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2nd Movement - Khale

Fluff from Clinton’s book, crunch adapted from the book with original additions. Additional material from Josh and the Random Wiki. Onomastics from Clinton and various Internet sources

Across the Border Sea, the deep green peninsula of Khale is an echo of Qek’s lushness. Once a stone’s throw across the Hungry River from Qek, the earthquakes of the Time of Shadow have split it away as the river was ripped into the much larger Sea of Teeth. It is still close: the Dragon’s Mouth is a small strait between Khale and Qek, and is usually much calmer than the sea. Controlling this strait, as well as a mysterious substance called moon-metal, earns Khale the enmity of its southern neighbor, Ammeni, who has attacked the country in a war of attrition for several years.

The forests of Khale are wet and thick, but move from jungle to evergreen woodlands, dappled with sunlight. They are sacred to the people of Khale who live beneath their towering boughs. Everything a tribesman could need is found under the forest-top, from fields of mushrooms and plants for medicine and food, to deer to hunt and ride, to fallen tree limbs easily sap-cured into bows and spears. Before the Time of Shadow, great webbed cities connected the forest; since then, the remnants of tribes live only off the land.

Khale is a harsh land in which to live: its many rivers flow with the blood of cousins, as the many tribes fight for control of their own land, and Ammeni pushes its troops further north. The land rumbles as many chieftains try to unite the tribes, but so far, none have been successful.

Tribe is Family

Khaleans are a hearty and strong people, Mediterranean in appearance, with generally black, brown, or red hair, and green or brown eyes. They claim ancient heritage with the people of Qek and maintain good relations with the few Qek that emerge from the jungle, although they speak different languages.

Khaleans operate in tribes of two to ten dozen people and consider all tribe members to be their family, not just blood relations. In fact, blood brothers from different tribes are not considered to be related at all, except in the way that all Khaleans are related. Upon marriage, males join the tribe of their wife, becoming part of a new family.

In addition, outsiders, or those with no family, can become part of the tribe through a naming ritual.

Within the tribe, status is very important. While family lines are matriarchal, positions of power are dominated by men. The tribe’s chief is almost always male, the husband of the eldest woman in the tribe, and his advisors, usually a bard and his most accomplished warrior, are also men. When two tribes battle, it is Khalean law – that is, tradition as old as Khale – that only the tribe’s men can fight. If a woman were found to be fighting for a tribe, it would be a horrible disgrace, and that tribe would more than likely surrender the fight.

We are the Forest

The forests of Khale are worshiped as ancestors. Each tree in a tribe’s territory is believed to be a fallen member of the tribe, born again as part of the land. An ancient and legendary tree in the center of Khale is said to be the great King Khale, a ruler that united all of the peninsula and lands beyond, and the father of all modern Khaleans.

Religion revolves around festivals, gatherings where a tribe – or many friendly tribes – will gather for a many-day-long revelry and celebration of their past. All festivals have tellings of great tales about the ancestors, done ritually around a bonfire. These rituals are competitive as tribal priests or BARDS try to outdo each other with fantastic stories. The bards, part priest and part artist, are given a special place in Khalean culture, as they are immune to normal tribal conflicts. When two tribes clash, the bards of each tribe will meet to write down the story of the conflict, narrating it as the battle flows. Killing a bard is a criminal offense, and usually results in the death of the murderer.

Magic is fully accepted in Khale, and fascinates most people. The bards of Khale, and foreign sorcerers (called DRUIDS by the Khaleans) are highly respected and use magic freely. It is said that each bard learns three PERFECT CHORDS in his lifetime; which three seems to reflect life experience in a profound manner. The chords are normal Secrets, except that obtaining them can be somewhat arduous: SECRET OF QUEST may be used to sidestep requirements. Musical effects may, of course, be RESISTED (R) by the audience at will.

