After the fall of Yawgmoth and Old Phyrexia, Sleeper Agents on many planes were orphaned. In some cases they lived and died normally. In others, their sudden exposure and deaths left a lingering effect on the plane in question

Kadaris is one such plane. Here, the consequences of the 4205 AR Invasion revealed the presence of the Sleepers to the world, and drove some talented mages to attempt to duplicate the wonders they discovered dying upon their doorsteps.

~A Recent History of Eastern Kadaris~

The Goblin Wars
In 4210 AR, the major powers of the world were the Malchut Empire (Which had a primarily human population with some Vedalken), the nation of Da’at (Elven), and the goblin hordes of the Worldspine. In that year, the constant minor skirmishes in the foothills of the Worldspine became an all-out war.

While initially able to protect its holdings, the imperial armies were horrifically undermanned. However, many mages had been studying scrapped Sleeper Agents (and some other Phyrexian relics found with them), and some of them thought they could replicate the creatures. Thus, the first batch of artificial ‘humans’, or Vatborn, were created to serve as a sudden influx of soldiers for the war.

The war, or at least a series of conflicts in the Worldspine that tend to be recorded as a single war, dragged on for over twenty years. Legions of artificial soldiers turned the tides of battle by taking the numeric advantage away from the goblins. As the war went on, the designs became more refined – some chose to create brutes who were more naturally suited for combat, while others created better and better imitators of humanity, feeling that a soldier able to think and feel as humans do would be more valuable in the long run than a living war machine.

After those twenty years, the goblins were broken: a large portion of their adult population had been killed in combat or taken prisoner and enslaved by imperial forces, and the remaining tribes were scattered and no longer a military threat. At this point, the army was withdrawn from the field, and brought to the heart of the Empire.

The Rise and Fall of the Vatborn
The thorniest issue facing the Malchut Empire after the Goblin Wars was what to do with the soldiers they had created. The brutes, of course, would be retained by the state, acting as military police (or tools thereof), but many of the creations of the war were damnably near to humans, some even so much as to be visually unrecognizable. They reasoned on a human (or near human) level, but according to the major beliefs of the Empire were without souls, and according to more practical beliefs were also property of the state.

The decision was made to sell most of the former soldiers as new slaves, alongside the captured goblins. Tattooed or branded for identification, they entered the workforce performing menial tasks. The transition was not entirely without incident, as many of them (especially the most advanced) displayed emotions similar to those of their masters, and resented the treatment they received in peace after their service in war. However, no large-scale revolt of the former soldiers ever manifested.

Due to the increased availability, the demand for slaves skyrocketed in the decades following the end of the Goblin Wars. By 4290 AR, when even the best of the war-born vatborn were dying of old age, the creation of new models was a big business. Most resembled closely the familiar humanoid races (goblin, vedalken, and elf models were created to sate expensive tastes, as well as the familiar humans), with stripped-down “workhorse” designs used for the most menial and dangerous labors, where price was very much an issue. By 4300 AR, about seventy years after the end of the war, the vatborn human-like population had skyrocketed to nearly a quarter of that of natural-born citizens of the Empire.

That point, however, marked the height of the popularity of artificial life. Backlash, particularly from religious forces inside the empire, began to turn public opinion against the omnipresent slaves. In the years that followed, lynch mobs began to target the “counterfeit people” while demand for their services died off. A string of riots in 4313 AR prompted the Empire to finish off the dying business and “temporarily” outlaw the creation of any further individuals that could be mistaken for ‘real’ people. In 4317, the government began to collect such vatborn, particularly rounding up ones who had become vagrants, turned out of their masters’ homes when no longer fashionable to have, with the express intent of exterminating that population.

A Leader Arises
In 4305 AR, a grieving father commissioned a very unique Artificial Human. Modeled after his eight-year-old daughter, who had died of disease, the artificial would begin ‘life’ as an apparent child (though her creators suspected rightly she would mature like a human), and would be both spared branding and given enough sketchy false memories that neither she nor anyone else could recognize that she was not, in fact, real. Because her model was unique, the mages responsible for her creation made a total of five, though the additional four were branded and not given any false memories. The one requested then began to live a normal life as a natural human named Miryam Miykal.

