Map of the Dorok Kingdom under the Kulubaluka Dynasty
"Once radiant, the civilisations of industrial gigantism had disappeared into the darkness of time, and the surface of the earth had been covered with a forest of giant miasmas exalting poisonous vapours: the Sea of Corruption. Men reduced to subsistence here and there on the edge of this rotten jungle are trying as best they can to survive on the last lands still preserved by insects of all kinds in the jungle. »
"The Chosen One, clothed in Blue, will come towards us on a golden field, to renew the lost link with the Earth and guide us towards a pure world." The Prophecy of the Blue Clad-One.
Since the Seven Days of Fire that ended the Ancient Civilization, the survivors who had been spared by the Cataclysm have founded new kingdoms on the outskirts of the Sea of Corruption, a mouldy forest born from the lands ravaged by the pollution of the Ancient Order and the war.
On the Eurasian continent, kingdoms followed one another, appearing on the last rivers and trying as best they could to preserve the ancient and complex technologies. The Doroks are an ancient people who appeared on the river of the same name after the Seven Days of Fire. They have survived on the shores of the Inland Sea and have built resplendent cities as well as oases and lush green countryside. But disunity between the various clans and tribes and destructive wars ravaged the Doroks kingdoms, allowing the sea of corruption to advance ever further into the few viable lands .
More numerous are the invasions of foreign countries, motivated by the acquisition of the Black Pyramid, Shuwa, where many powers would be locked up within it. The latest to date is that of the King of Eftal, a kingdom in the north founded around the river Talia. The King of Eftal, Tarkhan took the Doroks cities one by one before finally acquiring the powers of Shuwa and dominating the whole known world.
King Tarkhan became immortal and Eftal built many aeroplanes and developed ancient technologies such as ceramics, large and powerful aircraft as well as chemicals to repel the Sea of Corruption. Oases were born in the middle of the desert and many great cities where wealth and power accumulated.
At that time the Sixty Doroks tribes under the Eftalian protectorate benefited from the prevailing prosperity with the end of clan rivalries despite the many discriminations. In addition, the establishment of an Eftalian governor appointed by King Tarkhan in the city of Isso gave the Doroks more autonomy.
But when King Tarkhan died, the Empire sank into chaos. With Tarkhan dying suddenly despite his powers and with no direct heirs, the members of the court quarrelled before finally going to war. The prince of the city of Tolas, Kujula waged a violent war of conquest in an attempt to recover Eftal. The war ruined many towns that were wiped off the map after much looting by mercenary armies. Increasingly armed aircraft ravaged the skies and the land. Arms dealers, with the explosion in demand, began to search the sea for the corrupted shells of Ohmus, large insects with strong bodies that could be used to build armour. But the ever-increasing massacre of Ohmus for armaments caused a cataclysm of great magnitude.
A wave of Ohmus and other insects came out of the forest in a raging rage, with no stopping them, destroying one by one the cities of Eftal, the monarchy was destroyed, the fabulous factories and their technology were lost. For twenty days the Ohmus continued to advance, dying of hunger more than two thousand miles away from the forest. On their bodies the spores multiplied and soon the sea of corruption covered the ancient Eftal Kingdom.
In Isso, the governor, in the absence of authority, declared himself independent and took possession of the crypt of Shuwa. Becoming King of the Doroks he married a local princess, founded the Kulubaluka dynasty and converted to the Doroks religion. The Doroks lands having been spared by the Daikasho, many Eftalians fled to the court of Isso.
In order not to make the same mistake as Tarkhan, King Kulubaluka forbade him and his successors to obtain immortality with Shuwa's tomb. With the Dorok religion he establishes a new church, the Fukai (the Dorok name of the sea of corruption) being seen as sacred and a punishment for the infidels of Eftal. Moreover, the Ohmus are seen as sacred beings who must not be defiled by man under any circumstances, under penalty of provoking his anger. Entering the Fukai is seen as sacrilege that can cause the destruction of the Dorok Kingdom. Each great city appointed a Venerable Bonze to lead the believing community of the city. The prophecy of the Being clothed in blue, a legend that had existed for centuries, was revived. The Prophecy of the Blue Clad-One must appear to save humanity and re-establish the lost link between man and nature.
With the power of the Shuwa Crypt, King Kulubaluka began to cultivate a new species of tree for the construction of powerful ships made of wood to move entire tribes. Moreover, the crypt made it possible to build much more effective masks to resist the miasmas of the Fukai. During the reign of the first Kulubaluka, the Doroks tasted independence and peace. Despite the wave of Eftalian refugees on Dorok lands, King Kulubaluka managed to avoid civil war.
But soon after the death of King Kulubaluka, the dynasty fell into decadence, losing more and more power to the ever-strengthening Doroks cities. One hundred years after the founding of the Kulubaluka dynasty, most of the Doroks principalities were independent and in regular conflict. Different religious schisms, the struggle for trade routes and ethnic wars with the Eftalian minority were commonplace at that time.