The Green World

Inside the forests of Khale, there is another world, a mystic world. This is their greatest secret, and it is forbidden to share it with those not of the tribe. Ancient trees, those with a circumference greater than two men holding hands, can be used as a gateway into the GREEN WORLD.

This Green World is a maze of pathways, some so small that one must crawl through them, and others large enough for five people to stand side-by-side. The walls of these caverns are growing wood, light and grainy, and glow with faint green light. When the Sky Fire came, many Khaleans moved into the Green World to escape, building cities inside its immense caverns. Those cities lie dead now, and are said to be haunted; gnarled trees grow throughout them, with human expressions twisted into their trunks.

The Green World covers all of Khale, and can be used as a passageway to anywhere else in the land, provided there is a guide. When one ends up is less certain: while experienced travelers have little trouble, those who get lost in the Green World may find themselves exiting into another time entirely. Bards sometime use these passages to go to earlier times and talk to ancient ancestors, although no one has ever been able to travel within one hundred years before the Time of Shadow, or one year after it.

Legends say that King Khale himself still wanders these halls, a large old man with a beard like moss, and hands like wood-knots. Supposedly, he or other great ancestors can guide you to any place and time within these halls, or grant you great boons, provided you perform a quest, usually a reenactment of a previous adventure of the ancestor. During festivals, tribes will sometimes send their greatest hero bands to perform a quest and grant them success over their enemies.

As war envelopes Khale from the south, some tribes have moved completely into the Green World, leaving the land of Khale behind. Their great mistake lies in the fact that the Green World does not stand alone: it is formed of the forest of Khale, and as the forest falls, it grows dimmer and smaller.

Traveling the Green World

The Green World is difficult to traverse. My strategy is to handle it almost like the [[Qek?|Qek jungle]]: a bard familiar with the terrain may well learn knots from the ancestors or even tie them himself, becoming a TSAFARI (known in Khale simply as questors). The pertinent Ability in the Green World is TREE-BOND (I). Typical knots would involve gateways into different places and times, important ancestors and waypoints of ancestral quests. Characters unfamiliar with the pathways may still check TREEBOND (I) to avoid danger and encounter friendly ancestors, as their instincts lead them. Just like the Qek jungles, getting lost is an invitation for the Story Guide to complicate things, not to end the story.

The Hands of the Tribe

Within tribes, farming and hunting are both fine jobs and craftsmen and artists are well respected. The ability of Khalean craftsmen to forge sharp swords and carve strong tools and weapons from wood, curing them with sap, is legendary.

Tribes are communal entities divided internally into MOIETIES or “skin groups”, sort of totemic factions named for common animals that are entangled with both means of production and procreation: while a person’s moiety does not directly determine their occupation, it does indicate his responsibility of oversight over the work of others in the commune. Moieties for individuals are determined based on the moieties of their parents as well as their gender; the foremost purpose is prevention of incest, which is achieved by strict taboos in determining which moieties are allowed to marry each other.

Khale trades for metal tools with Qek, and their longships sail to southern Maldor to trade spices which do not grow in that colder climate. Many young Khalean men, bereft of family, have joined crews, even becoming pirates. The Wooden Sickle is a famous ship of pirate youth that has been the scourge of the Ammeni coastline.

Khaleans have a taste for drink, and import beer from Maldor and Goren and wine from Oran in large quantities. They are also known to grow marijuana, a plant which is smoked for mild hallucinatory and relaxing effects. This drug is said to bring out epic tales in heroes and increase sexual desire.

Moon Metal

After the Year of Shadow, a group of explorers found a forest like no other in northern Khale; metal grew up from the ground, gleaming like bright silver, sprouting branches like trees. This, the only metal in Khale, is said to be a piece of the Shadow Moon fell to earth. Whatever it is, it has taken root and grows in a parody of a natural forest.

Moon-metal is easy to craft, and deadly sharp and strong. If heated over a fire, it responds to the user’s wants to form itself into any metal object of superior quality. However, moon-metal severs the user’s relationship with the Green World: merely touching moon-metal gains the character a circumstance penalty die for TREE-BOND (I), and routinely handling the stuff merits two. One cannot enter the Green World at all with any moon-metal upon their person.

