported throughout the Empire. The cheeses of the districts north of Ishri are famed in Kitaba, but are too acrid and runny for palates elsewhere.
The Baron of the Quamans is an old man, a profiteer from a long-gone war, who gouges his subjects as best he can and puts down any dissent fiercely - malefactors are usually sentenced to excavation in unexplored depths of Nishi Gahra, 150 km NE. The Baron is a great patron of the arts, and has attracted bards, sculptors, and poets from throughout the empire to his capital. The standard of Lesser Quaman is two blue snakes on a white field.
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Aghasal
Aghasal - about 130x100km, and lying almost entirely within the forested zone, Aghasal is bordered on the west by the Blil and on the E approximately by the watershed of the Blil and the Kesh. The rural population of 150 000 is 70% Kitaban, with 12000 Kalamen, 25 000 Asjhadis, and 8000 Quelians living in the lowlands near the Blil. There are three important towns:
1) Huratab, capital of both the Kitaban province of Aghasal and the present Barony. It is much decreased from its former size, with only 7000 inhabitants (cf. >30 000 at one time). Monuments and gilded tombs of princes clutter the town, and stone ruins stretch outside its walls. It is about 10% Tixrynic, with many new buildings in the centre of town, while many of the old have been torn down to impose a cartesian pattern of streets. The Archimandrite of Aghasal dwells here.
2) Vluqbaal, a canalled city of the kalamen on the Blil. It has 8500 inhabitants, 8000 of which are Kalamen. It was founded by Zimbelani mercenaries after the conquest of Kitaba, who sent home for their families and took up residence in a depopulated area by the riverbank. It is a dangerous and bewildering place for strangers, all transport being by water between multistoried towers of brick with dim smoky interiors. Drugs, gems, and ancient artifacts are three of the more conventional products that can be bought in its bazaars.
3) Onnithim (3000 above ground, at least 6000 below) is a town near the Quelian border, 57 km SE of Huratab. Above ground, it is a typical kitaban town, with winding streets, mud-brick dwellings, and a mostly Kitaban populace. Beneath this, however, is an underground lake (1x3km), along whose shores live Quelians, 1000 T'sai Lho, and small numbers of Thuduni and Kitabans involved in prospecting the interminable surrounding caverns. The undercity subsists on mushrooms and blindfish, preserves much of Quelian language and culture that is long dead in Quelia itself, and is to a large extent hidden from imperial tax collectors.
Some genseric and silk are produced north of Vluqbaal; numerous za-poppy fields and mushroom crypts dot the Blilside fields to the south, serving Vluqbaal's appetite for narcotics. Further from the river, as in Quaman and Red Asjhad, there is little commercial agriculture. Fine carpets and porcelain as thin as eggshell are produced in Huratab, and the fine clay found between it and Onnithim is an important source of export revenue.
Aghasal is a problem area for the religious authorities; Vluqbaal is the centre for the fanatical sect known as the Servants of the Tongue, while ancient Quelian beliefs linger on in Onnithim and mad-prophets can be found in every bazaar. The mixture of languages and peoples and the simmering resentment aganst the empire leads to tensions that often boil over in violence. The Baron is a firm and unyielding woman who is quick to imprison malefactors in the great necropolis, now a prison, of Huratab. The crime-lords of Vluqbaal and the Under-city of Onnithim preserve their status as no-go areas by generous donations to the baronial coffers; taxes are not overly high elsewhere, and the peasantry are reasonably prosperous. The standard of Agshal is a black triangle, point downwards, on a golden field, with the Tixrynish rune for lightning on the triangle in silver.
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New Ferrak
New Ferrak is the Tixryni name for a barony built up out of the former Kitaban polities of Survana, occupying the wooded lands near the Survan hills, and Njara-Kesh (Upper Kesh), a land of dry savanna made liveable only by the unpredictable waters of the Kesh. It is about 170x90 km, with a rural population of 110 000 overwhelmingly Kitaban.
