Atlas Elyden #7 - Laaskha

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Second of the territories annexed by the Korachani empire following the Archpotentate Malichar’s rise to power, Laaskha was then and remains now a militant culture famed for its unique tradition of employing spirithosts in battle. In their most basic form, spirithosts are artificially-maintained bodies imbued with the spirits of great past generals, allowing them to impart their wisdom to those in the present. So important were the spirithosts in their culture that a great hall, still standing, was constructed to house both the vessels and the spirits. There, in the Temple of the Spirithosts, they are venerated as great cultural heroes and champions of the Laaskhan people.

But Laaskha is more than the followers of these millennia-old champions. It is a land of borders - to the west, beyond the Gulf of Skaros, are foreign lands without the Korachani empire. It is a land of many people - lascar, Korachani, Vaalkan, Almagesti - all mingle in its cities. It is a land whose people, disparate as they may be, are united by belief (faith in the Church of the Machine is absolute and its ancestral god, the seven-armed martial deity Seithenyn, was successfully converted into a major saint of the Church of the Machine long ago) and a hard-working nature.

That hard-working nature was put to the test when, early in the fourth millennium RM, it became apparent that the oceans of Elyden were slowly drying up. Inch-by-inch, the coastline was expanding, leaving coastal settlements surrounded by mudflats that allowed sea access only during high-tide. Over centuries even the tides could not rescue such cities from becoming land-locked. Some cities were relocated at great cost, others had new ports built closer to the new coastlines. Still others toiled to deepen their harbours, but the fate of such cities was inevitable. The Laaskhans relocated and rebuilt many times over the past centuries, and the ruins of abandoned cities pepper the land, in some places over a hundred miles from the present coastline. Such cities might be forgotten by other nations, but the Laaskhans look at them as reminders of their past and the dedication that marks them as Laaskhans.