Café de Nuit

Putting the two maps together was´nt much of a problem because I used Corel-Art-Dabbler for doing that. This program is truely ancient, but has a transparent-paper-funktion....
The thought of a unknown darklord in Yujin is great !!! Adventures in Yujin could have a certain X-Files-style (conspirations and betrayals everywhere, the heroes know, there is some big conspiration going on but never get the right clues... )

I like the idea of the darklords being unknown in Yujin and Siranga-Purang too. I like the sense of mystery (not to mention it gives the individual DM more freedom).

So, this is the savage domain northern of Siranga-Purang where royal soldiers and tribal warriors kill each other in a gruesome war, a enigmatic druglord rules with an iron fist over an ancient castle and hundreds of plantationslaves and horrible, unknown things stalk the woods !
Is there something in the description, that needs a correction ?


The Northern Jungles

CL:
Tribal communitys: 1-2
Sirangapunesian settlers: 4-5
Landscape: Full Ecology; tropical jungles.
The domain isn´t called „The Northern Jungles“ for nothing ! The land is overgrown with all kind of tropical vegetation. The domain can be divided up into to main parts. The the rainforrests in the southern lowlands stand on a very muddy and swamplike ground what makes movement and building settlements difficult. The northern highlands are also overcrusted with tropical vegetation but stand on a much more solid ground. The climate is extremly wet during all time of the year. During most time of the year, the lowland.jungles are shrouded in thick, wet fog. Only during the typhoontime, the sight is wider than 50. Meters. The climate in the highlands is much more pleasant. Sometimes, one can even catch a look on a blue skie. The temperature in the whole domain never sinks below 30°C.
The flora of the domain is mainly the same, that can be found in other tropical domains like Sri-Raji or the Wildlands – with one exception: Only here, northern of Siranga-Purang grows the mysterious Night-Lotus, the base-ingredience for the infamous drug of the same name. Only few facts are known about the Night-Lotus. The plant looks much like a normal lotusflower but has a black blossom with starlike, twinkling silver spots on it. The scent of the flower is mildly narcotic and can cause strange visions under certain circumstances. The raffined drug (consisting of the fermented and powdered blossom-leaves) is much stronger, if smoked like tobbaco or opium. Raffined Night-Lotus is highly priced by the traders from Siranga-Purang or the Eastern-Orient-Company. The black, glittering powder is illegal in most other domains except Siranga-Purang but found on nearly every black-market in the whole Orient.
The fauna of the Northern Jungles is also very diverse. There are countless differend specimen of incredibly large insects and reptiles and also a lot of colorfull, exotic birds. There are no crocodiles kreeping around in the rivers, but the muddy waters are still dangerous to swim. Deeper inside the Jungle, the hordes of underarm-long leeches swarm the water. A swarm of this creatures can drain a man bonedry within a few minutes. Another notable danger are the bloodthirsty oversized reaper-warans. This large lizards are cunning and fast predators that hunt even humans. Of all mamals the rare dwarf-elefants and the strange redfurred apes are most notable.
Tribal people and settlers alike live from ricefarming and dwell in villages composed of small wooden huts with leave- and straw-roofs. In the lowlands, most buildings are standing on stakes because of the muddy and soft ground. The villages of the settlers and the tribal-people do not differ much by the outward apearance. The greatest difference seems to be, that the settlers use more sofisticated metal-tools. But there are, however examples of higher developed architecture. Deep in the northern highlands the massive fortress of the decadent Lord Karakut can be found. Lord Karakut, a powerfull drug-baron, is the only person, who managed to cultivate Night-Lotus and now produces it on a large plantation. His workers are mostly captives and slaves forced to work by Karakuts mercanerys. Nobody ever opposed him, because he has high friends within the sirangapunese government. People rumor, that the trade with Night-Lotus made him the richest person in the southern Orient after the Godking.
But Karakuts Estate is not the only trace of high civilisation: Somewhere deep in the jungle are the ruins of the ancient city Anguk-Bat – the lost residence of the mad godking Ingkut XXII. Once, over 1000 years ago, this metropolis was the center of the ancient Siranga-Purang. Then some cataclysm happend and killed over 90 % of the citys population. The survivors fled in horror and never returned to the city, they believed to be cursed. What happened really to Anguk-Bat is unknown today. The legend of the treasures the fleeing survivors left in the palaces and the subterran labyrinth of the lost city attracts a lot of adventurers and rogues. Until today, no one made it to the ruins and returned with some of the gold....
Major Settlements:
Lord Karakuts Estate (150 Soldiers and ca. 400 slaves)