Survana has perhaps 25 000 rural inhabitants and was once known as the "Garden of Kitaba". Its main town, Shurifar (4000) nestles among waterfalls and pleasant green hills a scant 10km from the source of the Kesh. It is unwalled, built mostly of brick, with stairways as common as streets, and laced with gardens and fountains. There are about 500 Quelians living there, mostly concerned with trade, and only a few Tixryni. In older, more martial times Shurifar was inhabited only seasonally, and the fortress town of Shurtab, on a steep-sided hill 3km E of the town, was the city proper. There is only a small Imperial garrison there now, in one of the towers at the city wall that has been refurbished; Shurtab was too fine a fortress for any Kitaban rebels (it withstood an initial siege of 6 years), so its survivors were forbidden from setting foot there again. It is now almost wholly ruinous. Survana produces za-poppies, many kinds of fruit, liqueurs, and building stone from the western Survan Hills. Most of the populace is despite this engaged in subsistence agriculture, and there is much woodcutting and grazing of sheep and goats in the forest lands.
Kesikesh, (or Xar Kesikesh- 11 000) lies 50km N of Shurifar on the fringe of the wooded zone. It is the Tixryni capital of New Ferrak (10% Tixryni), and is a city of low mudbrick dwellings, wide straight treelined streets, massive walls, and stonefaced men in hoods. The principal military colleges of Kitaba are here, alongside the river by the baroque baronial palace, and it seems half the people in the streets are armed - imperial soldiers, baronial guards, bodyguards of the town's feuding merchants. The Archimandrite of Kesh, spiritual sovereign of the Kesh valley, has his palace here. He is an active proponent of the Iarap Davsur and has an overwhelmingly lawful stand on most matters, fitting into Kesikesh admirably.
North of Kesikesh New Ferrak is flat and densely populated, grimy village after grimy village huddled amid sunbaked fields along the rivers. The market towns, the ancient homes of the warrior nobles of Njara-kesh, are dull and colourless, the mansions and markets half in ruins and the townfolk turned out onto the fields.
Dasyab (3000), 35km NE of Kesikesh, sits forlornly in a ring of towers that are all that remains of its wall; Keshandu (4500), a further 55km N, seems like but the outbuildings of a great blue temple made when it was the capital of all the Keshvale and a city of 50 000.
The plains of the Kesh are given over mostly to grains and dispirited vegetables, but a little genseric is grown, some curious fruits for export, and in a few places around Dasyab the strange Tuvatrees that grow to their full height in a fortnight and seem to float in air.
The baron of New Ferrak is kind, generous, and beloved by all - all, that is, except her insane brother, some kitaban rebels lurking in the woods, and the hordes of assassins that continually wash in waves over the walls of the baronial castle. Rumour says that the brother can afford to hire so many assassins because he sold his blood to demons and now has nothing but air in his veins; more reliably known facts are that he is in communication with the Servants of the Tongue and that he lurks with a small band of supporters somewhere in the labyrinthine sewers of Keshandu. The standard of New Ferrak is three sky blue disks on a field of white, edged with gold. The ancient flag of Kashandu was pure gold, and the pitiful rebel forces bear a standard of gold with a black snake upon it.
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New Cadrashik
New Cadrashik, or Uru-kesh, comprises the lower course of the Kesh and has 75 000 rural inhabitants, overwhelmigly Kitaban. The produce of the barony is very similar to those of Njara-kesh detailed immediately above, with the addition of widespread water rat farming. Most of this agricultural activity takes place on the west bank, the east bank rapidly fading to savanna except in the neighbourhood of Jhahktur (9000), the capital of the barony, where there is a wide belt of irrigated land. This city is ringed about with plantations of palms and tuvatrees and is famed chiefly for the prevalence of disfiguring infectious diseases there. A major road runs from it to Qamandu through the mines of Nishi Gahra, and like Qamandu it has a great fair where the nomads of the vast savanna gather to sell their goat's wool, oryx horns, opals, snakeskin, and ant's honey. The market is held in a huge field outside the town which is roofed over with red cloth for the festival.
There are perhaps 500 tixryni in all of New Cadrashik, too few to effecitvely hamstring the perennial ravages of nationalist brigands - so the matter has been dealt with by alliance with the savanna nomads, who mercilessly slay both brigands and obstreperous travellers in their lands in return for cash rewards at Jhahktur. New Cadrashik is thought of even in Kitaba as an impoverished backwater region. The baron is a stern man getting on in years, often quite muddle-headed, and the administration of the barony falls more and more to a coterie of soldiers who surround the irresponsible heir. The standard of New Cadrashik is white with a red snake coiled across it.
