As part of the draconic Tarakona setting I’m building on this blog, today I introduce in detail the Kala, fierce humanoid lizards who live in the plains of the world.

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Created as laborers, Kala are, as a whole, strong but not bright. They have capitalized on these traits by developing a strong warrior culture of hunters and soldiers. For their first few generations, they established small clans of 20 to 50, each led by a chief, living off the bounty of the western grasslands.

Then came Dak One-Eye, who carried the magic hammer Thundermaker. This hammer was given to him by the god Ahm, who instructed Dak to unite the Kala as one empire under his name. The other clans quickly fell under Dak’s banner, forming the Empire of Ahm. Dak received many other visions and teachings of Ahm, which evolved into a complex religion.

Quickly conquering the western plains, the Kala established a thriving, spirited civilization now divided between industrious city-dwelling Kala and their wilder nomadic cousins, though it is not without its own internal squabbles.

Kala Culture

The empire is led by the Charl—currently Charl Torren of the Piercing Gaze. According to the Fourth Scroll of Ahm, the Charl must be “warrior in spirit, noble in bearing, fierce in war, decisive in home, and dedicated entirely to preserving the worship of Ahm.” This is generally interpreted to mean a strong warrior with a level head and respect for religion. Torren certainly combines these attributes, though he’s a better administrator than a fighter. This reputation has earned him some enemies among the war-chiefs.

Just below the Charl in rank are the priests and priestesses of the Eight Orders of Ahm. Each gender has its own religious role. Males (korani) serve as lay counselors and perform basic rites like the Seventh-Day Naming of the Child. Only females (dessen) may dance the holy dances and participate in the holiest of rites directly to Ahm. The high council of dessen also choose the next Charl when the current Charl dies.

Charls rarely die of old age. This remains an open secret.

Just below the priesthood sits the warrior class. Organized into battalions named according to their originating clan, battalions are led by war-chiefs. Each battalion votes for its war chief, though these elections are usually far from fair.

At the moment, the most powerful clans include Piercing Gaze, Everstride, Deep Shadow, and the Thousand Spears.

The rest of the Kala population is made up of the common class, including all the usual suspects: potters, weavers, ranchers, etc. Kala are omnivores, but favor meat. Since so much of the continent has been domesticated, most of their food comes from ranching and herding of slurn, a large, cattle-like lizard. Farming is looked down upon as an occupation too tied to one place, though some vegetable and fruit gardening occurs, particularly in the cities.

Every clan specializes in a particular craft, though several clans may practice the same craft.

Kala love rocks and stones, attaching great significance to the shape of stones, and often carrying one with them as a sort of totem. They will often set up standing stones to absorb evil or as sites of worship, believing that powerful spirits are attracted to them.

Kala Clan Life

Kala live in clans. Adolescents are encouraged to explore strong relationships but remain sexually celibate. Upon maturation, males and females are “bonded,” which is roughly equivalent to a marriage ceremony. Kala bond deeply to their mates, to an extent that may be physiological. Infidelity is a capital crime for both involved. Kala reproduce ovipariously (by laying eggs), and both parents watch over the eggs.

However, Kala young are raised by the clan. Mothers are expected to care for their infants themselves, but after weaning, parentage is mostly ignored. Adults self-organize into disciplinarians, care-givers, trainers, and so forth.

Kala Civilization

Kala live in either large, sprawling cities miles wide, with buildings rarely more than 2 stories high, or in nomadic camps. Predictably, nomadic Kala look down on city-dwellers as soft and living lives unfit to traditional values, while city-dwelling Kala see themselves as modern and much more economically powerful than their scattered nomadic cousins.

Kala cities are usually built of adobe or simple brick. What was once a clan on the plains is now a group of several dozen Kala who live in a complex of squat buildings surrounded by a low stake wall. Each clan works a particular trade, from weaving to weapon-making.

Kala Personality

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The average Kala has a spirited personality, given to strong emotions. They are not the savage brutes often painted by other cultures. Instead, they lust for life and vibrant experiences.

This helps to explain their many festivals and generally loud culture. As the Kala saying goes, “It’s not a proper festival unless a dish has been broken.”

Because companionship enhances emotion, Kala make excellent friends, and indeed they often jump into friendships without much judgment.

Most Kala are highly religious, though most outsiders have a difficult time deciphering Ahm rituals and festivals, which operate according to a highly complex schedule.

The Teachings of Ahm

According to the only two historical records we have of his early life, Dak One-Eye was just another energetic clan chief until receiving Thundermaker. His early revelations about Ahm concentrate on the importance of uniting the Kala race under one banner for Ahm’s glory. Later teachings take a much more pacifistic tone, particularly in the Eighteenth Revelation.

