Tossing Diplos at Hubs

Jarru [Jannu]

The Jannu did not build their desert stronghold. They are horse people – wanderers, fighters, hunters – not stone and mortar builders. Their ancestors found it, they say, at the beginning of the present Age, sand-blown and echoing with death. It took their Shamen a hundred years to drive out the ghosts. Now it is a focal point for their tribes, like a stone oasis to which they all wander from time to time, to meet and trade and swap rumours.

Nessim [Sultanate of Kazim]

It is customary for desert princes to build pleasure gardens amidst the sands; to make the sands bloom, to create a haven of lush beauty amid the scorching rocks, is a princely achievement. But only one garden has grown so huge, its delights so manifold, that a whole city has grown up simply to support it. It is the will of the supreme Sultan that his garden should be beyond equal in beauty, watered by a thousand fountains, decorated by two thousand slave girls, tended by four thousand eunuchs. None would deny the will of the Sultan.

Khafkar [Sultanate of Kazim]

Khafkar is a slave city. The soldiers who guard the gates are slaves, the officials who administrate the exchequer are slaves, the labourers who clear muck from the roads are slaves. Some are shackled and beaten, some are bedecked in silks and perfumes, but from the lowest to the highest, the Sultan owns every one, and the slaves run the city in his name.