Moon-metal has a weakness for wood, it deforms like soft clay when clashing with it. A LUNAR FORGING (R) check can be used to force the metal to retain its form, however. Failure ruins the item.

The Worst War

Near is not a very peaceful place, but nowhere does war burn as savage and bitter as it does in Khale today. The Ammeni Houses have almost all sent their mercenaries to Khale, many uniting their forces under one leadership in their hurry to subjugate the land.

Reasons for the war are two-fold: The coastline of Khale controls the Hungry Mouth, making sailing between the Eastern Ocean and the Sea of Teeth a hazardous thing when even stopping for water can bring hostile barbarians out of the woods. The other reason is moonmetal, which Ammeni princes have witnessed and which they desire for themselves.

Ammeni bamboo weapons are no match to what the Khalean warriors have, but their leadership has been tempered in the wars of Maldor, consisting of some of the most cunning and ambitious men to ever come out of that war-torn land. Ammeni troops group together, build fortifications, patrol the forest paths and guard the building of roads into the woods. They fight in closed formation, with harsh punishment to soldiers who endanger the unit by breaking discipline.

Khaleans respond with guerrilla warfare, striking and then disappearing into the forest, refusing definitive engagement. The tribes that did have died to the man, with women taken as spoils after the men reveal the tribe’s location under torture. The tribes farther in the wilderness might have only heard stories of what is going on, but all Khaleans are family to a degree: they will all fight when the word reaches them.

Khaleans do not have a regular army in this war; what they do have are HERO BANDS formed of the best warriors of many tribes. These were originally based on the lodge structure of moieties that tie tribes together, but today great heroes travel from tribe to tribe, initiating any able body into the war against the Ammeni. The hero bands are highly motivated and thoroughly skilled, and they are pretty much the only cultural structure the Khaleans have for bringing the war to the Ammeni; hero bands make long treks into areas under Ammeni control to strike at the enemy where they can.

As the Ammeni supply lines grow longer and the war grinds to a halt, the princes are sure to bring in more weapons, whatever they need to pacify the land. Burning the forest and desecrating Khalean beliefs forces tribal forces into disunity or decisive confrontation. Three-Corner wizards, native Ammeni sorcerers and eclectics from Inselburg can name their price when the war reaches this point.

Regardless, it’s the Ammeni mercenaries who gave this war its name, for many have died in the woods without warning. For most of the Khaleans it’s still not yet a single, unified war; when this changes and Khale rises as one, who knows what will happen.

Actual Play

The basic function for Khale and Khaleans in the larger Near is that they are fantasy barbarians. In fact, they are my go-to barbarians in the setting: if the game is set in Maldor or wherever and I need barbarians, then the Khalean woods are in Maldor, or next to it, or there’s an off-shoot culture of Khaleans somewhere about there, never mind geography.

Having a barbarian culture to deal with is a fine thing when you want to compare and contrast lifestyles. Khaleans are of course by-the-book fantasy barbarians, noble and harmonious, but that sort of thing can be played around if desired: the war makes jerks of everybody after they’ve hidden under a rock for a couple of months while waiting for the enemy to make an appearance.

A specific challenge that certain sorts of groups might have to face is this: why play in Khale when you could be playing ORLANTHI in Glorantha? I don’t know how it came to be that way, but there sure are similarities. A cunning Story Guide might draw on the rich Gloranthan sources for inspiration here, I’d say. In fact, I recommend it: that whole heroquesting thing in the Green World has already been figured out three or four times in detail there, for example.

Ideas

Ideas - Khale

Khaleans are a very romantic culture, which translates to “good” in our fantasy literature sensibilities. Go along with that, it’s probably more worthwhile at first than undermining it: for instance, destroying or corrupting the poor, noble savages is going to be very, very tragic, regardless of which side player characters happen to be on.

