Plakhán

Plakhán (pronounced /pləˈxɑːn/) is an onirarchy located on a series of islands near the eastern end of the Akararal Sea on the world of Dadauar. Plakhán has little trade or interaction with other nations, managing to remain more or less self-sufficient. This is achieved in large part because the vast majority of its biological population is kept constantly sleep, requiring little in the way of resources beyond water and nutrients. Of the roughly 1,100,000 people living in Plakhán, only about four thousand—well under half of one percent—are actually awake; these are mostly the nation's onirarchs, who gather power from the dreams of the sleepers and live in luxury. Tending to the needs of both the sleepers and the onirarchs are a host of batirines, many of them of sorts unique to Plakhán and designed around the nation's unusual circumstances.

Geography

Plakhán is an archipelago consisting of six primary islands, plus a number of much smaller surrounding isles. From northwest to southeast, the main islands are Afla, Hahtak, Hahlahar, Ak'hahen, Efkhen, and Takhétahat. Hahlahar is by far the largest, and is sometimes referred to as Plakhán's "main island". All of the principal islands of Plakhán are mountainous or hilly and heavily forested; the climate of the nation is wet and temperate—though some of the onirarchs magically maintain the surroundings of their residences and other favored locations at warmer temperatures, especially in the winter.

The land area of Plakhán is about 48,400 square kilometers. Hahlahar alone comprises about three fifths of this area; after that, the next largest island is Hahtak, followed closely by Efkhen. All the remaining islands combined make up about a seventh of the archipelago's area.

History

Exactly how long ago the first human settlers arrived on the Plakháni islands is unclear. It did have inhabitants before the Great Plague, a people historians call the Akhati, but they seem to have been completely eradicated by the pandemic, and have left few records. Little is known about the Akhati, including where they came from, how long they lived on the islands, or indeed whether they are really a single people at all, or whether multiple people lived in the antepestile archipelago, either serially or simultaneously.

As with most of Dadauar, the archipelago's history after the Plague is much better documented. Its first post-Plague inhabitants seem to have been Uraga immigrants who sailed from the Stone Coast and settled on the islands. Anthropologists sometimes call these early arrivals the "Lizard People", after the common lizard motifs in their pottery and other surviving craftwork. Finding plentiful food in the islands' forests and in the surrounding waters, the Lizard People had little reason to rush to pass out of a hunting and gathering lifestyle, though as their numbers grow some of their densest population centers did start to engage in agriculture.

How the Lizard People would have eventually developed were they left to their own devices is an unanswered question, however, for they were joined a thousand years later by a different group of settlers, a group of Nanori from Onraa fleeing the strange rhegus that afflicted their homeland. The population of the Lizard People was still sparse enough that there was plenty of room for the new arrivals, but the Nanori had a stronger history of urbanization and aquaculture, and brought their practices to their new home. In any case, the two peoples were not long distinct; the Lizard People and the Nanori newcomers mingled and intermarried, and the majority ethnicity of modern Plakhán, called just the Plakháni, arose from a mixture of the two original post-Plague inhabitants.

Relative to the mainland nations of Burcady, Plakhán was late to respond to the lure of onirarchy—but respond it did, when a band of Plakháni wizards followed in the footsteps of mainland onirarchs and seized control of the country be arrogating its people's dream energy for themselves, forming a new government now called the First Council of Plakhán. The First Council, however, was shortlived, as it was opposed by other Plakháni wizards who managed to resist its attempt to steal their dream energy and who overthrew the Council, banishing many of its members to the plane of Sardaj, including the plot's ringleader Sasata Khahlan (and unfortunately including a number of innocents who were caught in the crossfire). The archipelago's government was returned to the semidemocratic hierarchical government it had had previously.

This return to form, however, would last for even less time than the First Council itself. One of the wizards who had been involved in quashing the Council, Nahéde Hahfakh, came to reflect later on the Council's power and covet it for himself, eventually deciding to attempt a similar coup—but to take measures to make sure it would not be overthrown as the First Council had been. He made contact with one of the surviving former Council members, Okor Terahlen, and together they went about gathering what remnants of the Council's power they could and plotting how to effect their takeover. They eventually came up with the ambitious idea of putting everyone in Plakhán to sleep, save for themselves and a few trusted servants and associates. Thus, they reasoned, not only would they have a much greater source of magical power, since the people would be generating dream energy for them to skim off constantly and not only for a few hours a day, but with anyone not in on their plan in permanent obdormition there would be no one to oppose them.

