Pash Kingdom

**Description**

The small kingdom of Pash is an arid and dusty land dotted with rare oases around which huge city-states have been built. These city-states, ruled by Merchant Princes, although officially forming a Commercial League supposed to act as a grand coalition headed by the King, from his city of Ran Dagaan, are in fact constantly at war. In Pash, anything can act as a casus belli between two city-states. Even a simple insult can result in ten years of armed conflict. However, gold is supreme in these merchant lands and the trade routes are neutral and sacred grounds that cannot be disturbed for any reason.

In the city-states of Pash, fencing is considered as a science and studied as such in prestigious fighting schools. Each city-state has, over the centuries, developed its own style, quite distinct from its neighbours. For example, the style of the Floating Blade, elegant and slow, is typical of the city of Jyrash, while the Sleeping Gazelle, much more lively and based on feints, is the predominant style in Karash.

**Society**

The Pashi society is divided into four social classes: To the three usual social classes (nobility, clergy and plebeians) is added the class of duellists, noble families dedicated to the study and practice of fencing since centuries.

In these families, one is considered a man when one receives his karij, a typical Pash sword. Each duellist carries on his blade, in the form of tiny runes, the story of his life and accomplishments, and the experience and value of a fencer is measured by the number of runes on his sword. Losing one's sword is, for a Pashi fencer, the supreme shame. Those who lose or break their sword are usually exiled and end their lives in utter misery because it is taboo for a Pashi duellist to change blades. Each blade is forged by adding a little of the blood of the child to whom it will be assigned and is thus considered to be linked to his soul.

The artists who carve runes into Pashi swords are called the Karijdyana and are incredibly respected. By tradition, they teach their art to only one disciple in their lifetime, often a former duelist who has decided to stop fighting.

Fencers are everywhere in Pashi society: as bodyguards for rich and noble merchants, guards in cities, escorts for caravans, soldiers in the mercenary troops hired by city-states to wage war on each other, or simply itinerant fencers who travel from city to city to accomplish their "shakash" (an initiatory journey that every duellist undertakes between the ages of 16 and 20 in order to meet and challenge other duellists from different schools), etc...

A popular legend in Pash is that of the Broken Blades master, a Pashi swordsman who lost the rest of his family went mad and took all the blades of his ancestors and smelted them down into one horrible-looking, jagged monstrosity of a blade.

**The Water Palace of Ran Dagaan**

This place is known as the third of the Nine Wonders of the World, of Laelaz the Walker.

It is gigantic semi-circular shaped temple, located in the heart of the city-state of Ran Dagaan, in the kingdom of Pash. The magnificent building, with its solid gold domes, marble colonnades and jewel-encrusted stone arches, stands in the middle of an inland lake connected to the rest of the city by thirteen bridges.

This place is dedicated to Naël, the Goddess of Swords, Sacred Guardian of Duels and patron saint of fencers, a major deity of the Pashi pantheon.

From the heights of the palace flow gigantic cascades of clear water which, for some inexplicable reason, never seem to stop running, and which fall into the countless inner patios of the temple. These sanctuaries, large pools dotted with a few raised flagstones emerging from the water, where one can set foot, serve as duelling places for the Pashi duellists, who come to cross the blade with their fellows.

To spill one's blood (and, at times, to die) in the waters of the Palace is both an immense honour and a way of proving one's devotion to Naël.

Laelaz had the opportunity to witness a duel of Pashi fencers when he visited the Palace and declared that the blades went so fast that his eyes could not follow their trajectory, but that it was one of the most graceful and impressive spectacles he had ever seen in his life.