The Empire of the Ashura

Posted: September 13, 2011 | Author: Dennis N. Santana | Filed under: Fluff/Inspiration, Other Systems, RPG, Spirits Of Eden |1 Comment »

The Five Nations of Adel are not the only powers in their world. Deep beneath the Archdungeon of Abyss Isle, there is a connected, underground realm with its own political entities and even its own species of humanoid beings, known as the Ashura. The Empire of the Ashura is said to be about as large as the Noshiki wasteland, stretching beneath Adel in a series of cave networks, massive underground plains, forests and valleys, and subterranean seas and rivers. The Ashura are an uncommon sight for Adelians, and likewise. Unsurprisingly, lucrative trade and diplomatic exchanges do occur despite the risks, for the Ashura hold many things the Adelians desire, and doubly so in the other direction. Sharing a language, the two have begun to explore each other’s culture. In this article, we’ll look briefly at the Empire of the Ashura and its people, living beneath the World of Adel.

Introduction

The Ashura are a conglomerate of different species who inhabit Septinum, known to the Adelians as “The Hell Beneath All Creation.” Septinum is not entirely hellish, though to an Adelian it certainly would be – it is a world that exists in caverns beneath the crust of their world. Though many locations in Septinum open up as wide and airy as any valley or plains in Adel, and it has its own ecosystem with plenty of food and resources for its inhabitants, it is a bleak-looking place. There is no sky, the ground is rocky and uneven, the world is ashen and colorless, and there are few natural bright lights. To an Adelian, Septinum is cold, dim and dismal, or, in those places where magma flows freely, horrific and dangerous despite the renewed light.

Septinum is a place difficult to describe in geographical terms. Septinum is divided a few tiers of organization. At the highest level (and least useful one), all of Septinum is claimed by Empress Lamashtu Proteas IV as her domain. There is no other monarch or ruler – Lamashtu is the supreme law of all of this land. She can rally and command all of it as she pleases. The Hells are then divided into a few geographical areas, comprising tunnel networks that open up into larger, habitable areas. Adelian’s knowledge of these areas, aside from the Empress’ capital of Tartaros, is woefully incomplete. At the smallest organizational level, Septinum is composed of Communities. Each Community is made up of a few Households. These Households then “own” all the people of the community, and amongst themselves all of its resources and land area.

The Ashura, like the Adelians, are known by one moniker (Adelians being a catch-all for the four species composing Adelian Society, and Ashura the same) but they are actually three different species of humanoid creatures. Both Ashura and Adelians share a language, though the Ashura treat the Adelian’s language as a quaint dialect of theirs (the differences are negligible, however). Also like the Adelians, Ashura have no real concerns about sex, gender and sexuality that we outside observers often assume. In fact, Ashura take it a step further, and many have no real trouble with incest or polyamory – as we’ll soon see. However, Ashura, unlike the Adelians, do have a strict institutionalized racial caste system, and stratification matters to them.

Ecosystem And Resources

Septinum’s ecosystem is very different from that of Adel’s surface. The animals that inhabit Septinum are strange, alien creatures, with no discernible analogs to those above ground. Protoplasmic oozes cling to the roofs of caves, strange crustaceans filter-feed at the bottom of gray rivers and lakes, fleshy many-limbed beings drag themselves across the waste, multiples eyes and mouths blinking and snapping. Ashura are omnivorous, but even they realize that a lot of the creatures around them are inedible. Ashura eat mostly the seafood and the local insects. They do not partake of the stranger beasts.

Fungus, algae and moss are common vegetable matter eaten by Ashura. Depending on where they grow, they take characteristic tastes that are quite pleasing to Ashura. Some strange crops also grow in Septinum. Dark, grayish-purplish rice called Ash Rice is a staple crop of the Ashura that is not found above-ground, and is a delicacy to the Adelians. They also grow their own sorts of beans and grains with which they make tofu and bread, as well as odd fruits that have juice and flesh that provides some variety to the Ashura’s diet, and from which they make liquor. There are no cattle in Septinum, so the Ashura find cheese and milk and other dairy to be exotic and wonderful food, and import it from Adel (insofar as things can be reliably imported to Septinum). Ashura use the honey of Hell Wasps, large, rather angry insects, as their favored sweetener.