Anguk-Bat : this ancient ruin-city was builded by the mad godking Ingkut XXII from Siranga-Purang, and housed over 40.000 people, but this abbandoned city is even avoided by the natives.
The Folk:
Population:
round about 4.500 (there are no exact numbers)
Sirangapunese: 10 %
other oriental Gnomes: 40 %
Humans: 30 %
Lizardmen: 20 %
Languages: various tribe-dialects; sirangapunese, pidgin
Religion: Shamanism; Anchestral Cults
The people living in the northern jungles belong either to the settlers that left the bustling citys of the south or they belong to one of the many little tribes, that live in the jungle since millenia.
Most peoples in the Northern Jungles are gnomes, although there are some humans and lizard-men. Unregarding of race, the people mostly have a very dark, copperlike skin and jet-black hear. The sirangapunese settlers tend to wear exactly the same fashion, they would wear back home in Siranga-Purang. Under the human and gnomish tribal-people, it is not common to wear a beard and wrap themselve in a colorfull kilt. Tribes-men and women alike go barechested and love to wear a lot of twinkling copper-rings and chains.
The tribal lizard-men are much more primitive than humans or gnomes and do not wear any cloth at all. They love to paint their skin with colorfull ornaments and also carry a lot of copper-rings.
Law:
The sirangapunesian villages absolutely the law of the godking and the villages are internaly ruled by a village-elder, very similar to western burgomaster. During the last years of bloody war, most villages of the settlers tend to raise a militia and fortified their settlements with high palisade-fences.
The human and gnomish tribes all have their specific form of gouvernment –normaly a tribal-village is ruled by a holy men. This can be a shaman or, in more civilized tribes this is a priest of an ancestral-cult or a minglun-jiao-missionary . During wartimes the controll is overtaken by a warchief, that is elected by a council of all mature warriors of the village.
The lizard-men are much more simple organized. The leader of a lizard-men-tribe is always the strongest of all tribe-members.
Further north in the holdings of Lord Karakut, only the drug-barons word is the law and nothing else. Every person living there depends on the goodwill of the decadent lunatic and his henchmen. Everyone, who has no rank inside Karakuts private-army is nothing more than a slave and has to work on the night-lotus-plantation.
Trade and Politics:
Ressources: the Night-Lotus, exotic woods, exotic fruits, ingrediences for various drugs, rice, fur and meat
Coinage: Trade is conducted by sirangapunesian coins or barter
Politics:
At the moment, the Northern Jungles are shaken by a bloody and uttermost brutal war between the sirangapunese army and an alliance of tribes from the highlands. No one knows exactly, why the tribes suddenly attacked the villages of the peacefull settlers and there have not been negotiations between the two warpartys for years now. From captives, the sirangapunese know, that the tribal-people blame the sirangapunese for some unknown blasphemous crime, that has to be revenged.
Although, the tribe-warriors are far more primitive equiped, the sirangapunese army has a bad standing in this war and hardly manages to defend the few remaining settlements. The soldiers do not know the area well and gunpowder is fastly rendered useless when a powderbarrel is oppened in the wet climate. The bullets, the sirangapunese soldiers fire down from the palisades to defend a village terrify the tribal-warriors and kill a lot of them – but when the army-forces patroll during the swamps of the lowlands, their muskets soon become nothing more than very expensive clubs thanks to all the mud and the omnipresent murky water. Not few soldiers become prey to the gigantic leaches or the reaper-warans. But the greatest problem, the officers of the godking face is the fact, that the tribal-warriors can move through the forests nearly unseen and strike with poisened arrows and deadly traps hidden in the trees.
What role the enigmatic Lord Karakut plays in this conflict, is unknown. On the one hand, he is a loyal friend to a lot sirangapunesian ministers and magistrates (as he ensures every year when he visites the capitol-city Siranga down in Siranga-Purang). On the other hand, half mad survivors told stories about Karakuts henchmen opening fire when meeting lonely, small bands of sirangapunesian soldiers.
Darklord:
Everyone, who lives in the Northern Jungles knows: something evil and unholy lurks deep inside of the green hell.
But nobody is sure, what this evil something exactly is. Tales talk of strange, maneating lotusplants deep in the jungle; the spirits of Anguk-Bat; a tribe of hyperintelligent, evil killerapes; demonconjuring witches and a lot of other gruesome things.
The newest and most popular story is the following:
Soldiers reported, that whole units where wiped out by some strange, nearly invisible creature that acted incredibly fast and cunning. The creature was never seen fully and is described to be nothing more than a flickering shadow floating through the thin air. Sometimes this thing emmits a horrible laughter, shortly before it kills....