Thirteen years later, as the conflict between artificial and natural citizens of the empire heated up behind closed doors, Miryam came face to face with the facts of her own existence. According to her own account, recorded while she was alive, it was just after sunset, rain that had poured torrentially for three days showing no signs of abating when one of the other four examples of her model arrived at her home.

The experience was like looking into some horrifically twisted mirror. Beneath the many wounds both fresh and healing, the sodden rags she wore, and the dark tattoo on her forehead, the new arrival was identical to Miryam: there could be no doubt that they were quite literally cast from the same mold.

The Other Miryam, who had, as a subject for experimentation, simply been called Three, gave an account of her self: how she and her other ‘sisters’ Two, Four and Five had lived; how their inquiries after “One” and a little snooping had let them learn about Miryam; how the changing laws had seen them turned out into the world; how she had been rounded up and taken to a place where she and others were subjected to a train of abuses intended to use them up and eventually kill them; and how she had escaped and sought out Miryam in the hopes that someone the world would listen to would listen to her.

Three died a week later from Pneumonia, but Miryam’s adoptive father confirmed her story before then. The strain on Miryam Miykal was great – having lived her whole life as a ‘real’ person, she knew how cheap artificial lives were seen to be, had heard preachers insist such creatures were without souls, and valueless before the gods. But if she held to those beliefs any longer, than her own life was also meaningless. After nearly a month of attempting to arrange her thoughts and considering very seriously the merits of self-destruction, she instead, Miryam decided instead to attempt to act as a voice for those who had none.

It was not long after she entered the public light and beginning to speak out for the artificial that Miryam’s name came to be known across the empire. Though she never advocated violence nor herself shed any blood, riots seemed to follow in her wake as those on both sides were called to face uncomfortable truths. A year into her campaign, Miryam discovered and revealed to the populace one of the camps where the collected vatborn were being worked to death, and when among the prisoners who escaped that place ragged and starving Two, Four, and Five were discovered, she revealed her own nature to the world.

In the wake of that day came war.

Civil War
In 4319 AR, the Malchut Empire declared that the reasoning Vatborn (which were the vast majority) were an abomination before the gods, and would be exterminated – they would kill those they had brought into being as swiftly as possible, any hope of depleting the artificial population in secrecy now gone.

But as the Empire had feared, the breach or secrecy in their program lead to an almost immediate revolt. While the Vatborn were outnumbered five to one by the natural citizens of the Empire, they had a leader to rally around, a desperate need to not lose their battle, and many among the human population were sympathetic to the desire of the Vatborn to continue living, believing that they had the right to at least that much.

In fact, early conflicts that ended in Vatborn being driven from the major cities (but rarely captured and executed) likely would have been worse for the empire if not for Miryam’s stand against shedding blood. The young woman firmly believed that Vatborn and natural citizens could live in peace, and while lines were drawn spent her time desperately attempting to negotiate a peace with the government that wished nothing less than their total destruction. When her efforts proved futile, however, the clever young lady had those Vatborn who followed her as a racial leader execute a series of surgical strikes that paralyzed imperial war efforts with minimal casualties, damaging infrastructure and organization.

Such actions also brought the majority of Vatborn under her banner, and lost her very few of their natural allies, as her actions made the genocidal intent clearly one-sided.

All the same, a force consisting of more maids, porters, farmhands, and harlots than soldiers, outnumbered and restraining itself, could make little progress against the entrenched Imperial armed forces. Raids would liberate both thinking prisoners and abhuman work “animals” and take them to secure positions in the wilds, but such little victories did nothing to bring their opponents to the bargaining table. Even when the Vatborn begin to position themselves on essentially unpopulated islands, withdrawing from the Empire’s heartland, the persecution continued unabated.

Intervention
After three years, things finally changed. The nation of Da’at, long neutral towards the empire’s affairs, decided to enter what ranged between a series of attempted pogroms and a civil war. The elven war-host poured from the forests, and had fewer compunctions about killing soldiers than did Miryam’s Vatborn. With the army occupied in anti-guerilla struggles with the Vatborn, the elves faced minimal resistance, and soon forced the imperial leaders to sue for peace.