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Ishpala
Ishpala is the name of a largish town (14 000) at the junction of the Maktab ("The Elder Sister of Rivers") and the Kesh ("The Younger Sister of Rivers"). It is also the name of the surrounding barony, stretching about 60 km S on the Maktab, about 30 km N, and east as far as the Dragon's Bones. It has about 70 000 settled agricultural inhabitants in the belt along the river, a sparse population of herders along the rolling savannas to the east, and a number of settlements along the western slopes of the mountains, where there are isolated patches of green and perennial streams running down from the peaks. Most of the 10 000 rural dwellers in this part are Kitaban, but there are a few more akin to the people of Zagath, dark skinned with short hair and strange accents, and one or perhaps two villages of black minotaurs that have never condescended to learn the languages of humen. In this belt there are two major settlements; the great convict operated copper mines, Ma Basshur (4000) in the shadow of dark mount Ahmar, and the dusty huddle of stone buildings and trees that is Qadri (3000, 85km ESE of Ishpala, 30 km S of Ma Basshur).
The area around Ishpala city is one of the chief genseric growing areas of the empire, has sizeable growths of both tuva and wax trees, and is the only part of the Empire where hallucinogenic jukla grass is grown. It also has many orchards, as well as cotton fields and the customary peasant plots of grains and noisome leaf vegetables. Ishpala has been since ancient times the magical centre of Kitaba, where the High Necromancer of the Kingdom dwelt in a magnificent tower of copper and weird opaline brick at the extreme pointy end of the town. The position of High Necromancer has been abolished under the Empire, and the tower given over to the Baron of Ishpala, but many magicians of all shades still live in the city. There are also very many drug addicts in the city, lolling in the dust and from time to time being found disembowelled for arcane and diabolic rituals. Most construction is of mud brick, with incredibly thick walls surrounding a spacious and bizarrely laid out city. A great stone citadel (originally painted a garish red and black) was once the residence of the Kitaban governors and is now the main barracks and prison of the Barony. About 10% of the populace are Kalamen, including not a few Northern Kalamen who have journeyed south to learn occult arts; many of the 1500 Tixryni of Ishpala are also there for that reason, having been refused entrance to the reputable magical academy at Makanos. It is said that Ishpala is older than Huktab, and was the capital of a great Kingdom along the Maktab and the Kesh long before the land was called Kitaba.
The road from Kitaba to Murzagoth passes through the Barony, angling past the copper mines at Ma Basshur and then over the mountains through the pass of Zissaim and out onto the drab grey desert of Zagath. At both Ma Basshur and Zassaim there are important fortifications, strongly defended, to keep a watch on the borders of the Empire and the malefactors within. That at Zassaim is particularly impressive, seemingly carved out of a single block of stone 400' high and hung with 144 towers.
The farmlands near the mountains are also thick with fruit and nut orchards and plantings of curious trees- ichorwood is widely raised and its sap fermented, and the great vulkberry trees that nourish giant silkworms are not uncommon.
Qadri is the centre of the trade in giant silkworm silk - too coarse for clothing, it is made into fine light rope and thread for doctoring. About 500 Quelians resident in the town control this trade.
The baron of Ishpala is a very pious and stern man of middle years. He is anxious to prevent heresy from entering his barony, so all travellers must make a declaration of orthodoxy upon entering the barony and kiss the feet of holy statues set up in special shrines on the borders. The magical fraternity are persecuted from time to time in a desultory fashion, but on the plus side there are many holy folk dwelling in the city, distributing food among the impoverished and trying to reform ichorwine and juklasoup addicts. There is the slightest suspicion that the baron, a drab and humourless man whose wife and children died in a plague some decades ago, might be just a teensy bit unhinged, but the learned Archimandrite of Ishpala manages to curb his worse excesses. The standard of the barony is white, with three thin bands of black, red, and green stretched across it diagonally.
