Navelborne

The Kingdom of Navelborne is a state of The Southeastern Threshold, located on the Plateau of Safe Harbour, where the Great Grass Sea meets the land of Harborhead, overlooking the Flittering Morass to the Northeast. Dominating the plateau, the kingdom’s rulers have little interest in territorial expansion, instead raiding nearby tribes and villages for slaves and loot, or to extract onerous tributes.

Origin

Navelborne’s origins, and the source of its name, are told in a legend commonly sung around local campfires. During the time of the Great Contagion, as nine of every ten mortals in Creation sickened and died, a tribe of the Dphon people sought shelter by ascending the plateau. The inhabitants of the place, themselves suffering greatly, offered up what food and water they felt could be spared, along with the land surrounding the base of their plateau. When the Dphon asked to ascend and settle the plateau itself, the local chiefs protested, crying ‘When we have already given so much in charity, your demands do not cease. Should we now open our navels and build you palaces upon our souls?’ Hearing this, the chief of the Dphon disembowled the assembled chiefs, and had his people build their camp upon their still warm corpses, so it might truly be borne upon their navels.

The people of Navelborn celebrate the moral of this story, and many foreigners state that to know it is to know the nature of the kingdom.

Geography

The Plateau of Safe Harbour rises 1,300ft above the surrounding grasslands, its sides steep cliffs. Only two paths exist to make a reliable ascent from ground level to the top, one in the northeast where a tall waterfall pours down to feed the Flittering Morass. Alongside the waterfall, ancient mudslides and collapses of the sheer cliff face allow travellers to ascend along a well-defended road to reach the summit, the city of Safe Harbour. Though it is the easier ascent, journeying here is rendered difficult by the presence of the Morass below, treacherous ground for caravan and mortal alike. Still, for those hoping to cut through the Morass on the journey between Harborhead and the Great Grass Sea, Safe Harbor lives up to its name as a sheltered stopover, and is home to a large slave market where the warbands of Navelborne sell their captives off to The Guild, the Scarlet Dynasty, and independent traders.

The other ascent to the plateau is located at its opposite end, on the southwestern side. Here, a narrow path zigzags up the cliff face, difficult to ascend for cart or beast of burden (the locals have a large number of slave-porters which can be rented out to those who brought their trade goods to the cliff base in wagons). At the top of the cliff stands the Navel Borne City, capital of Navelborne and home to most of its religious and governmental institutions. By tradition, each time a new king is crowned in Navelborne, he has a new Royal Palace constructed, the palace of the previous king given over to housing bureaucratic offices, embassies, or the temples of honoured gods. Amongst the institutions to inhabit such palaces are the Embassy of the Realm and the Temples of Ahlat, Rabszolga, Bright Spearpoint, and the Immaculate Order.

Though it is located on the edge of the Flittering Morass, the height of the plateau means the population needs worry little about the predations of disease carriers such as the Fly of Torpid Slumber.

Economy

Navelborne is home to many hunters, warriors, and artisans, but despite the grasslands of their plateau being fit for grazing Cattle they do not engage directly in agriculture or herding, instead forcing slaves to till and harvest Wheat and Love Grass . As a visitor will often be told if they ask why it is so, ‘We are hunters. We do not herd.’

However, Navelborne is quite wealthy due to two resources in high demand. The first is Gold, mined by slaves from pits at the center of the plateau. This metal is highly sought across the Grass Sea, which has few sources of it. The second is slaves: the people of Navelborne are slavers as a matter of identity, believing it is their rightful nature to raid other states and peoples for slaves. These raids also bring back loot in the form of food and finished goods, but these merely feed domestic demand, while slaves can be sold for jade and silver, used to buy goods imported from both near and far. The palaces of Navelborne kings are ostentatiously ornamented, and wealthy warband leaders bedeck themselves in fine clothing and jewelry to demonstrate their raiding prowess.

Though their Imperial Monopoly does not extend into the Threshhold, House Cynis controls the largest stake in the Navelborne slave market, exporting the choicest examples (including much-sought Djala) to the slave markets of the Blessed Isle. Cynis dominance has meant The Guild’s presence has been limited, their efforts concentrated in the slave markets of the Port of New Hope to the northeast.

People

The people of Navelborn are nearly all Dphon, black and white striped folk, with foreigners easily picked out from locals. A large population of slaves also resides in the kingdom, most distinguishable easily from their masters, but as Navelborne raiders show no mercy to other Dphon tribes, those Dphon taken as slaves and not sold to foreigners have their foreheads scarred to make hiding impossible should one escape. Like most Dphon, the population of Navelborne favours minimal clothing, strips of leather decorated with colorful feathers to allow full display of their skin stripes, though the wealthy and successful often take up expensive foreign fashions. The people of Navelborne are proud and brutal, exalting their traditions of hunting and raiding for slaves. This makes them a militant culture, where most are warriors used to moving long distances on foot and fighting with shortbow, tiger claw, and boar spear.

The population is organized into groups based around the warband, which consists of male and female warriors, led into battle by a warband leader chosen by popular acclaim (sometimes a powerful warrior, sometimes a charismatic manipulator, sometimes both). The warband is responsible for fighting together to take slaves and loot, paying a tribute tax from its income to the king, while the children, elderly, infirm, and artisan relatives of warband members remain at home living in a village or city block. Warband leaders are also responsible for leading their bands in enforcing the will of the king, acting as judges, juries, and executioners to members of their band… or to foreigners.

