Great Ra'ga

The lands to the south-west of the Gnoll Empire are populated by a race of sentient crabs, the **Ra**, who first appeared around the Prime Bog, a stagnant basin formed through runoff water from the marshes to the north. The rest of these land is mostly tropical jungles and marshes inland, which give way to more temperate plains as one comes closer to the southern coast.

The Ra were still quite primitive when the old wizards built the wall of fire separating them from Squid Peninsula. In the centuries afterwards, the Ra expanded out of the bog and created many small city-kingdoms which constantly fought each other. This period is known as the Old Ra'ga, and at this time the religion of the Ra was centered around a titanic sea serpent supposedly sleeping at the bottom of the Sea of bile. But everything changed when the gnolls came.

The reason Nogar was never invaded by the gnolls is that the great gnoll warchief shifted his focus West, to conquer and devour the Ra, which admittedly are quite delicious. The Old Ra'ga kingdoms were destroyed one after the other by the ravenous gnoll horde, and it seemed like the whole Ra people would be annihilated.

The pleas of the Ra to the sea were answered when a great host of tall men with skin painted red came ashore, armed with golden weapons. These men were fearfully met by the desperate Ra, and they claimed to have come from the land of Thuleas, and island far, far to the north of the world which had once been a beautiful green land, but had over the years transformed into a frozen wasteland. The Thuleans thus migrated south, in search of a new land to settle, and the winds had taken them here.

The Ra warned them to escape, that the land was doomed due to the invasion of the endless, invincible gnoll. But the Thuleans didn't budge, they were here to claim the land and were ready to fight for it. In the great battle that ensued, the prince of the Thuleans, Visha, slew 12,345 gnolls, including the gnoll chief himself.

After the gnoll invasion was repulsed, the Ra embraced the Thuleans as gods. The Thuleans then reorganized Ra society into 8 new kingdoms. This period, which continues to this day, is known as the Great Ra'ga.

The eight Ra'ga are independent from one another, but they share the new culture formed through the mixture of Thulean and Old Ra customs and art. Nowadays, Ra society is divided into 4 castes, the slaves, the labourers, the construction workers and the warrior-kings. The descendants of the Thuleans now live in the island city of U'mer, which serves as the formal capital of the great Ra'ga. The men are an upper caste of priests which even the greatest Ra king wouldn't dare disobey.

Since then the gnolls haven't made any new great invasion to the south-west, only small-sized pirate raids. Though some Thuleans feel that change is coming from the wind up north.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Ra are a species of crab-like humanoids that live in the bogs and swamps of the Crimson Plateau and the surrounding areas. They have been an isolationist species for most of its existence, until the gnoll invasion and the arrival of the legendary thuleans forced them to break their stagnation and develop into somewhat of a modern society. Despite this, they are still quite far apart from the rest of the world, though they are quickly establishing relations with the sea traders of the region.

## Biology

The Ra are hulking figures, easily reaching 2m of height, though their size has to account for their crustacean carapace, which extends from above their head to their tail. The Ra always look like they are hunched, with their shoulders being above their head. They can have up to eight [pairs of] appendages: three pairs of legs, necessary for them to stand upright; three pairs of arms sharp, pointed dactyls; a pair of bigger arms with pseudo-hands; and a pair of great claws, strong enough to cut down tree trunks with them. The many appendages are needed to move around in the incredibly dense waters and grimes of their home, but this leaves them as lumbering, bumbling and very slow if the are outside of the marshes. Their pseudo-hands have only three fingers, and can barely make an opposable movement, which limits its uses. Many say this is the actual reason why it took so long to Ra society to advance beyond their hunter-gatherer state, and why their technology is still considerably backwards, even with the increased contact with the outside world. Their most defining feature is their pair of giant pincers. Full of incredibly dense muscle, they are not only able to cut an adult human in half with ease, but also pummel to dust whatever they somehow aren’t able to slice. The Ra use this claws frequently, both to travel, to open the shells of turtles and oysters that live in the swamps and to defend themselves from the anacondas and the crocodiles living in the area (with a bite so strong it can even pierce the Ras’ shell).