How does the name "The Jade Kingdoms: Guide to Gothic Asia" strike you?

That sounds perfectly fine! Now for the small domain of Funan - the "prosperous south".

The placement of this could be tricky, but if Waldi is okay with me using the domain south of Hongjiangdu (southwest of the Liang) as Funan, then that's fine. Otherwise I can subdivide Liang.

The Funan folk are stout, rather short, and darker in skin tone than most Hua. However, they still view themselves as Hua, even though their dialect is completely incomprehensible to Hua ears. In time long past, sometimes ousted Emperors would flee to Funan, there to live out their lives in solitude amid the palm trees and tropical heat. The Zhengti script still applies here, but few people speak the Zhengyu tongue. The local dialect is Funanhua.

(Note: This domain is lovingly based on the province of my mother's family and all my aunts and uncles. I would like to dedicate Funan to them as an accurate snapshot of the fine spirit of the people of that land. ~ HMB)

Fuknaam, the Prosperous South (Fu Nan in Hua)
Far from Imperial oversight, the farflung domain of Fuknaam has long been a haven for smugglers, traders, unscrupulous merchants, and a general wretched hive of scum and villainy. They are so distant that the Dragons rarely care to visit their domain, and their pursuit of wealth and profits has made them careless of the Celestial Bureaucracy and temples.
Based on: Hong Kong, that hive of scum and villainy on Earth.
CL: (very roughly) 9 in Tsoy Luk, as low as 4 in inland areas.
Landscape: Once upon a time, the Fuknaam valleys and rivers were beautiful and picturesque. Ever since the Fukaam people arrived, however, much of the landscape has become cluttered with their dwellings, refuse, and pollution. It is said that rats plague the countryside of Funan as thickly as fleas on a dog - but the wiser of the Hua merely note that's because they can't stand the stench of the Fuknaam cities.
Major Settlements: A settler once thought that naming a capital "Riches Shores" (Cai Lu in Hua, Tsoy Luk in Funanese) would draw trade and commerce. Instead, it drew bandits, pirates, and prostitutes. Worse still, it drew the Fuknaamyun (Funanren, "Prosperous Southern People" in Hua). Tsoy Luk (pop. 125,000) dominates the domain, but smaller settlements dot the landscape like pustulous nipples on the bloated carcass of an upside-down sow floating in a river of effluvium with a winnet firmly affixed to its --but I digress. The second largest city is Caizhou (90,000), which was established centuries ago as a garrison town by a forgotten Emperor. The locals call it Tsoyjuk, which can mean "Riches Land" or possibly "Vegetable Rice-Gruel".The local general, after arriving in Fuknaam, noted the people were unusually rebellious. Later on, he learned they were just naturally disagreeable, and amended his verdict to "moderately revolting" instead.
The Que city of Yang'An has been described as the "Courtesan of the East", for its allure and vice. By the same token, Tsoyluk counts as the "Bedbug of the East" - it's densely packed, it'll suck your blood dry, and you will probably end up spending the night with it, like it or not.

Population: The last Imperial survey raised the alarming possibility that the infestation had reached about 500,000. No censuses have since been attempted for fear of what horrid developments they might reveal.
Characters: The Hua Empire has several locations where the beauty of the local women are the subject of poems. Fuknaam is not one of them. In fact, a popular saying goes "If you find a good looking woman in Funan, she probably traveled there from somewhere else." Another saying goes "What do you call a Fuknaamyun man who enjoys sex more than he enjoys gold?" "A pervert." Yet another saying goes "A Fuknaamyun walked under a bar." (The joke ends there.)
From this, it's easy to see that Fuknaam characters are short-statured, unlovely, and single-mindedly enamored of money.

Basically, they're dwarves aren't they?

Classes: Most Fuknaamyun slave away in the fields, or mills, or foundries. However, they have a reputation for spending money. Some do so very shrewdly (jokes about these usually start off "He walked out the door with a single fen" and end with "and his family were feasting for days!"), while others are less savvy with money and more concerned with lavish expenditure. (A Fuknaamyun playboy flaunts his new overpriced jacket, saying "Do you like my new expensive jacket? I spent 300 kuai at Lo's Market!" Another playboy comes up to him and says "Aiya, you got ripped off! You could have spent 800 kuai for the same one at Ping's!".) Rogues are very common, as are bards. The Fuknaam find it hard to summon enough passion to go berserk over anything, so barbarian classes are mostly out (unless gold is at stake, in which case arguably every Fuknaamyun has been a barbarian at some point in their lives - usually at the cash register). The domain's pollution and dirt has driven off the Dragon, so wizards are rare, and the bustling materialism of the cities and wrenching labor of the countryside leaves little time or inclination to support a monastic order.
Worship of the Celestial Bureaucracy has fallen by the wayside, as the Fuknaamyun believe they are already making a tidy prophet.
Fuknaamyun are not well suited to fighting, and there is no formal army or navy, but fighters and sailors are found as long as they're being paid, cash up front.
All Fuknaamyun aspire to be the "daifun" (Da Kuan in Hua, "big money"), or one of the patrician families. The only entrance requirement is money and the willingness to do whatever it takes to make it.
Language: Fuknaamwa (Funanhua, dialect) is a cacophonous medley of nasals, linguals, and glottals that mix together with an effluvious yet incoherent plaintiveness. The Fuknaamyun have difficulty pronouncing "r" sounds, replacing them either with "y" or "l" (ell). An ancient Hua poet who traveled to Fuknaam as a forfeit for losing a bet later said he couldn't help but recall his finest conversations in Fuknaamwa, every time he heard the couple arguing next door.
Religion: Many clerics have tried to save the souls of the Fuknaamyun. This has given rise to the saying "zaau daan mei mou", or "searching for eyebrows on an egg".
The Law: Money is power, and power corrupts. The reigning patrician families control the port city and every transaction requires some sort of service to be done. Bribes and gifts are a way of life here, and it is said that life is cheap. (This is actually incorrect. Life is expensive, but death is often free.) In theory, there are a few laissez-faire laws prohibiting murder, rape, and other clearly antisocial behavior, but in practice money and connections are the true arbiters. The patrician families also do not rule absolutely - they need a constant stream of favors and exchanges to keep their place, and often enough a family falls from grace, to be replaced by one or two newcomers.
Trade: Fuknaam innkeepers are known for their officious service and warm hostility. After talking to merchants and inquiring of officials, visitors will note Fuknaamyun are quite economical with their compassion, their patience, and the truth. Ships from far and wide stop at the port, and here is perhaps the single place in the Hua Empire where your class and race do not matter, because all that speaks is gold.
Resources: Fuknaam is very cosmopolitan, and the relentless competition among its nobility has resulted in some staggering technological achievements. Where other Hua armies use bamboo firelances and "ZhugeNu" repeated crossbows, the Chow family has blended both and perfected a multi-shot rifle that can fire up to five rounds before it needs to be reloaded. The Ng family has used its ore mining business to reform the way it transports heavy loads, using steam engine technology to lay a limited railroad line from the shoreside mountain mines to the city. Meanwhile, the Yeung family has combined a contained steam engine within a sturdy metal-and-wood frame to produce a coal-powered ship that does not rely on wind for its propulsion.
In a pre-Industrial society, such advances are only possible with the resources of the noble class, and an exploitable cheap-labor working class. However, the innate rivalry of the houses means they are unlikely to share their knowledge, and the tight control by the inventing families prevents the effective dissemination of their technology.
Coinage: Each family prints its own notes and even mints its own coins. Simply finding out how much a coin is worth can be an alchemist's challenge.
Politics:
The Hua believe in Yujing as the center of the earthly plane, and the further away you go, the further you fall from its blessing. That means Fuknaam is a hideout for humans who have willingly left the bright center of the universe, thus earning themselves eternal damnation - or at the very least, lasting inconvenience. An old king of Liang once said living in Yujing is like spending the rest of your life with your enemies right by your side. (The quote then goes on, apocryphally, to say it still beats living with your friends if they're all Fuknaamyun.) The Fuknaamyun are too disorganized to form any provincial initiatives, and this has made Tsoyluk an attractive city for foreign crews to do business... as long as the foreigners have a good bargaining sense. One surprisingly effective chamber of commerce has been formed by some enterprising merchants from the Western Core in the city - it originally started off as an informal lunch meeting where westerners could exchange information on which officials could be trusted and how much to bribe them. It later grew in attendance and became a force for the patrician families to deal with as a diplomatic body.