The terms, which Da’at and Miryam and her closest lieutenants were able to dictate, were simple: The Vatborn were to be granted lands (including the islands they were currently holding, and several coastal counties) to found their own nation as well as the magical knowledge and technology to produce more of their own, as the Vatborn were typically sterile. Da’at also demanded reparations, which crippled the Empire’s ability to maintain a standing army for decades thereafter.

The Founding of the Free States
Before the organization of the Vatborn Nation was complete, a fanatical assassin killed Miryam Miykal. The Vatborn immediately fell into disarray, as her closest advisors could not agree on which of them would be her successor as leader of the Vatborn. Three major factions developed, lead by Five (or as she came to be known, Rebecca Miykal, the last of Miryam’s sisters still alive), a male-form skilled-labor model Vatborn called Foreman, and a female-form household-assistant model Vatborn who had learned to use magic and insisted on the name Zero.

Though there were many other highly respected Vatborn, Rebecca, Zero, and Foreman effectively represented the three major ideologies of the liberated Vatborn: Those who wished to become human, those who wished to become separate, and those who wished to transcend humanity, respectively. The other Vatborn leaders gradually fell in behind one of the three. By the first winter of their freedom, it was clear that the rifts between the Vatborn factions could not be overcome without a leader as charismatic and respected as Miryam had been, and when spring came in 4324 AR there were three new “Free States” along the former Imperial coast.

~4505 AR~
Nearly 200 years after the foundation of the Free States, the world is mostly in the state it was when they were founded. What follows are the present cultures and other entities

Malchut Empire
The most populous single group, the Malchut Empire holds vast fields, peat-rich moors, the foothills of the Worldspine, and thin woodlands along their border with Da’at. Their primary population is human, with a minority of Vedalken and Goblins. The Empire has a deep but not total unification of church and state, symbolized by its reigning empress being wedded by law to the high priest of their orthodox church upon her ascension to the throne (or to his successor, if the high priest is still her father).

The main tenets of the Malchut faith are belief in a pantheon of gods known collectively as the Orderers (who are held to have gifted divine law to their first High Priest and divine right of rulership to his wife, from whom the line of the Empress is held to follow), faith that the Orderers have a purpose for each soul, and acknowledgement that ‘heathens’ (those who do not recognize the Orderers) are to be controlled by those who serve the Order.

While the power structure beneath the Empress is separate from that of the priesthood (in part because only women can be hereditary rulers and only men are allowed to be clergy), the laws that the Empress upholds are founded in these religious teachings, including the Malchut practices of slavery and their former turning against those lives that were created outside the Order.

The current empress is Sarah IV, a young and decently progressive monarch who has attempted to curry favor with Da’at and normalize relations with the Free States. Her husband, the High Priest of the Orderers, is her elder brother Remiel IX – not the most likely arrangement in imperial history, but also not unheard of. He views his sister-wife’s outreach to other peoples as a frustrating sign of the empire’s continued weakness.


Da’at
Da’at is the elven nation. The elves consider themselves the defenders of Life as a whole. Over the years, they have had somewhat rocky relations with Malchut, but Malchut never saw fit to make war on them, and Da’at only made war on Malchut in order to spare the Vatborn from eventual genocide.

Da’at includes the Orderers in its pantheon, but their worship is focused on the primal essence of life itself, a non-sentient force that flows through all living things and which is regarded as sacred.

Despite their respect for all lives, the elves also respect death as part of life. They are not averse to hunting nor to killing sapients if it is deemed necessary, because in their view the spirit merely returns to the greater whole. Ancestor “woship” is common among the elves of Da’at – though they do not feel their ancestors to be divine or sacred, they do carry a great respect for the fact that the present generation lives only because the former made wise choices, and will sometimes consult their deceased ancestors in a manner akin to prayer.

Da’at is ruled by a council of elders, being the most senior heads of religious organizations and the Civil Service – when a seat opens, it is for lawyers, judges, priests, diplomats, and so on, if they are of greater experience than their piers, to retire from such roles and become statesmen. As such, the ruling council of Da’at is typically highly conservative, and tends to advocate a “wait and see” approach that makes their intervention on behalf of the Vatborn all the more stunning a turn of events.


Free State of Teferet
Founded by Rebecca Miykal and her followers, the Free State of Teferet addresses the condition of the Vatborn by attempting to become “human” – successive generations born from the growth vats represent refinements of the design underneath the skin, and the ultimate goal of Teferet’s vat-tenders is to create a generation of vatborn that can sire and conceive children on their own. So far, they have been entirely unsuccessful.

