Ool Oebor (UPP X-868772-3 - G4V Ool Piri, M3VI Ool Sina)

One myth handed down from Hissta and other scalies of the world is that Ool Oebor was once the nexus of worlds, the universal crossroads between all hunting grounds and all garden and slave worlds worth visiting by the scaled folk. In the beginning, the tale goes, the entire world was a desert, a huge camp and waystation where the scaly warlords would meet, conduct trade in goods and ideas and slaves. Cities arose to service the endless lizard caravans travelling through the gateways and from those cities sprung faiths, religions, and eventually the gods they acknowledged.

The most prominent of these was Val'Sen, embodying the land itself. Through his urging, with the growing support of his worshippers, the gates were sealed, the ground was opened, and the sky ripped asunder to rain for a century upon the parched no-where land, turning it into a garden world in its own right at the cost of its endless expanses of emptiness and all its deep places, as well as its first god. Val'Sen, the crossroads deity was destroyed by a shift of belief, leaving his seven children to fill the spiritual void his passing left behind.

Or so the legend goes.

Each people, each race - furry, insectile, draconic, reptilian, piscine, avian - each has its own creation myths and explanations where their people came from, their moralities, their own personal gods. Many are at odds with each other, though almost all agree that the world started as an empty, waterless place, and that the roads to and from other worlds lay buried, deep beneath the waves. Some hold that earthquakes, volcanoes, the movement of the world's restless skin may one day bring those gates to the surface to be rediscovered by Ool Oebor's peoples. Some hold this has already happened countless times through the ages, and the gates are tightly held secrets, portals through which demons may travel, or great wealth might be accessed, plundered from unsuspecting sister planets somewhere deep, deep in the sky.

Here follows a brief description of the major landmasses and island systems. (Some citystates and areas are left intentionally blank for 'oh yeah' moments and retconning purposes.)

Val'Deria

Ancient Ankaret, once a thriving kingdom consisting of jackals, fennecs, tigers and hyenas has been overrun by scalie folk, many of whom claim that all the world was once their birthright and who plan to return all of the continent to scalie rule. The crocodilian king Agavar rules from his palace just south of Ankaret, with claims that his egg came from the union of a feline worshipper and Val'Dek, a returning god. The spread of scalies across the north of the continent has been slow and steady, only checked by the Vekkis Mountains to the south, and another more mysterious reptilian force holding the swamps and forests in middle of the continent. The jackal kingdom of Ged, capital Gamenud, lies under constant seige from Ankaret, with many of its ruling class either fled to more distant lands or trapped in a constant state of infighting with the military leaders.

Terizi, a Miyen (feline) citystate with a formidable naval force resists both scalie empires and boasts one of the strongest merchant fleets in the known world. Swesti is the capital of the Miahesh rodentine and lapine alliance, a series of feudal coastal towns and cities united against the threats to the east and north. Many of the smaller towns are thought to be corrupt, already secretly aligned with their scalie neighbors. The Cult of the Egg has many adherents in the rural towns inland.

Hsai Tsin, The City of Lanterns, also known as the City of Pandas, is a cynosure of trade. Red and Giant Pandas, as well as Cormorants, Naga, Sunbears and Rats come from villages all along the peninsula to trade their goods with foreigners here. Kailia, Regent of Hsai Tsin has administered the city as a popular tyrant for at least four hundred years, giving some credence to the stories that she is secretly a dragon.

Fingerling Isles

Named after the schools of tiny fish that sometimes swarm across miles across the tropical seas, the Fingerling Isles consist of thousands of mostly uncharted islands ranging from a few hundred miles long to treacherous shoals and sandbars only peeking above water at high tide. Almost as numerous as the islands are the peoples of the Fingerlings, many islands hosting both ecosystems and races found nowhere else in the world. Island commerce, however, has spread Otterfolk, Turtles, Iguana, Miyen, Jays, Ibis, Eagles, Hawks, Terns and Gulls a bit more noticeably throughout the chain, and most of their ports and cities are common stops for traders risking intercontinental voyages.

Carrafel is the capital of Ilarix, an island empire claiming some sixty or so islands at the eastern end of the chain. Ilarix traditionally executes their Emperor after a reign of five years with the idea that since power corrupts, five years is the longest any being can survive and still ascend to paradise. The position is voluntary, and actually competed for politically and since the Empire's founding three hundred years prior, only twenty eight Emperors have fled or otherwise avoided their fate before the end of their reign. The current ruler is a Badger named Hrussa who took the crown after his family was murdered by pirates. Nearing the end of his fourth year, Hrussa has successfully doubled the size of Ilarix's navy and substantially reduced piracy in much of the surrounding waters.

