Armageddon

Formally, a capital metropolis of the Ark, the region has since over countless millennia turned into ruin and overtaken by nature. Nevertheless, hidden caches of advanced technologies can still be found then and now, which are exploited by the various races that inhabit the lost continent. Today, it is only known as Armageddon, for it is a continent forever embroiled in conflict and destruction.

i) Nations

Eisenkrieg

By Artnoob100

Race: Human, Armagator

Government: Stratocracy

Economy: Industry, Mining, Slavery

Motto: Forward, Always Forward!

Population: 30 million [~6000 Armagators]

Eisenkrieg, also known as the ‘Empire of Steel,’ is a large human faction present at the center of the continent. While comprising mainly of humans, the faction is most noted for its use of bio-titans known as Armagators.

Over the centuries, the empire has been constantly waging a war of conquest, its foes of no match to Imperial discipline, industry, and gunpowder. Their whole society is highly regimented with militaristic culture and a rigid hierarchy – at the top of which sits the Imperatorführer.

However, the role isn’t dynastic. Rather, any general with enough clout can stake his [or her] claim on the throne. As a result, seldom does a ruler die from old age, instead becoming victims of assassination or a bloody coup de tat.

Yet, regardless of who is at the helm, the imperial machines march on, forever at war and forever expanding and subjugating.

At present, its empire’s border has somewhat stagnated. The ashen wastes to the West are home to fierce nomads and their living gods – hardly worth going to war over. To the North, the various forest tribes have united to form the massive Rasgula Conferderay to check the empire’s advance. Finally, to the East, the Realm of the Rotten appears a far too advance of a power to contest with. However, even against it, a war may come soon.

 

Vaukala Dominion

By Spaghetti Moe

Race: Vaukala

Government: Theocratic Oligarchy

Economy: Industry, trading, mining

Motto: In Memory’s Forge, We Sail Towards the Dawn of Ascension.

Population: 1 million

Weaving together ancient traditions, technological reverence, and a hierarchy shaped by both memory and nanomachines is a faction known as the Vaukala. Ancient and rooted in the depths of the Ark, the Vaukala society has evolved into a rigid caste-based system.

At the pinnacle of their dominion are Those Who Remember, immobile elders and shrewd traders, holding the collective memories and histories of the Vaukala. Leadership among them emerges through a disorganized democracy, where younger members ascend to guide discussions and represent their people. The death of a member results in a communal consumption of their entire body, a ritualistic act sustaining the warren or crew.

Those Who Hunt, colloquially known as the Night Merchants of Kell, embody the diplomatic face of the Vaukala. Steering seafaring endeavors and trade negotiations, they navigate the Great Expanse, seeking technology and forging alliances. Their role extends to leadership at sea, and their expeditions bring back both resources and the potential for ascending the caste hierarchy.

Those Who Create form the skilled worker class, contributing expertise in medicine, craftsmanship, and other specialized fields. While lacking voting rights, they occasionally accompany merchants on expeditions, reinforcing the dominion’s functionality.

Meanwhile, Those Who Toil, the populous laborers, engage in mining, fishing, and farming, contributing to the sustenance and prosperity of Vaukala communities.

The Vaukala Dominion, characterized by its small-town dynamics, thrives on communal cooperation, with internal conflicts rare due to shared objectives. Nor can it be said that conflicts with other surface factions are common either. The Vaukala tend to keep their contact minimal with the surface world and prefer diplomacy to courting actual war.

 

Konductors ov Cekrets

By Dupers13

Race: Human

Government: Tribal Dictatorship

Economy: Hunting, trading

Motto: In a mighty world, mightier

Population: 43,000

The Dread Woods are home to considered among the most dangerous regions of an already dangerous continent. Yet, even here, sapient societies manage to eke out a living.

The Konductors are one such people. Though having some striking phenotypical differences compared to base humans, they are still genetically similar to be classified as the same species, unlike other off-shoots such as the Thyrs.

Though socially primitive, they have managed to thrive and have even begun the process of building a kingdom in this region. This is all thanks to one great discovery stumbled upon by their forefathers.

Originally, one of many nomadic groups that wandered and warred in the Ashen Wastes, the tribe is said to have migrated to the forests up north on some unknown date.

There they discovered caches of lost technology unrivaled by any fielded by societies in the present day. They settled down with the technology in the middle of these woods, learning how to use them and protect themselves from invading tribes and predators. So far, few adversaries have managed to match their strengths

The Konductors follow a religion known as Teknologeeisim. They believed that their god had granted them these technologies and taught them how to use them until he was put into hiding by their enemies. Each Konductor is trained as a warrior from an early age, making their whole society prepare for inbashon – the day in which they get revenge for their one god.

 

The Grafters

By Netherportal11

Race: Kuni

Government: Tribal Council

Economy: Mining, trade, agriculture

Motto: Unity in Flesh, Strength in Sacrifice

Population: 354,000

In the harsh expanse of the Ashen Wastes, the Grafter civilization thrives amidst scarcity and danger. Composed of various nomadic tribes of the desert-adapted Kuni, their unity was forged by the discovery of the Godgrafter, a lost relic capable of fusing bodies together. Through sacrifice and dark experimentation, the first god, Sobek, emerged, setting the stage for the rise of the Grafters.

At present, the Grafters are a formidable society, their bodies twisted amalgamations of flesh and limb. Fleshgrafting is both an art and a necessity, allowing Grafters to absorb bodies for sustenance and strength. The pursuit of greater body counts fuels their culture, with aspirations of ascending to godhood driving many.

