By Banch

Torkumala was once a collection of city-states and smaller kingdoms, vaguely united by a shared ancestry with a Fallen Empire in the region. They occasionally warred, but the region was mostly stable and famous across Yszefir for its beautiful architecture, food, and music.

300 years ago, three powerful necromancers used a war between their kingdoms to facilitate the creation of a massive army of the dead, then turned their new minions against their kings and took the thrones for themselves.

Over the course of a bloody campaign, they united every kingdom in the region under their banner, and reorganized the lands into La Trimonarquia, splitting the country between the three of them. The people are made to worship La Trimonarquia as living god-kings, and any dissent is punished by the Inquisitors, who root out rebels and heresy, and are empowered to direct the dead forces of La Trimonarquia. All dead are taken by the church and sent to La Trimonarquia to serve, unless they are of particularly high standing.

Citizens of Torkumala live in 2 different worlds. Nobles whose ancestors sided with the dead live in palaces and sprawling estates, tended to by skeletal servants and supplied with whatever forces they need to keep the commoners working the fields and mines that supply their opulent lifestyles. The most favored among them are allowed to join an inner circle and ascend as a greater undead. Many of these families have patriarchs that are just as old as La Trimonarquia.

For commoners, life is harsh and simple. Do your work, pay your respects to the church, and cause no trouble. They still find pockets of joy, but even while they sing and eat there is always the dread. That the gold-gilded Inquisitors will enter the town and claim that they are hiding heretics, or rebels, or they have failed to pay their tithes. Then the dead come shambling in, and half the town will disappear.

La Trimonarquia are living on borrowed time. Their army is rotting away faster than they can replace it and their courts of sycophants and apprentice necromancers are beginning to make plots of their own. After 300 years the three liches’ minds are beginning to unravel, and the day-to-day affairs are largely managed by their courtiers and hangers-on. It’s an open secret that, very soon, the land will be engulfed by war again, and this time it won’t stop until one of the liches stands victorious on the ashes of the nation. They press their Inquisitors to gather bodies for the coming conflict, and subject their victims to terrible experiments beneath their gothic palaces.

In defiance of these mad kings and their cowardly servants, rebel cells have begun uniting into more organized fronts, winning small victories in the mountains and forests, where the touch of the dead is weak. Among them are Los Muertos Libres, undead who have retained free will and escaped the persecution of the Inquisitors.

Torkumala itself is a beautiful country, filled with verdant valleys, beautiful snowy mountains in the east, and picturesque white beaches in the west. The scars of the old war still linger, however, and venturing beyond the main road is dangerous. Undying weapons of war, curses that blight entire regions, and destroyed cities filled with the wailing dead are scattered across the land.

Population

3 mil alive 200k undead

Government

A feudal system where La Trimonarquia, three powerful lich lords, rule the nation. Nobles below them do most of the actual management, while the liches act as leverage against rebellion and upsetting the hierarchy.

Problems

La Trimonarquia are losing their minds, and their Inquisitors are arresting more and more people as they prepare to turn them into undead soldiers for the coming civil war.

The land is haunted figuratively by the destruction of the last war and literally by discarded or leftover undead monstrosities.

The rebels are growing in power and organization and are beginning to threaten the stability of the northeastern region.

Names

Spanish names, especially related to gems or piousness.

Background Concepts

Rebel fighter, free undead, noble scion, struggling musician, gold miner, common laborer, necromancer apprentice, defected inquisitor