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Daspera and Talaq
The western bank of the Maktab, along 180km from Ishpala to the boundary of Quelia, is the barony of Daspera and Talaq. It is chiefly low lying, becoming hilly in the south, and is split between savanna and fertile but uninteresting cropland, with a few patches of woodland in the extreme south. Stew melons and silk are grown in the south, around the town of Gashanvar (7000), while the springs of Talaq (7500) nourish a small but dense region of fruit orchards and waxtree. Cotton is grown a great deal throughout the barony and both towns are major centres of weaving. There is sheep and goatherding and raising of burrowing lizards for food and leather in the savanna districts. The rural population of 70 000 is mostly Kitaban, with 5000 Kalamen and a small but influential minority of 3000 Quelians who provide most of the shopkeepers and merchants in the southern half of the barony.
Gashanvar, 70km N of Quelia and 160km S of Ishpala, is the baronial seat and upper limit of navigation on the Maktab. It is largely a grubby town of mudbrick, but the attached Tixrynic quarter is spacious, green, and laid out with obsessive regularity. The baronial palace is a recently built structure of stone and fine woods brought from the mountains, surounded by parade grounds and garrison buildings. Gashanvar is the chief market town for the (very small) population of nomadic herders of the Kesh-Maktab mesopotamia, and is the seat of the Archimandrite or High Priest of the Upper Maktab region.
Talaq is something else entirely; it cannot be seen from afar, for it sits in a bowl-shaped depression in the ground, filled to the brim with thick clusters of trees. A low wall of stone surrounds the town, and most of the visible buildings are towers of stone no more than four stories high - most of the population live underground, however, in little caves hewn out alongside the irrigation channels leading from the spring. It is an exceedingly ancient community, with many temples to forgotten gods, and kilometers of catacombs incorporating a virtual T'sai Lho necropolis. There are no T'sai Lho living there now, and hardly any non-Kitaban humans; some 1000 Kalamen live in the more run down and damp subterranean channels, and strangely enough there is a small temple and monastery of minotaurs - not the Dorrenfolk, but the minotaurs from oversea. This tiny group of albino cowheads guard a mysterious metal relic of one of their Gods and cater to a tiny trickle of pilgrims- about one a month.
The baron of Daspera and Talaq is a rude and overbearing woman with a great fondness for the privileges of wealth. Her sons and daughters are rude and overbearing brats that swagger through the marketplaces and extort money from merchants and foreigners alike. The two oldest keep hiring assasins to slay each others servants as a kind of game.
The standard of the barony is a green dragon on a chequered field of black and gold.
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Great Dashtra
Paralleling Daspera and Talaq on the east bank, reaching up into the Dragon's Bones, is the diverse barony of Great Dashtra. Along the Maktab live about 85 000 peasants, mostly Kitaban, with 8000 Quelians chiefly in the south and 6000 Kalamen. The chief towns of the river valley are Adashtra (4000), 105km S of Ishpala and the capital of the Barony, and Muxdaht (5000), a Quelian dominated city in the extreme south at the mouth of the Plain of Drakes. Much cotton is grown along the river, with waxtree and stewmelon common in the south.
Adashtra is a small and grubby town of mud brick with 300 Tixryni inhabitants, mostly in service of the Baron. The Temple of Khnum, a complex nearly as large as a town with little architectural merit but a great reputation for breeding of Kitaban heresies, lies 4km NE of Adashtra amid great orchards of sour lumfruit and portyguls. Three times Imperial religious authorities have tried to close the temple, and three times insurrections throughout Great Dashtra have caused them to abandon their plans. Adashtra has a great bronze monument commemerating the Imperial soldiers who died sacking the town after the second of these incidents. The baronial palace is small and unflammable, with no windows on the first two floors - the baron is a jovial atheist who views the religious goings on his barony with amusement bordering on contempt; he has surorunded himself with like-minded people, and survives in his position only through his consummate skill in keeping Great Dashtra peaceful and prosperous. He and his entourage enjoy hunting in the mountains, throwing great banquets, and giving extravagant gifts to those who impress them. The Archimandrite of Gashanvar, high priest of the Upper Maktab region, cordially detests the baron - there are equal numbers of Dashtran knights and vengeful acolytes in the respective dungeons of these two powers. Relations between Great Dashtra and Ishpala are also somewhat strained.
