Lunatik Nine

North of the Kowloon stacked city, lies a city so vile, ugly and dirty that even the peasants of Grobianismus would be proud of.

**Lunatik Nine** (named after the amount of times the city has been sacked and then rebuilt) is populated by a group of former slaves that used to live in Kowloon. Using scraps from Kowloon that they managed to scavenge, these people, called the "**Khenomeri**", named after a fallen empire they have no relation with, are said to hail from the hordes to the far south, who eventually made their way to Kowloon as slaves.

Disentery, hepatitis and fleas are very common in Lunatik Nine, as well as use of the "White Death". Since they refuse to work honest jobs, they mostly survive by stealing from Kowloon. Even though the Kowloon militia often raids the Khenomeri back for the scraps they've stolen, razing the city into the ground, after each raid they manage to build it back with even more houses, nobody knowing how or why.

Khenomeris make such excellent thieves and scammers, that their services are well appreciated in Ampleazzo and Gvilderstaaten.

## History

Lunatik Nine's history can be traced all the way back to the Khenomeric Empire, which, being under the province of Kowloon, was known as Gamah. Gamah was a small and insignificant city built on the banks of the river Gones, although one that had amassed a lot of magoclergy sympathizers over the years. After the fall of the Magoclergy, Gamah was reduced to a shell, being purged of most of its inhabitants (most being innocent of any crime), with most of its buildings being abandoned and the remaining people fleeing off to greener pastures, which included Anachonia.

Anachonia itself had recently experienced a surge in power and status, bringing much wealth to the city, which included slaves. Some of these slaves included Ketlovians (who were humans then), and a peculiar group of Ketlovians at that, as those ones were enslaved and sold off by their fellow countrymen, due to their strange religious habits and nomadic way of life.

After a civil war broke out in Anachonia, these slaves found the opportunity to break their shackles, and fled to the north, but not before looting the city out of all its valuables.

The Ketlovians settled themselves in the city of Gamah, which was mostly abandoned, but instead of rebuilding the city, they broke up every building and repurposed the scraps from both Gamah and Anachonia to build new ones - mostly busy and ugly shacks, hovels and slums. Generations passed, and after the decline of the Khenomeric Empire, the Ketlovians started to calling themselves "the Khenomeri", somehow claiming the splendour of this once glorious empire as their own.

Even though the Khenomeri had made Gamah their home, they still retained their nomadic lifestyle, and their caravans roamed all over the north, with Gamah being their only permament settlement. They ventured into other lands, trading, stealing and raiding whatever they could find, with Anachonia being their most prominent victim.

The years following the Khenomeris' escape from Anachonia, the latter did not take kindly of the escape of their slaves and the looting of their city, and such many a times they raided and razed Gamah to the ground, each time being built anew, in what seemed days. This happened even more once Anachonia turned into a densely populated gigantic slum, with the Khenomeris' lootings becoming even more common than before, and the Kowloonians' retributionary raids as well. Word of mouth gave Gamah the name "Lunatik Nine", said to have come from the times it was razed and rebuilt again (although, to be true, the true number is probably much higher), which is now solely known as.

Unlike Kowloon, which grew from humans' greed, leading them to migrate there, Lunatik Nine grew more organically, because of the Khenomeris' religious beliefs that encourage them to have as many children as possible; as soon as possible. This has led to the average Khenomeri woman having more than 6 or 7 children, a fact that has made Lunatik Nine almost as populous as Kowloon, although not as densely populated.

Nowadays, Lunatik Nine is a dirty and poor city tha's more like a huge slum, with garbage, stray dogs and thieves roaming about its streets, and a dirty diseased ridden river running through it.

## Government

There's no real government in Lunatik Nine. The city is populated by many clans, which are basically extended families, and laws are made on the fly and are mostly oral, which leads to high criminal activity in the city, even amongst the Khenomeri.

## Geography

Lunatik Nine, and the surrounding land, is comprised of grasslands and scrublands as far as the eye can see, being ideal for the Khenomeris' grazing and nomadic exploits, with some more forested areas to the south.

## Religion

A part of the Khenomeris' culture involves roaming the lands with the caravan along one's family, either for conducting trade with foreigners, or simply for stealing from them, with families leaving and returning to and from Lunatik Nine at random intervals. This has led to many Khenomeris adopting religious beliefs from all over the world, such as the worship of Uun, the Gluttony god, the Harmony Goddess, druidic beliefs, the worship of Avangar, and more, sometimes combined into one. But the one common denominator between these faiths is the worship of the Mother of the Earth, the ancestral fertility goddess of the Khenomeri. According to this belief, the more children a couple has, the better fortunes will be bestowed upon their family.

This faith is quite different to the religion of the Ketlovians, which is based on the Ancient Khenomeric pantheon.

## Culture

For Khenomeris, stealing, looting and tricking people (and especially foreigners) is not seen as something morally bad, which is why they practice it all the time. Not only that, but work is seen as something that's to be avoided unless necessary, and as such the Khenomeri have made a name for themselves as being lazy, whichs begs the question as to why they were sold as slaves in the first place.

Vendettas and grudges are a big part of Khenomeri culture. Family is above all, and dishonoring one's family (for example, a son of one clan impregnating the daughter of another, without marriage) is seen as sacrilege, and it often leads to bloody skirmishes and fights between the various families. These vendettas are either resolved with the death of a clan's leader, or by the payment of extraodinary amounts of gold to one family, which usually contains one year's worth of looting.

Popular practices in Lunatik Nine include the art of fortune telling, tarot reading and the playing of traditional music.

## Demographics

Lunatik Nine, and the surrounding pastures, are almost entirely composed of the Khenomeri. The only foreigners who ever step foot into this land are either smugglers and vendors of illegal goods (such as the ones selling the White Death, which the Khenomeri are addicted to), or members of Kowloon's militia, seeking to burn the city to the ground once again. The rare times that a foreigner had settled in Lunatik Nine ended with their belongings disappearing with no trace within a fortnight.

## Foreign Relations

The Khenomeri have made a name out of themselves as excellent thieves even to corners of the world thousands of kilometres away from them, such as Ampleazzo and Gvilderstaaten, with them sometimes finding themselves in the employ of shady employers in such places.

More often than not, this reputation has caused them trouble, as they are seen as lazy and untrustworthy by pretty much everyone. Most khenomeris that have settled in foreign lands, especially in smallstep and zemyland, have constantly refused to work and kept stealing and breaking the law, with the respective city guard usually evicting them from the city, again and again.

### Kowloon

The Khenomeri will sometimes swarm into Anachonia in large numbers anytime divinely created stuff is appearing, appreciating the free food and what scraps they can scavenge. The Kowloonians, when things get bad and the Khenomeri raids are getting too common, will oft raid and raze Lunatik Nine, as per tradition. Nonetheless, few Khenomeri can be counted amongst Kowloon's permament residents, claiming to have originated from two Ketlovian slaves that did not escape to Gamah.

The rest of Lunatik Nine's neighbours, such as the Kingdom of Tarot, the Astromancers and the pilgrims of the Harmony Goddess' realm, avoid any interactions with the Khenomeri, and would rather not have to deal with them, even if the opportunity to incorporate that land to their realm came up.