1) Iron Horde
2) The City of the Queen in Red
3) The Ziggurat Cities of Hi
4) Gorgossos
5) And it’s Slave Cities
6) The Land of the Cotton Kings
7) The Mountain Clans
8) The Kingdom of Laurel
10) The City of the Masked Kings
11) The Green Tribes
12) The Saintly City
13) The First Men
14) The Sledwalkers
15) The Tibimen
16) The Kwa Rodom d’Bec
18) The Rust Islands
19) The Kwa Rodom D’ilnor
20) The Kwa Rodom D’ilsu
21) Millermen
22) The Islands of Hooz
23) The Lakemen
24) The Aurelai League
Consider, then, the fall of the Sorcerer Kings of Ancient Times.
The men of yore were a great people, standing proud above the world. With their noble sorceries, they raised great cities of Iron and glass from the earth, chained the demons of the earth and forests with their great black chains, many of which still crisscross the land, and even conversed with the stars themselves, learning of the Elder wisdoms. Every man and child enjoyed lives akin to that of kins.
Jealously did the vile serpent Petro, he of smoke and poison, lust after the works of man, but in its vile cunning it knew that they were beyond his clawing grasp. And so the demon approached the Black King, the king of all men. Never before had a more noble man, a wiser man, ruled. Thrice, the serpent came, promising riches, knowledge, and power, and thrice the Black King sent him away.
And so the serpent slipped into the King's White Gleaming Palace, darting from shadow to shadow, before coming to the oval room of the Black King's daughters. Rearing over them, he breathed a portion of his noxious self out. The foul miasma coiled, like an oily black smoke, slipping into the lungs of the two girls.
Where before there had been two girls full of life and joy and beauty now lay two girls wasting away, sickly and pale. No ball could bring more than a thin, wispy smile to their face, no song could move their feet for more than a few steps. The Black King despaired, calling for doctors from all over the globe, but none could lift the curse upon the two girls.
Finally, the Serpent returned, offering to lift the curse if only the King would takehis counsel. Despairing, the king accepted, and his daughters were returned to their lovely selves, and the seeds of the downfall of man were laid.
From then on, all the works of man were tainted by the foul magics of the Serpent, and slowly it eroded the chains that man had put on the demons of the world. As man grew more and more powerful upon the back of the forbidden knowledge they now knew, so to did evil forces of the world prepare to take them down.
Many of the City-Weavers were corrupted by the subtle whispers of demons, and they worked against their brothers in secret, weaving enchantments that would free Petro's mother, the greatest of the Primeval Serpents, from it's icy prison. Of the men unwittingly sworn to Serpent was the Black King, who, with his greatest mastery of the arcane secrets, was named the Witch King. From his steely throne, he turned the magics of mankind against itself.
And so were the works of Mankind undone, in a single day and a single night, she broke her chains, and with Petro and his kin disease and famine and war at her side, consumed the flesh of the cities of man in a great wave. When the waters receded, not one man in a million remained alive.
But as great evil rose, so did a great good. The Witch King, who was once the wisest of all men, had born daughters, and they had born sons. Taking up the ancient weapons of their line, they found and brought heroes from all around the earth. Expending the last magics of the earth, they slew Petro and his Mother, and cut Disease and Famine into pieces so that alone they could not threaten mankind again. Together, they stood against the Witch King, and together they tore down his White Palace, and together they slew him. As the last of the magics of this earth faded, so did the heroes, laying down their swords and passing into the beyond, till such time as they are needed again.
- Excerpt from Lessons in Sin, Book Of The Years.
…Of Foul Gorgossos and its slave cities Alar, Hala, and Deme, the less said the better, though every man should know of the dangers of those waters. Any taken alive is brought to teeming slave pits where cruel masters take the vilest of pleasures upon the unwilling. The luckiest, it is said, are brought to the mines or sold to the Cotton Kings, where they are worked to death, for the fate of those who remain in the cities is too horrid to countenance.
Gorgossos, it is said, is the only place that some of the sorceries of the ancients still exist, brought there by the Necromancers who served the Witch King after his fall, and it is within its blood soaked halls that the darkest empire known to man was created. Seven Hundred years ago the triremes of Gorgossos set forth, bearing in their hold wailing slave armies, and by sword and fire and arcane trickery brought the lands of dukusuh and the Mississippi to it's knees, and made the Ziggurat cities of Hi their clients.
Of that bloody empire, only the slave cities and Gorgossos itself still remain. Five hundred years ago, the weight of the Gorgossan Joug grew too heavy and the enslaved rose up in the Aurelei League, and pushed back the bloody wave back to the sea. Only the Cities of Alar, Hala, and Deme, cities who had for so long been slaves, remained to feed the gaping maw that is Gorgossos.
This legacy, this history, is one that is never far from the minds of the Triarchs of Gorgossos, and it is whispered that the foulest of evils are performed on the slaves on the forbidden island in an attempt to create an army that will never revolt. Should that ever happen, the world had best beware.
The City of the Queen in Red, once the Crown Jewel of Gorgossos's domains holds a fraction of the secrets of Gorgossos, but should it's Necromancer Queen turn her gaze outwards, her zealot armies would bath the world in an orgy of slaughter unseen since the fall of the Black King.