Muxdaht is a spacious town of black stone nestling in the foothills of Mt. Jharam. It is filled with spreading trees and wide paved squares, with many towers and connected cellars built for refuge in times of trial; the city walls are currently in disrepair. 2000 of its inhabitants are Quelian, and only 200 Tixryni, but the Kitaban language is rarely spoken. Silkworms are raised around the town, mostly small but a few giant, and there are many ichorwood trees and a large community of ichorwine addicts.
Alongside the mountains are three great valleys, cut off from one another by craggy forested mountains rising to barren peaks. In the north, between the mountains south of Qadri and the the Xaqdas range, is the Vale of Honey, a land empty of all but herders, anthills, and scattered dead trees, with a few dark folk like Zagathis and curious black minotaurs in the lower slopes of the mountains.
The next valley, the Vale of Dams, has a settled rural population of 15 000, almost all Kitaban, alongside the mountains. It, too, is largely dry. The settlement is centred on the town of Ahtilakh (3500), near the mouth of the valley, and at its other end there are monasteries, inbred Zagathis, and in the mountains the strange and half legendary people known as the Gort. It is said each tiny village of Zagathis has its own language, and they are known to be heretics; they look forward to the return of the mad prophet Yllam, who was walled up alive, and the conversion of unbelievers into maggots and weevils; in those days they will come down from the hills, and all their dead will be ressurected with them, and Huktab will be called Yllamabad.
Meanwhile, their missionaries are stoned in the dirty streets of Ahtilakh; there are few trees there, but wide fields of long stapled cotton, and gemstones are found in the mountains above the town. Water is a problem in the town, and every year in the dry season beggars and such die of thirst.
The final valley, the Plain of Drakes, is more fertile and well watered than the others, with many pleasant forests. Its settled population of 15 000 includes many herders and orchard keepers. These live mainly in the south and west parts of the valley, and are split evenly between Kitabans and Quelians. The Quelians of the Plain of Drakes have preserved their own language to a large extent, and are ruled by village queens as in the days of old. It is said they worship T'sai Lho, but they are outwardly orthodox by the standards of the barony, being among the most vociferous supporters of the temple of Khnum.
The Lakkush Range, between the Plain of Drakes and the Vale of Dams, is largely uninhabited, with a few minotaurs in the east and a prosperous settlement of 2000, including 500 Thuduni, at the great delvings of Ma Yabkush in the west. These produce both copper and gold and were keenly fought over in olden times; many ruins of fortifications surround them, and bones and weapons are unearthed regularly. Ma Yabkush is 65km SSE from Gashanvar and 40 km NW of Muxdaht; its produce is smelted on the site and sent in both directions, either up the Maktab or south into Quelia.
The standard of Great Dashtra is all of copper, with black tassels around the edges.
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Eye of Kitaba
The Eye of Kitaba, comprising the mighty city of Huktab and about 70km of fertile fields by the Maktab, is directly controlled by the Episiarch of Kitaba. There are 60 000 rural inhabitants and a teeming horde of 140 000 in Huktab itself.
The rural parts have several small towns - Adrasshur 30km N, Daxral and Udu-Jhakta facing each other across the river 20km S, where cotton is sorted before being sent to Huktab. Genseric is also grown, as is fruit; this is mostly salted and sent to Huktab, which is the centre for one of the most disreputable cusines in the empire. Burrowing sand lizards are raised in adjoining savanna lands, and what sheep and goats there are around Huktab are raised for cheese; highly salted flat breads of the eerie grey grain of Kitaba are dusted with genseric, wrapped around the main protein source of Huktab- insect larvae from underground hatcheries by the river- and washed down with grey, silt-laden river water boiled to remove the larger parasites. Ancient dried fish and cakes of seaweed that have been on the road for twenty years form the basis (with genseric, of course) of the famous Huktaban Broth, normally eaten with boiled grain, and the rich seem to revel in eating strange organs of every animal flavoured with even stranger spices.
Huktab was once a splendid city of gleaming gold and white palaces, vast gardens filled with fountains, twisting frantic marketplaces, and endless alleys four feet wide. The Empire has torn into it with a vengeance, digging up gardens to widen and extend the city walls and driving straight wide avenues willy-nilly through ancient neighbourhoods. Most of the city centre, with its fine temples, has been taken over by the Tixryni occupiers (5000); 10 000 Kalamen, 7000 Quelians, and 3000 Zagathis live in their own quarters.
