Xos

Xos (pronounced /ʃoʊs/) is the world of the Empire of Norg that is the center of power for Charad, god of conflict. In many ways, it is Xos that is the center of Norg's war effort, where strategies are formulated against the Gray Realm and Berdacha and the Empire's other enemies. This would seem to make Xos a tempting target for said enemies, but its high defenses and its position well within the Empire's boundaries make it relatively safe.

Not everything in Xos is centered around war, however; even if it's true that life in Xos is largely about conflict, war is not the only kind of conflict. Competitive games, including board and card games, are popular on Xos, and are a larger industry on the World of Conflict than on any other world of the Empire. Not all Xos's recreational contests play out on so small a scale; sports are also a large industry on Xos, and huge arenas are common where sporting events and other large-scale competitive entertainments take place. Battles between boicorras are very popular on Xos, such that entire arenas are devoted to them (though they may also take place in arenas also used for other purposes), and in some areas almost everyone is expected to possess some boicorras of his own. In parts of the world other theder strains, rare elsewhere in Norg, are also battled competitively.

In Xosan culture, these various competitive activities, including not only boicorra battles but the most seemingly innocuous of tabletop games, serve not necessarily just for simple entertainment. It's common among Xosan people to resort to these competitions to settle even the most seemingly trivial dispute, the resolution to a disagreement contingent on which side wins the contest. Even when the games do serve no more purpose than amusement, it's very common for Xosans to place large wagers on the outcomes—not necessarily monetary wagers, but forfeits and promises for the loser to perform some often humiliating activity. These wagers carry the force of law in Xosan society, and can even be enforced magically; talismans called galdiners are commonly used for just this purpose.

Geography

Like most worlds of Piobagh, Xos is a devare, with two distinct sides linked by conasters. Both sides are fairly typical terrestrial worlds, with several continents and oceans. One side, Chax, has most of its continents clustered together into an effective supercontinent; the other, Rilan, has its continents distributed more evenly about its surface. Chax is slightly warmer than Rilan, while the latter seems to have more precipitation; Chax has more deserts, Rilan more swamps. Both sides of the devare are heavily urbanized, but not totally, with large areas of wilderness still remaining (and often serving as venues for military maneuvers or other grand-scale competitions).

Multiple small conasters link Chax and Rilan, but there are also five large conasters, big enough to fly sizeable skyships through. The largest of these conasters, the Guiag, is more than six hundred kilometers in diameter, and its sides all the way through are riddled with chambers and passages and densely inhabited (as are those of the other four large conasters, to a lesser degree).

Inhabitants

Xos, like most worlds of Norg, is inhabited primarily by humans, though they form a plurality rather than an outright majority and other races are certainly not uncommon. Aside from humans, the most numerous races among the Xosan population include glashans, ulbuses, ubadi, ghincums, and bleastkin. Xos's oceans, too, have their own ellogous inhabitants, including not only aquatic bleastkin but also kosori, curiates, and abazanes. Many of these people, however, are no longer pure members of their original races, but have become Charadites, or more rarely other kinds of Ghalite.

In accordance with the field of the world's patron god, inhabitants of each side of Chax see themselves as in competition with the other, as if the two sides of the world were rival teams—which in a way they are, if only because they consider themselves to be. Most of Xos's military activity is based on Chax, but the military doesn't really participate in the competition between the sides, being some of the few inhabitants of Xos not to do so; this, of course, doesn't prevent Chaxan civilians from taking pride in the military presence, or Rilanians from holding it as a mark against Chax. Naturally, each side also has many different regions and communities at several different levels that contend with each other, only to unite against a common rival at larger scales.

Government

As usual for Norg's capital worlds, Xos is, in principle, a theocracy, led by the priesthood of Xos and more precisely by the archprelate of Charad, a werelion Charadite named Uyadu M!m. M!m's rule, however, is highly contested, both from within the priesthood and from without. Among the Charadite priests, M!m faces opposition from three antiprelates who constantly second-guess his edicts and contend to effect their own plans. From without, his antagonists are the military, led by High General Amus Ceague, High Admiral Odecon Soron, and High Ardannader Laider Un (who in turn are in constant dispute with each other); the Gamelords, who by their prowess in various competitions have won political power; the wealthy Permagnates; and the Cardinals who are in principle elected to keep the other vying factions in check but who in practice just add another vying faction to the pile.