At the time, Dak’s teachings about pacifism were revolutionary, and caused much debate within the Kala wash-tents. However, Dak carefully phrased pacifism not as a lack of conflict, but as necessary for the survival of the race. As is explained in lines fifty-three through sixty-one and seventy-six through eighty-one of the Eighteenth Revelation:

In war there is fighting, yes
But is there not also death, not only of lives but also of nations?
Are the lives of all to be risked, year after year, generation after generation, without end?
No warrior wins every battle.
No feeling surpasses that of proof of arms
Of feeling victory over your foe with the might of claw and arm and leg
And can we feel this only in war?
We are warriors, yes
And we are more, far more, infinitely more.
…
We must survive,
To survive we must stand firm,*
To stand firm we must build,
To build we must not step onto the battlefield.
We will preserve our warrior’s spirit
In a thousand other ways.

* There is no direct translation for the term here translated as “stand firm.” The closest equivalent means to remain successful over a long period, despite drawbacks and enemies.

Ahm’s teachings can be usefully analyzed along the same gender division of the korani and dessen. The korani lay teachings emphasize self-discipline, self-reliance, self-control, and zest for raw emotion. These are taught during daily lessons given by the korani, who also typically teach in the informal neighborhood schools of the Kala (though these are gradually being supplanted by tutors and “professional” teachers, which has caused much concern). The dessen oversee the three-hour weekly rites attended by all Kala at temples or shrines, and dessen lectures emphasize pacifism and the importance of preserving Kala race and culture.

Kala Religion

The major festivals of the Kala include (but are by no means limited to):

• The Feast of the High Sun
• The Fast of Thek
• The Festival of the Waxing Moon
• The Three-Day Festival
• The Five-Day Festival
• The Feast of Forgiveness
• The Coming of Age
• The Gift of the Dead

Encountering the Kala

Combat

If you encounter a Kala raiding party, it will generally consist of a handful of warriors, archers, and warcasters, led by an elite warrior. The warriors will swarm the most physically powerfully enemy, directing their archers to do the same, while the warcasters keep other enemies at bay. Once the first enemy dies, the warriors leap to the next most powerful enemy in turn.

Plot Hooks

Nomadic clans often want information on rival clans nearby; this can be as simple as a scouting mission or as complex as infiltrating and “helping” the other clan.

Whenever you visit a Kala city, you’re likely to find it in the middle of a religious celebration. There are many opportunities for conflict here, such as the theft of a religious item or a mysterious death during a feast.

I’m building a setting on this blog: Tarakona, a continent filled with draconic races.

Today I’m going to flesh out the continent’s history. To understand any world, it helps to understand where it came from. If you know which elements forged it into its present shape, you can grasp it that much better.

However, a world intended for a tabletop RPG has specific requirements, different than what you need for a novel.

First, the world has to provide plot hooks. All the “fluff” in a game should provide plot hooks, in my opinion: material that can provide the backstory or motivation for an adventure.

Second, the setting has to provide dungeons. I don’t mean that literally, nor is it just because of the legacy of D&D. The PCs will need iconic areas to explore and have their adventures in. Even games that don’t involve heroic fantasy or dungeon crawling need iconic environments: dusty libraries and long-forgotten crypts in a Cthulhu investigation game, for example. The setting has to provide for the presence of those environments.

I’ve already established that dragons ruled the continent some centuries ago, and created the races that currently dominate it. But every epic fantasy world needs ruins and dungeons of past empires, and it’ll be difficult for GMs to run a game in a world where all the ruins are scaled for dragons.

So, let’s add some races that came before: humans who grew too powerful. What destroyed them? Let’s echo the downfall of the dragons by having them destroy the humans who came before.

On to our history:

The Age of Monsters

Tarakona was a primitive, untamed wilderness. Huge monsters roamed the jungle-covered land. Eventually, humans arrived and killed off most of those monsters, though many were driven underground or to remote areas. Few records of this era survive.

Plot hooks=: A newly-discovered record hints at an ancient monster driven underground, now living in caves like Morlocks, their internal organs valuable for spell components.

The Golden Age of Man

Great empires grew during this time. Men built massive cities and fortresses. Armies fought until they were united under Grand Emperor Koss. Under Koss and his descendants, lords squabbled and fought, but never put the entire nation at risk.

Most people viewed magic with suspicion, and the state increasingly disfavored it. This eventually led to the Sorcerer’s Rebellion. In their search for freedom and vengeance, wizards unleashed massive powers, leveling whole nations and throwing Tarakona into chaos. Great cities fell into ruin and sank into the jungle.

Plot hooks: Koss and his descendants ruled with a famous scepter, long thought lost; a recently-discovered map shows its location. Five artifacts were used to destroy whole cities during the Sorcerer’s Rebellion; someone has found an old, heavily trapped ruin that contains one of them.

The Days of Magic

After the dust settled, the surviving wizards set themselves up in power. Frankly horrified at the vast destruction they and their peers had wrought, they pledged never to use spells of mass destruction again.