It is hard to say what function the city really serves, today; much of the populace is desperately poor. There are myriads of specialty craftsfolk with tiny shops or plots of street, myriads of seasonal labourers who drink and scrounge in the city in the off months, myriads of drug addicts. The main metal smithing and distilling industries of Kitaba are located in Huktab; the main courts; the centres for religious and secular education. Most of the Empire's paper is made there, from cotton; and there are dozens of merchants with obscenely huge fortunes and thousands of servants between.
The baronial palace faces one side of the Great Mudrash, a former garden given over to stock markets, slave markets, prostitution, and pickpocketing. It was once the palace of the King of Kitaba, but its rich furnishings have been squirrelled away in vaults in Ag-Darxes and now its wide bare halls seem strangely dead, the exquisite roof mosaics loking down ten or twenty or thirty feet on rooms filled with minor bureacrats amending tax records. The portion set aside for the baron's personal use is small only in comparison to the palace as a whole; it faces a preserved garden at the back side of the building. The great temples of Ayyartha and Juluk, the former court of Kitaba topped with brass vultures (now residence of the Archimandrite of Huktab and seat of the orthodoxy tribunal), and the Eternal Library fill most of the other sides of the Mudrash. The Eternal Library is a vast many-layered maze of a building, with no end of secret doors and mysterious long abandoned passages; the structures at its centre are said to be the oldest building in the city. It gave the Imperial invaders a great deal of trouble, and the most part of the books stored their were burned along with its defenders. Many survived in the further recesses, as did the hereditary librarian caste. Today a small section near the front has been refurbished and furnished with books in Tixryni and modern Kitaban, and there are brothels, granaries, and taverns in other corners of the building, but most remains dark and still save for the scurrying of the rat-like librarians on their mysterious errands.
The Episiarch of Kitaba is an old but still vigourous man whose offspring live in Ag-Darxes and was appointed to his post by the emperor 35 years ago. He is devoted to his duty and the idea of Empire, and consistently favours Tixryni immigrants over the local inhabitants. The Kitaban nobility of Huktab detest him; he has had very many executed for treason over the years. He is clean living and does not go in for barbaric tortures; he used to travel the Episiarchy a great deal puttinf things to rights and still has a foot long scar on his abdomen received from a mad beggar-woman in Shurifar. The standard of the Eye of Kitaba is red, with a representation of an eye in black at the centre and gold bands above and below.
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Eastern Kitaba
Eastern Kitaba - This territory of more than 40 000 km2, mostly arid savanna and rugged mountains, is ruled from the ancient pleasure city of Madara (7000), in the Godking Range 48km ESE of Huktab. A settled rural population of 8000 live nearby, in the shadow of the Godking Range. This was the summer residence of the Kings of Kitaba, a cool and well-watered city with a majestic view of the plains to the south. A cold stream flows through it at all times of the years, in ancient times diverted to feed fountains and pools
in a many-gardened palace above the town. This is currently the residence of the Baron of Eastern Kitaba, though the gardens are much reduced in extent and many outbuildings are ruinous. The town of Madara itself is finely built of stone, with wide streets and airy dwellings. 800 largely-wealthy Tixrynic inhabitanmts share the city with their servants, some few tradesfolk, and about 100 irascible Thuduni. Eastward of the settled land about Madara the population is only very scanty, some few xenophobic hamlets of Zagathish folk in the more isolated valleys.
On the north side of the range, there is a largish settlement at the mines of Ma Shhulxa (3000, 70km E of Huktab), with pits full of gold worked by sweaty Thuduni and Zagathis. The individual mines are small, but are scattered over an area of at least 30km2. In the days of the Kingdom this whole area was a royal preserve, worked by criminals and the chief source of Kitaba's wealth; immediately after the conquest there was a gold rush to this region, in which 25 000, mostly Tixryni ex-soldiers, thronged the mines, founding and as quickly abandoning a dozen small towns. The whole area is a denuded moonscape riddled with pits and deep shafts.