It should come as no surprise to the reader that this august body of traders and merchants is called "The Tsoy Luk Club."

Offshore, a Siranga-Purang naval raider preys on cargo boats coming in and out of the port, giving his name only as "Lokukteoi" ("Twistleg" in Fuknaamwa). He and his band of pirates are ruthless, and there is a rumor that they have a powerful artifact that can call down the power of the sun upon enemy ships. He stops at any port he sees fit, and almost never needs to make landfall, ruling the seas with his self-declared "zan zung kyun" (Zhen Zhong Quan, true and final authority - sometimes written as "Real Ultimate Power").

Also, the lesser degree of Hua authority here means the Jomon-jin traders from the Western island of Jomon have been able to land and trade without needing permission from a local king. However, there are rumors that the traders bring with them the dreaded ninja - spies and assassins from the Jomon courts. It is not even known whether any are in Fuknaam, but if they are, their goals are unknown. Quite possibly, they could be locked in an epic struggle against the pirates, aiming to steal away their real ultimate power.

Darklord: Elsewhere in the Hua Empire, the forces of nature and the imposition of Mankind are in a deadly balance. Not so in Fuknaam. Here, the fires of the factories and the smoke of the engines blots out the sunlight for days on end, and the people have grown so desperate in their struggles that they live literally on top of each other. Now that the Dragon has left and appears to have no plans of coming back, all that is left is the beating heart of the city and its wretched inhabitants, slaving away.

However, not all is as it seems. The Fuknaamyun have cast off the guidance of spiritual beings, and trusting in their own infallibility, dig forth the bowels of the earth and trawl the belly of the sea for their industry and output. Sometimes, it almost seems as if something else is leading them...

A mechanical instrument of terror once took form, dreamed of in the past by a sage philosopher. Horrified, the philosopher took his own life shortly thereafter, but still he spoke of his fears - that the deeds of men would one day exceed their masters' powers of control. Just as the luminous being Akira, or the fabled Technological Singularity, a malignant being of evil has masked itself in the advances of science and awaits activation, through rivets, cogs, and ultimately, code.
The people of Fuknaam already have destroyed the idyllic seaside harbor that first awaited them here centuries ago. Now they are despoiling the land and sea, poisoning the rivers and skies and trampling themselves over as they push science ever onwards, drawing closer to the day when a single human hand can destroy millions with a single gesture.

HuManBing wrote:That sounds perfectly fine!

The sad part is that it took me this long to think that up.

I really like Funan/ Fuknaam too. It's much better developed than Nosos -- more realistic and with a definite culture. Plus a more interesting darklord (although that's a matter of taste, of course).

Hmmm, I get the feeling you don't care much for Hong King though.

I remember my mother asking whether I'd like to go to Hong Kong with her and I wanted to say "Sure, it'll be fun to see the Kowloon Harbor and Happy Valley again!"

However, something went wrong and before I knew it, I had accidentally said "The glorious waves of the People's Liberation Army Air Force should bomb the unsightly capitalist running dogs into the ocean!"

That made breakfast rather awkward, I can tell you.

But all joking aside, we can cut out whatever sounds too silly for the Fuknaam domain. I tried to keep it fairly poetic (even if it's over-the-top poetic) but I'm well aware that my goal of having fun at the expense of my maternal family may interfere with writing good, clean copy

Yea ! Funan rules !!!! !! And I start to love abstract darklords .

The placement of this could be tricky, but if Waldi is okay with me using the domain south of Hongjiangdu (southwest of the Liang) as Funan, then that's fine. Otherwise I can subdivide Liang

Placing in the domain it south of Hongjiangdu is no problem. I did not have any idea for that plave yet and those "cantonese" culture sounds perfect for it !
But one thought I had about Funan, was the following:

However, something went wrong and before I knew it, I had accidentally said "The glorious waves of the People's Liberation Army Air Force should bomb the unsightly capitalist running dogs into the ocean!"

