Development Sneak Peek: Tribes of Sur Codex

Hey everyone, hope the first week of the year is going well for you so far!!

Since we're a month out from the CH10 release, I thought it would be a nice preview to show off one of the definitive codex pages that will be added in the new chapter. As the title says, it concerns the Tribes of Sur!!

Excerpt from Founding an Empire as written by High Master Bahoz. Taken from Chapter Five, Becoming Arsurian, one of the chapters assigned to the Crown for mandatory reading by a tutor:

“Since the Arsurian Empire was first founded, more and more tribes in the region moved to gather and settle in larger cities and towns, rather than remain on tribal lands. This was motivated by a range of causes, but at the core of it was one born from the environment.

Much of the tribal lands that encompassed Zerat, Avdin and Penawar had become battlefields, and many villages had been destroyed in the war against Hathura. The harm done to the land was not only physical, but spiritual; in places where many had died, the surrounding land became almost uninhabitable. 

Lingering magic, both from the spirits of those that had passed on as well as the physical damage done to it, became poison to the earth. No crops would grow anywhere in its vicinity. Some places became plagued by ghouls, making it a danger to traverse, let alone live on. Treating the land was not impossible but would take decades of recovery efforts; nature heals its wounds slowly, though with resilience. 

Some of the tribes, who existed largely independently from each other before but fought together in the war, came to the decision to work together to build new homes. Zeratun, the Empire’s capital, is the biggest example of this: it was built with the labor and effort of multiple Surian tribes who cooperated, aided in funds by Crown Ashadūna.

These new homes were initially meant to be a temporary solution to provide shelter while tribal lands were being healed, but gradually became a habit and a preference for many. Over the centuries, the tribal members who came to live in these cities adapted. Tribal background is still a cultural marker, especially when interacting with others from different tribal backgrounds, but it also became part of the greater notion of belonging to a city, and as an extension of that, being a citizen of Arsur. 

Like Zeratun, the cities of Ilwan and Arzo share a very similar history regarding the tribes settled there. Marabad is the only exception, as it was born from the Monarchy of Ardia; among citizens, distinctions are made mainly between Ardian heritage and tribal heritage. Şevan is not included in this consideration, as Hathurian history is an entirely separate subject with its own unique relationship to Arsur, which will be discussed in later chapters.

In contrast, those who continue living on tribal lands consider themselves citizens of Arsur in name only. They pay taxes, but are otherwise self-governing; the stewards of their lands and villages tend to conflict with stewards of larger cities, who are seen as Arsurian rather than tribal. Some tribes have come to consider those who live in the cities as outsiders, while others maintain familial relations with their tribal members; each tribe is very particular in its norms for heritage.

To conclude, the oft-repeated claim that Crown Ashadūna ‘unified’ the tribes of Sur is thus one grounded in a myth of glorification: there was no unification, only a military alliance followed by economic cooperation. In the centuries since, Surian tribal relations have become more complicated than ever before, and tribal fracturing has never been so pervasive as it is now.”

History and politics, my beloved.

Hope this was a fun preview, we're definitely getting into the thick of courtly intrigue with CH10 and gradually filling out all those "Unnamed" codex entries lol.

Until next time 💖