The Flower Coast

The Flower Coast is the strip of coastline between Deluja and the Kingdom of Taneth. It is traditionally known by locals as Larjala (or "the center of the world"), though the foreign floral moniker has caught on in recent years even among local residents. Local merchants would say that it is called the Flower Coast because of the way that people integrate flowers into their hats and helmets, and because the coast is naturally sweet smelling and colorful. But the name also comes from a darker place: this region has been the number one place for Orthodox Desmians to harvest dryads for sacrifice over the last millennia, and much of its history during that time has been shaped by the push and pull of slave economies and pirate fleets. It has given this place sharp edges. The religion of this place is a hardened Ishkibism that has little tolerance for disunity or softness; the locals must labor in the sweltering heat, must prepare their bodies and minds for sudden violence, and must subsume themselves into the army of the righteous and reject the foreign. What was once a land of decentralized plurality and relative harmony has become a land dominated by a religious monoculture of war and industry. 
This transformation is incomplete, but that only makes the changes more visibly violent. Orthodox Desmian pirates lurk on the waters, hunting for weak points to exploit. Rising Ishkibite kingdoms are increasing their soft-power hold over the coast and are spreading their borders slowly but surely. Pockets of deviants or traditionalists fight desperately to exist. Foreign investors are moving into these rising autocracies, alchemizing the subjugation of local peoples into cheap labor for cash crops. Every autocracy is an experiment in domination, with its own approach to the changing world; this innovation in power both makes it vulnerable and visible. 
It is also important to understand that the majority of the coastline is not held by these kingdoms directly, but are rather held by various tribal networks that align with one state or another. These tribal networks are experimental as well, mixing the old decentralized ways with newer, more militarized and centralized religious approaches. Each town, tribe, or micro-state is adapting in its own way, making for a huge patchwork of fluid polities that move relatively smoothly under the soft power of the rising centralized kingdoms. The tribal networks grow more traditional in religion and political structure as one moves inland (as the difficult terrain makes travel difficult and muffles the impact of the coastal changes), and one tribe along the coast has rejected Ishkibism entirely - the Fezea, the lone bastion of coastal traditionalism. 
Here is a roster of the current rising Ishkibite kingdoms, from North to South:

• Silena, the first bastion against Taneth. A crusading base for Ishkibites, where foreigners of all cultures come together to battle Orthodox pirates and skirmishers. Known for its burning of Orthodox 'demons' and its composite culture, where all who are willing to fight Orthodoxy are welcome.
• Alupel, the hierarchical and insular twin to Silena. Most dryads from Silena were evacuated here, and foreigners are relegated to island trading posts to prevent illicit slaving. Known for attacking those who enter their land or coastal waters without (extremely hard to get) permission on-sight.
• The Kingdom of St. Autumn's, the largest and most populated of the Flower Coast kingdoms, as well as the most pious. The heart of the Ishkibite temple here, St. Autumn was founded by the two richest tribes of the region - the Vyel and Roila - who united under the supposed reincarnation of the Ishkibite Saint Autumn, who is believed to guide this land personally. Industrious, expansionist, and assimilationist, St. Autumn's has mixed together influences and merchants from all across the Ishkibite world. Very preferential for Ishkibite merchants and immigrants. 
• Sarjen, a small city-state founded by local merchants who wanted to imitate St. Autumn's. Hierarchical, commercial, and more open to foreigners of other faiths, Sarjen is a plutocracy that seems destined to be the soft-power battleground between St. Autumn's and Sarokai
• Sarokai is a large kingdom of Ishkibite dryads that sees a divine mission in subjugating 'lesser' dryads and 'taming the jungle'. Sarokai is the rising star of the coast, a pragmatic kingdom that has tied together Ishkibism, conquest, and profit - it relentless pursues non-Ishkibites locals and harnesses them for labor, and it has diverted the last dregs of the slave trade away from Orthodox sacrifice and towards profit and industry. It has also married this Ishkibite conquest train with foreign investors from Ekraht and Sonev (as well as the Ishkibite world). A controversial kingdom that has managed to balance Ishkibal's disdain of profiteering with his desire to see the coast protected from Orthodoxy. 
• Prialem, a small kingdom that is essentially a monarchical despotism that claims to represent the unified Sarja and Pekevia tribal networks, but has some work to do if it is going to actually bring all of those sub-tribes and villages to heel. 
• Drillem, an isolationist kingdom of dryads that formed under other Lunar cults but has since converted to Ishkibism. Quiet, insular, and comparatively democratic, hosting a holy order to Theia the Liberator 
• Tallen, a rich Ishkibite kingdom based around a fertile lake and surrounding flatlands. Known for its half-dryads, its welcoming attitude towards foreigners, and its close relationship with the nearby aquatic folk. Has allied with Drillem and Arzeth, which it may one day subsume. 
• Arzeth, a rocky stretch of land united under Ishkibite prisms, known for its salt mining and desalination, and its more conservative hierarchies. 