Could there be a People´s Liberation Army in Funan, that opposes the patricial families ?

Edit:

How does the name "The Jade Kingdoms: Guide to Gothic Asia" strike you?

Sounds great !! The only thing I would change is, that I would write "Gothic Orient" for our fantasy-continent isn´t the real asia...

Re: A People's Liberation Army... I had thoughts about that, but I don't know how well that would fit into the setting. I do think the Communist movement is an important one (regardless of whether one thinks it's a good thing or bad) and many people ignore it.

However, it is clearly a modern-day movement with its roots in the late Industrial.

That was one thing that I had in mind as a "future darklord" idea. The late Qing dynasty was beset by internal strife as well as dealing iwth foreign occupation. The Taiping rebellion tried to set up a religious Christian nation, and the Boxer Rebellion later attempted to drive out the foreigners. Both failed, after being bloodily quashed.

However, perhaps there is the threat of an even more pervasive movement foretold by the prophets of Zong'Anling, where peasants will unite not in the name of religion or nationalism, but in the name of overthrowing their oppressors. This movement is seductive and lofty, but it threatens to destroy the entire order as we know it - prophets say the Celestial Bureaucracy will lie in ruins, the Dragons will be banished forever, and the monasteries will be eliminated and burned. The Emperor and kings are uncertain of the truth of this prophecy, but are keeping an eye out just in case.

The revolution leader is said to take the form of a young firebrand who will take the form of an unusually beautiful man (Mao Zedong himself was said, in his youth, to have feminine looks - a sign of extreme intelligence, according to traditional Chinese lore). This firebrand, it is said, will turn the entire order upside down and turn children against their parents, brothers against sisters, and millions will die happily at his command.

The fact that Zong'Anling's sages predict this to pass has caused Yujing a lot of consternation. Needless to say, the kings are nervously watching for any manifestation of such an individual.

In campaign terms, this might serve better as a device rather than an actual event. The kings and Emperor could become steadily more paranoid as various movements and minor rebellions escalate. Perhaps it could be like the Dukkar mythos in the Western Core - something that's yet to reach its full potential but haunting nonetheless.

Edit: Also bear in mind that if you were to have the Communist Revolution follow its historical scope here, such an army would conquer Yujing, Que, Liang, and Wen, as well as all of Jorpuk and all of Fuknaam, as well as a very large percentage of Taiga. If we ever do a Tibet style domain to the east in the mountains, the Communist Revolution would presumably overwhelm that as well and drive their religious leader beyond the border.

Quite a drastic change!

Of course, this doesn't happen overnight, and you could really make a fascinating campaign out of it (both featuring the good and evil done during such a campaign) but it is quite a heavy handed change to enforce. If we ever did a Gothic Earth setting for this, complete with late Industrial time periods, then this could work.

Otherwise, I think the best way to go is to focus on a Taiping-style religious revolution (which I will put in one of the two little "corner" domains around Wen) and to emphasize the bloodshed and cruelty of that affair... and then foreshadow the Red Secession far in the future as being even worse.

Cool ! I like those prophecie-idea !!!!!!! I would suggest, that the prophecy isn´t commonly known, but the basement for some conservative tongs that want to keep the ancient traditions of the Hua (and drive the foureigners out).

I thought of renaming the Northern Jungles to Ahng-Nam. I think that sounds a bit better !
This is the adapted, new version of Siranga-Purang. I tried to base it a bit more to Indochina and a bit less to Hong-Kong:

Siranga-Purang
CL: 8 in the larger citys; 5-6 on the rural countryside.
The Landscape: Full Ecology: Tropical jungle and intensively cultivated areals.
The southern coasts of the peninsula are a relative rocky area famed for the fantastc and pitoresk rock-formations, while the northern coast are formed by long stripes of beautifull white sandbeaches. The clear and blue-green coloured seawater is not very deep and home to an immense variety of different aquatical creatures. The ocean near Siranga-Purang is dotted with hundreds of rocky little tropical islands. Some of them are large enough to house a village (mostly inhabited by fishermen), but the most are to small for that. near the capitol city, Siranga it became a fashion of the rich to build small estates on some of this little islands, where they spend their free-time.
The inland is naturaly a lush, evergreen tropical rainforest, but the 1500 years of sirangapunesian culture formed the landscape in large parts of the domain. A lot of little farming-villages dot the soft hills of the land and the sight is dominated by plantations and ricefields. Thanks to the warm, temperate weather and the rich and fertile grounds, sirangapunesian plantations can work highly effective. Farmers grow rice, tea, sugar, an immesurable amount of different fruits and vedgetables, various spices and a large amount of differend medical herbs and drugs. It is all to obvious, that the wealth of the golden kingdom came from the export of this natural grown treasures. Further north, the nature becomes increasingly untamed and the villages become smaller and poorer - soon, the traveller will reach the invisible border to the Northern Jungles.
West of the mainland peninsula is the large "Ape-Island" It is called that way not only because the golden temple-pagode of the monkey-god in Lut-Sham but also because of the large numer of different monkeys living there.