Alternatively, consider my Ammeni Wars campaign, in which the Worst War becomes regional as a hero band travels to Orania and wins the Senate of Kalderon to their side; even if victorious, the epic heroes are going to have a bitch of a time with the Ammeni reconstruction: what do you do with a nation like that?

I have the impression that the Khalean capability for time travel has largely been neglected in practical play, possibly because it takes a campaign to such radical directions. Still, one day I’m going to play an assassin from the future, his only hope to kill the man who would sell his people to eternal slavery. Other basic directions to go here are the Celtic olden goldies, like shamed heroes cast out of their tribe, bards seeking their art in the oddest places, romantic troubles caused by the moietic taboos and so on.

Khalean Names

Names - Khale

Khalean names are vaguely Celtic, of course. The moiety is more important than specific parentage for most purposes, so a typical name format in intertribal matters could be <position> <first name> of <moiety> in <tribe>. “Bard Nevins of Snake moiety in tribe Luthan”, for example. Alternatively, “Bard Nevins Snake-skin of tribe Luthan” has a nice ring as well. Additional bynames are added, but only for braggarts and people who actually make an appearance in bard songs, in which such are a matter of course.

Male

Pwyll, Nevins, Bowdyn, Gwawl, Aonghus, Morvyn, Dwayne, Kelvin, Keaghan, Brasil, Cathair, Hueil, Donat, Eoghann, Newlyn.

Female

Maeveen, Isolde, Elsha, Aphria, Evelina, Moyna, Deirdre, Jennifer, Wynne, Yseult, Africa, Violet, Donella, Grania, Merna.

Places

Ofaly-nun-Luthan, Veneti-Iam, L’lun-no-Vatic and so on, in descriptive vein. I basically just string sounds together for profit and pleasure when making these up.

Cultural Strengths

Cultural Strengths - Khale

Typical Ability SPECIALIZATIONS for Khaleans include camouflage, drinking, jests, growing herbs, tracking, theatre, sailing, craft specialties, moiety responsibilities.

Typical Pool CONDITIONING for Khaleans comes from bardic upbringing or surviving alone in the wilds.

Typical Ability ENHANCEMENTS for Khaleans originate in ancestral blessings, heroic inspiration, foreign magic.

Typical Ability SYNERGIES for Khaleans are common abilities with their Khalean counterparts.

Typical EQUIPMENT for Khaleans is wooden, including spears, swords, bows, shields, boats. Other things include clothing off leather and plants, craft tools, musical instruments, exotic animals, hero bands.

Abilities - Khale

Spearfighting (V)
Spear is the favored weapon of the Khaleans, who use it with great skill not only to strike in the crowded woods, but in movement as well. The spear is supposed to be for hunting, though.
Female Rites (R)
Some things in Khale are tied strictly to gender. Violence is for men, while creating life is for women. The life rites are useful in religious acts, but also in midwifery, contraception, abortion and treating women’s and children’s diseases.
Carousing (V)
Khalean parties can be brutal affairs, especially as the men start competing to establish a pecking order. This Ability helps in holding the liquor, as well as holding your wits and not offending anybody.
Genealogy (R)
A necessary Ability for knowing your ancestors, determining moieties within the tribe and finding kinship relations with outsiders. The Ability also covers tribal history and mythology, which is useful in figuring out the correct greetings when interacting with ancestors and outsiders.
Guerrilla Warfare (I)
This is a similar Ability to BATTLE (R) in that it concerns planning and executing combat operations. The difference comes in the means: Khaleans have learned to deal with asymmetric force warfare, meaning that this Ability is good for ambushes, attacking soft targets, avoiding decisive combat, false flag operations, misdirecting the enemy and so on. Honorable battles between tribes are not resolved by these means, however; this is for foreign intruders.
Tree-bond (I)
Khalean ancestor worship is closely tied to this peculiar ability. Aside from ritual use in recognizing and worshipping ancestor spirits, the Ability can be used to enter the Green World from a suitable tree.
Woodworking (I)
Khaleans create most of their tools out of wood, often to highly exacting standards of beauty and utility. This Ability can be used to create both art and tools, such as weapons, buildings and even ships.
Lunar Forging (R)
This Ability is used to craft moon-metal by projecting psychic force on the heated substance. It might be useful for other similar shaping tasks as well.