Politics

Navelborne is a monarchy, ruled by a king, the Leader of the Great Warband, the Master of a Thousand Raids. When a king dies, the various warbands of Navelborne prepare for the succession, embarking on a month-long raid to gather as much loot and as many captives as they can, and skirmishing with each other to eliminate their most dangerous rivals. At the end of this period, the viceroy (head of government in the kingdom) counts the wealth and captives gathered, and the most successful warband leader is crowned, her takings used to begin construction of a new palace where she will reside.

Officially Navelborne is an ally of the Realm, rather than a satrapy, but this does not mean the land is more independent. Navelborne accepted Realm emissaries in the centuries following the rise of the Scarlet Empress, and while vacationing Dynasts on safari have irked many Threshold states amongst the Navelborne people accomplishments such as participating in slave raids or displaying trophies from amongst the Five Trophies of the Southern Hunt earned Dynastic visitors great respect. Due to internal strife over selection of monarchs, the kingdom turned to these visitors to serve as neutral parties in counting out looted wealth and captives, a relationship which has become more formal as the centuries have worn on.

Today, rather than dispatching a satrap, the Realm (represented by House Cynis) appoints a viceroy who will serve as head of government in the kingdom. Departments and agents of the Thousand Scales see to the collection of taxes and report violatons of royal edicts to native warband leaders, who then mete out appropriate justice.

Relations with Navelborne’s neighbours are poor: Navelborne raids into Harbourhead for slaves and cattle, while Harborhead raids for slaves in turn. The scattered tribes of the surrounding swamps and grasslands are also targets for raids, and fiercer clashes occur with patrols and trade caravans of the Port of New Hope located on the other side of the Flittering Morass, which many in Navelborne consider not just a target for raids but a rival that must be pushed far from their lands.

King: Hadar the Victorious, King of the Navel Borne, Leader of the Great Warband, Master of a Thousand Raids.

Realm Emissary: Cynis Flutesong, Viceroy of the Navel Borne.

Religion

The religious landscape of Navelborne is varied. Though the Realm has had a long presence in the kingdom, Immaculate doctrine is not completely dominant... the local people simply cannot accept that the path to spiritual advancement comes through meditation and dutiful obedience rather than the number of captives you claim in battle. They worship three gods above all others, each having a powerful cult in the kingdom: Ahlat, God ofSouthern War, Bright Spearpoint, God of the Southern Hunt, and Rabszolga, God of Slaves (along with his consort Ystara, God of Trade in Luxury Goods, a more recent addition to that cult).

The people of Navelborne worship Ahlat for power in battle, worship Bright Spearpoint for prey on the hunt, and worship Rabszolga for captives to take back with them. As God of Cattle, Ahlat has attempted the same machinations amongst the people of Navelborne as he has amongst those of Harborhead and elsewhere in the South, to bind the raising of cattle and the raiding ways of Southern war in a perfect harmony of worship rising to his palace in Yu-Shan... however, unlike amongst the Five Peoples to the northwest, in Navelborne these efforts bear little fruit – the Dphon of Navelborne will not raise cattle. While the Hecatomb sacrifice of one hundred cows causes the tribes of Harbourhead to raid each other so as not to kill off their own cattle, it is seen as a divine challenge by the Navelborne, to take as many cattle as they can and enslave all the herders, to celebrate their victory with a hundred hecatombs, gorging on beef served by broken slaves. Navelborne thus becomes an unexpected obstacle for Ahlat’s plans: to link his cattle-herding cults in Harborhead with those in the Great Grass Sea, they must pass through either the deadly Flittering Morass or the lands ranged by the raiders of Navelborne, who have eagerness to sieze cattle but no cows of their own to reward attacks against them.

A potent god such as Ahlat might have overcome this state of affairs, save that the people of Navelborne also granted great worship to Bright Spearpoint, a divinity whom Ahlat had betrayed in times passed. Bright Spearpoint eagerly supported the Navelborne’s wish to enslave herders rather than become them, countering some of the Bull God’s maneuvers in Heaven and joined by Rabszolga, whose nature meant the forceful prayers of the local people had particular resonance. When Ahlat attempted to influence the kingdom by having their armies falter in battle, he found that the Navelborne were in some ways worse than the Immaculates: they prayed to the concept of a Southern war god, not to the individual who demanded cattle rearing in exchange for victories, and when victory was not granted them they prayed to the Southern Censor to find and punish the evil spirit that was interfering with the right action of their war god. Unwilling to risk exposing his schemes to an already-hostile censor, Ahlat stepped back, deeming Navelborne unimportant. His cult remains large but not dominant in the kingdom as he has moved on to more important matters… of course, the Bull God would pounce at opportunity to finally replace these militant hunters with cattle herders should it arise, but his enemies also watch closely for a chance to make him pay for past betrayals.

The cult of Rabszolga in Navelborne is, to those few who might pay attention to such matters, a demonstration of success for the goddess Ystara’s schemes to become wife of the God of Slaves. With blessing and bribe over the past seven centuries, Ystara has emerged in the pantheon of the Slave God as his spouse and consort, thanked with prayer each time a slave is bought or sold. Her own purview has also been expanded as her influence over the cult has grown, and it is her priests which birrthed the local trend of selling slaves to buy foreign luxuries, so warband leaders might demonstrate their prowess by displaying baggy silk garments and heavy golden jewelry. The cult has also encouraged, allied closely with House Cynis, local warbands to seek out as many Djala as possible in the local grasslands, enslaving them for sale on the luxury market as fashionable household accessories.

Source: origin myth drawn from the RL origin story claimed by the West African realm of Dahomey.