The disputes between the archprelate and the antiprelates, and between the archprelates and his secular adversaries, are, like disputes between private parties, often settled by games and competitions. Except in matters of the utmost import, this does not usually mean that the archprelate and his oppugners compete directly; rather, each of these important personages has a number of agents who contend on his or her behalf. In fact, each of these high officials has several thousand such surrogates at the ready, specializing in different kinds of contests—and each may therefore be engaged by proxy in several hundred contests at any given time, against their various foes.

This pattern of dispute presents itself in miniature at local levels on Xos as well, down to that of individual cities and neighborhoods. The archprelate appoints prelates, who preside over dioceses and who in turn appoint lower ecclesiastical officials to preside over benefices, and so on. In turn, however, each prelate and other ruling cleric is opposed by anticlerics, by military officers, and by local gamethanes, magnates, and advocates.

Economy

Much of Xos's income comes from the military presence; the empire spends much on the military, and the military in turn injects money into the local economy. The military, however, does not form the entirety of the world's income. Xos exports skilled mercenaries well tested in the world's constant conflicts; weapons designed by seasoned warriors; boicorras and other theders and the tools to handle them. But even more so than all these combat-related exports, perhaps Xos's largest export is entertainment. The sports played on Xos are watched around the Empire; the games designed there are exported to far-flung worlds. And the entertainment business having gained such a firm foothold on Xos due to these factors, it has come to be a surprising center of entertainments not so overtly centered around competition, as well; plays written and music composed on Xos have added much to Norg's artistic reserves.

The World of Conflict also has some more material exports, the reasons for which are not so related to its patron's field. In the swamps of Rilan and the jungles of Chax grow many plants from which spices and medicines can be extracted; fine jewels have been found beneath the world's surface. In terms of manufacturing, Xos is renowned for the fine cloths woven there, and the fine clothing made from them, as well as the skilled metalwork, not all of which by any means is armor and weaponry.

History

Xos was a hard-won world, its history no doubt contributing to its selection as the capital world of Charad, god of conflict. When Norg first encountered Xos, it was as an outpost of the Lead Imperium. Even then, though, the Imperium's hold on the world was tenuous, the native inhabitants still offering a good deal of resistance. These native forces included not only the world's true natives, a race called the berbedons, but also some members of panasteric races that were apparently the remains of one or more previous settlement attempts that the natives had more or less absorbed.

A three-way fight ensued between the Empire of Norg, the Lead Imperium, and the now almost defunct Worlds of Light whose frontier the world happened to lie near. Norg repelled the Worlds of Light and eventually drove out the Lead Imperium, but then itself inherited the Imperium's problem with the natives. This, too, became a three-way fight when an extraplanar invasion force arrived from the chore of Darradane, inimical to both Norg and the Xosan natives. Norg's hold on Xos only solidified when, long after it had thoroughly subdued all the territory in a wide swathe around Xos, it managed to turn the Darradane forces' portals back on themselves, casting back to Darradane not only the entities that had come from there, but also the native forces as well (and, as inevitable casualties, most of their own occupying forces, though these were easily replenished from another world). Known as the Purge, this event led to the extinction of the berbedons, or the near-extinction, since a few individuals may have remained who had traveled off-world before the event... or at least, it led to their permanent removal from Piobagh, since it could be that some still survive on Darradane.

In any case, Xos was not the first capital world of Norg, but the previous capital world, Ieghe, was sacrificed wholesale in a desperate but effective gambit against the Gray Realm. When a new capital world was needed, the (new) archprelate of Charad chose Xos almost instantly, and, uncharacteristically, her one surviving antiprelate agreed. As the capital world of Charad, Xos throve as never before, and quickly became the military and entertainment center it is today.