South 101

The South will rise again, mon!

Imagine for a moment that there is a continent on Hekinoe to the south of The Known World. Dry heat has turned to damp humidity that hangs thick in the air. Imagine that, like Fresgulen, there are rumors of this place, but they trailed off out of sailor gossip about a hundred years ago when an expedition to investigate them left the shores of The New Empire.

There's this continent to the south of The Known World, still a bit north of the south pole of Hekinoe. It is a hot jungle full of jungle type stuff. About a hundred years ago, possibly more, perhaps even a lot more, some ships left The New Empire to explore south when they found that expansion into The Fallen Empire of man was going to be far more difficult than they expected.

When they found themselves near this southern continent, they sailed to a beach and set up camp. It was a tough land full of oversized flora and fauna, but resource rich. Lots of big trees and big animals to eat and take hide from. Unfortunately, as conquistador types often do, they ran into some natives. Things went quite well for the natives, the explorers had some guns and cannons, but the natives knew the forest and they knew the denizens of the forest. They also had the help of their gods.

They call/ed them The Gods of the Deep Earth, there were/are/? ten of them and the tribes of this southern continent worship them as, well, gods. Not as mighty beings of power that they serve, but as god gods, the creators of everything. Anyway, the gods were good to their worshippers and wiped the beaches free of these invaders. The explorers lost their ships and a lot of their supplies, but they survived.

Once the explorers could not steal everything not nailed down and flee, the natives left them alone to forge their own destiny. Their gods were benevolent, and they were happily willing to follow the example laid down by their creators. So the explorers got all factiony and some went native, others were determined to conquer the damn place in the name of their king. Others went against decades of propaganda calling cultists madmen and delusional and decided to start worshipping The Gods of the Deep Earth.

The natives are an old race of lizardfolk types from various clans all over the continent, they use obsidian weaponry and live in a fairly primitive tribal society. Obsidian is quite abundant in the area due to the volcanic activity of the place, which is a result of the god's activities within their mountain domain. The jungle is large and jungle-like with lots of poisonous critters and insects, and what might be called Hekinoeian dinosaurs. Sorcery is only really known in its druidic form on the continent, and it keeps the theme of unreliability we're all used to.

It's kind of an untamed place with only the lizardfolk and their gods. The explorers from over a hundred years ago have fallen on hard times for the most part. As I said, some went native and took to jungle life. Others became cultists. The largest chunk of explorers became a militaristic society obsessed with the idea of conquering the place in the name of The New Empire.

Those descended from those that have gone native so to speak are tolerated. They tried to start some shit and the god bitch slapped them, but they and their descendants have changed. They're not welcomed among the various clans of lizardfolk, but they don't hunt them.

The crazy cultist types are considered fools and madman, mainly because the lizardfolk believe that they were created as crude representations of their gods and no sane god would create something that looks like an Elduman or Elduman descended human. Seriously, they have no scales or talons and that is just plain gross.

Those that claim they want to conquer this land are hunted pretty extensively. They usually live in tree forts and keep lizardfolk captives as slave labor. They take as much as they can from the areas surrounding their encampments and from those they slay in battle. They are pretty straightforward examples of foreign conquerers that feel they're entitled to everything.

The god(s), they live in their mountains doing god type things.

I'm not sure if this jungle place matters, but it is there.