As such, Teferet Vatborn tend to look identical to humans (or sometimes other sapient races – elven, vedalken, and goblin models are still used, though uncommonly). In most cases, an individual’s cosmetic features are essentially random (rather than pre-determined). Thus, it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, to tell a Teferet Vatborn from a natural individual, which has caused no end of paranoia in bordering imperial provinces.

Teferet is a monarchy – the heir to the throne is a child raised by the current monarch, and has thusfar always been an identical copy of the “Miykal” design (Effectivley, clones of Five/Rebecca and Miryam).

Beneath the monarch, it functions essentially as any human society would, save for the impossibility of natural birth, and even then children (as most Vatborn begin life with an apparent age of four to eight years, though birthing infants has become increasingly common) are given to guardians or family units to raise as their own.

Teferet has an icy but improving relationship with Malchut and deteriorating relations with Hod, but good relations with Netzach and Da’at.


Free State of Netzach
Founded by Zero the Sorceress and her followers, the Free State of Netzach addresses the condition of the Vatborn by attempting to become their own form of true life. – accepting that they are not humans and feeling that they never can be, Netzach Vatborn have strived to discover their own, unique place in the world. Their vat-tenders have innovated and tweaked the physical design of new generations, attempting to move towards a viable new standard that would allow them to be both unique and accepted.

One of the strongest beliefs of Netzach is that magic is in the blood of all Vatborn – they are created by magic, and thus they should naturally incorporate magic into their lives and their essence. While Zero was one of the first vatborn to show any talent for the arcane arts, most Netzach vatborn of the current generation are natural wizards, and as the vat-tenders learn how one generation lived, the next can be given a higher overall potential for magical talent.

Netzach Vatborn are recognizable as humanoid-derivative, but could not be mistaken for actual humans, as Teferet’s population could. In the current generation, their features tend to be somewhat elongated, and while they mass no more than an average human, they stand upwards of a foot taller. Most humans find them not unpleasant to look at, though often somewhat eerie. The most recent three birthings of Netzach Vatborn (thus the vast majority of those still alive) also have large wings of stretched skin, though for about half of the population (and one third of the most recent ‘batch’), these wings are merely vestigial, and not strong enough to fly with, a problem on which the vat-tenders are working

The Vatborn of Netzach have a narrow band of cosmetic traits – they can be male or female (though neither is reproductively capable), and always have albino-white (or perhaps more accurately Kor-white, though there are no Kor on Kadaris) skin. Their hair can be bright yellow, vivid red, bright orange, light or dark green, rich blue, or bright teal. Each gender has about half a dozen facial structure variants. Thus, there are only around 90 potential phenotypes for Netzach Vatborn, and the odds of one encountering another who looks identical are very high. The vatborn counter this effect on a cultural level – tattooing and piercing are very popular. Other forms of body modification, such as scarification and surgical alteration, are also more commonly practiced in Netzach than in any other culture of Kadaris, and there is no standardized set of locations, marks, or implanted adornments to replicate, thus allowing individuals to be immediately and visually distinguished from one another based on how they have chosen to alter their bodies.

While the Vatborn of Netzach aim to be their own species, natural reproduction is not their first goal: achieving their “ideal” base form is. Should Teferet succeed, Netzach will likely trade for the information and adapt it themselves after their leadership is satisfied that what a vatborn “ought to be” has been defined and stabilized. Still, they maintain a low apparent age at ‘birth’ – usually around six to ten years as a human would guess, giving them time to learn before “adulthood” but less growing to do than if they began as infants.

That leadership is a council of peers – Netzach practices representative democracy, but the pool from which representatives can be chosen is smaller than the pool of those who decide which individual represents them. Only land-holding vatborn capable of wizardry are permitted on the council of peers, but each community selects its representatives to the council by a vote of every resident. The term to which a peer is appointed is twenty years or until death, whichever comes first. Birthings occur every twenty years, but the terms of the peers are staggered such that the entire council is not replaced at once.