Most of the barony is flat and dry savanna country rolling north from the Dragon's Bones, even more barren than the savanna elsewhere in Kitaba. A small population of nomadic herders raise oryx and goats - the oryx powder of the barony is highly esteemed; the nomads mix it with the ashes of certain resins - and collect lizards for their skins and meat. There are also scattered zagathis in the hills, eluding imperial censuses and eking a living from hunting, slash-and-burn cultivation, collecting gems, and stealing gems from prospectors. Along the lonely dunesome coast, in scattered smallholdings, live about 3000 fisherfolk, pearlers, serpenthunters, and collectors of medicinal seaweed. Within this savanna area are a number of settlements:
The isolated silver/lead mines at Zurimandu (2000), 115km ENE of Huktab. There was formerly an oasis here, and a sizeable town, but the water failed and the croplands dried up and blew away. The miners are almost all Kitaban, and the settlement is dusy and squalid; there are no trees near, all having been felled to fuel the smelters. Besides the main mine outside the ruins of the town, there are smaller diggings at Ma Qaartu (15km NW) and Assharti Well (5km SE). Sanjilaq(5500), on the road to Karad, is a gloomy treeless town, swept by duststorms and infested with prospectors, cutthroats, and thorn bushes. There are some small agricultural lands around it, and ichorwood groves in the ranges beyond; about 6000 inhabitants of these areas are listed by the census. Sanjilaq is there because it has abundant underground water, and the main enterprises are based on the aforementioned fossickers after gems and silver - whether in the savanna, the ranges, or traveller's pockets. There is a very fine and well fortified Tixryni run inn on the western side of town, the "Dream Harvester".
Mafra Karad (3500), 100km NNE of Sanjilaq, is a rambling collection of shacks and pit traps clinging to the foothills of the Dragon's Bones. It is drab, hungry, and exclusively devoted to the diamond mines owned by a consortium of very rich Thuduni, "Gamar, Pilast, and Thuzak Inc." They live in Great Ashkarad and bankroll very many guards to secure the mine; those who are not guards in Mafra Karad are very likely slaves, either mining or scratching in the dirt to raise the pitiful grey grain that feeds them. Visitors are unwelcome in the settlement, and the surrounding area is rife with brigands and raiders from Karad. The diamonds are carried overland a short way to Faxal Am (900), 46km NW, where they are loaded onto ships. Faxal Am also handles the produce of many of the coast dwellers, and is a scheming little place of plots and counterplots, riddled with thieves. The cove is lined with rowdy taverns and brothels catering to the guards of GaPiThu.
The Baron of Eastern Kitaba, despite the small population of his barony, is probably the second most powerful man in Kitaba. Taxes gleaned from the mines enable him to bribe his way through Huktab, and he lives in great splendour at Madara. A gaunt man who talks sparingly, he likes falcons more than people, and ruthlessly quashes dissent - friends of his among the nomads hunt down the everpresent brigands, skin them, and spread their skins on the roads, with their crimes marked on them; other evildoers are brought alive into Sanjilaq and burnt alive in the town square. The baron is highly skilled with both the bow and the sword, and has hunted the zagathi hill people for sport; he travels ceaselessly, advancing his personal fortunes, and has one daughter of surpassing beauty and kindness who dwells always in a walled garden at Madara. The standard of Eastern Kitaba shows a golden dolphin on a black field speckled with stars.
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Bahash
Bahash is the name of the second largest town of Kitaba (23 000), a walled and moated market town of brick 50km NNW of Huktab. It is also the name of a barony ruling 60km of land along the Malash (35 000 peasants), a goat dairying and cotton growing district whose population is overwhelmingly Kitaban. On the east bank, there are largish salt flats between the river and the savanna country, from which most of the salt for the Maktab Valley is collected; nearby, at Ksar Saram (30km N of Bahash) can be seen what is claimed to be the remains of a great temple of salt, built by a mad Godking in ancient times.
Bahash has narrow, crowded streets, full of dust, and many temples roofed with gold. 500 Tixryni and 400 Kalamen live there. It does not have its own resident High Priest, but has built a palace for one anyway, filled with fountains and mosaics of precious stone. It is perhaps the most orthodox town in Kitaba. Interesting sights are the Garden of Dancing Streams, which boasts 100 fountains each constructed on a different design, and the Sky Spear, a tower covered with green glazed tiles that is twice as high as the Necromancer's tower in Ishpala and can be seen 20km away. 4000 nomads of the surrounding savanna country pay their taxes in oryx hoof and opal at Bahash.