Of course, putting a million people to sleep would itself take a considerable expenditure of magical power. But, through a combination of using some stored power of the First Council and borrowing some power from mainland onirarchs they made deals with, Hahfakh and his allies managed the feat—an event now called the Ofakhha. Unfortunately for them, it did not bring about all the benefits they had hoped for; although the people were sleeping for more hours, they did not generate much more dream energy—a little more, yes, but not in proportion to their greater time in slumber. It did, however, still present the other advantage they had anticipated: that with everyone asleep, they could rule unchallenged, and had no fear of resistance. And that ended up being reason enough to keep the system in place.

Population

The population of Plakhán can be divided into three main groups: onirarchs, sleepers, and batirines. The onirarchs and the sleepers are almost exclusively human, and ethnically similar, most being of Plakháni—that is, ultimately mixed Lizard Person/Nanori—descent.

Sleepers

The vast majority of the people of Plakhán are maintained in constant slumber. In this state, their dreams provide the onirarchs with dream energy to power their magic, but they are in no position to rebel or interfere with the onirarchs' plans and lifestyle.

The sleeping people do, of course, have biological needs, which are provided by the batirines. Breathing is not a problem, since that is something people do in their sleep anyway, but they also require food and water, which must be provided them. Their wastes must be removed lest they fester and bring disease or worse. Finally, since their numbers must be maintained as they age and die, they must be made to procreate. In the early days of the nation, this was done by briefly waking them once a year and urging them to couple, promising rewards in the dreamworlds for those who provided the land with new citizens. Quickly, however, the onirarchs hit upon a method of allowing their land's population to sustain itself or even grow without requiring its citizens to ever wake. By minimally invasive magical means, harvester batirines gather both eggs and semen from fertile people with the applicable organs, passing them on to incubator batirines that grow the babies inside themselves. As soon as they are born, the babies are cast into sleep like all the other Plakháni outside the onirarchy.

Of course, while they sleep, the people of Plakhán dream, and like other dreamers of Dadauar they pass at least part of their sleeping time in Magogenia, the still poorly-understood location or esture which is the source of dream energy. The onirarchs of Plakhán created a special dreamworld for their people to inhabit, called the Joyful Isles. At first, the intent was that this was a paradisaical place, a lush tropical getaway where the residents could do as they pleased. As the onirarchs largely ignored it, however, much of what they had built there fell into disrepair, and it was in part overtaken by strange predators that may have arrived from elsewhere in Magogenia. Still, the Plakháni populace have developed their own culture and customs in their dreaming life, since never waking that is all the life they have, and, not requiring food or drink in their dreams, spend much of their time in elaborate games and contests—when they're not fending off the dangerous denizens.

Onirarchs

Drawing on the dream energy of the hundreds of thousands of sleepers, the onirarchs have access to potent magic that they use to maintain and develop the land's infrastructure and control its batirines—as well as to construct and modify their own lavish residences and for various amusements. Not all the onirarchs are dream mages; some relatives and associates of magic-wielding onirarchs are permitted to remain among the wakeful as well and partake in the onirarchs' plenty.

Whether a given person is a sleeper or an onirarch is mostly a matter of birth; those born to sleepers are sleepers, and will pass their entire lives without once waking, and those born to onirarchs are onirarchs, and will enjoy the bounty of the sleepers' dream energy. But passage between the two categories is not impossible. A scion of the onirarchs who proves particularly incompetent or useless, or who seems to sympathize too much with the sleepers, or who for any other reason strikes their fellow onirarchs as dangerous, disagreeable, or disposable, may be "demoted" to a sleeper, cast into a slumber from which they will never wake. Such ex-onirarchs are in some ways worse off than those who have been sleepers from birth, since at least the latter have never known anything else, while outcast dreamlords have their memories of better days—and are now surrounded in the dreamworld by those they formerly exploited.