Underground rivers supply a lot of water to Ashura, so they hardly have drought. Ashura communities only exist where tenable – as such no Ashura really exist in hardship and hunger. If a place can only support a very dismal life, Ashura won’t be there. The Sunda simply won’t develop a community in any inhospitable areas.

Ashura have mineral resources comparable to the Adelians’.

Septinum has weather patterns, mostly generated from the magical energy permeating the underground. Magma bursts, boreal storms of magic light and flame and ice, elemental anomalies, and other strange phenomena occur within Septinum. However, Ashura are quite adept at predicting these events, and have learned to endure them safely.

Ashura Technology

Ashura are roughly at the same technological level as Adelians for most things. As far as weapons are concerned, Ashura firearms shoot hot red and blue beams, rather than solid rounds, but they otherwise still carry swords and hardly use metal armor. Ashura have vast architectural monuments, including the Fortress-Capital of Tartaros, which seems as though the Ashura built a castle out of a mountain and live in it. Ashura technological development, however, is even slower than the Adel’s. Adelians have a mistrust of technology, and the necessary religious rites to sanctify their technology, let alone to innovate new technology, greatly slow them down. Ashura, on the other hand, have no drive to innovate. The technologies they’ve discovered, such as their lasers, were all passing fancies of creative Sunda with nothing to do. They just happened to be useful in the end.

As such, Ashura don’t really have artificers, and they don’t even really have a public discourse like Adel does about technology and its good and evil (mostly evil) results. Ashura are too content to change the status quo. Whereas Adelians actively believe technology will literally revolt and kill them if they allow it, Ashura just don’t care. When Ashura discover artifacts of the ancient world, of which there are many (and the base of their laser technology was one of them), they tend to lie forgotten until a Sunda with enough time on his or her hands becomes curious about them.

Socio-Racial Stratification

At the top of the Ashura hierarchy are the Sunda. Sunda are humanoids with blue, red or purple skin and thin, flexible tails that end in spade, diamond, heart or club shapes. They are divided into types by the shape of their horns – Sunda with curved horns curling around the sides of the head, like a crown of sorts, are referred to as Rhonnu, and they are the heads of their households, and ultimately, of the state. The Empress is High Rhonnu of the land.

It is the Sunda’s (the Rhonnu head of house and his or her advisors) duty to insure that the people in their households have food, drink, and accommodations suitable to them, as well as the tools to perform their work, and some time with which to relax themselves and make ready for future work. They handle money, and organize the household to yield the greatest benefit to all its members, proportionate to their racial class. If an underling is injured or depressed and the Sunda catches wind of it, the situation must be rectified, either by the Sunda personally (uncommon) or by a representative (quite often how it goes). The Rhonnu must act as tyrant, teacher, healer, provider, and even as a matchmaker at times.

Sunda with any other “imperfect” horn shapes are referred to as Maha, and are bureaucrats, priests, authors, thespians, or whatever other pursuit they want to undertake in the service of a Rhonnu who “owns” them. Sunda are the cornerstones of Ashura communities. Every Ashura community, very village, every town, is organized into what the Adelians inaccurately refer to as “Ownership Groups” (the older Adelian term for this, Family Group, was even less accurate). These groups are composed of Sundas running Households, and the people that protect or labor within those Households.

Below the Sunda are the Surapad. Surapad Ashura are humanoids with feathery plume tails, like the Phoenix Iomadi, often very colorful and gaudy. They have small, stubby limbs on their backs, which can ignite into fiery wings that allow them supernatural flight. Surapad tend to have bronzed or golden skin and contrasting hair, and are the military elite. They are socially-ordained officers, coordinators, trainers and mentors for their “inferiors” who fight alongside them. They are also bodyguards and often friends and consort to the Sunda. Where possible, each Sunda has a Surapad guardian.