Their outer shell protects most of their body, with the exception of behind the legs and tail, and it is hard enough to be able to stop lances and swords by itself. The Ra have an especially hard carapace around their head and on their back, and it’s shaped in such a way that the Ra can hide their face wholly within their protective shell, though this obviously means they will not be able to see or hear anything while protected. The Ra are not born with a shell: while they are newborns and during most of their childhood, the Ra are near completely exposed, quickly growing a thin shell and shedding it just as fast as it grew. To counter this, the youngsters usually craft armor to wear out of the giant oyster shells, wood planks, rocks, barnacles and pretty much anything that could protect them. This artificial shell is expanded all throughout their childhood, and it’s abandoned right when they reach adulthood and grow their definitive shell.

The Ra’s head have two black protruding eyes, which are not particularly effective. The Ra can only discern the outlines of objects and bodies, and are apparently colorblind. They are sensitive to bioluminescence, but can be sensitive to natural light, hiding their eyes back into their sockets to protect them from excess shine. Their mouth is composed of dozens of moving parts, taking the role of teeth to chew and cut the meat they eat. However, this complex system makes the Ra unable to breathe or exhale through their mouth, and thus their communication is done through their noses. The Ra have big gills at the sides of their faces, as well as at the sides of their torso, easily protected by the carapace if the need arose. They can emit sounds from there, using a wide range of tones and pitches to communicate with each other. They enjoy a great sense of hearing, detecting vibrations through their many antennae, and also through the many sensory organs they have below their tail, which is especially useful when in the murky waters of the swamps.

The Ra are a sexually dimorphic species. The males are considerably bigger than the females, and their right claw is much bigger than their left one (unlike the females’, whose claws are the same size). The males also have different coloration patterns on their shells, which they work as a show of beauty and health. The females are a paler shade of orange altogether, and in general have longer and more dexterous arms.

Ra’s reproduction is oviparous. The female Ra will lay 5-10 eggs and then the male will fertilize them. Ra’s incubation periods are long, about nearly a year, and this makes the females gather together to protect their spawn for the duration of the incubation. The males will then protect the females, attacking any predator that might threaten them and bringing food to the nests. Ra’s lives are very long, nearly 150 years old, but they tend to have a high mortality rate when they are young, due to the many diseases and dangers that lurk in the bogs.

## History

The history of the Ra shines for its stagnation. Whereas around the world empires rose and fell, the Ra stayed in their swamps, living nomadic lives, hunting and gathering whatever food they could for their tribes. Contact with the outside world has existed, mostly in the form of traders and treasure hunters, but in general, the land of the Ra has been left alone. It was simply too uninteresting, with its harsh environment and lack of resources making it a poor choice of colonization. Even when the Khenomeric Empire expanded to the eastern bogs, it didn’t really affect the lives of the Ra much. The khenomeri founded a couple of coastal cities along the area, from where explorers and hunters could try to get the exotic and dangerous fauna of the region, with some small trade happening between the khenomeri and the Ra. And these colonies were quickly abandoned once the Khenomeric Decay set in, with the ruins of the coastal cities long looted and ransacked by bandits or used as bases for pirates.

This state of immobility would change with the arrival of the gnoll. The rise of the Gnoll Empire after the fall of the Khenomeric Empire had become an unstoppable movement, expanding in all directions. The more land the gnolls captured, the more they fed, and the more gnoll they could recruit to their armies. This became a tsunami of bodies, seemingly unable to be stopped. Under the rule of the first Gnoll Emperor, they moved forward, taking as much land as possible, seeking no treasure or glory, but more things to feed their ever growing armies. The bogs of the Ra, in general ignored by the civilized nations of the world, were just as valid of a target as any other for the gnoll. However, this particular campaign would prove different from anything the Gnoll Empire had fought thus far.

