Gray, short post i'm sleepy

Gray is connected to green by a tiny little border, but it is one of the most active borders in the whole Territory.  That is because of the mass wood trade that goes on there.  The majority of the business of Gray is boat building.  Everything from tiny pirogues all the way up to large ships.  Wood from Green and papyrus reeds from inside the city.  The whole area is covered in a plant much like cyperus papyrus from our Egypt.  Biggest difference is that they are half again as big.  These grow from 15-25 feet tall.  They grow in a fashion that forms natural pathways in a maze like fashion.  The locals harvest them in a thinning pattern that does not ruin these natural waterways.  The reeds are used in much the same fashion as the ancient Egyptians did and the people are culturally very similar.  The biggest difference in the lack of stone and Pyramids.


The baddie will actually be here physically, before the Flight.  He will be elsewhere afterward.  I have the idea for him to be spreading some sort of sickness to the papyrus causing them to petrify at a unnatural rate.  Then his minions gather the stone reeds and build pyramids.  I'm gunna have baddie building these things all over the place.  I need to figure out what they are for now...

Blue skies

On the surface Sapphire appears barren and abandoned.  There is even less land here than other cities.  Jagged rocks pierce the surface, and huge whirlpools come and go.  The water is extremely clear but dark, making it difficult to see to the rocky bottom.  Sometimes as one is gazing into the depths bight lights blind the watcher.  Some of the larger rocks projecting form the water have caves leading down, deep beneath sea level.


No people appear to live in the territory, but without fail every year, proper taxes and records are brought to the council via representative.  This representative comes from the Traders Guild, and is extremely closed mouthed, never giving any information on the city.  The paper work is always very detailed, but somehow always makes the mystery worse.  Population, marriages, sales, imports, exports, and all other relevant facts are listed, but no one lives there....


The actual population of Sapphire lives in underground caverns made of crystal.  The bright light sometimes blinds sailors is the light bouncing around these crystals.  Even though it looks dark down there, the crystals do a magnificent job of collecting what light does get down there and concentrating it into the caverns, creating a twilight effect.  Coupled with many species of bio-luminescent creatures that have been culminated.  What few trusted traders that are allowed down there would tell you its like swimming through the stars in the sky, if they were inclined to speak about it at all. 


The population are mermaids, if you hadn't figured that out yet.  I have an idea of what they will like like, a cross between the mermaids in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and traditional ones.  If any one has read these books, it will be most like the fish people in Wren's Quest.  Entrances to their caverns are the large sea caves mentioned before and the whirlpools mentioned  above.


Only city-state to have a monarchical form of government.  It is an matriarchal electoral monarchy.  Will be the only area that they visit that have little or no problems with the Stone Man (which is what I have decided to call my baddie.)


The mermaids, along with the unicorns from Green will also receive Jewels when Draca Flys.

Map ideas, and further details on areas.

So the map thing did not happen this week.  Or last week.  blargh.  I think that is the technical term.  However I think I have come up with a few other things.

First, pertaining to the whole map and how such a strange environment developed.  Basically a meteor. Hit ocean and collided with the edge of a continent, that's how the thing has at least shallow water over the whole surface and all these crazy environments.  The entire meteor is completely honey combed with caves and tunnel systems, which is why you can almost travel everywhere underground.  Water gets sucked up, spit out, stagnates, and everything else through these tunnels.


A situation has been developed for Green.  Farming and way of life is dependent upon relationship with unicorns.  The unicorns are literally burned by the touch of a non-virgin, so the culture has developed toward, late in life marriage, and fewer, later births.  This results in population decline, and weddings being an unhappy event instead of a joyous one.

There really isn't much a stigma against losing your virginity so much as a preference for your relationship with your unicorn.  The people tend to pair up with one or two unicorns and form a very close bond early in life.  And the relationship with the unicorns makes life so much more convenient.  They can walk on water, easing transportation, purify water which allows the farmers to farm many things that can't be grown anywhere else in the area. 

The unicorns are fully sentient and as upset about the population decline of their humans and the virginity problem as the humans.  They know that this problem has only been going on for the past four or five generations though and believe that there is something causing non-virgins to burn the unicorns.  Still working on how to get the rumor to the party, but I'm going to have the item be made of silver, and therefore really precious in this almost metal free enviroment....or maybe iron and allow them to have weapons made form it...I think I'll leave that open to what the party would like more.


I think the item will also be a cap on a pyramid (short dungeon)...placed there by the same necromancer baddie that is currently in Gray...might make a way to have the whole thing interconnected, but I don't think that matters at all till I see how the players are going to be.

I think I will also have them be greeted by a NPC and invited to a wedding upon entering the area.
Other than mapping and Npc's to be rolled I think I've got what I need for Green. Only 12 more city-states to go....