Secrets - Khale

Secret of Eight Forms
The character has concertedly taught himself to fight and kill humans. The student is supposed to learn this by observing the eight moietic animals, because other skins won’t share their secrets with you; in practice HEROES teach these arts freely to anybody. A character with this Secret can use his SPEARFIGHTING (V) with any (and I mean any) weapons, and even without, although he does suffer circumstance penalties. He also has no Pool spend cap on bonus dice when disarming opponents, and can use his own bonus dice as opponent penalty dice if they are fighting with unfamiliar weapons.
Perfect Chord of Joy
A successful MUSIC (I) check causes swellings of joy in the listeners. They also gain the KEY OF JOY until the end of the scene if they can. This Key is not in the book – you will have to create it yourself.
Cost: 1 INSTINCT.
Requirements: Buy off a pertinent Motivation Key.
Perfect Chord of Sleep
A successful MUSIC (I) check causes the audience to slumber.
Cost: 1 INSTINCT.
Requirements: Buy off a pertinent Motivation Key.
Perfect Chord of Sorrow
A successful MUSIC (I) check causes tears of sorrow for the listeners. The check heals or causes INSTINCT Harm depending on the situation.
Cost: 1 INSTINCT.
Requirements: Buy off a pertinent Motivation Key.
Perfect Chord of Longing
A successful MUSIC (I) check causes a sense of yearning for the audience. The Story Guide frames a flashback scene related to the situation.
Cost: 1 INSTINCT.
Requirements: Buy off a pertinent Motivation Key.
Perfect Chord of Fear
A successful MUSIC (I) check causes dread and terror in the listeners. This chord has a bad reputation among most tribes.
Cost: 1 INSTINCT.
Requirements: Buy off a pertinent Motivation Key.
Secret of the Lyric
By combining STORYTELL (R) into his music, a bard may direct the feelings caused by his PERFECT CHORDS into specific conclusion. This allows the player to control the effects and audience of the chords in a much more exact manner, convincing them of a specific point related to the song.
Cost: 1 REASON.
Secret of Full Music
Many legends are told of bards skilled enough to allure animals of the forest, force people to dance, beat King Khale himself in a contest, kill with a song and so on. Normally this sort of thing would require a TRANSCENDENT (7) Ability check, but with this Secret the character may do musical magic regardless. This only works when conducted with passion (a greater activation of a Motivation Key), and the character needs to use one or more perfect chords to channel the power of his music.
Cost: VIGOR equal to 7 minus the check result.
Requirements: Three PERFECT CHORDS
Secret of the Questor
This is the same as the SECRET OF TSAFARI from Qek. Tying knots in the Green World is much easier in that there are no time limits or other ritual constraints. Some of the other knotwork crunch might also be available in Khale to questors.
Secret of Forest Transport
The character can bring others into the Green World with him, holding the portal for them. The ancestors will hold the character responsible for the actions of the visitors.
Cost: 1 VIGOR per visitor
Secret of Bough’s Bosom
While in the Green World, the character can use any of his Pools interchangeably to heal naturally. Ability checks made to heal him in the Green World gain a bonus die as well.
Wooden Imbuement
Khaleans create out of wood items that would be made of metal in other places, such as tools, weapons and armor. The equipment is light, and has the effects of one equipment mastery imbuement of the creator’s choice, but it is somewhat frail: any attempts to break it use the SECRET OF SHATTERING.
Moon-Metal Imbuement