But in Isso, a series of mad kings with powerful psychic powers set out to reconquer the various principalities. But this was done at the price of blood, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The survivors of the massacred tribes were fleeing the tyranny of the Kulubaluka, which in turn caused the horrors of war. The massacres of the Eftalian minority motivated the Kingdom of Tolas in the north and its vassals, now the Torumekia Empire, to intervene violently to protect the Eftalians but also to try to re-conquer the Doroks.
The surprise was great when a young man took control of the Shuwa crypt with monstrous and immortal creatures called heedras. He declared himself the saviour of mankind and quickly recaptured every Dorok city, repelled the torumekias and his allies before overthrowing the last King Dorok Luwa Kulubaluka with tele-physiological powers.
This man declared himself Holy Emperor and founded the Holy Dorok Empire by divinizing himself in the eyes of his people. The cult of the Fukai and the prophecy of the Blue Clad-One were declared heretics, condemning the infidels to be burned at the stake. In addition, the Venerable monks of each city became the new rulers, who had to pay homage to the Emperor. On the death of the First Emperor, power was shared between his two sons: the Old Emperor named Namulis and the Young Emperor named Miralupa.
But despite the newly founded union and the end of the civil war between the Doroks, rivalries and struggles are still commonplace in the united Doroks principalities. Moreover, the ever-stronger presence of the Torumekias in the north does not bode well for the King of Tolas' desire to take Shuwa.
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The following map was made at the time of the Dorok Kingdom. Engraved and drawn on wood with many inlaid gemstones and two gilded plates in Old Dorok, it is a rare copy that survived the iconoclasm of the Holy Emperors. Although the author of the map is unknown, it is very likely that it was commissioned by King Kulubaluka in view of his rich manufacture. The entire Dorok World is depicted, between the Fukai in the north and the basin of pus in the south, the Gosu Mountains in the west and the Inland sea in the east.
What makes it possible to date the map with certainty is the absence of the Imperial eye, symbol of the Emperors but above all the presence of an Ohmu in the middle of the Fukai as well as an Original Sutra. The presence of the deified Ohmu is proof that the map dates back to the Kulubaluka dynasty. The cult of Ohmu and its representation were automatically destroyed by the Inquisition of the Bonsons.
We can also see that the lack of details on the Fukai serves to show the omnipotence of Ohmu but also the lack of knowledge of the Sea of Corruption during the Kulubaluka era. Already at that time there were rumours of Eftalians having survived and hiding in the depths of the Fukai. During the Holy Empire after the lifting of the divinization of Fukai, numerous expeditions were carried out to find the ancient Eftalian cities and its worm-handlers.
On the map, the capital of Isso seems to represent the royal palace. The fortress cities are all represented in the same way despite the fact that their architecture can vary from one region to another. Moreover, only the most important cities are represented and many secondary fortresses do not appear. Finally, we can note that the draughtsman had fun representing the secondary towns with towers from the old world, which had long since disappeared at that time.
The map shows the Dorok Kingdom in its Golden Age. The capital of Isso, however, lies inland in the Kamatara Desert. It was a resplendent city where the Dorok throne was located and was plundered by the Holy Emperors and disappeared over time under the Fukai. To the east of Isso is the Dorok River, the heart of the Dorok people, which has its source in the Doki Mountains. The river, although very long, only has a significant flow at the arrival of the rainy season. It is controlled upstream by the city of Kabo, one of the most powerful Doroks cities as it controls all the trade routes in the Dorok region due to its central position. Its manufactures and refinement make it a popular city even today under the Holy Emperors.
However, when the Kulubaluka Kingdom collapsed, the city suffered greatly from war, the occupation by Luwa Kulubaluka and the many wars with the city of Mani. Mani is located downstream from the Dorok River, flowing into the Inland Sea. It formed the "Great League" at the time of the civil war by vassalising the cities of Tekuyu, Bida, Miri and Go (not shown on the map). It fiercely resisted Luwa Kulubaluka and planned to reunite the Dorok World under his rule. But the arrival of the first Dorok Emperor and his immortal heedra warriors brought the Mani League to its knees. Under the Holy Empire it lost suzerainty over its neighbours and a large part of its power, to the great despair of its population, the city becoming only a shadow of its former self.
North of the Dorok River is the Shil River and between the two rivers are the largest oases of the time. Most of them used the trees that the first King Kulubaluka planted in the area, helping to repel desertification, to develop and create new oases and also to serve as raw material for Doroks vessels. The Doroks use this wood, which is resistant to rot and fire, to create large floating devices for trade and warfare. However, the civil war and the increase in the number of ships reduced the forests, which were heavily exploited. Today the production of wood is directly controlled by the Emperors and their clergy to protect the last existing reserves of the Empire.