At the helm of Grafter society stand their living gods: Sobek, Gurogorne, Neith, and Arogast. Each embodies different aspects of power, from fertility to warfare, knowledge, and strength. Their influence shapes the political landscape, though governance remains decentralized under a tribal council structure.

 

Realm of the Rotten

By ScifiPug

Race: Various

Government: Constitution Monarchy

Economy: Industry, cultural exports

Population: Undetermined

Motto: Ephemeral echoes, eternal cycles

Rot is a partially underwater city-state on the shattered archipelago. It is composed of a society that reveres death and decay. Its residents, The Rotten, compose a variety of diaspora from across the universe (mostly human, shifter, and Nokk) all defined by their adherence to the ideology of Rot.

Though they technically qualify as a constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected council, their many royal families are better described as inbred luxury livestock famed for their supposed clairvoyance. This arose from a combination of human and shifter ideology, of a divinely appointed dreamer given the necessary vision to rule. However, after the ruthless oligarchy (referred to as the Bloat) was overthrown and a more egalitarian government was in the works, they still believed in royal visions and exploited that loophole.

Human royalty has their eye sockets filled with genetically manipulated botfly larvae that spend their whole life dormant in human flesh and send specialized hallucinatory neurotransmitters to their brain genome. These give them surreal visions and they become more detached from reality as they forget what it is like to see. The Nokk royal families once having supposedly rediscovered their true form and established supremacy over the resident shifters have been bred into nearly homogenous lumps with many defective and hypertrophied zooids, and are regularly harvested for gonozooids and gametes for artificial breeding.

Humans are the most abundant residents of Rot with their visibly short lifespans and permanent deaths, they have come to play an important role in the development of Rot, both as a state and as an idea. Rotten tales and ideologies are so much more meaningful to them due to their mortality. Rotten humans often have blotchy skin with inconsistent expression of melanin and other pigments that they consider attractive. They find it reminiscent of death and peeling, decaying flesh.

The other populous residents, the Shifters do not see death in the same catastrophic manner humans do, being modular colonial organisms that sequentially lose zooids but still maintain their collective for millennia. Their philosophies were also crucial to the development of Rot, especially during the Bloat and the revolution that tore it down, the Rupture. Their biotechnology has been indispensable to Rotten livelihood, and the development of human biotechnology, alloying large swaths off the coast of the shattered archipelago for growing and cultivating various cells and organisms.

The last major group, the Nokk, still remains at odds with the shifters even in Rot, for their past sins. The Nokk are skeptical people who pride themselves in only believing hard empirical evidence and science. Like other Rotten, they scoff at the idea of souls and spirits and embrace the flesh, traditional Nokk are very focused on returning to a bygone Kallolian golden age and rediscovering their True Form. However many less socially conservative Nokk have been highly aberrant and deviant, experimenting with wildly different body plans and configurations that are just as functional and efficient as the supposedly superior  True Form. They believe trying to narrow and construct themselves into a bygone true form is flawed. Traditionally resembling the True Form has been a status symbol among Rotten Nokk, but now deviating wildly from it is a badge of honor.

Creation myths state that their great city was created when a gargantuan cetacean god-creature, the Leviathan, died and created a fall in which scavengers, composters, and decomposers thrived. Such biomass and biodiversity allowed people to establish a settlement and feast off the rotten flesh and compost eventually becoming the city of Rot.  Another prominent figure is the Megalodon, a gigantic marine Kauai often depicted as a giant lamnid shark or sometimes a shifter-like creature who was the  Leviathan’s nemesis and possibly its killer. Rotten rarely believes in souls or anything resembling Cartesian dualism, instead believing life is footed in flesh, soil, and fertile biomass. However, many humans and shifters believe in dream visions. The Rotten does not believe in purging, purifying, or sterilizing in any non-medical context – let their lives rot, they believe, for entropy is the essence of existence.

 

Necrolyphic Empire

By Sir Hanroq

Race: 4.5 million

Government: Feudal Empire

Economy: Agriculture, trade, craft industry

Motto: Embrace the Daring, Bow to Change

What is at present referred to as the Necrolyphic Empire stands as only a shadow of a once far mightier realm. Still, it stands strong and has been standing strong for centuries. Their society revolves around two main components: necromancy and biotechnology.

As such, the Necrolyphs are undead ghoulish creatures still sentient and living for centuries after their “death.” Despite this, they still have an intact biology. Their organs are still intact and they follow a regular heterotrophic sort of nutrition. Through biotechnology and genetic engineering, they have bred out almost all evolutionary disadvantages and they function optimally even after their relative death. In some other cases, biotechnology has taken over, with communities like Paladins essentially being Necrolyphs stuffed in large mechanical suits.

Necrolyphs have discovered the use of Vindus, a somewhat biological mineral to create Paladins, large and hulking biomachines that originally were created as means of prolonging Necrolyphic life even further than the hundreds. However, as their special culture has expanded and grown, means have been discovered to create Paladin suits even for “young” Necrolyphs.

The Necrolyphs’ provinces are divided based on clusters of islands. There are 5 provinces in total: Pyronium, Ispharos, Ihutsa, Merumetsu, and Imperia. Each province has its own unique culture and history. Each Province has a legion of army units— the exact number varies. The soldiers can range from rigorously trained war-masters to terrified, expendable frontline chargers.

A core feature of Necrolyphic society is its strong environmentalism. This was a major reason why they preferred biotechnology instead of industrialism. Even their industrial-looking mechanical suits are made using biotechnology, with most to all of their materials being biologically procured instead of minerally sourced.

 

 

 

 

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