Major Settlements:
Siranga (pop. 85.500)
Lut-Sham (pop. 9.900)
Phong-Pen (pop. 4.500)

The Folk:
Population : 345.000
Gnomes: 60%
Humans: 35%
Lizard-Men: 5%
Languages: Sirangapunese, Hua, Jomon, Pidgin
Religion: Minglun Jiao; Anchestral Cults;
Most citizens of Siranga-Purang belong to a nonhuman race. These small, wiry people are closely related to the gnomes of the western lands. Western gnomes and sirangapunese can even mature and raise common children, even if this occurs extremely rarely.
There are however some characteristics, at which one can differentiate the two races of gnomes: for westeners the strange, almondshaped eyes of the sirangapunese, which is usually either black or brown, are remarkable. The hair is always smooth and jet-black. Their skin color varies between middle brown tones and a bright coffee-brown with a clear trace of yellow in it. Sirangapunesian men and women carry their hair always very long. Women from poor classes twist the hair simply to a long braid, while rich ladies stick their hair with needles and combs to elaborated and fascinating towerlike hair-styles . Men always wear their hair as a long braid, no matter from wich class of society they descented from. As all gnomes, male sirangapunese have strong facial hair, but unlike western gnomes, they do only seldom wear wild growing, long beards. People with such a look are concideres to be beggars or holy men, such as the Minglun-Jiao-Monks from the temple of the monkey-god. The momentary fashion-trends are thin mustaces with long ends hanging down and small goatees. Common men and women alike wear simple blue cotton-jackets and trousers, dare-wheel-large straw hats and the characteristic wooden sandals (no sirangapunese goes without his or her wooden flip-flops) during their everyday life, The few members of the sirangapunesian upperclass wear expensive and elaborated, gold-embroidered robes. Sirangapunese live together in large kinships on houseboats or multileveled buildings of stakes directly at the coast. It is nothing unusual, when four generations of a family live together under one roof and round about 15 children per married couple are the average. The kinships are organized patriachic. The oldest man of the kinship, usually the great-grandfather, functiones as family-leader.
For observers from other races, daily live seems to be a complete chaos in the sirangapunesian settlements (be they exclusive sirangapunesian cities, or far more common, sirangapunesian quarters in the towns of other races).
On the small wooden bridges between the stakehouses true masses of sirangapunese move around and down on the water small transportation punts, full-loaded cargorafts, houseboats and water-taxis themselves swim closely next to each other
Between the buildings, innumerable linen and ropes are strained, which are partly used to fix boats and partly serve as laundry-lines. The noise is overwhelming, but the shouting of fisher-men, traders and dealers is not the only reason for that. Sirangapunese are considered correctly to be chatful natures. There their language is extraordenary complicated and the scripture consists of several thousand different glyphes (far more than in any human writing-system) and is very difficult to understand by non-sirangapunese, is spoken - even if the non-natives can read and write Sirangapunesian perfectly. Sirangapunese always talk fast and hectically and rarely take breath while speaking When the strange smell in the air becomes "overwhelming", the traveller comes dangerously near to one of the feared sirangapunese fast-food-restaurants. The sirangapunesian cuisine follows a strict principle that says: "You can eat everygthing as long as you add enough spice !“
To Sirangapunese, quite everything plant- or animal-like counts as enjoyable meal. All ingrediences are thrown into a large „Wok“ and heatended on a special oven that emmits hissing flashes of flames. The ingrediences are thrown around, mixed with obsure sauces and than are peppered extraordinarily strong. There is hardly a cuisine in the known world that is so rich of variations like the sirangapunesian.
However there are certain standart-meals, that enjoy a large popularity, as for instance the "Nine-Lucky-Doggy-Stew", "Sea-Gull-Sweet-Sour", „Roasted Cockroaches with Almond-Rice“, „Thousand-Years-Old-Smoked-Tofu“ or "simple" noodle soup. To each meal belongs, however a large amount of "Shagipang-Olek" (a dubious, strongsmelling chili-pepper-sauce that contains ingredience like turpentine or gun powder) and to enormous amounts at rice! None-sirangapunese are strongly adviced to avoid sirangapunese food at any costs (sirangapunese meals give a comletely new meaning to the word „hot“). If one however nevertheless did eat something (and still lives and is concious), he should NEVER ask what his meal contained !!! The honest answer could cause a shock.........
In the Far East, the sirangapunese have often the reputation to be a pack of rogues, thieves, betrayers or smugglers. Sirangapunese have also (like their western cousins) a strong affinity to sience and inventing. The oriental gnomes truely shine on the field of alchemy and are masters of fireworks. The ultimate goal of all sirangapunese alchemists is the „Potion of Immortality“ (Truely every sirangapunese alchemist searches after it !!!). Unfortunately, the alchemists of Siranga-Purang use large amounts of quicksilver for the most important experiment. Thanks to this fact, the averange sirangapunesian alchemist is very excentric at the best and completely nuts at the worst case.
This bad reputation is partly connected with there homeland and Siranga, the infamous capitol-city of Siranga Purang. This true moloch is considered as the largest accumulation of do-evils and gangsters in the whole Orient shortly after FuAn. The city became immeasurable rich and prospering because of the many trading-routes that run through the city and the extensive export of spices and drugs. It is no wonder that the Eastern-Oriental-Spice-Company has ist largest seat in the Jade-Kingdoms in Siranga. Some of the small islands near Siranga-Purangs coast are company-holdings where the western foreigners lead their own plantations. Beside the honest tradesmen, there are however also smugglers and triads settled who settled down here and hold the city in their iron grasp. The Triad of Siranga is one the most powerful criminal organization of the Far East. So, Siranga is also very famous for the infamous gambling-houses; borde – ups, massage-palors and pubs.
It is almoust funny, that most sirangapunese criminals retire at a certain age and become one of the barefooted, orangerobed minglun-jiao-monks in Lut-Sham. So they want to erase the bad karma they accumulated with the countless crimes they conducted during their past life. Only few foreigners understand the irony in the popular quote „Beeing as innocent as a monk“. If a Sirangapunese says that, he normaly means, that someone is almost certainly a evil, criminal person.
The Law:
Officialy Siranga-Purang is ruled by an absolutistic hereditary monarchy with a large bureaucracy. But the Godking Mong-Phat XXIV, the last son of the ancient Phat-Dynasty, seldom meddles in the daily politics and leaves all work to his corrupt magistrates. In fact, Mong-Phat leaves his royal palace only once in a year when he has to do the traditional pilgrimage to the pagode of the monkey-god in Lut-Sham. Peoples rumor, that the weak godking consumes large amount of fermented night-lotus and lives most time in a strange illusionary world of bizarre feverdreams. Increasingly, his beautifull sister Pai-Pai replaces him on official events
Inofficially, the whole kingdom is run by "organized" corruption and regiment through the triad-elders. Of course, nobody would ever oppose the laws of the godking – but the cunning corrupt magistrates find always a way to undergo the laws, if the „criminal“ pays enough bribes. This works even on a very high level. One example for this system: Prostitution is prohibitet by royal law, but the triads, (who earn a lot of money through the courtesans on the famous sirangapunese flowerboats) offered a enormous bribe to the ministry of law and order. Rumors say, the bribe, that was paid to the officials near the docks of Siranga one foggy nigth, was over 5.000.000 Kesh in Gold. Soon, some clever police-officer invented the „Medical Massage-Palor for Gentlemen“. From one month to the other every bordello in Siranga closed. Therefore, a amazing economic miracle happened in the massage-palor-buisness.
Trade and Politics:
Ressources:
naturaly: night-lotus (booth: fresh bundles and fermented powder), rice, beans, lychees, citrus, chili-beans, all kind of differend fish and seafood, rice-wine, beer, silk, silver, gold, iron, explosives, shagipang-olek, opium, black lotus, marihuana, cocain, heroine,
just going through the port: what-ever-you-wish
Coinage:
Gold-Kesh (gp); Silver-Kesh (sp); Copper-Kesh (cp)
Politics:
The political course of Siranga-Purang follows the wishes of the traders and gangsters and a bribe can buy everything. Sometimes this is beneficial for the royal house. So, the sirangapunese army is equipped very well with modern muskets from the west and even some artillerie by the Jomon-Jin and the Eastern-Oriental-Spice-Company. Therefore, the Sirangapunese have to defend the holdings of the Company and the jomonian Embassy.
Siranga-Purang is generaly a very peacefull nation, but nowadays a terrible war in the northern jungles of Ahng-Nam. The sirangaounesian settlers, the royal army claims to defend, would leave Ahng-Nam voluntary, but the real reason for the expensive war is a completely different one: Ahng-Nam is the only source for the mysterious Night-Lotus. If Siranga-Purang looses controll over the northern jungles, the triads won´t be able to trade Night-Lotus anymore....
Characters:
Classes: rogues, monks, wizards, (kung-fu-)fighters