First, the gnoll had to advance through the dense swamps and marshes of the land of the Ra. Disease, wild animals and the many natural traps of the region took the lives of hundreds right of the bat, but this did not dent the strength of the gnoll at all. On the contrary, the dead gnoll spawned many gnoll maggots and hyena, which were the first sign the Ra received something was wrong. Trying to find the origin of these strange creatures, the Ra had found the gnoll much earlier than the gnoll had found them. Many tribes advocated for just letting them cross, thinking that either they’d go away or the swamps would finish them off. However, this quickly proved a wrong supposition, as not only they swept the bogs clean of life (threatening many of the oyster fields the Ra depended on) but their numbers kept increasing despite their losses. And what was worse, the gnoll had no compunction about attacking the Ra’s nesting grounds. Without any attempt of diplomacy or even communication, the gnoll jumped on the breeding grounds with glee, sensing easy targets. This would drive the Ra into rage, and soon enough, all tribes were on the war footing. Tens of thousands of Ra moved to the northern borders to stop the assault of this monstrous invader, in a never before seen mobilization of the species. The movement of Ra was so big that it displaced many of the local predators, somehow feeling the impending clash between them and the gnoll.

The battles between the Ra and the gnoll lacked any strategy or subtlety. Both sides keep charging at each other head on, trying to crush them, the Ra with their monstrous strength, the gnoll with sheer numbers and rage. The gnoll had not seen an enemy such as the Ra, and fighting within the bogs and marshes, the gnoll were outmaneuvered all the time. A single Ra was strong enough to rip apart a gnoll with ease, and their armor protected them from the gnolls’ crude weaponry. Simply put, the gnoll could not hurt them, needing the help of ogres to even have the chance of fighting the Ra. Eventually, however, the gnoll became more and more adept at fighting the Ra. They discovered that attacking the weak points of the armor was better that just blunting their swords and maces on the resilient carapaces. This started having an effect, but for every Ra that fell, around 50 gnoll had died or been crippled. The rate of attrition of the gnoll was nothing like they had seen before, and unlike other campaigns, the gnoll simply couldn’t replace the numbers faster, since the land was just as hostile as the Ra themselves. However, the gnolls’ numbers were seemingly without end, killing the Ra through sheer exhaustion, blood loss or drowning them in bodies. And the Ra’s numbers simply weren’t enough to push the gnolls back. Sooner or later, the gnolls would steamroll the Ra, erasing them from their homeland. This was the point when the first thuleans arrived to the swamps.

The mystery of the **thuleans** is something that has become a myth within Ra’s culture. The chronicles of the Ra tell of a group of humans who had reached the Ra’s swamps, for some cosmic coincidence, at the same time as the invasion of the gnoll. Tall, with their skin filled with red tattoos and markings and wielding strange golden weapons, they identified themselves as the men of the land of Thulea. Where was that mythical land of Thulea, once green and fertile but now a frozen cemetery, or what were they doing in the swamp, it is not known. Some historians believe that, in reality, the thuleans were just humans who lived in the old khenomeric colonies, and had been forced into the swamps due to the gnolls’ advance. Others believe that they were some old wizards who had lived in isolation in the lands near the border with the Khenomeric Empire. And some believe that they were merchants and explorers from the south that were in the worst place at the worst time. Whatever the true is, they entered in contact with the Ra. The thuleans had built a ramshackle fort using rotting wood, stones and the bones of the gnoll, and were holding off the attack using arrows, spears and magic. They were going to be overrun when a group of Ra burst in and destroyed the gnoll attacking. Puzzled by the humans’ strategy, the Ra brought the thuleans to their leaders, and they explained that they knew how to fight the gnoll, but they were too few to push them back by themselves. Naturally, the Ra and the thuleans quickly bonded over a shared enemy, and began organizing their counterattack.