The presence of large forests reduced urban settlement, preventing the appearance of large fortress cities. But further north, Semi during the civil war, being increasingly subjected to the Fukai and the raids of Torumekia pushed the city to build ships to move its inhabitants inside the forests. Under the Holy Emperors it was almost the only one to be settled in the region, competing only with the town of Mitosu, north of the river Shil.
Mitosu is a very recent city and does not appear on the map. It was built by the first Holy Emperor after the conquest of Nomiso by Torumekia. Nomiso was the northernmost Dorok city, protected from the Fukai by Tanar Higlands. But Torumekia's intervention to protect the Eftalians of Dorok ended with the conquest of Nomiso. Nomiso underwent a great change in population, with the Eftalians fleeing all Doroks lands to take shelter in Nomiso and the Doroks inhabitants of Nomiso settling in the south and founding the city of Mitosu. Mitosu, in spite of its dream of returning to its original city, must however realise that the conquest of Nomiso is only the first step of Torumekia in the Doroks lands...
South of the Dorok River is the city of Modo. For centuries it has had ships travelling the distant coasts of the Inland Sea bringing back many exotic products from unknown lands. An important city under the Dorok Kingdom, its power declined when the civil war ravaged the trade routes on which the city depended. In addition, Mani's numerous incursions to control the city destroyed the city's marine infrastructure. The coup de grâce was the Holy Emperor's ban on trading abroad, under penalty of excommunion. Now Modo is a simple secondary city in decline.
The cities to the south of Modo are the ones that benefited most from the arrival of the Holy Emperor. Under Luwa Kulubaluka they decided to declare their clergy independent by reinterpreting the prophecy of the Blue Clad-One. The Venerable monks of these cities drove out the reigning princes and appointed themselves rulers and protectors of the true faith. Luwa Kulubaluka tried as best he could to subdue the schismatic cities of Etari, Namaki and Dama. But when the first Holy Emperor came directly from Shuwa with his heedras, they declared him the legitimate ruler and saviour of mankind. They founded an army of fanatical warrior monks and exported the Holy War in the name of the Emperor. Since the establishment of the Empire they have held a prominent place in power, with most of the priest commanders leading the armies of the Empire coming from one of these cities.
To the east of the Gosu Mountains and south of the ancient capital of Isso are the cities of Saju and Sapata, on the edge of the Kamatara Desert. In the time of the Kulubaluka, each of the two cities was ruled by one of the sons of King Dorok. But the rivalry between the two princes caused many wars between Saju and Sapata, and the fall of the monarchy in Isso saw a struggle between the two princes for the conquest of Isso. The Prince of Sapata was none other than Luwa Kulubaluka, who after defeating and pillaging Saju took control of Isso and tried to regain his kingdom. But when the Holy Army to the south arrived in Sapata, Luwa Kulubaluka tried to defeat the First Holy Emperor. Both monarchs possessed overpowering psychic powers, but Luwa Kulubaluka's great age and the overpowering power of the First Holy Emperor defeated the last King Dorok. After the battle, the Holy Emperor decided to burn the entire Kulubaluka royal family at the stake. But Luwa Kulubaluka's eldest son managed to escape, making the Emperor fear the return of the suitor. But the long-awaited disappearance of the heir extinguished the hopes of the supporters of the old dynasty. In spite of the disappearance of the suitor of Kulubaluka and the bringing to heel of Sapata, rivalry still exists between the two Venerable monks of Sapata and Saju and their population and hostilities often resume despite the presence of the Emperors not far away.
To the west of the Gosu Mountains is a large valley. In it are the rusty ruins and rubble of an Old World Megapolis, which was destroyed by the Seven Days of Fire. But there remains in this desert valley a Great Black Pyramid. It is said to have existed before the Seven Days of Fire or to have appeared just after the Cataclysm. Yet after a thousand years it remains the most famous but also the most mysterious place in the region. It is impossible to enter the Tomb by force. The Crypt only opens to the Mighty One who decides not to take the Tomb by force. For a thousand years the monarchs of many kingdoms have entered the Tomb and emerged immortal or with many technologies from the Old World. The Kings of Eftal or Dorok and so many others before them have always built their capitals around the Tomb. The most recent conquest came from the First Holy Emperor. He came out of nowhere and with four heedras took control of the crypt and set out to conquer the Doroks cities.
Since then, Shuwa has once again become the capital of the Doroks and is now the Holy City of Shuwa. The power of the Crypt is used to establish the power of the Emperors and the powerful Dorok clergy. But despite the many technological advances of the United Doroks Principalities, rivalries between the fifty-two tribes of the Empire remain numerous. Moreover, the arrival of a new warlike lineage in Torumekia has raised fears that war may once again break out between the last two Empires on the planet.