I advise any man who intends to sail those seas to carry with them....
-Excerpt from Clouds of Blood, or, a traveler’s guide to the far south.
Of the Mountain Clans, there are the Chia Men, the Red Necks, and the Crowfeet. There are the Tenisy, the Bama, and the Smoke Men. The Eagle walkers and the Scorpions and the Pabs, the Knotted Hairs, the Blackmen, and the Stonemen. All different, and all very proud of their differences. They fight and kill each other over this difference, but will unite against the Cotton Kings should they dare to look to them.
- Of the Mountain Men, Scout Henris Targaris
...Gaze upon the mighty ziggurats of Hi
revel in your filth and look upon us as the sky
Turn with your sails a wing
and weep with the sight of our iron blades....
-War cry of the City of Hi, Circa 573 A.G.
...The Wildmen of the North are distinct only in the differences of their cawing languages and the weapons they bring to bear in their eternal war. The Tibimen, at least, speak the heathen tongue of the Kwa Kingdom, which is closer to the tongue of proper men than that of the Sledwalkers and the First Men...
... The Sledwalkers have an unnatural connection with their dogs, eating with them, sleeping with them, and, rumor says, whelping their pups on them...
... All the Wildmen of the North are barbarians, strong, stupid, and unworthy of anything but serving our great kings as anything but sworn guards. Exploiting their primitive code of Honor would bind them to your service.
Chikita Masala speaking to King Ohan III of the Hi City of Lews
I am High Pwezant Illum the Great, Ruler of all the lands of Mercia from sea to shining sea, ruling as the great Pwezant of old did. From the brackish seas of the west to the Eastern forest, from the cliff cities of the south to the icebound wastes of the north, all falls under the domain of the Iron Throne. Bend the Knee, and you may serve as king, resist, and watch as your cities are put to the torch and your wives and daughters made into my whores...
... The Iron Horde will stop only when there is no more land to conquer and no more men to serve me...
- Proclamation from Pwezant Illum the Great before his sack of the Lakeman city of Iwa
“...You’ve bought me a drink, I tell ya a story. That’s how it works. I aint gonna take no for an answer. I’ma tell you about the time we sailed clear up the great bay, past them big ol’ stone mountains and into the lakes of the north. Well, I call em lakes, but, truth, they’re big, like the sea.
They talk funny up there, not like you and me and civilized folks, but with some language that’s full of sounds no normal tongue should make. We set into port in the Kwa Kingdoms, but the capn’t had a string o’ bad luck, n’ nobody would take our cargo till we got to the tipymost point of the kingdoms there. City by the name of o’ Fandurbil, and some fat fuck of a merchant comes aboard and tells the cap’n he’ll buy the entire stock, and give us shit what to take home after... ifn’t only the capn’t does a thing for him.
Now, the capn’t were a good man, but not the sharpest sword in the bunch, but even he knew this seemed off, but profits were profits, and his da, who owned the ships, had made it right clear that his son had best come home with riches or not come home at all, so he listened to the fat fuck.
Turns out the fat fuck says one of his ships went aground off some hellish islands even more north, where the cold starts to get real, the Rust Islands, he says. We’s to get that cargo and brings it back. Locals told us stories of ghosts, and men who walk with them‘n the broken ruins of ancient-man’s cities, you know, from back when the world was good.
The men start to grumble, right? Sailors are a superstitious lot, but the Capn’t, he’s smelled the stench of gold, and nothing’s gonna stop him now, ‘specially not the stories of superstitious fucks.
So, he says, all we gots to do is sail for a day north, pick up some cargo, and sail back.
Seems simple, right? Well, capn’t was so sure too. We sailed our ship right up to where the fat fuck said his ship runs aground. Fog’s all around, we’re sailing as slow as we can, can’t see shit in the pea soup in the air. No wind t’at all, so we start rowin’. Weren’t long before Little Jimmy, he’s the lookout calls out “Ship ahead!”
Capn’t calls for the horns, announce us, but there’s no answer. Horn blows again, but still nothing but dead air. Jimmy calls the all clear, and we keep going, sinews all on edge. Not an hour later, Jimmy calls out “Ship ahead.” Again, Capn’t blows the horns, and again, aint no sound but our oars beating against the surf...
Then, out of the fog ahead o us soar these great big skeletons. An ancient city, rotten away till nothing but it’s Iron Bones stood up over the waves. And, at the top, high above us, something moved...”
- Story heard in a pub in the Southern City of Dunsdun.
The Men of the Green tribes are particularly friendly folk, always happy to have a traveler over for dinner, or, sometimes, FOR dinner...
... The strange gods of the Green Men are capricious, and it is said that there is a thousand gods for every man alive, each with his own goals and whims.
- Of the Green Tribes, Scout Henris Targaris
NO cities on this earth are as strange or elegant as the stately stilt cities of the Lakemen. Perched precariously out amongst the reeds and over the depths, no man may approach save by boat or by swimming, which, naturally, makes conquest of the Lakecities a hardy task.
- A guide to the Cities of the Lakes, Ansel Renols