"What did you expect to find? A resplendent queen, dressed in golden fineries? A glorious despot on a high throne? You are in Alz Gamora, and here all Gamorans are equal. I merely take on a greater burden than my fellow citizens."

-The Princeps, Teyacapan Kuali

Gamoran Culture

Masters of Magic and Machines

Gamorans, like many great peoples, had humble origins. In the faded memory of their ancient past, these cat-folk ranged across the treetops, in fear of the mighty beasts and monsters that roamed the forest floor. They lived in hanging tent-like homes, where they would spend most of their lives, and hunted animals that spent their time in the treetops, foraged fruit, and grew special mushrooms that grew alongside tree-trunks. In those days, they inhabited the Starwood, a jungle that spread from the modern day green glade to the modern day Forest of Stars. There, they eventually encountered the strange building of colored glass, known as the Looking Glass. It is said that some of the earliest inhabitants of the Looking Glass, in fact perhaps the first, were the ones to teach magic to the tabaxi. Over generations, the Gamorans would master the magic, and slowly use it to journey into the jungle below them. The magic allowed them to become a settled, ground-dwelling people, and they established settlements dotting the jungle and coastline, which they mastered and terraformed to allow for advanced irrigation. It was the Gamorans' encounter with the dwarves that further changed them. The dwarves, wishing to make peace with the inhabitants of the continent, made contact with the most powerful people inhabiting it, the Gamorans. They granted them mighty gifts, taught them engineering, and introduced mechanical technologies to them. Just as the magic of the Looking Glass had amazed and transformed the Gamorans, these foundries, drills, canals, and pulleys began to transform the Gamoran settlements. The forest was further logged for lumber, and the settlements became magnificent exemplars of modern engineering. The crafts and goods of the Gamorans became highly prized, and eventually, while their craft would never outdo the elves, and their construction would never outdo the dwarves, the sheer ingenuity of their equipment and mechanizations would see no equal in the current day of Adra. The old tribes each sent a priest, a mage, and a warrior to join an Elder Council, the Tribonaes. The body selected, through a vote, one person to rule over their united people, a chief executor, and first among equals, the Princeps, meaning first citizen. While now the Tribonaes hold little to no relation to the old Gamoran tribes, and the selection process for the Princeps is a dramatic, complex, and dangerous affair, the overall centralization of the Gamoran culture has remained the same since the forming of their government. The sheer advancement of their culture over their neighbors in Arathia has made them completely dominant over the continent. Rather than ruling directly over all of its people, the Gamorans rule indirectly over the Calakmulans, Caxamalcans, and Bolgans. In truth, the vast majority of land in Arathia remains untamed and uncontrolled by their armies, but their maps and charts will tend to refer to these untamed lands as nominally theirs. The Gamorans believe that they are destined to fully master their continent, and perhaps even the world, but the only force more impressive than Gamoran machines and magic is the sheer indomitability of the Rathian Jungle.

          The Gamorans are one of the world's best kept secrets. Their strongholds and settlements sit sheltered from the buzz of the rest of Adra, and as such, most people in the western nations have never heard of the Gamorans, or only heard of Alz Gamora in passing. When the average person imagines Arathia, they think of mud huts, not massive stone temples. They think of flint tools, not industrious metalworks. In truth, there exists no culture in all the world that is as singularly advanced as the Gamorans. The economy, government, civic life, city planning, and cuisine of the Gamorans outstrips most of the rest of Adra, and no other culture has such fine exemplaries in each category for which a culture is judged against. Of course, as was noted previously, this is not to say that the Gamorans are better at building than dwarves, or better at weaving than elves, or better at bureaucracy than the Arissians. Instead, the Gamorans are exemptional in all of these categories, master at none. The exception to this would be in the realm of magic, and machines. The technology of the Gamorans is, at any time, several centuries ahead of the rest of the world. Gamorans are often freed up, by and large, from certain types of labor, while other more complex and nuanced forms of labor present themselves. The magic of the Gamorans is also incredible to behold. The Gamorans constantly push the boundaries of magic, experimenting with arcane powers the world has never seen, allowing them to master the universe around them like no Kith before has been able to. In some rare cases, these two things meld, in the hands of the famed artificers, those who fuse machinery and magic in an awe inspiring and dangerous blend. While the ingenuity and creativity of the Gamorans is to be lauded, so is their lack of restraint to be chastised. It has often been noted by their neighbors that the Gamorans seem to lack any fear of the gods, respect for tradition, or care for the consequences of their meddling with nature. This is an exaggeration, as Alz Gamora is filled with god-fearing people, and the traditions of the Gamorans are as hard wired into the average citizen of their nation as it is in any person in Adra. However, it is probably true that the Gamorans sometimes arrogantly believe that their meddling with machines and magic can only improve the world around them, and rarely consider the possibility that some artifacts were not to be created, some spells were not to be cast, and some artifices were never meant to be forged. This lack of finely tuned appreciation of the greater consequences of their actions carries on into the political sphere as well. The Gamorans tend to believe that their way is the best way, and that by sharing their greatness with others, they only give them a gift. However, unlike the Arissians, who have more flexible beliefs on who is or is not a barbarian, the Gamorans tend to view the other inhabitants of Arathia (save for the dwarves, whom they respect highly) as ultimately unteachable. Rather, Gamoran boons are to be viewed either as a gift from a greater people to a lesser people, or as a token to be leveraged in exchange for tribute. The Gamorans do not generally believe that foreigners are reformable, and foreign born dwellers of Alz Gamora are never fully seen as equal by members of the Gamoran culture (though their children are often believed to be fully integrated into the culture). Most notable of the traits of the Gamoran psyche is their will to colonize, master, and organize the whole of the Arathian continent. The wild jungle around them presents a constant split hair in their view, a chaotic mess on the doorstep of the order-obsessed Gamorans. Gamorans believe that they are destined to one day dominate the whole of Arathia, and perhaps once that is done, they will set their eyes on the whole of Adra. Only time will tell.

          The Gamoran people are most highly concentrated in the Principality of Alz Gamora, which spreads from the Chalco Plains in the far south of Arathia up to the Ob-Dani plains in the far north. They are most concentrated around the Great Shark Bay. There are also many Gamorans living as advisors and diplomats in the other nations and settlements of Arathia, and Gamoran ambassadors are common at the great courts in the rest of the world. The races of the Gamorans are most predominately tabaxi, goliath, firbolg, with some small numbers of dwarves, tritons, humans, and even grung among them. As Alz Gamora grows, it becomes impossible to keep all Gamorans following the same church. Still, the Princeps tries, and from Ok-La-Ay, the Imperial Cult of Wisdom spreads across the continent, with Aerideia and the lesser God of the Arcane, Malomen holding great sway. Still, other religions crop up like weeds despite such efforts. Gamorans tend to be ingenious, sophisticated, and organized. They also tend to be self-aggrandized, incautious, and imperialist. The dominant language among the Gamorans is Terran, considered the lingua-franca of Arathia.

If you choose the Gamoran Culture, you gain the following:

~Either a +1 to your Intelligence score or a +1 to your Dexterity score~

~A -1 to your Constitution score~

~As a known language, Terran~

~A Sub-Discipline in every knowledge skill on checks relating to Gamoran Culture~

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