Geography

The Flower coast is a stretch of coast 1200 miles long. Most of it is humid, tropical forest, though the level of forest density varies. There is the equatorial stretch in the center, which is dense rainforest that impedes most travel inland. There are the rockier segments, a bit cooler and a bit drier, stones amidst tropical swamp. And then there are the Northern and Southern belts of jungle that are not full-fledged rainforest but certainly flirt with the idea during spring and summer months. 
East of the coast is the Spine of Izekra, the Kalshra mountains, which rise 5,000 feet above sea level and are generally 130 miles inland. In some areas, the Kalshras branch towards the coast and even touch the sea; in others, there are large, flat, tropical forest basins between the sea and the rain-catching mountains.

Fauna & Flora

The Flower coast has great biodiversity, as most jungles do. A wide array of tropical opossums live across the coast, from the ring-tailed opossum to the green opossum. The tree kangaroo can be found here, as can the echidna and the marsupial cuscus. All manner of sugar glider and bat can be found on the continent, as can quolls. Over the centuries, trade and changing weather patterns have introduced all sorts of fauna from Southeast Samvara and Makal, such as civets, a wide variety of lemurs and monkeys, and dholes. 
While most people won't notice, the wide variety of insects (particularly grasshoppers, moths, and snails) and frogs is incredible here.

Natural Resources

As a tropical ecosystem with a lot of internal variety, the Flower Coast can grow many beloved cash crops: coffee, cocoa, bananas, pineapples, sugar, and rubber all grow well here. The mountains here also are the original producers of the coca plant (from which coca wine and cocaine are produced), though the Flower coast so far has not started growing coca as a cash crop.

History

Pre-Ishkibite History (Pre 1150)

The history of the Flower Coast as a region is necessarily one imposed from the outside in; the region didn't exist as a unified entity in any way for the first millennia of its existence. Generally speaking, one must talk about pre-Ishkibite history in either very general or very local ways - there were local kingdoms that rose and fell and local cultures that changed over the centuries, and then there were the big changes that varied in how they impacted local life from place to place.
The first big change was the arrival of Corpseblight in the early Modern Era, which devastated the local dryad population and brought down the ancient equatorial dryad kingdom of Prialem (which was rapidly forming just before). The Corpseblight pandemic led to the rise of a unified priestly class across ethnic lines, the collapse of the local coastal settlements, and the rise of humans in coastal positions of power.
Then there was the second prism migration of the 300s through 600s. Prisms had migrated briefly along the coasts and settled the mountains in the late Divine Era, but had not settled down. But the second migration was much more thorough, and established trade ties between the inland mountain regions and the coast.
Trade networks to the broader world slowly recovered over the first millennium and were strengthened by the tours of solars in the 800s and 900s, led by Haru. This also began the age of Lunar Cults, which fought desperately in the 900s and then cooled off briefly in the 1000s and 1100s.

The Desmian Crisis and Ishkibism (1150 to 1500)

