Assai

Assai
The assai were the fourth race to join the empire but under the most unusual circumstances, The Assai had their own king at the time name “Kedgar the Butcher” He was the grandson of a warlord who had conquered all the coastal cities a few generations before and he ruled over his people with an Iron and bloody fist, He had a reputation for petty cruelty and unwarranted executions, The Assai people had rebelled several times but Kedgars regime heavily restricted their access to arms and the rebels were always soundly defeated.

The resistance eventually with no other options sought the help of the Praetorians, Kedgar was a vicious man but he paled in comparison to the Praetorians who stood as wrath and death incarnate, The Assai however so no other option and though they knew what the praetorians were they also knew that the people of the Chimerian empire were treated far better by their monstrous rulers, Praetorians had no need for petty displays of power or cruelty, They were wanton forces of power and destruction with nothing to prove to any common man.

The agreement of the rebels to join the empire signalled the end of the butcher kingdom, A lone praetorian walked to Kedgars castle with a trail of devoted followers behind him, By the dawn of the next day Kedgars regime was no more and the empire controlled the entire mainland.

Assai are great seafarers and fishermen, They ferry goods up and down the coast and make use of the more fertile soil on the coast to produce a large quantity of the agriculture for the empire, They prize Poetry and Song over all other forms of art but have some of the best painters and sculptors in the known world, Their remote location keeps them relatively shielded form conflict and they supply naval personnel to oversee the slave armadas in the inner sea, They are also skilled diplomats and scholars, They do however have a flighty and unreliable nature and at their worst they become little more than self indulgent fops or power crazed pirates, as such Assai rarely rise to prominence in any civic capacity in the empire.

The Assai all wear brightly coloured clothes and the men all sport enormous moustaches, To the Assai a moustache is a sign of Virility and Authority and they tend to regard other men with moustaches higher than even their higher ranked clean shaven counterparts, It is also not unusual in Assai for women to wear elaborate and brightly coloured fake moustaches to formal events although nobody knows how this tradition started.

Assai ships are usually coast hugging lightweight fishing barges or light commercial vessels, They possess little military technology but have made up for it with the application of Fire Oil sourced from the Ignar to the north, The Assai have become masters of the fire catapult and have pioneered the use of Fire ships to combat the forces of Miletia, Mylantis and Valengal, What they lack in discipline they make up for in adaptability and cunning.

The Assai also man the great “Floating Fortress” style ships that the jackals of Phyror use, These ships are clad in metal plates so as not to burn and have an enormous deep hull making them fantastic troop carriers.

Assai cities are fairly ramshackle compared to the rest of the empire with no uniform size or design usually built in a disorganised haphazard fashion, The more modern cities begin to show some sense of order as the Lord of Walls imposes order on all the imperial cities.