The reverse process, the waking of a sleeper and their "promotion" to the onirarchy, is almost unknown—but not entirely so. It has happened at least twice. Once, a member of the Askha family decided to visit the Joyful Isles in his dreams, and there fell in love with a sleeper named Zanen Ananta; he later arranged for him to join him in the waking world. In the only other known case of a former sleeper joining the onirarchs, the batirine directorate requested that a sleeper named Hender Endane be awakened and welcomed among the onirarchs; why the batirines wanted her so elevated remains a mystery.

When they do sleep and dream themselves, the onirarchs do not visit the Joyful Isles; the onirarchs have no interest in mingling in their dreams with the hoi polloi. Rather, they have fashioned their own bespoke dreamworld just for themselves, which they call the Night Garden. There they while away the time much as they do while awake, mostly in games, politicking, and social maneuvering.

The dreamlords have little part in the construction or design of the Night Garden, that task being delegated to a collection of "Architects" plucked from the sleeping masses and assigned to the task—while the Architects are not inducted into the rank of the onirarchy, and pass their whole lives sleeping like most of the citizenry, they do get the dubious honor of spending their dreaming time in the Night Garden rather than the Joyful Isles. The selection of Architects has historically fallen to one particular otherwise minor onirarch family, the Erek'hat; it is assumed that the Erek'hat somehow have agents among the dreamers of the Joyful Isles to identify people there with potential talents that might make them good Architects, but the other onirarchs don't know the details, nor do they particularly care.

Batirines

The batirines in Plakhán outnumber the onirarchs, though not the sleepers; exact numbers are hard to come by, but there are probably roughly fifty thousand batirines of various types at work on the islands. Many types of batirine common in other onirarchies are rare or unknown here; with potential lawbreakers kept perpetually asleep, there is little need for law enforcement and for the enforcers and guardian batirines that fill that function elsewhere, nor for the eye and seeker batirines that are designed to spy on potential troublemakers.

However, Plakhán has many novel types of batirine unique to the archipelago, and designed to fill its idiosyncratic needs. In addition to the harvester and incubator batirines that facilitate the reproduction of the sleeping citizens, there are digester batirines that take in edible material and process it into a liquid slurry called khek that can then be passed on to feeder batirines that pump that slurry into sleepers' stomachs through long tubular appendages. There are batirines that produce and gather that edible material, serving in röles that in other onirarchies are filled by ordinary citizens: the fisher batirines that harvest the seas around the archipelago for food, and the tiller batirines that grow crops on land. There are distributor batirines that bring the raw materials to the digesters and dispend the khek to the feeders, and specialized caretakers that keep the sleepers relatively clean.

Overseeing and coördinating the actions of Plakhán's other batirines are supervisor batirines, perhaps similar in function to the master batirines found elsewhere but much more common and, not having to defend themselves against rebels and malcontents, much less combat-capable. Of all the batirine varieties unique to Plakhán, the supervisors are the only ones to clearly be fully intelligent and ellogous. It is not lost on the onirarchs that they therefore may be the only ones with the capacity to rebel, and the onirarchs therefore are careful to keep the supervisors placated, negotiating with them when necessary and acceding to reasonable demands. Among many of their other concessions, the supervisor batirines have demanded the right to dream, and that they be given their own dreamworld to pass their dreaming time in. The onirarchs consented, providing the supervisors with their own bespoke dreamworld which they call Serenity.

Wildlife

Having not been especially densely populated before the Ofakhha, and with the vast majority of its sleeping populace now sequestered in relatively small areas, Plakhán has escaped the ecological devastation that has afflicted far too many onirarchies, and still has plentiful wildlife and large areas of unspoiled wilderness. Some of the onirarchs enjoy taking walks through these wild areas, or engaging in sport hunts there, but they otherwise generally leave these areas alone, albeit more because they have no use for them than out of any ethical environmentalist concerns.

While Plakhán is home to populations of many organisms that apparently migrated there from the Burcadian mainland, it also has many endemic species of its own. Notably, Plakhán boasts Dadauar's largest bird of prey, the khar vulture, and one of its largest terrestrial arthropods, the bear scorpion. Another well-known Plakháni animal is the silver seal, which before the Ofakhha was frequently hunted for its fur—though now the onirarchs can produce similar materials easily enough through magical means that there is no longer a demand for it.

