"May we have a tour of the lower level?" asked Fanara. I would like to examine the library and any history or information you have on Dragonkin and the Drakelands."
"Why yes, and I can take you to the mess hall and on a tour of the underground medical offices. Also the lower level of the Bastions," Bescaylie replied.
"Great, when can we get started?"
"Immediately, just let me inform the guard."
Bescaylie led the group back down the tower to the lower level where they retraced their steps toward the lower level of a battlement. In that area was the Library, which contained books on a wide variety of topics, from popular fiction to military strategy and theory. Down another hallway was the Archive where books and scrolls filled the shelves. They contained a complete history of the Dragon Legion and the Skyfire Mandate, with a focus on the holdings of the Parapet Mountains, as well as ledgers and records detailing the settlements and inhabitants of the holding of Spurhorn.
Bescaylie then led that party back through the training hall, where some of the crossbowmen and dragon riders were in the middle of a session that Amadeo would have liked to watch.
"Maybe I can catch them again when we come back around and Fanara, Santrel and Milos head to the books," he said hopefully.
The next chamber was the guard post where two pairs of dragonriders and dragonkin, as well as four Dragon Legion crossbowmen greeted Bescaylie and were introduced to the party. Down another long hallway led to the Mess Hall, large hall filled with long tables and bench seating. To the north another large chamber contained a number of tables and seating for both Triaxians and dragonkin. Members of Spurhorn's garrison were congregated here, maintaining their gear, playing games, or just relaxing and socializing.
Further to the west was the lowest level of the western bastion, Bescaylie explained. This room held ammunition for the siege engines atop the bastion's roof, as well as additional weapons for Spurhorn's defenders. Circular stairs headed upwards into the tower itself. To the north were the barracks and then east led to the chambers of the servants. Continuing the party came to the Infirmary where Priests of Apsu cared for wounded soldiers.
The next chamber was entered with reverence by Bescaylie. A large statue of a dragon in flight dominated this small shrine dedicated to Apsu the Waybringer, god of the metallic dragons. Apsu is the
patron deity of the Dragon Legion, and many legionaries and dragonkin are his faithful followers Bescaylie explained. Four priests of Apsu were tending the chapel.
Almost finished Bescaylie led the party to the Hall of Remembrance, where paintings, plaques, and
small statues honored past heroes of the Dragon Legion. Next the party entered the Assembly Hall where dragonriders and dragonkin of the Dragon Legion assemble below the flight ramp for sorties out of Spurhorn's central keep.
Finding the ancient, almost blind Jarilne in her office, Casia inquired about the capabilities of the Ice Seers. She learned that they were somewhat equivalent to a Goliaron oracle but with some additional offense skills to go with healing and religious aspects. Casia asked about the typical wizard or arcane spell abilities of Golarion but this seemed to be lacking on Triaxus, at least among the Dragon Legion of the Skyfire Mandate.
Fanara and Santrel learned about he capabilities of the Dragonkin. Each color has a breath weapon of some element along with the ability to use weapons and other skills. Each is also immune to Paralysis and Sleep along with their own breath weapon type.
In the archive Fanara and Santrel studied the historical books and scrolls. In addition to the general Drakelands vs. Skyfire Mandate history related by Bescaylie was more information on the erratic orbit of Tiraxus and its seasons they found some interesting ecological descriptions and more on the other continents of Tiraxus.
Triaxus's unique environment has given rise to two distinct ecosystems. While the physiology of a few creatures, including the Triaxians, shifts and adapts to the changing environment, most plants and animals are ascendant during only one season, going dormant or dying back to a tiny minimum population during the other. Such survival methods vary wildly. Some organisms bury eggs or seeds deep in the soil that are programmed not to hatch or sprout until the favorable season has returned, while sufficiently long-lived creatures might hide and hibernate. Some winter-adapted creatures like the fire-horned acelope retreat to snowy mountaintops and polar regions during the summer, while the last of the sun-loving karbalands mate and then worm their way into stony niches to die, leaving their gestating young to gnaw their way out of the corpses over the course of decades.
At the moment, the grassy prairies and deep jungles of summer are only a distant memory on Triaxus, as are its summer residents-the great silver hunting cats, leechbats, stilt-runners, porabees, echo moles, and so on. In their place are the hard-edged predators of winter-giant furred insects whose chittering mandibles can tear a person in half, terrifying frost worms , and the snowbirds whose beaks can punch through plate armor. Some land based herbivores manage to subsist on the snowmoss, pale fungi, and hardy icefruit trees that grow along the glaciers and frost- choked fields and taiga, yet in the winter the great lakes and seas are a far better source of food, as aquatic life proceeds with only minimal changes beneath the bergs and ice sheets. Those Winterborn Triaxians who don't rely on ice-fishing, whaling, sharking, and other coastal pursuits often raise herd animals like the stringy, goatlike shabals for their blood and milk, working hard to protect them from the moonflowers, stormghosts, iceshelled gammenores, and psychically gabbling moyeyes who would happily take such easy prey.
