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2nd Movement - The Idea of Ammeni

The most evil man to ever walk in Near created a nation. His name has been lost to history, the Ammeni call him simply “Father”. As the legend has it, Father lived in the age before the Skyfire; he was a patrician of Maldor, a man of influence and discretion.

When the Skyfire first appeared in the sky, people were concerned. When the fire grew larger, Father ordered action. His clients labored to raise walls. His factors brought foodstuffs from all over the Empire. His extended family gathered from all corners to stand by him. When Skyfire grew large as sun, Father closed himself off from the chaos outside, withdrawing to his estates.

The land shook and clouds of ash blackened everything as the Darkness came. This mattered not within Father’s estates: the thick stone walls of the low buildings were like a secure womb that shielded the people within. Even as the weeks turned to months and months to years, as ice crept in long spikes down the eaves, Father’s foresight held strong.

When the sun rose again, Father was distrustful at first. His sons insisted, however: Father was the first to greet the Moon’s gentle rays over the river Lamia, turned serpentine by the wracked torture of the land. The lands were deserted and in chaos, pitiful people covered from the Moon and the rainbow sunsets. Father had stores and men in his service, and tools of steel. His sons were quick to act, the first plantations were cut out of the wilderness to bring new prosperity to the broken world.

The story does not end there, however. While the Houses outlaw all forms of religion, preferring to worship wealth alone, in truth every real Ammeni knows it: Father yet lives and guides the fate of Ammeni from the shadows.

The concrete form of this belief is the Revenant Cult, a secret society of alchemists and House nobility who strive to uncover Father’s secret – eternal life. They believe that Father leads the cult and will reveal his secret to those who prove worthy of it by extended study and faithful service.

The Revenant Cult is arranged into a strict tree of mentor–student relationships, with higher-ranking members being allowed to recruit more students than lower ranks. The cult prefers Ammeni nobility, is open only to humans, and hates elves and their supposed immortality fiercely.

Glancing at the highest echelons of the Revenant Cult, we find Saul Lenoir, a man who claims to speak for the House Father himself. Some in fact think that they are one and the same. Saul is impossibly old and has found an immortality of sorts in an alchemical mixture of araka and poiture. He does not age, even if his body would like to decay. This is not allowed, and Saul consumes a few pounds of human flesh every day to keep his ageless mien. One of his ultimate goals is to shed even this limitation and truly embrace eternity.

Father himself quickly faded to background as his sons took over. The estate houses were reinforced and thralls accepted on the plantations – people outside the Houses through the Darkness were wretched, and happy to suborn themselves to the Ammeni. Soon the seven Houses were established as great plantations that fed the whole river valley. The influence of the Houses reached towards the sea, through the delta. Therein lived former subject people of the Empire, weak and destitute, unable to govern themselves now that world had broken. With time Ammeni came to rule the lowlands and the coasts, even encroaching to the barbaric west all the way to the mighty Absolon’s Way. The Houses grew rich and mighty, but they never forgot Father who sheltered them through the Darkness.

Even while the Council sets trade law and the Houses each rule as they please in their own domains, the Revenant Cult works its will among the Ammeni. Saul fears nothing so much as contenders to his plans, so he works relentlessly to keep others from uncovering his secret. Even with the aid of the Revenant Cult this is a ceaseless work in a land obsessed with the pleasures of life and death.

Meanwhile, the Ammeni have grown into their role as rulers. They are known outside their country for their cruelty and decadence. Even if only the rich five percent share of these vices, the rest as well have grown heartless and opportunist in a country built on poison. The upper class has no excuses for their excesses, finest silks and bizarre delicacies of the fertile delta when the chattel slaves are worked to death or killed for sport.

Ammeni is a country predicated on expansive colonialism and exploitation of the weak. Its national myths are cruel lies. The budding maritime empire reaches to embrace the whole of the Sea of Teeth. If any one place in Near is in need of heroism, it is found on the banks of the Poison River.