The thuleans explained to the Ra many new ways of fighting a war. Instead of pushing head on with great numbers, the thuleans would organize ambushes in the swamps, dividing the gnoll forces and making the Ra appearing from seemingly nowhere, and brutally crushing them with their claws. The thuleans also used many magical spells to aid the Ra in battle, from healing spells to animal invocation, bringing the wild animals of the swamps into a frenzy and sending them against the invaders. The swamps were made deeper, so that the gnoll could not really pass through them, funneling their numbers into more manageable amounts, easily beaten by the Ra. The Ra denied battle to the gnoll, and more and more their forces were scattered in the swamps, where the marshes themselves would take care of the bestial invaders. The gnoll responded the only way they knew: sending more gnoll. The sheer numbers invested in the swamps forced other campaigns to reduce their numbers, slowing down the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Gnoll Empire. In the battle of Oirant in 2.735 ABE, the Ra managed to outflank, surround and destroy nearly a third of the forces of the gnoll, having been set up by the Thuleans to think that it was a weak point of the Ra, a vital breeding center of the crabmen. The remains of the bones of the fallen gnoll were put together to form a mound big enough to be seen from miles. The thuleans used their magic to burn the corpses so as to avoid the spawning of maggot gnolls.

Such victory broke the spirit of the gnoll. It was clear for all to see that the war with the Ra was simply not worth the effort, and not only that, it was bleeding the empire white. In 2.737 ABE, the gnoll began retreating from the swamps, in a disorganized rout that saw many thousands more fell victim to the swamps. Unbeknownst to the Ra, the Gnoll Emperor, Grabagrorr the Great, had been bested in single combat by an unknown figure, simply known as The Nameless. His plans for the empire were not based upon war, and simply saw the war with the Ra as a waste of energy. He ordered to retreat to the border of the swamps, creating some primitive fortresses to avoid revenge from the Ra. The Ra did not even bother to push beyond the border, since they knew that a fight outside the bogs would not really be to their advantage.

The end of the war with the Gnoll Empire was highly celebrated by the Ra. No other event had unified the scattered tribes of Ra like the war, and with the help of the thuleans, they had managed to survive from near obliteration. The relation between the thuleans and the Ra did not stop with the war, on the contrary. The Ra were mesmerized by all the advances the thuleans were able to bring to the table: things such as fire, architecture, agriculture and oyster husbandry, medicine, crafts… these things were unknown by the Ra, who had lived primitive lives since they first spawned from the swamps, but all this changed their lives radically. Their numbers grew exponentially, and this forced them to create a more complex organization to produce and manage all resources needed. The thuleans helped them create the first cities of the Ra, small and damp by any other standards, but for the Ra, they were incredible achievements. Rising from the swamps, the engineering necessary to drain enough swamp and dry it to build even the small Ra cities was something extraordinary, especially since the thuleans barely used any magic in the process. This strange knowledge has kept historians puzzled, wondering what other knowledge the thuleans held.

The thuleans’ knowledge went beyond technology. The thuleans helped the Ra organize themselves into organized kingdoms, with each of them having multiple small cities, each one in charge of the many oyster fields needed to sustain the population. They introduced things such as coin based economy, written language, laws, social structure… The Ra advanced many centuries in the course of decades, and that attracted the attention of traders and merchants around the region. This period of the Ra’s history became known as the Ra’Ga, literally meaning “The Great Ra”. This prosperity brought the Ra’s opinion of the thuleans, already high from their help with the war, to near divine levels. The thuleans settled in the island of U’mer, from where they tried to restore their civilization. Over time, U’mer became the biggest capital of the Ra’Ga. It is said that, once the great hero and leader of the thuleans, Prince Visha, reached old age, he decided to take his most loyal followers and sail to the north in search of the legendary “flower of fire”, a mystical item that would help him restore his frozen lands. Many thuleans remained, and have thus become the main leaders of the Ra ever since.

## Society and culture

The society of the Ra is heavily influenced by thulean culture. Many Ra have adopted customs such as tattooing their shells the same pattern traditional of thuleans. They’ve also adopted their written language, using mud tablets cooked in furnaces as support. Despite this, their geographical location and lack of appropriate resources (the Ra’Ga lacks great mineral veins, and many of the foods of the swamps are not edible by non-Ra) with which to trade with the outside world means that the region is considerable more backwards than other nearby nations. This suits the Ra fine, as they don’t really exit their homeland frequently. Seeing a Ra walking on a grass field can seem uncanny, considering their anatomy is design to move through dense mud and swamps, and outside of them, they can look uncoordinated and gangly. The descendants of the in the island of U’mer are much more developed, and have many more contacts with other human nations, especially with the nations of the south.