Plakhán has, too, its share of distinctive flora. The trunk of the clownthorn boasts great thorns that sport vivid colors but bear deadly toxins; many onirarchs plant them near their manors for their appearance but know to give them a wide berth. The humbush is notable for the sound it makes, almost like a groaning human voice, which apparently serves uses to attract its pollinators. The soft, sweet reamfruit was one of the nation's biggest exports before the Ofakhha, and even now, though some other lands have managed to establish their own populations of reamfruit trees, there are those who covet genuine Plakháni reamfruit.

Government

Plakhán is nominally a democracy, ruled by a fourteen-member National Council elected by the populace. Of course, this is true only if one ignores the 99.6% of the populace who are perpetually asleep and who do not participate in the vote; the Council is legitimately elected, but only by the onirarchs and not by the population at large. In any case, even among the onirarchs, everyone is not truly equal; there are six powerful ruling families that wield disproportionate influence over its political affairs, and rarely is there more than one member of the National Council who does not pertain to one of these families.

The ruling families of Plakhán are:

• The Asalákhta, who unusually among the onirarchs of Plakhán—or among onirarchs in general—are religiously devout, though they have augmented the pantheon worshiped before the Ofakhha with a number of new gods.
• The Askha, the newest family to rise to power, still considered irrespectable arrivistes by many members of the other ruling families but having gained control of enough of the nation's infrastructure to hold their position despite their peers' contempt.
• The Fafahú, who have a reputation as clever innovators who design and make all manner of useful telesmata, and whose röle in supplying their creations to the other onirarchs cements their power.
• The Hafháte, mystical dabblers in the more arcane applications of dream magic, and in particular known to study, commune with, and perhaps even travel to—and bring things from—other planes.
• The Terahlen, descended from Plakhán's first onirarchs, the wealthiest of the ruling families, and the one with the most ties to other onirarchies.
• The Tolkhóta, many of whose members are highly skilled in creating and dealing with batirines—and whom therefore the other families often turn to when the batirines cause trouble.

Languages

The Lizard People who were Plakhán's first inhabitants spoke their own language, Aara, related to other languages spoken on Burcady. The Nanori who arrived later, however, spoke their own completely unrelated language, Khetekh. While at first communication between the two peoples was different, as they interacted and intermingled they developed first a pidgin and then a creole that allowed confariation. That creole evolved into the current Plakháni language, which largely combines Aara grammar with Khetekh phonology, and a lexicon adapted from both languages.

In the centuries since the Ofakhha, the Plakháni language has begun to split. The sleepers speak to each other in their dreams, but have no interaction with the onirarchs who do not visit the Joyful Isles, and so the versions of the Plakh&aaacute;i spoken by dreamlords and sleepers have diverged. When it is necessary to distinguish the two, the onirarchs' language is called High Plakháni and the sleepers' Low Plakháni—this terminology of course shows a bias toward regarding the onirarchs' language as more refined and more respectable, but since it is the onirarchs who coined and still mostly use the terminology this is unsurprising. It is, however, true that High Plakháni is closer to the pre-Ofakhha Plakháni language; this is probably mostly because the dreamers in the Joyful Isles make little use of writing, and therefore lack the written corpora that might otherwise help stabilize their language and slow its rate of change. For the moment, High Plakháni and Low Plakháni remain mostly mutually intelligible, though there are a few common misunderstandings due to false friends. If Plakhán continues much longer under its current conditions, however, there may come a time when that is no longer the case.

Relations

Plakhán maintains its isolation from the rest of the world for pragmatic reasons. The primary benefit of its keeping most of its people in constant slumber is the removal of any possibility of unrest or resistance; a sleeping populace is a peaceful populace. This effort has proved very successful, and Plakhán has a virtually nonexistent resistance rate, rivaled only by Risinien, which keeps its citizens in place in an even more drastic way. But should the nation open itself to traders and tourism, that would mean allowing entry to people the onirarchs didn't recognize—and potential rebels. It would do the onirarchs little good to quash the potential for homegrown rebellion only to roll out a red carpet for foreign rebels to enter.