An item made of moon-metal is light, gleaming, stainless, flexible and sharp as it needs be. Whenever the item would normally be destroyed or broken, its quality merely decreases by one step. A moonmetal item does not have a limit to the number of imbuements it may have, and imbuing it gains a discount of one point. However, the item suffers when striking wood, breaking like a normal item subjected to the same Ability check; this can be resisted reflexively (that is, without effort or spending actions in extended conflict) by the user’s LUNAR FORGING (R).
Secret of Moon Heart
The character has consumed a quantity of moon-metal, which has bonded permanently to his flesh. He no longer needs fire to shape moon-metal, and may spend unlimited VIGOR for bonus dice in LUNAR FORGING (R). The character cannot enter the Green World, however, and Harm caused to him by wooden weapons is AGGRAVATED, marked accordingly on the Harm track. Such Harm does not shake down and cannot be healed naturally.
Secret of Hero Band
The character can form an elite warband out of people who are united by purpose, tribal, family and moiety ties. Use GENEALOGY (R), STORY-TELL (R) or SPEAK (R) to unite the warband into a HERO BAND. Such a band is created like equipment as per the SECRET OF CREATION, with the PURPOSE IMBUEMENT automatically included. Hero Bands can also imbue Keys. A hero band can be used by any member as equipment, although they can be disarmed by separating the character from his peers. The hero band is quite difficult to destroy, as named characters are more likely to escape and regroup than get killed; attacking their sense of purpose and loyalty is much easier mechanically.
Cost: as per the SECRET OF CREATION, except swap INSTINCT and VIGOR costs.
Purpose Imbuement
A HERO BAND always has this imbuement, as they have a definite purpose to which they are created. Using it for other reasons is only possible if the character convinces the heroes to take the new mission. The character might also lose the support of the band if he insists on going against its purpose. On the other hand, band members can only be suborned by overcoming the band quality, and they’ll always return for the character if he’s lost to them.
Initiation Imbuement
A HERO BAND with this imbuement can only be joined through initiation tests set by the hero band creator. Anybody wanting to join the band (creator included) has to pass the set check difficulties in specific Abilities. For each two levels of initiation decrease the introduction cost of the band by one point.
Key Imbuement (specify)
A HERO BAND with this imbuement has a Key that the character can use as his own. If anybody buys it off, all characters in the hero band gain experience.
An Example Hero Band
This AMAZING (4) hero band was formed by Lugh Salmon-Skin to fight the Ammeni. His heroic friends Kelvin Tree-hand and Witch Deirdre are members, as are two dozen most cunning woodsmen of thirteen tribes.
Ratings: +3 for fighting in water. +2 for fighting Ammeni. +1 for fighting. +1 for druidic magic.
Imbuements: Purpose (defeat the Ammeni) (V) Initiation (Amazing Woodcraft, Good Guerrilla Warfare and Good Spearfighting) (I) Sidekick (Kelvin) (V) Sidekick (Deirdre) (I)
Cost: 1 INSTINCT per scene.

Keys - Khale

Key of the Tribe
The character is a member of a Khalean tribe, a communal unit with central leadership.
1xp: Help the tribe.
2xp: Obey the rightful leaders.
5xp: Defend the tribe in battle.
Buyoff: Leave the tribe.
Key of Moiety
The character takes his moiety responsibilities seriously. If they are more serious to him than his tribe, he might even leave to become a lodge master or a hero.
1xp: Do work that belongs specifically to your moiety.
2xp: Monitor the activities of the other moiety yours is responsible for.
5xp: Let the moiety rules determine an affair of the heart.
Buyoff: Break the moietic rules.
Key of the Worst War
The character has been touched by the war raging in southern Khale. This Key suits the Ammeni soldiers just fine, as well as noncombatants of all stripes.
1xp: The war is discussed.
2xp: Encounter the enemy.
5xp: Get into battle
Buyoff: Leave Khale behind.

Define external redirect: Qek