The darklord:
On the great bazaar of Siranga, you can easyli spot the modest building of the „Wong&Tschiao Spice-Import-Export-Company“, one of the richest trading-companies or the southern Orient. The founder of the company, the old Wong-Gan was a honest and hardworking buissnesmen. Unfortunately, one can not say that about his great grandson, the dubious Dr. Wong-Jen´Djiä. No matter, what dirty, illegal buisness is conducted in the darker corners of the bazaar – rogues and gangsters know that the the „Wong&Tschiao Spice-Import-Export-Company“ is always involved somehow.
Rumors say, that the cunning 95-years old akademic fought his way up to the highest position inside the triads – the High Grandmaster. If that rumors are true, the Doctor commands a true army of goons and rogues. It is also told, that Dr. Wong became a master of the black arts and is, by now, the greatest wizard of Siranga-Purang. But never tell those storys aloud on the streets. The one, who speaks to open about the Doctor beeing a triadmember dies a horrible death during the next night. Officialy, Dr. Wong is a honorable member of the high society – the inheritor of a respected trading-company and a talented physician...

So, what do you think of it ?

Waldi wrote:Sounds great !! The only thing I would change is, that I would write "Gothic Orient" for our fantasy-continent isn´t the real asia...

Um, I'll have to ask about that. I've heard that the terms "Oriental" and "Orient" are considered offensive by many Asian-Americans, so I think I'll ask a few of the Asian people in my town what they think. If Orient is deemed offensive, I guess we can come up with something else.

Btw, the revised Siranga-Purang owns!

The Siranga Purang layout is very interesting! I like the idea of a paradise land, but with an underlying hint of something dark and menacing in the jungles.

We will have to look more closely at the magic system for the Jade Kingdoms, but I think the Siranga Purang and jungle domains would be well suited to Necromancy (sort of a like an Asian version of voodoo). Would you be interested in making Wong a practitioner of necromancy?