Netzach has so far maintained positive relations with the other Free States as well as Da’at and Malchut, but is closest to Teferet and Da’at


Free State of Hod
Founded by Foreman and his followers, the Free State of Hod considers the condition of the Vatborn to be that they were made for a purpose, and should continue to be made for a purpose. They discard notions of nature and species in favor of a program that sees each “individual” with an exact meaning in life.

To this end, the Vatborn of Hod come in many types, that would not be recognizable as one another. All are genderless (as they see no need to maintain such trappings), have slick, grey skin (unless a thicker hide is necessary for protection from injury) and are absolutely hairless. They are given physical traits as befits their intended purpose and nothing more. Thus the Thinker with its massively expanded cranium, vast array of sensory organs, and spindly limbs that are scarce able to move it and the blind, idiot Palanquin that lives only to bear the Thinker on its broad and flat back and stomp about with its six legs at the Thinker’s direction were born initially from the same stock.

The rulers of Hod are the Thinkers: they have disproportionately massive heads to house equally massive brains, a full human-like face with access to all the senses from the nose up (though their ears are differently shaped and their eyes keener, more numerous, and capable of independent motion), a short proboscis capable of ingesting most forms of nutrition quickly and efficiently as they do not breathe through it, a hulking neck and upper body to support that head and a set of six tentacles which were deemed to provide better fine manipulation than hands. Beneath that, their legs are shrunken and atrophied, sufficient only to allow them a slow, shuffling gait when unassisted. Thinkers were made to innovate and to direct the grand experiment of Hod towards ever-better ends. Thinkers make almost every decision for the whole of Hod – some are politicians, others are scientists, and still others simply designers, architects, or foremen that choose what obedient laborers shall build.

The only group in Hod that might challenge the supremacy of the Thinkers are the Vat Tenders – those responsible for growing and to some extent designing new individuals (and thus with the power to determine what the next generation of Thinkers will be like). They resemble in many ways the vedalken of Mirrodin, in that they are tall, slender humanoids possessed of four arms and somewhat enlarged, elongated heads. The resemblance stops there, however: the Vat-tenders are cyclopean (as their work does not often require good depth perception or environmental awareness) creatures: They lack noses (it was decided they had no need for the sense of smell) and external ears (hearing through small, barely visible holes in the sides of their heads.) Their mouths are broad, lipless gashes placed about where one would expect, presenting a permanent grin full of razor sharp teeth, for the primary diet of the Vat Tenders is waste flesh from the vats. Their limbs are not as strong as the human average, but far more capable of exertion (and their legs of speed) than the physically incompetent Thinkers, for the Vat Tenders are expected to hurry back and forth from one laboratory to another, carrying the seeds of new lives.

Other specialists, performing vital, skilled tasks within Hod are designed with varying senses, strengths, and mental enhancements or handicaps as are necessary. All are incapable of innovation or original thought, as that is the place of the Thinkers primarly and the Vat Tenders as their work often needs the ability to solve problems and conduct experiments on the fly (though it might be more that the Vat Tenders were not willing to give up such faculties and have Thinkers perform them). These range from awesomely strong masons and smiths to fragile, many-limbed weavers to farmers with bony sickles and trowels as useful parts of their anatomy.

Lastly are the beasts of burden – those Vatborn that replace domestic animals and were thus created without sapient thought. Some are deaf, many are blind (if they are expected to work only under the direction of a sighted specialist, such as draft animals or the Palanquins of the Thinkers) and all are mute. The crude designs of the Beasts were made in the first few generations of Hod, and thus tend to have a twisted human-ness to them, far more than the Thinkers or Specalists. When one looks at them, one sees a human body twisted, mutilated, and added to until it came to that form, as is most notable in the partially blank human head so often found at the front of the creature.

While Hod has made no hostile overtures towards any other nation and seems entirely content to work towards its own perfection, the alien and often hideous look of its “citizens” has soured relations with every other nation (even Netzach), and most dread what might one day creep out of Hod’s territory.


Goblins
The goblins of Kadaris are small, standing to around four feet with spindly limbs but broad bodies and large hands and feet, broad and flat heads with wide mouths and fat noses. Their skin is brown with green markings, and owing to their shape one could be excused for mistaking, at a glance, one curled up asleep for a rock. For their size, they are disproportionately strong, and thus a goblin warrior is usually an even match for a much larger human soldier.

