Quote Originally Posted by Kythia View Post
Crossposted from recruitment as I'm not sure I put it in the right place:

Faction Name The Magaramach


Spoiler: Summary
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Leader: The Leviation
(Wait to roll until approved)
Diplomacy:
Military:
Economy:
Faith:
Intrigue:
(Link to the post containing your rolls.)

Capital Region: The Magaramachi Salination (outsiders), Home (internally) (ideally region 19, anything with brackish borders for preference)
Resources: Most Magaramachi aren't really able to understand the concept of trade but they do understand the concept of "if I do this, you do that" in the same way that a dog does. With a bit of effort and a fair amount of sweet, high-calorie foods, smaller Magaramachi can be lured and somewhat domesticated into a supply of Labour by more intelligent races. They can't handle complicated jobs and require constant oversight but their raw strength ad lack of need for sleep makes them equivalent to entire work crews when it comes to infrastructure projects and the like.

The sweet food is an essential part of that process though; the Magaramachi sweet tooth is all encompassing. Not to say the Magaramachi salination is free of such treats: theres a small silver and blue fish that they devour by the handful and a particular reddy green algae rewards those willing to travel to the surface. But there's not, and in fact can never be, enough Sweet Foods for the population's liking.

Holy Sites:
  • Sharprock: Open.
    Technically a particularly hard coral but sharper minds than the Magaramachi could be forgiven for thinking it was rock. This large reef towards the north of the Salination is deadly within seconds to anything large enough not to be able to avoid brushing up against it. It's easily sharp enough to penetrate Magaramachi scales or similar plating and strong enough to make removing parts to use a weopans dangerous. The Magaramachi give the area a wide berth and those intelligent enough to think such abstract thoughts view it as a place of death and terror, an eternal punishment for anyone smaller than them.
  • The Breeding Gyre: Open
    At the confluence of several major currents, the water is whipped into unpredictable whirls and eddies and something about the ever changing touch of the waters drives the Magaramachi into a frenzy of reproduction and violence. This place is both the major source of Magaramachi young and the major check on their population as individuals make their way there to fight one another, feed from one another and do other things beginning with "F" to one another. They stay there in an orgy of violence and other things until dead or too weak to continue. While it may seem hellish, the smarter ones view it as their (eventual) eternal reward for being so incredible and large - though of course in their dim imagination they win every encounter and grow bigger and stronger with each one.
  • Leviathan's Home: Leviathan is the boss
    An area of the salination. Not particularly salty but not particularly not-salty. Not overly blessed with food but not too barren. Not too this, but not totally un-this. It's sole distinguishing feature is its the area Leviathan has called her own. She half swims, have floats through this area, an occasional flick of her tail driving her towards the males she has domesticated over here or a passing shoal of fish over there. Periodically - weekly? on average? - a challenger not bright enough to recongise how large and fantastic she is enters the area to be destroyed in a brief but bloody encounter. Their half eaten corpse slowly sinks to the bottom to be devoured by the mudscum who are finding this area to be a nirvana.

Faction Support:
  • Aristocratic: Self
  • Clerical: Open
  • Mercantile: Open

Starting tech: Choose one (or none) of:
  • Supernatic Propagation - The surface of the water is a dangerous and often hostile place, making so-called 'dry' bioproductivity a risky proposition, but with the right tools and personnel, engineered life can flourish there too.



Spoiler: Geography
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The Magaramachi Salination is an unusually salty region of tropical waters containing the confluence of a few major ocean currents. It's a relatively shallow area with only a few rifts leading to deeper area, the majority of the region extends only a hundred or so feet down before one meets three or four feet of thick viscous mud. The bottom mud is the domain of the mudscum - semi-intelligent flat fish who live in packs and eat any flesh that makes it's way down there: their sharp teeth are effective at making sure that most things that come down are sufficiently dead to be eaten straight away regardless of how it landed but Magaramachi scales and similar carapaces need to be left to soften in the mildly corrosive mud for a few days.

Above that various shoals of fish, collectively known as deepfish, swim. Eating particulate matter and eventually dying and falling to feed the mudscum they are actually, though noone has noticed, the main driver of the region's enhanced salinity due to their highly saline skeletons eventually degrading.

Above that, the floating Magaramachi and various shoals of fish collectively called the highfish. Some of these are highly attractive to the Magaramachi and an unchecked explosion in Magaramachi numbers wuld likely lead to their extinction, with as yet unknown effects on the local ecosystem.

Above that, the surface. Clouds of colourful algae cover most of the surface gaining energy from the salts in the water and eventually dying and falling to be eaten by fish.

The algae covering most of the surface means there are few photosynthesising plants in the region as the waters are darker than one might expect given their depth.


