[CWBP2] Plot 004 - (WIP) - Trinagon

[Ghostman]

Sure took me a long time to get started on this, but here it comes! I have tweaked the coastline a little bit, added a good number of little islands, and changed the elevation to feature more higher mountains. That said, the actual edges of the map are pretty much unchanged, so there should be no problems with continuity. The current map version is still in the base projection, so it's fairly distorted.






Trinagon, island of the skyriders

Trinagon (trin-ah-gawn) is a sizeable island off the western coast of the northeastern continent, situated south of a large peninsula. This island, along with several smaller isles and a portion of continental landmass, is the home of a thriving civilization. Ancestors of the Trinagonese people migrated to this area through a magical gateway many generations ago, during a half-forgotten era when tools and weapons were cast from bronze and men knew not of the plough and the mill. Since the migration happened before the dawn of recorded history, knowledge of it has become lost in a haze of myths and legends. Oral legends passed through generations tell of some kind of devastating disaster that befell the progenitors of the Trinagonese in their long-lost homeland. They were guided on their exodus by omens and visions, leading them safely through the gateway.

The Trinagonese people of the present era are an urbanized, sedentary civilization that have mastered many crafts and arts. They erect great cities of stone and brick, explore the seas on ships powered by sails or oars, mine the depths of the earth for it's mineral riches, cultivate it's surface with fields and orchards and gardens, and collect knowledge of the world in libraries.

Trinagon is famed above all for it's winged horses, a breed of majestic flying beasts native to that island. Members of the Trinagonese warrior-aristocracy alone have the privilege of riding these beautiful animals; it is a capital crime for any citizen of lesser status to even attempt it. The art of breeding winged horses is a carefully guarded secret. Foals are bred and trained for aerial combat, to serve as the mounts of the flying cavalry. These horsemen are known as skyriders, and they are both the most prestigious and the most well-trained soldiers of the realm.

Politics
The Trinagonese are not unified under any single kingdom. The lands they inhabit fall under the domination of several semi-independent city-states. These cities are joined together in an alliance known as the Trinagonese League, headed by a council of representatives from each city. The council annually elects from it's ranks a leader known as the Primarch, for a term of single year. The league settles any disputes that arise between it's member states and combines their military forces in wars against external enemies, but does not meddle in the cities' internal affairs. Each individual city possesses it's own political system and government. Most of them could be described as oligarchic republics.

Names
Names hold great importance in Trinagonese culture. Each person bears three names: the given name, which most closely resembles a personal name; the spirit name, passed down from the eponymous ancestor of one's bloodline; and the astral name, based on astrological signs at one's time of birth. Of these three names the first one is considered the least important and is routinely omitted, being spoken only in private by one's parents and siblings. The middle name is the foremost one. The last name is used in formal introductions but often omitted in casual speech unless there's danger of confusing the person in question for another from the same lineage.

Literacy
Trinagonese people are unusually literate for the age, owing to the number of public libraries they've built and the esteem in which they hold knowledge and the scholarly profession. They pen their records on papyrus, which grows wild in the rivers of their homelands. Their native alphabet is supposedly a divine gift bestowed upon the people in a miracle that occurred centuries ago. It is an object of reverence and the very act of it's reading and writing is considered to be a somewhat magical action. Most symbols of this alphabet come in two versions: a left-oriented and a right-oriented one. Triagonese script is written so that the first line of text flows right to left, the second line flows left to right, the third line right to left again, and so on down in a zigzag pattern. The direction of writing on each line determines which version of a symbol is used. However, some of the symbols are symmetrical and thus have just a single, unchanging form.

Magic
Traditional magic of the Trinagonese people consists of divinations, particularly by means of astrology, and of the laying and lifting of curses.

Religion
Trinagonese religion is an unorganized "folk religion" based on tradition: there is no established canon or dogma, no clergy, and no central authority. There are ancient poems and hymns that are sung as part of rituals and are regarded as sacred things. There are holy monuments that have been erected in honour and reverence for the multitude of deified concepts such as Fertility, Wisdom, Beauty, Death, The Harvest, Glory, The Sky, The Winds, Fortune, Victory, The Seasons and Order, all of which receive localized forms of veneration and communal rituals of appeasement. There are hereditary holy men - an esteemed caste of scholarly mystics who provide religious guidance, study the arts of medicine and philosophy and sorcery, and perform ceremonies at important festivals such as the solstices. These holy men are regarded as something akin to minor gods or living saints, and are objects of adoration and worship.

The Trinagonese do not believe that individual people possess personal souls. In their belief a soul is instead something that belongs collectively to a female or male lineage, originating in the eponymous ancestor of the lineage and existing across every subsequent generation. People are one with their familial souls from the moment they are born, and remain as part of them after their deaths. As long as a lineage persists, it's collective soul continues to live on - but should it become extinct, the soul will fade to oblivion.

Adherents of the religion strive to live in harmony with their familial spirits, both as a means to experience spiritual communion and empathy with their deceased relatives, as well as to gain good fortune and inner strength from the favourable influence of their ancestors. Such harmony can be achieved by acting always in deference to one's spirit name and by worshiping the image of the eponymous ancestor.

The soul of a patrilinear lineage can only be passed down by males of the bloodline, and the soul of a matrilinear lineage by females of the bloodline. When one of the parents is unable to pass down their ancestral soul, all the children of the couple will belong to the other parent's lineage. Should both parents be eligible to continue their lineages, theirs daughters will be born into the matrilinear and their sons into the patrilinear lineage. If neither parent is eligible then their children would be considered to be literally soulless creatures. Because of this disturbing implication, marriage and procreation between two ineligible characters is a strict taboo. Spiritual "orphans" that lack a connection to an ancestral soul are pitied and reviled, cast outside the sphere of proper society alongside equally soulless foreigners.