Icy forests make up a large part of the winter landscape, and Triaxus's trees have various ways of coping with the extreme winters. Some, such as the great conifers, simply shrug it off and change hardly at all. Others lose their leaves and go dormant, sometimes actively expanding their capillaries and allowing their sap to freeze solid, turning themselves into frozen sculptures that thaw in the summer. Those that don't run the risk of exploding as their sap freezes inside the wood-the smooth-baled burst tree actually does so intentionally, filling every branch with sap as the temperature cools and using the resulting explosions to spread its seeds, and turning its groves into shrapnel-filled deathtraps. Still other trees have even stranger variations, such as long-rooted dapoya, which lifts itself above snows and floods like a mangrove, and the gora, whose thin summer trunk is wrapped in great scales of flexible fibrous bark, used by locals for everything from making twine and baskets to shingling houses and crafting armor.
One of the most common domesticated animals in the Skyfire Mandate and other portions of the northern continents is the wolliped. This creature is shaped somewhat like an eight-legged alpaca with two large, downward- curving tusks. Its copious fur keeps it warm in the winter and sheds to a length of just a few inches in the summer, with the discarded wool either felted or spun and woven to make most of the cloth in the region. In addition to its utility in textile production, the docile wolliped is also used as both beast of burden and steed, with ground based cavalry often riding armored wollipeds into battle. Though wolliped tusks are normally used to break through ice or churn tough ground, the creatures also employ them for self- defense and mating displays-a battle-trained wolliped can inflict horrific damage on the battlefield.
In addition to the Drakelands and the Skyfire Mandate, there are several major populated regions of Triaxus.
Allied Territories: Spanning the entire continent of Ora, this region -- often simply called "the Territories" -- is a riot of nations both small and large, including monarchies, theocracies, democracies, and more. Once these nations struggled against each other in a political free-for-all, yet the first great wars against the dragons of the Drakelands drove them to ally into a single federated unit in order to ensure that humanoids would survive as anything more than just a slave race. After the great victories of the War of Heroes and the establishment of the Skyfire Mandate, however, the dragons became a less immediate threat, and old rivalries began to splinter the bonds of blood and fellowship. Today, the Allied Territories are a union in name only, frequently engaging in border skirmishes and even absorbing each other completely, while still paying lip service to the humanoid alliance of old. Should the dragons ever make another significant push into their continent, however, it's likely that such feuds would quickly be mended, and all spears turned outward.
The composition of the Allied Territories is always in flux, particularly as portions of their population are driven south from the poles in winter or drawn north in summer, but of the hundreds of nations and free cities that spring up periodically, a few are particularly well established, having survived many seasonal cycles. The riders of Aylok, for instance, hold fertile plains and are widely notorious for breeding the best cavalry. Zo, the Port of a Thousand Ships, boasts markets where anything can be found, and in winter maintains magically melted shipping lanes. Prieta, the Scholar's Paradise, values learning above all, and even the basest of its mercenaries seek to improve their minds. And everyone in the Territories has heard of Kamora, the wealthy gateway to the Uchorae Jungle, whose residents pay for their nation's bounty by constantly defending their high-walled cities from vampiric predators.
Ning: An island continent separated from its neighbors by the wide Sephorian Sea, the Immortal Suzerainty of Ning is an independent empire rarely challenged by the armies of other nations. Nevertheless, the empire maintains a vast standing army that it uses to protect the countless rural villages strewn across its landscape from the many predators-both bestial and dangerously intelligent that dwell within the forests and valleys of the continent's interior. Many of these communities are reachable only by treacherous roads through sharp-toothed mountains and deep jungles, and thus one of the first things constructed in any new settlement is its shelterstone, a ziggurat- shaped fortress designed to house citizens during invasions by monsters, and which usually contains some magical means of contacting the empire's military for help.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Ning's culture is its focus on social station, honor, and custom. Ruled by the benevolent Immortal Suzerain (a title conferred on each monarch when the previous one dies or abdicates), everyone in the nation, from government officials and nobility down to common farmers, is obsessed with matters of etiquette, and those who flaunt the rules either deliberately or through ignorance - can find themselves treated as invisible by the affronted populace.
Another peculiarity of Ning society is a unique caste called ukara, or "battleflowers." These individuals are elaborately decorated and androgynous warriors who renounce all ties to family, social status, and personal gender in order to compete in ritualized gladiatorial bouts. Those who do well are treated as high nobility, with great houses and powerful merchants competing for the honor of their favor, while those unable to prove their worth after their first year are banished from the major cities forever, forced to spend their lives defending outlying communities.
Sephorian Archipelago: The seas between these several hundred islands are remarkably gentle, allowing travel by canoe in the summer and by walking across mazes of ice floes in the winter. Despite regular trade between them, most of the small island communities maintain their own customs and traditions, with even a few miles between islands creating vast differences in culture. To the more "civilized" nations of the continents, the most interesting aspects of the archipelago are the mysterious cylindrical towers on some of the islands that periodically exhale smoke and, aside from being used as navigational aids, are treated as taboo by the residents. Many of the more fertile islands are also left fallow, for reasons either unremembered or unexplained to outsiders.
DM's Notes: Informational session only.
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