The Ishkibites of the far North once served as a wall against Desmianism, but in 1150 the Emerald Crusade broke through that wall. The distant world of Orthodoxy was hungry for captive dryads to destroy for prestige and piety, and their crusader-general was a shrewd man with deep pockets. Desmians had been developing tools to expand their religion for millennia at this point, and their methods were sophisticated when necessary. Pirates to kidnap, adventurers to carve out Desmian states, and a new method that had proven effective in the islands of the Northeast: using networks of debt to harvest dryads and spark species-conflict. The idea of debt slavery can be found anywhere there is the idea of debt, and while the Desmians lack great wealth or instruments of arcane finance, they do have a continent-wide unity that allows them to punch above their class. Desmian crusader captains were able to use secular Desmian merchants as innocent-looking middlemen for the crusade to offer easy loans (as well as Desmian mercenaries and weapons to profiteer off of local politics, the profits of which could be looped around as loans). Debt could be passed downwards from the wealthy merchant elites down to local farmers - indebted merchants could give loans to poor farmers or peddlers to pass the debt down - ultimately burdening the most desperate in society with debt that was ultimately in the hands of Orthodox crusaders. Dryad debtors would be funneled upwards to the crusade, while human debtors could pay off their debt by capturing dryads - sowing species-discord and creating a cycle of short-term consumption that profited the Desmians above all.
The Desmian assault of piracy and debt networking frantically escalated from 1180 to 1250, and sent ripples of chaos and infighting across the region. The Desmians may have lacked corporations or major financial institutions, but their forever crusades allowed them to coordinate financially when dryads sap was waiting to be spilt. But the Lunar Panethon was united in stopping them in their tracks, and mortals across Izekra worked together to prevent this system of slavery from tearing the land apart. In the 1250s, the land North of the Flower Coast, Taneth, united in Ishkibism to shut down Orthodox creditors, pirates, and slave purchasers. The Flower Coast became the only part of Izekra the Orthodox could easily target, and while the coast was too divided to shut the Orthodox out, it was also too far away for their raiding parties to easily reach. So the merchants and crusaders relied on the markets they had jumpstarted through debt to extract sacrifices, rather than raiding parties that had to cross through enemy waters. 
And so, the Flower Coast began its time of particular troubles. From the 1250s to the 1500s, the Flower Coast's cults and fledgling kingdoms fought as bad actors turned a profit. A massive prism migration inland began, away from the coastal violence, and the loss of the prisms caused communities to become even smaller and more unbalanced. In the end, Ishkibism won handily: it had a head start in advertising, appealed equally to the human-led lands as the dryad-led ones, allowed for trading with foreign Desmians without feeding their slave systems, and had tools for integrating low-status communities of formerly enslaved persons without offending high-status ones. Ishkibism's hold wasn't absolute, but it did drive out all other Lunar cults. The only thing left was Prakahl, the traditional religious structure of the land - and so Ishkibism began to consume it as well. 

The Age of Healing (1500 - 1870)

The Desmian economic machine was not strong enough to sustain its destruction of the Flower Coast - it depended on shock and awe to gain entry, and then raw inertia from there. The military economy of that continent simply could not afford recurring indebtment campaigns. Once the chain to Desmia was broken, the Flower coast was still left with an unusually bad domestic slave economy, but it was safe from future attempts. Finally, healing could begin. 
With the Orthodox gone, Theia and Ishkibal began breaking up the domestic slave systems. The two Gods ultimately diverged on the question of what comes next - industrious theocratic agraria, or a freer possible society? - and squabbled on-and-off over the 1500s and 1600s. Both agreed to avoid proxy wars, and the focus shifted towards Taneth over time. As Taneth grew stronger, the Flower Coast became more insulated from Orthodoxy. New actors were stumbling onto the stage instead: trade routes to foreign continents were being perfected down South of the Flower Coast, in Deluja, and now merchants from around the world were stopping by. The coastal ports were bustling with chemicals, spices, metals, and cotton now, instead of slaves, and the city states that were wiped out by the Ishkibites and Theians in the 1400s began to reinvent themselves. The future seemed certain: the North would follow Taneth's way into Ishkibite agricultural kingdoms, and the South would fall into the Delujan merchant-prince style of decentralized city-states. 
But, alas, Orthodoxy broke out of its cage again - and the Flower Coast had left a cultural memory behind as a vulnerable target. In 1730, the Orthodox began mass raids of Taneth. In 1870, these raids started spilling into the Flower Coast. The old tales of the Desmian Terror ignited the imaginations of the region, releasing a wave of Ishkibite zeal. It was time to form a united front, no matter the cost. 

Modern History

In 1979, Taneth fell to Orthodoxy entirely. Raids and invaders spilled into the Flower coast. The slow murder-machine of the Emerald Crusade, which had announced itself back in 1180, had arrived on their doorstep. In 1985, Orthodox Taneth launched a full-fledged invasion of the Flower Coast. Thankfully, the Desmians overextended. Their armies were worn down, the armies of the Northern coast were able to cut off Taneth's main host with one of their rulers at Silena in 1987. In 1988, she was sacrificed at Silena's Ishkibite temple, and her ashes are proudly displayed at the temple today. 
From 1988 to 2020, Desmian pirates and raiders have probed along the coast looking for points of entry. The Ishkibites have radicalized in response, purging the land of any potential weakness before the Desmians have a chance to get there first.

Alternative Name(s)

Larjala

Type

Region

Location under

Izekra

Included Locations

• Dumella