Crisis Cycles

Culture Name: The Half-men of Knocnorie, in the city of Karkosa

Banner Colour: Yellow

Government and Leader: Empress Kuvan she-who-dances-with-dreams. She who wears robes of gold, has limbs of doves and the face of bone. Blessed most keenly and lucidly with visions of her people, with rare patience and discipline she leads her people and makes judgement. She is in her 30s now assumedly, and was chosen for the role nearly two decades ago when she danced with Emperor Caroia he-who-is-blessed-of-winds during the public ceremony of wandering stars, a yearly event where strange lights form over the city of Karkosa and all halflings become whole in the celebration.

She is aided in her decisions and bureaucratic responsibilities by the priests of Truth, other Half-men that are allowed to wear the golden robes and fill out the government roles. Knocnorie is a spiritual theocracy through and through and all official roles come with official clothing of varying degrees of yellow and other titles, be it the priests of war, the priests of healing, the priests of knowledge, etc for their military, their doctors and their education, so on.

Society: Half-men believe that unlike the other species of the realm, half of themselves exists in the realm of magic and soul, how well one comes to know their other half-self leads to fulfillment and power, and one can never truly die so long as both selves still exist, only being born again. So in times of sadness or woe, then surely some affliction has come upon their soul-self that is affecting their body. They live out deep in the jungle, and are a fairly recent society. Maybe only a couple of centuries old. Tales from back then imply that a madness and sickness swept through the jungle that overcame the adults of their tribes, leaving only the young-lings as survivors, changed by the experience. The children of tribes came together and traveled to the holy city of Karkosa, a city they had been forbidden to approach by their elders. There they found abandoned lodgings, strange writings and artifacts, and when they slept there, their dreams became peaceful and lucid rather than the night-terrors they'd been scarred with by the plague of mosquitoes that drove their parents to death, and these wild dreams now blessed their descendants too but without the lethality and terror the initial plague brought.

Generations down the line, Half-men now wield magic daggers honed to sharpness in the stepped pyramid that sits in the center of Karkosa that helps them channel their magic as weapon implements. They regularly use elixers formed from jungle fruits and mosquitoes to trigger dreams in themselves now, dreams of madness and symbols as they believe that the madness that originally swept over them and led to the formation of their people is actually a pathway to truth and power for those able to survive the deep delves into that realm.

They are currently beginning to expand their holy city and prepare to grow due to their population influx, taking the current signs from the heavens that the time has come for the people of Knocnorie to spread back out proper into the jungle they came from originally. Currently the city of Karkosa has been taking inspiration from the dwarven manufacture of cities in the expansion of Karkosa's city borders and addition of new buildings.

Species: The Half-men, or halflings as they are more scientifically called, are a small, sinewy people of brown and yellow hair. They have almost the same size as a child, or a very young teen, but are closer proportionally to adults and have the nearly the same strength and quicker speed than bigger humans despite their size. They have multiple sets of small sharp teeth that seem to easily come out but grow back quickly. They only live for about 60 years, and mature quickly. They also seem to have a pretty aggressive metabolism, and much more rapid heartbeat and bloodflow than other species due to maybe having a larger heart, and seem to be innately very good at surviving poisons and disease that rapidly flush through their system. They can wield magic but it is a strange, inherent thing and they have no truck with formalised arcane writings and instead use tools and meditations and natural rituals to connect to it and truck with the spirits that guide magic.

Stances on the three changes: The roaring descent of the COSMONAUTS has been taken as a glorious portent of the future, a sign of some great change in the spirit world, that it is a new time and the ways of the old in this realm will begin to change, and that all the half-men must seize this moment too as surely as their soul-halves are.

The hierarchy of the priest of Truths and those under them remains, but celebrations and dances and music now fill each night enough to rival the yearly ceremony of the wandering stars as jubilation and wildness sweeps the city, eruptions of joyous magic and quick spirits and tempers are spreading as an emotional renaissance sweeps through the half-men. The leaders of the city may be interested in seeing the FORMAL events of other countries and cities, as a beginning to make themselves known to the world at large.

They have their own priests and magic ceremonies, and their own views on mosquitoes leading them to an unfortunate disparity of views of the PRAYER magic sweeping the land

Major cultural influence: People from the western jungle. Descended from tribes of the forest that used to also survive and war with the frogmen, now they have begun to form their own proper civilisation. From their greater position of strength, they still do business with the frogmen, buying toxins and hallucinogenics, and spirits and draughts from them.

From the Ranitezians, the Halfling people have adopted a love of music, art, community and herbs and magic and drugs.