Below them are the Kshatriya. Kshatriya look like Iomadi, except they have ashen-gray or dusty-white skin and hair and have long, droopy rabbit-like ears and fluffy, stubby, immobile tails. Kshatriya are laborers. They farm, they fix things, they build things. Kshatriya are utilitarian, but theirs is still considered an artform of sorts. Kshatriya also double as the military grunts led by the Surapad, though some are dedicated exclusively to this role, rather than “doubling” as one.

Ashura lifespans are rather comfortable and convenient for them. While Adelians are living on average 75 to 90 years, Ashura can live upwards of a few hundred years, and Sunda for the most part stay young and healthy throughout, while Surapad and Kshatriya only really show wear and tear because of their more engaging lifestyles.

The Great Chain of Being

Adelian terminology is expressed in quotes, because they are woefully inept at understanding Ashura culture, and indeed, it is not their fault. Anybody would be, except an Ashura. To the Ashura, their socio-racial hierarchy is referred to as The Great Chain of Being. It dictates that each Ashura is born to perform certain tasks. A Sunda cannot be expected to build a bridge – he or she is just not fit for that work. Similarly, it is believed a Kshatriya would run the economy into the ground if allowed to. So each of the species is organized to the benefit of others. Ashura Civilization requires each of them.

Every Ashura believes in the hierarchy. Adelians have tried to talk to them about upward mobility, but they run into the problem that such situations are uncommon even in Adelian society, and making them outright impossible isn’t much of a difference. So their arguments fall on deaf ears. A Kshatriya imagines running a household to be nightmarish, not a privilege, while a Sunda thinks building a dining table would probably result in his or her death. Both believe in their ordained duties.

The hierarchy of the Ashura stretches across the entirety of the Empire. The Empire is headed by a Rhonnu Sunda, Lamashtu Proteas, and she “owns” everybody and everything, and has her own military and the laborers who build and farm for the state, repair monuments and infrastructure for the state, and so on. So at the state level, there is the state hierarchy. Then at the community level, the state hierarchy is miniaturized into the households, the Sunda owning those households, the security staff protecting those households, the laborers fixing and building and growing things for those households, and so on. Lamashtu can override any household and get them to do what she wants. But each Household has control of its people otherwise.

Each “Household” varies in size. Ashura history records that a massive conflict once wracked all of Septinum. From it, the Empire rose, and each “Household” was given wealth proportionate to their contributions to the Imperial cause. Households rise and fall with the follies and fortunes of the people living there, as well as the whims of nature. So there is no real “average size” for a household. Some Households have much more Kshatriya than they do Surapads or Sundas, while others might have way more Sunda lazing about than they do Kshatriya to get things done for them. One Household’s imbalances allow it to perform services for other Households, or to use its spare people in mercantilism, entertainment or other appropriate pursuits.

In a strict sense, Ashura have sort of a command economy on the state level, while the Adelians are hard pressed to understand how it even works on the community level compared to their own, more traditional way of being.

Interpersonal Relationships

For the Adelians, all of this is confusing enough. But it gets worse for their poor scholars and diplomats, when they try to understand an important cultural concept – how Ashura romance and relationships work.

Ashura have an openly poly-amorous society. A physical fulfillment of love is a part of any fond relationship that an Ashura partakes in. For them, a “lover” is somebody you consort with and are passionate about, someone who inspires and motivates you, somebody who knows you; while a friend is somebody whom you have a fun, simple and casual relationship with. Though there are some differences in how they treat each kind of relationship, intercourse factors into all of them. An Ashura is expected to have both a lover and some friends, and sex is part of enjoying the relationship.

Ashura can be “friends” with anyone of any caste. They can only be lovers within one strata down from themselves. So a Sunda can be lovers with a Surapad, but not a Kshatriya. This is something that tends to be violated, however, because even in the highly unorthodox society of the Ashura, love is a powerful concept and strikes unexpectedly. An Ashura can have any amount of friends, but will only have one lover. Orientation and gender play no real part in these exchanges.