Spoiler: People
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Picture a crocodile. Remove those parts of its head that aren't mouth and make them mouth - a long body ending in powerful jaws. (The brain, should you care, goes backwards to near the stomach. The eyes are lost due to the darker waters, replace them with electrochemical sensors inside the mouth and a tongue sensitive to minute currents in the water. Nostrils are lost to gills shielded by slightly thinner scales). Now thicken the scales and up the musculature. You're picturing a Magaramachon.

They hatch from eggs at about a foot long and grow rapidly until about five feet, slower after that though rate of growtth is highly dependant on food availability. Magaramachi are biologically immortal and grow throughout their entire life, becoming stronger and more intelligent as they do, until they meet a violent end or, less commonly, succumb to starvation or disease. The bulk, those smaller than about six feet, are barely intelligent - smarter than a dumb dog, dumber than a smart one. Once they pass around six feet they start getting progressively smarter with no theoretical upper limit. The Magaramachi don't keep records themselves but records from their neighbours talk about one who reached thirty eight feet and was able to make substantial contributions to the world's knowledge - it's entirely possible that algae propogation was invented or at least substantially improved by them. Reaching such a size would have taken centuries though and as their body grows so does their food needs; Megaramachi of that size invariably starve to death.

Magaramachi society is entirely focused around size, and as size grows so does ego. Once one is large enough to have a concept of "myself" and "not myself" they inevitably come to the only sensible conclusion - that they are the greatest of all Magaramachi, that their smaller cousins are suitable only for training to bring them food and that their larger brethren (who attained such a size only through pure luck) must be brought down and eaten. The very largest, fifteen foot plus, are capable of understanding that not everything feels that way and acting as if they are not the greatest and most perfect of all things under the sea, but the fact that they can pretend not to think it doesn't mean they don't think it. Diplomacy is possible but goes much smoother if every so often the other party remarks on how large and incredible the Magaramachon is, how they are truly the greatest of all Magaramachi and how they will inevitably grow larger still.

Magaramachi females are perhaps slightly larger than males on average but not so much as to be an infallible guide. Magaramchi are hatched from eggs as they fall, those infants that don't hatch in time are eaten by mudscum as the eggs hit the bottom and the mother swims away unconcerned. Magaramchi fmales are capable of multiple simoultaneous pregnancies from multiple partners (or the same partner multiple times) - three or four concurrent pregnancies is common and seven or eight is a relatively routine occurance (akin to triplets in human society)

Magaramachon society, such as it is, is composed of several distinct groups under the leadership of the largest, the group being precisely as big as the leader can get away with. At any time the Salination is home to around twenty or thirty such groups in a constant state of war as each individual leader seeks to redress whatever cosmic wrong has happened to allow Magaramachi who aren't them to have any influence. Currently the largest, by quite some way, is the twenty three foot female who calls herself (or, more likely, allows others to call her) Leviathan - Magaramachi lrge enough to have names tend to have names like that: "Giant", "Huge", "Enormous", etc. The exception is those too cowed by a larger leader to have set up on their own who take/are given deprecating names like "Tiny" or "Small" which adds more fuel to their sullen plotting and scheming against their leader - until, of course, that breaks into a frenzy of teeth and claws when a challenge is made.

Algae plays a huge part in the diet of the smaller Magaramachi and smaller, non-intelligent, ones will instinctively "farm" the more desirable crops. Spreading clumps out for more growth, eating competing blooms etc. As one grows larger, this task becomes devolved to those smaller ones you've brought under your sway but becomes likewise more efficient with techniques such as crop splicing, crop rotation and selective breeding being widely known. These techniques have also been used on a species of large fish (called the "highest fish") that lives much of its life floating face down on the surface and, with much less success, on the mudscum below. Magaramachi are far more adept at farming the surface than the floor.


Spoiler: Faith
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Each Magaramachi intelligent enough to consider the issue of faith follows a religion at once unique to itself and indistinguishable from every other Magaramachi. It can be broudly summed up as "<Insert name here> is the best" or "<Insert name here> is the biggest". Tenets are simple. <Insert name here> is the pinnacle of the Magaramachi race. Those it has cowed into following it have made the only sensible decision based on a) how tiny and insignifcent they are versus b) how huge and awesome he is.
Those larger are living on borrowed time until they are inevitably challenged and eaten, the calaries from their body feeding <Insert name here> and being another step on their eventual and utterly guaranteed path to becoming the size of the entire planet and then eating the planet. It's unclear what would happen after that.
No worries! I'll be putting up a new recruitment thread later today with updated maps and locations. For now I put a response for you in the current Recruitment Thread. Thanks for dropping in an application! The Magaramachi are really interesting!