Tigwulf

Tigwulf is a sparsely settled island dominated by Tigers, Wolves, and Bears who live in small mead-hall style kingdoms and rarely trade with the rest of the world. Ignaf is the exception, a sort of holy city and trading port, as well as the launching site of Tigwulf's annual Viking voyages against the continent of Falchef. Every year young warriors and sailors, eager to test their mettle in battle, sail to their neighboring continent and fight the horrors they find there. The survivors often bring home alien weapons, chitin, claws, fangs and other trophies with which to impress beast less suicidal than they.

Falchef, The Nest

Little is known about this continent beyond the forays that inhabitants of Tigwulf make along its coast. All others avoid the place and tell stories of its alien and inhospitable terrain. One popular story says a vulpine empire once ruled the entire landmass, and treasures lay buried beneath the strange 'mud castles' that stretch 'miles into the sky' in the continent's interior. Another says that the vulpines and other luckless races still exist, but in the thrall of the insectile overlords of the Nest. Very few claim to have talked and traded with its inhabitants, finding them strange, but fair and intelligent, though most hold these few to be ... liars.

Dragonsbreath Isles

This chain boasts thousands of islands as well, though most are cool, mossy wastes or little more than barren rocks jutting out of the sea. Volcanoes are a common occurance and many of the islands are relatively young as a result. Those islands that are inhabited tend to host peoples that are more dour, violent, and just generally unfriendly compared to their counterparts elsewhere. Piracy is popular among the islands, as is naval war and slavery between close neighbor states.

Khufi is the capital of the Nashan Mandate, a Jackal and Arctic Fox Mageocracy/Theocracy blend state. Sufros, the Whitefather and Boatwrecker, sometimes a giant polar bear, sometimes a giant white 'sea' scarab aids his worshippers in battle, 'right' living, and magic, but becomes non-sentient during the winter months, when the priesthood prays for his return to sanity. While almost universally unpopular, adherants to Sufrosinism can be found in every corner of the world, proseltyzing, performing 'miracles' and generally making loud, barbaric nuisances of themselves.

Tem Miebor

Myths and legends pertaining to 'soft skins' smooth skins, the 'unscaled ones' all say Tem Miebor is either their origin or their homeland. Considered by many to be haunted, only few fur or feathered folk have settled the southern and western coastal areas of Tem Miebor. Goblins, Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Humans and worse things are all said to live in the forests, or deep under the mountains within the continent, though only gnolls and kobolds have been actually encountered, raiding or, less commonly, trading with the newcomers.

Hestania

Known by its admirers as The Land of Dreams, Hestania is dominated by a riot of races predominantly related to Equines, Caprines, Cervines, Bovines, and Ovines (Horses, Goats, Deer, Cattle and Sheep respectively), each of its five kingdoms an eclectic mixture of their representative races. Though wars are uncommon, coups and succession crisis are quite popular in all five kingdoms, sometimes with several within the span of a decade or so.

Miscar Anu

Musteline tribes hunt, live and fish in the interior of this super-island, often in 'primitive' hamlets and villages. A few coastal towns and ports resemble those in other more 'civilized' parts of the world, albeit with very exotic architectural styles and customs. Miscar Anu in one Ermine based tongue translates roughly to Paradise, where the soul goes after death, and many of the musteline natives of Miscar Anu also belive in reincarnation.

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Further world notes: Ool Oebor's Primary star is Piri, a yellow main sequence juuuuust slightly cooler, more golden yellow than Sol. Piri has a distant companion, sub-dwarf star called Sina orbiting roughly at the equivalent of Pluto's orbit, making for a -very- bright night-time star. Stories of blood, spirits, wine, lust and treason all crop up about Sina.

Ool Oebor has a 'Moon' proper, Ool Drash in most reptilian tongues, similar to our Luna, but a bit closer, with a visible bluish halo around it. Many stories say Ool Drash is the memory or dreaming of the original world, barren before the waters came.

A smaller satelite orbits much further away, forming little more than a slow moving greenish smudge in the night sky, visible with the naked eye - called the Gnat in the east and The Egg in the north and west.

The Windwall refers to the phenomenon of horrific storms forming roughly two to three thousand miles out to sea to the west that no one has sailed into and returned from. Theories of a spherical world are common, but without even legends of lands to the west or far east, and a relatively calm interior sea, no sane power or merchant will fund exploration into the Windwall or deep into the Morning Sea.

Small frozen Poles exist both to the north and south, but have no coastal 'land' to speak of, with icebergs shearing off regularly from glaciers originating in the deep interior. If anything lives in the ice on top or underneath the world, it doesn't make sea ports and doesn't trade openly with the rest of the planet.

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Val Cruxia, Tisar Anu, Steeple Chase Isles and Gaveh are all 'open' for friends, with permission, to develop if they so want. Any races I missed, or that I want to add later can easily fit into any of the other *significantly large* areas talked about above as I adlib my way through a world.

Further 'detail' maps, stories, essays etc. will be posted to my scraps as addendums to this map.

Miyen, Hissta, Ool Oebor and its associated stuff above, cliche' or otherwise, copyright me.