The Baron of Bahash is 3/4 Kitaban (both her father and grandfather married Kitaban wives) and is greatly loved by her subjects. She avoids the claustrophobic alleys of Bahash whenever she can, preferring to hold court in a huge tent hung with erotic tapestries on the edge of the savanna, 10km from the town. The standard of Bahash is of bone coloured white, with the Tixryni rune for "valour" inscribed on it thrice in flowing crimson.
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Uru-Maktab
Uru-Maktab, the Barony of the Lower Maktab, consists of the last 120 km of the Maktab's course. It has a rural population of 75 000, mostly growers of cotton and strange bitter vegetables; despite being close to the sea it is one of the hottest and driest parts of the barony. There are also 2000 Kalamen in the salty delta marshes, who grow water snakes and reeds for basketmaking. They have lived there a long time and have little intercourse with humen.
There are three fairly large towns in Uru-Maktab:
1) Tilxafar (10 000), lies a short distance from the Maktab 75km NNE of Bahash. It is a manufacturing town, full of glassmakers workshops and attic laboratories where pills are made for all those gullible and ailing. There is also much leatherworking, so that the city reeks of it always. There are perhaps 200 Tixryni in Tilxafar, and 500 Kalamen doing dirty and dangerous jobs. Tilxafar is built all of brick and its public buildings are painted garishly in various colours; foreigners get a painful rash from bathing there. Around it are a number of dusty orchards, and salted fruit is an important product of the city - the Maktab here is wide and sandy, and mined for the glassmaking industry.
2) Shufra Am (7500), is the downstream limit for navigation on the Maktab, beyond which it splits into dozens of channels meandering through tidal swampland. It lies 67 km N of Tilxafar and is a squat, unwalled city of mudbrick. From Shufra Am, goods are offloaded and transported overland 30km to Rastabash, the port of Kitaba. For this reason, perhaps 1000 of its people are porters (half human, half kalaman), and it has a thriving population of 500 Tixryni merchants. There are also many drunkards and smokers of the za-poppy, mostly worn out manual laborers; these are preyed upon by a gang centred on an emigre from Orrerery, which durgs them further and transports them south to the dreaded necromancers' flesh markets in Orrerery. Shufra Am is the town to which the marsh Kalamen bring their produce, and has a total Kalamen population of 1000; among these is the Bronze Reed, an ancient elder to whom all the kalamen show great reverence; his tail must never touch the ground.
The people of Shufra Am wear curious harnesses and bracelets of snakeskin, affected nowhere else in the Empire, and drink great quantities of a noxious brew made from fermented onions. They are fiercely proud of their town, which is indeed very old, and claim that before the Cataclysm they were a mighty port on the sea.
3) Rastabash (14 000), the port of Kitaba. It is made of whitewashed brick and gleams in the sun from far out to sea; its walls are high and thick to repel invasion by sea, and it is largely laid out in a grid like the colony cities of Tixryn. There are 1200 Kalamen, 200 Thuduni, 1000 Tixryni and Lhomishfolk, and a smattering of minotaurs from oversea. To Rastabash come all manner of things not found in Kitaba, and out of it goes fabric, cotton and silk, opals, pearls, silver, and all the other products of a wide and rich Episiarchy. Most all of the population are involved in this trade, but there are also herders (who often keep their beasts on streets or rooftops), fisherfolk, and tenders of the great seaweed beds that line the shore. The water quality in Rastabash is extremely poor, and disease is rampant; the inns are debauched sinks of depravity. The baron of Uru-Maktab and the Archimandrite of Rastabash both live in airy, high ceilinged buildings of white on a cliff facing the sea, a part of town home to many wealthy merchants. The baron is a clever, handsome, and unprincipled man who enjoys gambling and debauchery; there are rumours of a vast underground labyrinth underneath his castle where he imprisons his creditors and entertains himself in bizarre ways. The standard of Uru-Maktab is of bright green, with three five-pointed stars of black, silver, and red emblazoned on it. The Archimandrite, a competent if irreligious schemer, has wide ranging responsibilities, being responsible for the spiritual welfare of lands as far of as Karad.
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