Ra’s society is divided into four castes: the Warrior Kings, who take the role of rulers and defenders of the swamps; the construction workers, tasked with the thousands of responsibilities that cities always in risk of sinking into the swamps have; laborers, in charge of agriculture, oyster husbandry, trade, crafts and other such jobs; and the slaves. Unlike many slaver societies, the Ra do not buy their slaves from the outside, nor do they launch raids to capture them. Instead, slavery is only a state of legal punishment, and they have to be afforded all the rights and protections given to them by law (with the exception of freedom, of course). They are usually tasked with some of the hardest and most dangerous tasks in the kingdoms, which they maintain until their sentence is done.

The Ra live in familiar groups, usually with a male and two females. In the past, familiar groups were nearly non-existent, since reproduction and child rearing was a communal thing, done in the many spawning centers of the bogs. However, the contact with the thuleans brought them the concept of family, dividing the communal Ra into smaller groups. The creation of family bonds have helped the Ra’s spawn to grow and survive in bigger numbers, and also solidifying the bonds between individuals within the familiar group. The mothers are in charge of teaching the children the basics to survive, and then they are put to work as soon as they are considered capable to do so. High education is usually reserved for the firstborn male, and are then put to work as apprentices.

The cities of the Ra have strange architecture, designed to make use of the resources of the area and the unstable bogs and swamps. There are very few cities within the Ra’Ga, with most of the population nowadays either living in the great oyster farms or living as nomads as it’s tradition. The size of the cities is also small, since the environment is not the most appropriate to build sprawling metropolis in. In general, the cities are made in areas easy to drain, and once they’ve been cleaned enough, the Ra will design the cities from the bottom up. The thuleans brought with them a formula of special concrete, easy to create with the resources of the swamp and that could dry fast even in high humidity conditions. The Ra will set up great blocks of concrete at the bottom of the swamps, making sure the city’s buildings do not sink under their own weight. Once they have created a secure enough foundation, the Ra will begin building their structures, forming spherical and oval structures, using concrete blocks mixed with cooked adobe or hardened wood. These buildings are pretty much a single room, in which the Ra’s families live together, with only the public buildings having something similar to inner walls. Roads are irregular and frequently drain, with many Ra workers keeping them from clogging with the rains or the floods. Vines use the buildings to grow wildly, which is allowed by the Ra up to a certain point. This, combined with the frequent and unimpeded floods, means that their cities can look like they’ve been abandoned for ages when in reality they are in current use.

Trade between the different cities is slow, due to the Ra’s lack of a proper beast of burden. They have to carry their products by themselves, and the muddy terrain makes things such as carts useless. They will load all their burdens by themselves in bags and palanquins, tools that allow only slow travel with small volumes. Attempts of creating roads have been made, but the swamps simply swallow them without constant maintenance.

## Foreign Relations

The Ra have traditionally lived isolated from the other races of the world. In the past, they established tenue relations with humans from the Khenomeric Empire or the frogmen of the Land of Changing Waters to the north. Nowadays, however, they are much more connected to the outside world. The arrival of the thuleans managed to open the Ra to the trade of the south and east of Giantstep, with traders reaching the coast frequently. The Ra have repurposed many of the abandoned khenomeric ports in the coast as points dedicated to the outside world, since their ability to build docks from scratch is limited.

A growing danger for the Ra has been piracy. The raids from the Blind Bastard’s Domain and gnoll piratic raids are growing in number and ambition, threatening to cut off the city of U’mer from the rest of the Ra’Ga. The thuleans have developed a navy strong enough to deter attacks that aim for the coast, but their numbers are sparse and only usable for defense.

The Ra are obviously not fond of the Gnoll, and are one of the many nations who would gladly jump at the opportunity to erase them from the map if given the chance. Maggot gnolls, hyena gnoll and feral gnoll infest the bogs and swamps of the Ra’Ga, since so many gnoll died there during the war. The warriors of the Ra’Ga go to the swamps frequently to purge them from their home, having sworn to erase them completely from their territory. The Ra also keep many forces at the border, just in case the Gnoll Empire ever decide to rush them ever again.