For the next few centuries, the High Wizards retreated into their towers, devoting themselves to magical research. Their minions built fantastic palaces, impregnable fortresses, and secret underground laboratories.

Then one High Wizard grew powerful and distrustful. He allied with a few other spellcasters and summoned the dragons in an attempt to wipe out the other High Wizards.

Plot hooks: An old, fallen tower from the Days of Magic has been discovered; it’s full of valuable artifacts…and magically-animated guardians.

The Age of Dragons

The dragons fought for the wizards in a long war. The remaining humans and humanoids either died or emigrated to other continents of the world. Eventually, the dragons turned on their masters and killed them all, leaving Tarakona solely to its dragon masters. The dragons settled in their former masters’ homes, and used the wizards’ abandoned laboratories to create many lizard-like and draconic servant races.

Dragons and dragonkind spread throughout Tarakona, settling every corner of the continent. The dragons ruled with absolute power, sending Kala into vast battles purely for the dragons’ amusement, toying with craven lizardlings, and driving komodos deep into the dangerous old ruins for forgotten magical lore.

Then, mysteriously, a few centuries ago, the dragons began to weaken. Some died; some left. Nobody knows why; the dragons murmured of a dozen different reasons, few of them compatible.

Once the dragons grew sufficiently weak, the many servant races seized the opportunity, rose up, and killed their masters.

Fifty years of civil war followed, and the races eventually settled into stable clans and empires. The wars died, and over the next century, things slowly settled. Occasional battles marred a period of general peace and construction. Today, each of the three primary civilizations of Tarakona is sufficiently mature to attempt true mastery of their entire continent.

Now, each kingdom needs adventurers.

Plot hooks: An oracle prophesies that the dragons will return in one year unless certain conditions are met. A dragon’s lair has been unearthed.

Far off in the distant sea, a lost continent sits and broods. Cut off from the rest of the world for centuries, its draconic races killed their dragon masters and developed unique histories and culture over the past century and a half. But now they face a new threat: the dragons have returned. And now these strange creatures need adventurers.

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Tarakona can be dropped into any fantasy world, and I’m developing it here, in the open. I’ll build it according to the following principles:

1. Multi-level design. RPGers are imaginative, so each major element will start with a high-level version of a race, creature, artifact, or location. This high-level version will be all you need if you’re full of imagination and want to make it your own for your game. But I’ll also include detailed information that will let you plunk the element down directly in your game.
2. Enough detail to whet your appetite. I won’t list every ruler in Tarakona’s history. That’s boring and not useful. But I will tell you about the major names, and give you a couple of juicy details that can hook into other plots. Each major fact will be memorable and directly useful.
3. Multiple system support. I’ll include stats for D&D 5^th Edition, Pathfinder/D&D 3E, and OSR systems (though not all at once!). I definitely won’t be able to playtest them all, though, so I’ll beg your indulgence there.

Tarakona map

So, what is Tarakona? Let’s give you a high-level history to get you started.

Tarakona is a continent dominated by draconic races: versions of kobolds, lizardfolk, and similar creatures magically created by powerful dragons to serve them. There are no humans, elves, dwarves, or other humanoids (until the PCs arrive). These draconic races spent generations toiling for the dragons as slaves and pawns.

The powerfully-built kala were built for battle, their masters breeding whole armies that they would send against other dragons in battles over trifling bets, but which cost untold kala lives. The strange komodos spread throughout the continent, gathering rare spell components and braving dangerous creatures to research magic (and learning a few secrets themselves). The servile lizardlings served the dragons directly, fetching food and providing innumerable forms of entertainment for their masters.

Then, a few centuries ago, the dragons weakened. Some wasted away and died; others flew away; some simply disappeared. Nobody knows why. Dragons murmured of a dozen different reasons, none of them matching each other.

Eventually, the dragons weakened enough that their slave races rose up and slew their masters. Civil war inevitably followed, until finally the races stabilized into three great empires. Despite occasional skirmishes, they have spent the past century and a half developing their civilizations.

The kala seek out new experiences and vibrant emotional experiences, and they evolved into a nomadic people, dozens of tribes swarming across the plains and lightly-forested foothills in the northwest of the continent. Komodos established a secretive empire built around magic and blood sacrifice, their stone ziggurats sprouting out of the jungles and swamps in the center of the continent. The lizardlings, meanwhile, built sprawling, highly developed cities in the south, where you can find any entertainment you can imagine…for the right price.

But now a new war looms, and the draconic races cannot face it alone. They need outside help.

They need adventurers.

To use this now: use your system’s stats for lizardfolk (kala), kobolds (lizardlings), and yuan-ti (komodos), and set up the lizardfolk as a Mongolian-style civilization, the kobolds as a sprawling, Indo-Chinese civilization, and the yuan-ti as an Aztecy civilization. That’s not going to be quite as interesting as what I’ll develop here, but it’ll get you started.

Much more to come!