Because of this, Plakhán not only discourages visitors, but actively—and if necessary violently—keeps them off the islands. The waters around the archipelago are patrolled by sea batirines and xastrine batirines, and tower batirines are positioned at likely landing spots and on lookout points. Anyone spotted approaching the islands will be warned away if they're lucky; if not, or if that warning is unheeded, they will be captured for interrogation or simply destroyed. To avoid magical intrusion, the onirarchs have erected a rhegus over the entire archipelago, whimsically called the Turtle Shell, that prevents unauthorized translocation into the area, while still allowing such movement within or out of it. These defenses are not necessarily entirely infallible; it is possible that a few interlopers have reached Plakhán's shores, and scrabble for subsistence in its wilds and ruins avoiding the onirarchs' attention. But if so, they have not reached sufficient numbers to pose the dreamlords any real threat.

The only outsiders that are permitted in Plakhán are dreamlords from other onirarchies, who may be invited for diplomatic discussions or social events. Some of the Plakháni onirarchs, especially of the Terahlen family, delight in throwing elaborate fêtes, and may invite important guests from all over the rew. Even then, visiting dreamlords' retinues are closely vetted and watched, and they are discouraged from venturing away from approved locations.

Settlements and structures

Unlike most onirarchies, Plakhán does not have any massive cities with large populations. There were cities on the islands before the Ofakhha, certainly, and while some remnants of those cities still stand, they have not been maintained and have largely fallen into ruin—the largest, the nation's former capital Arkan Khafal, rots on the western coast of Hahlahar. Most of the sleepers are housed in dormitory towers, tall cylindrical buildings erected expressly for that purpose, and unfurnished except perhaps for shelves that serve as beds, since their occupants are perpetually asleep and need no other furniture. The disposition of the sleepers within the dormitory towers varies by the practices of the local supervisor batirines; some dormitory towers contain orderly shelves on which the sleepers lie, with aisles between them to grant easy access to the batirines that must tend them; in others, the sleepers are left to sprawl haphazardly on the floor, and the batirines must pick their ways around them. Some sleepers instead are housed in underground vaults, with similar variety in how they're kept.

As for the onirarchs, they live in fabulously opulent mansions or palaces spaced far apart from each other, each luxurious residence housing at most a small family, and perhaps only a single individual. No roads or streampaths connect the palaces to each other; the onirarchs have access to sufficent magic that when they need to visit each other they can simply translocate, or generate some exotic means of conveyance.

Aside from the dormitory towers, the only permanent structures in the archipelago that are still functional and not for the personal use of the onirarchs themselves are batirine mills that produce new batirines to replace those that fall prey to accident or wearout. The attrition rate of Plakháni batirines is low, however, and most of the mills are small and only operate intermittently, producing only perhaps a few dozen new batirines in a year. There are only three batirine mills in Plakhán of any great size and frequent usage, one in central Hahlahar, one on Efkhen, and one on Afla.

A few unique locales perhaps deserve special note. The Floral Tower is a grand edifice designed to impress, where visiting onirarchs are received, and where special events are held. The Orb Tower is a place where strange forms of magical research are conducted; those not of the Apkháta family are unwelcome, though not actually forbidden to come there. Terahlen Castle is the ancestral home of the Terahlen family; while some family members do live there, it is perhaps more significant as a symbol of their power than it is as an actual home. The Bridge of Dreams is the remnant of an attempt by a group of dreamlords to produce a bridge that physically connected Dadauar to Magogenia; while they did not succeed, what there is of the Bridge is still notorious for the strange magical effects that take place there. Another vestige of a failed experiment is the Field of Flesh, perhaps the most disturbing place in Plakhán—and one the onirarchs seldom find reason to go anywhere near.

Natural sites of interest

In addition to the structures built by the onirarchs, Plakhán has some notable locations of natural origin. Mount Taphak, in northwestern Hahlahar, is a great dormant volcano that may have portals to other planes in its interior; its peak is Plakhá's point of highest elevation. Frog Valley is a verdant lowland notable for the great diversity of anurans found there. The Broken Bay is a narrow, steep-walled inlet on the west side of Hahlahar that appears as if the result of something cracking the island like a stone. The Nerinen's Cave is a deep cave on the coast of northern Hahtak said to be haunted by an eponymous monster—which some believe, if it exists, to be a huge deepling.