Ashura can interbreed, but whatever the child ends up being will dictate its position in the Great Chain. Ashura have no actual familial bonds. Everything is sorted under the class structure. So a Sunda can take a Surapad as a lover or a “friend.” If a child is born, and the resulting child is a Surapad, he or she will grow up among the security staff of the Sunda. He or she is not really a daughter or son, in that sense. Just another member of the household security staff.

Similarly, an Ashura can end up enamored with what Adelians consider “family.” Indeed, Empress Lamashtu is currently a lover to her own mother, High Consort Leilize Acidius. This occurred because her mother is a Maha, and when her “father,” the former Emperor, passed away Lamashtu received everything the “household” (in this case, the Empire) “owned,” because she was the Rhonnu progeny in line to inherit. With her “father” (Leilize’s old lover) gone, Lamashtu escalated her good relationship with her “mother” from “Friend” to “Lover,” something both of them enjoy. It’s just the way things are for the Ashura.

This seems like it would create snags in inheritance, but inheritance really just means “the oldest Rhonnu child of the Household becomes the next head of the household.” It doesn’t matter with whom this child was conceived. Of course, some amount of rivalry and intrigue does exist within the Ashura. They are not robotic – they have ambition and emotion, positive, negative and neutral. However, as far as inheritance confusion, there is none. Everybody knows who the boss is going to be. Whether they sit down and take it or not is up to them. Usually, however, the only ones with a capacity for schemes are the Sunda.

The Adelians and the Ashura

The Adelians know the Ashura as two things: on the one hand they are a sister culture, of extremely strange beings that live in a land that is hard for the average person to reach. On the other hand they know the Ashura as thieving magpies. The Ashura’s relationship to the Adelians has the same duality. The Adelians are allowed into Ashura communities and culture as guests and envoys of a great foreign place full of exotic wonders, and shown hospitality, and “friendship.” But the Adelians are also a source of treasures and pretties that the Ashura have an enormous desire to harvest for their own ends.

Ashura are known to covet things. Adel’s mythology concerning the Ashura often depicts them as arrogant, strange, extremely desirous beings who envy and steal. This depiction is somewhat true. For the most part, Ashura only travel to Adel to either demand something, negotiate for something, or outright take something. Every Ashura household has a small army of soldiers and equipment to deploy against whatever objective the Sunda wants – be it a beautiful person that the Sunda wants to “befriend,” a glorious treasure the Sunda wants to “be gifted” or something else. Ashura have their ways and means to appear in nearly any part of Adel that they want to, though they typically appear on the edges of Noshiki, to which Septinum connects best. They don’t share these routes, techniques and spells with the Adelians. For an Adelian to travel to Septinum, they must usually go through the Archdungeon at Abyss Isle, or get very lucky with the gray mists in the land of Noshiki.

As such, Ashura often get, perhaps deservedly and perhaps not, lumped in with the Sorians, Furies, Angels and Elves as things the Adelians don’t desire to meet on a daily basis. However, of all their iconic antagonists, the Ashura are the ones most like them, and the only ones with whom they maintain a diplomatic presence. When Ashura and Adelian do battle, they do so with similar-looking magic, equipment and abilities, and they feel similar emotions, exhibit similar pains. They even have similar cultures – the Adelians and the Ashura both have their own mythology and arts that they exalt, with sometimes conflicting perspectives. Both are polytheistic spirit worshipers.

The Ashura’s world is a place that’s prime for exploration, if characters can make it there. They will find a world of great mystery – if ruins of the ancient world lie above the surface, untouched, what sorts lie beneath it? But they will also find a society there, that they might understand, or they might not, and which will have different interactions with them. There are new monsters, sure, and new possibilities for dungeons, but finding a support system is in itself a new challenge.

In addition, it is possible to play a game as Ashura. However, unless everyone is a Sunda, it will require some creativity and care to organize the group such that the differing social classes and norms of the Ashura do not cause discomfort or confusion. But this allows you to explore the intriguing relationships and society of the Ashura, as well as to come up with intrigue which you cannot have in Adel. In a sense, every Ashura household is like a little kingdom that can rise and fall and be overthrown based on the strengths and follies of its many members. This is something simply not found in Adel.

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