For the rest of the Asian style domains, I think necromancy is not particularly strong as a magical school. This is *very* provisional, because I have to look at other ways of doing magic to see if they have any clues. But I'd like to make Siranga Purang exotic in a way that differentiates it from the Hua kingdoms.

Of course, this is all up to you. If you feel Siranga Purang doesn't work well with necromancy then that's fine too. Another possibility is a place where foreigners can slowly go insane - partly through culture shock (and maybe a society that behaves in a way that can be very unsettling for a newcomer) and partly through... other causes. (I even had a dream once about a type of insect that makes a calling noise that will eventually drive a person insane. I woke up all right, though.)

Idea sources for this can be found in Wide Sargasso Sea - where an Englishman marries a plantation woman from the Carribbean islands, and then the culture shock causes him irrationally to suspect her of adultery and eventually the two come to hate each other.

I agree with MistShadow's concerns about the term "Oriental". There is some doubt over what part of the world it actually applies to (some say it counts as Asia Minor - Turkey and Arabia, but not the Far East). At first, I was surprised that WotC put out an "Oriental Adventures" guidebook because the term has fallen into lesser use. Then I looked inside and saw the unholy mess of cultures that they had blissfully thrown together like a toddler painting with peanut butter... enough said.

I like the idea of Jade Kingdoms better, because the term "Jade" definitely brings up the Far East in my mind. If you compare it to the "Verdurous Lands" and the "Amber Wastes", it's equally effective and evocative.

HuManBing wrote:For the rest of the Asian style domains, I think necromancy is not particularly strong as a magical school. This is *very* provisional, because I have to look at other ways of doing magic to see if they have any clues.

This is part of why I was hoping for a Halloween release (more than 6 months from now) -- besides domains, we need rules to make magic feel more authentic as well adjustments for native characters and prestige classes. We can't really use those from 3rd Edition Oriental Adventures as they're HIGHLY fantasized, besides all being based on Japan (what they didn't just make up, anyway).

Hmm...OK, then cut the "Oriental". Nevertheless "The Jade-Kingdoms" fits perfectly !

Dr. Wong beeing a necromancer is a great idea ! I imagine him to work on an alchemistic base rather than "voodo". Using "mad science" to raise Undead would fit to the Dr. Fu-Manchu-adaption I intended Dr.Wong to be .
The risen are no flesh-golems, but a kind of zombie that raises at Wongs command, when the fresh corpse is prepared with certain herbs and special drugs are injekted. While he is far more busy by keeping his criminal organisation running than raising the dead, he has not reached a state of "undead massproduction" like his western "fellow-necromancer" Anton Missroi did - also his undead look much different to their western cousins. Because the alchemical process of rising requires fresh corpses, Dr. Wong cannot rise skelletons or bodies that are too rotten. Wongs undead cannot be differed from normal living people at the first glance, and they even can talk and remember a few things from the time they where alive (at first, they loose this memories soon). But, as risen undead, most of them do not eat, drink or breathe, look pale and waxlike, do not feel any pain, move more like automatons than living men, lack every kind of emotion and have no free will to resist Dr. Wongs orders. There are, however, some "misshappened experiments", who stayed too human, and caused the Dr. headaches, but by now the raising-proces is perfected.
Most important of all, Wongs undead sustain on a weekly injektion of a special, alchemical night-lotus-preparate - that is, what keeps them "alive". So, even if one of the risen accidently keeps emotions or a free will the poor creature still depends on Dr. Wongs goodwill. He is the only one, who knows the formula for the night-lotus-preparate.
Wong used this necromancy not only to create 7 loyal personal guards. All seven were formerly kung-fu-masters that where poisened by Dr. Wong during a dinee´ on his yacht and insantly risen afterwards. There was a Nr. 8, the hua Feng-Kao, that dissapeared shortly after the rising-process and still could´nt be found by Wongs henchmen. Could this have something to do with the mysteroius masked kung-fu-fighter that recently caused serious problems to Wongs triads ? (Hey, why not ? It´s an eastern-setting ! So we should also have some 70ty-years-cheesy-kung-fu-movie-feeling in it, where it fits, right ?)
Another way for Dr. Wong to use his alchemical-necromantic powers is to "replace" certain officials and other high-ranking persons, that could cause a threat to his criminal-empire by undead...the persons are usualy poisened somehow, brought into Dr. Wongs secret laboratory and then are risen by him. Soon, another puppet-on-a-string, that acts after Wongs will, fills a gouvernment-position.

I also like the idea of the "land that drives foureigners" mad ! What about this one ?

The Sirangapunesian Fever (or "Yellow Fever" for westeners or "Di-Fever" for Hua in short)
what the people know:
This mysterious illness apears only in Suranga-Purang. It is completely unknown, what causes it, how the infection works and it can´t be healed. The infected suffer from increasing mental decay and slowly fall into madness. The fever is Siranga-Purangs greatest cause for becoming a Lost-One. The natives seem somehow to be immune to the fever and did not even know it, until the first foreign trader started suffering from it (according to ancient medical books, it was a hua-trader named Di-Chang. That´s why the Hua call it the Di-Fever)
For the GM:
The Fever drives all those mad, who are of lawfull good alighment and are not native to Siranga-Purang. How fast the fever works, depend on how far the homeland of the "infected" is from Siranga-Purang. A foreigner from Fuan would take about a decade to go nuts, Hua or Jomon-jin a year or two and Westeners mentaly decay in only a few month.