Malkuth

As the manufacturing center of the entire Empyrean system, Malkuth is primarily know for the production of durable, inexpensive Sheollan tanks, Behemoth space-craft, industrial mechs, and aggressor machine bodyguards.

Shemyaza : Creating a Malkuthi Character

## Malkuthi Industrial Complex

Urban systems on Malkuth are unique. Pyramidal industrial complexes are dropped from orbit in cargo carriers. These drop-shells are populated with the entire staffing necessary - excavation specialists, architects, miner families, and, rarely, an illegal Rasa workforce, all of them supplied only enough to construct the factory system inside. While Empyrean on paper, lax MIC regulations mean deals between Shemyaza Ecclesiarchs and Executive Monarchs allow them to set and enforce their own laws, nearly untouchable by Persian or Warden authorities. There are at least seven distinct dialects of thieves' cant. Violence is kept to the minimum possible by the Shemyaza, but uprisings escalate in sheer size and voracity throughout the Southeastern quadrant. While the Shemyaza abide by their own moral obligations to their Intercessor, most of the direct leadership is implemented by vice lords in the MICs.

## Landscape

> "For those with Malkuthi endurance, the rare metals hidden in the depths of this world are the bricks of paradise."
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> - Orol Yeva, Ecclesiarch of Dzern
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The environment of Malkuth is a black ruin. Glistening obsidian mountain ridges wander across the planet's surface, their peaks sharpened to brittle knives by downpours of sulphuric rain. Long gorges flow with the hungry, golden rivers, but no lakes, seas, or freshwater rivers remain on the surface. Drinkable water is rare. Bore-hole caverns left by particularly corrosive rain seasons often house vibrant ecologies of lichen, which velvets the corridors and feed larger subteranean species.

Outlawed folk songs tell of a Malkuth that thrives, but the half-remembered lyrics are whispered, and the haunting melodies are played on muted instruments, existing only as aching lullabies. The details vary with the tellers - teeming savannas, drenching jungles, or treacherous forests. If anything is certain of this long forgotten life, only a handful know. Perhaps, songs like these are nothing but fantasies... the kind always dreamed by people who live in places like Malkuth.

Kerazzans believe Malkuth went the way of their homeworld - a battleground for factory-lords who slaughtered the very world they fought over. Some Purist factions even believe Malkuth to be the ancient homeworld mentioned in the Grimoire, and accuse the Malkuthi of descending from the overlords mentioned in their antagonistic holy text. Purists name Malkuth the *'Verlune Kerazza.'* As such, many locales on Malkuth are considered Kerazzan holy sites, and invasions from Purists are an ever-present concern of the Shemyaza. Whether this is an example of their infamous paranoia or not is difficult to ascertain No offensives have ever been publically declared, but tensions between Kerazzans and the Shemyaza are strained, occasionally volatile. Shemyaza officials decry the Kerazzan concept of democratic assassination as "troubling examples of Kerazzan duplicity and subterfuge."

> "Unfortunately, a century after its settlement by enclaves of Hebrew speaking mystics, someone discovered an immense reservoir of hyperdense minerals used in hull plating and combustion fuel. Harborshale. \*Erberzhell,\* as it is now called in Sheol, seduced many contesting warlords, and it was the violence of their avarice which left Malkuth irreparably scarred."
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> - Harsakar, Verdeleigh of the Jetzchan Coven of Malkuth [assumed destroyed]
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## Flora and Fauna

**Crevaya:** Gargantuan crab-turtle creatures known for their tough, 300 yard diameter carapace and functional umbrella called a 'parasol.' Using their long tongues to devour subterranean lichens growing inside the bore-hole caverns opened by acid rains, the *crevaya* are mostly passive herbivores, provoked only by invasive trade caravans encroaching into their nesting grounds. Under these circumstances, crevaya mothers fight with unbridled aggression, often to their death.

Crevaya meat is a delicacy for Shemyaza officers and merchant princes, who fund hunting brigades to shell the mammoth creatures from assault crafts. Poachers beware: unrestrained crevaya beyond MIC limits often form symbiotic relationships with *bakka.* These brutally territorial and heavily armored predators roost beneath crevaya parasols in order to rest their wings or hunt the parasites which often breed there. It is not uncommon for bakka swarms to overpower careless hunters and take them down.

Excellent terraformers themselves, pests like the *uru* burrow their way through the corrugated pigiron foundation of the industrial complexes, subsisting on a diet of house pets and rust.

*Sheollan harvesters* mine harborshale by developing carbon lattices similar to diamond over their scythes, their hide toughened by several callous layers to avoid damage by industrial equipment, and growing bulk in order to yield more material in fewer, safer trips.

Note: Wild Sheollan harvesters are growing increasingly territorial.

## Statistics

Surface Area in Earths: .67

Currency: Yeni

Population: 5.648 Billion

Average Life Span: Sheol - 88, Shemyaza 214, everywhere else - 185

Religious Demographics: Shemyaza 38%; Traditional Malkuthi Faiths 43%; Catechist 19%

Technology: Heavy Industrial Equipment, MIC-Adaptive NIs, Firearms, Light-based Weaponry, Anti-Corrosive Sheollan Plate, Harborshale