While there is a significant goblin slave population in Malchut, the free goblins of the Worldspine have also recovered since their war, their numbers at the same level they were in 4210 AR. However, the goblins are far more scattered and factionalized than they were then, and their many tribes level the population growth by warring with one another. Their culture is deep and old and their religious beliefs complex and rarely shared with outsiders, though they seem to revere higher powers that are not the same as the Orderers.

One belief of the goblins is known by outsiders: The goblins believe in the Day of Inheritance, a mythical time in which their gods will decree that all the world is to belong to goblin-kind, and no force in the world will stop their march down from the Worldspine to spread throughout the flatlands, and after that day the goblins shall live in peace as there will be no more enemies and lands so broad they needn’t war over them, and goblin will only kill goblin for sport or sacrifice unto their benevolent gods, and the gods will teach them new sports and ways to kill one another that will please all goblins forever. It is thought that the Goblin Wars of 4210-4230 AR were sparked by a powerful and charismatic goblin leader declaring that the Day of Inheritance had come.


Beyond the Worldspine
The Worldspine – the goblin-infested mountain range at the western edge of Malchut – has long been impassible to civilized folk. But, after the Goblin Wars some travelers were able to thread passes through the Worldspine and discover that they were not alone. On the other side were lands and nations that had never before spoken with Malchut and Da’at. There were humans and elves there, and also vedalken in unheard of numbers and ratfolk (the likes of which had never been seen in the east). As goblin populations resurged, east and west were again cut off, but now knowing of each others existence, sometimes trade by sea, following a long route from the coastal holdings of the Free States to the shining cities of some of those western kingdoms. Especially as Teferet seeks knowledge of how to birth ‘real’ humans and Netzach seeks acceptance, the formerly unknown beyond is looking more and more to potentially play a part in the future of the peoples of the east.


Phyrexian Poison
Kadaris is a world that has been touched by Phyrexia. On some planes, this has resulted in a full-scale invasion from the inside, but the taint on Kadaris does not seem that severe. Wetlands into which the bodies of sleeper agents and the earliest models of creation vats for the goblin wars, which incorporated parts of sleepers, were tossed have been permanently polluted. The total land area of such “oil bogs” is currently less than a hundred acres, spread across half a dozen sites where the initial Vatborn factories built in the Goblin Wars once stood, but they are very slowly growing as no steps have been taken so far to curb the spread.

While it is unlikely that this corruption presents a real existential threat life on Kadaris in any soon sense, it is difficult to imagine that any good would come if Hod began to experiment with the oil in their creation vats, nor could it benefit the world to continue to ignore such blighted places.

This is just a bump to remind me that I need to think about moving forward with this.

I could really use some help on fleshing out the world beyond the Worldspine (The western nations).

I'll... see if I can't brainstorm something, but I have a lot on my plate.

I'm bringing this up again. I'd like to collect opinions on it and maybe even help filling in the other side of the worldspine (or even some indication whether I should do this at all), but if all else fails I might just throw it up for voting as-is

Oh wow, I forgot all about this. I'd need to look through it again, I fear. I don't remember a whole lot about it.

I re-read this and I like it a lot! It's an intriguing setup for sure, and a fascinating contrast to Shandrovol, where the touch of Phyrexia became a blight.

I'll have to ponder over what might go into the Western Lands. I think the most obvious question is whether they, too, were touched by Phyrexia, and if not, how they've reacted to the knowledge of artificial beings on the other side of the continent.

One thing that I noticed is that the plane feels very self-contained. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the players and the story are very much their own thing, and it's hard to imagine external forces interfering much. That said... I wonder what Ellia would think of the plane and what havoc she might wreak.

Still want help?

I really enjoyed Kadaris (though I keep pronouncing it as Kardis in my head), and I believe I detected a hint of Ptolemaic Egypt in the Malchut Empire.

One thing that I've been thinking of is that you said that the vatborn are usually sterile , but have had no ability to produce their own offspring. ["Vatborn were to be granted lands (including the islands they were currently holding, and several coastal counties) to found their own nation as well as the magical knowledge and technology to produce more of their own, as the Vatborn were typically sterile"] Does that mean that some are capable of interbreeding and have not?

Need to touch up some of that. This post is to remind me of the same.