Haba-Ish

thousands of years ago, Deh-Nin (the Fallen Sun, the Bleeding Sun) landed in the region that would become haba-ish, turning the interior into a scorching desert.
Deh-Nin has immense knowledge of essence and is very powerful, but cannot move or manipulate things and is seriously wounded. as a consequence, it relies on nearby human civilisations to acheive its goals - specifically, accruing materials and building structures of mysterious purpose. in return, it grants them gifts - special artefacts of great power, fuelled by closed coronal loops of sunfire.
most of the locals are wary of Deh-Nin, but need its power to keep up with their local
possible wariness of Deh-Nin based on an earlier moment in history, when it showed its hand too early and (narrowly) failed to establish its own state of sunfire-elementals.
in order to observe humanity, Deh-Nin creates Emissaries - sentient sunfire-elementals in artificial bodies - with the assistance of its human allies. Emissaries are never given generally-dextrous tools to prevent them from making copies of themselves and bootstrapping a civilisation (as has happened in the past)
metaphors and symbolism(need to decide which to focus on): deals with the devil and accepting help from adversaries, the cold war, islamic golden age, shiny rocketpunk adventure, prisoner's dilemma/game theory/bad equilibria, handling dangerous prisoners/AI/actors (possibly as a metaphor for scientific progress).

Deh-Nin's Gifts:

heat-rays
jetpacks and rockets (steered by micro-emissaries?)
cutters/swords and welders/melters
sunfire bombs
humanoid Emissaries (robots)
pocket Emissaries (assistant AIs that can be carried/worn - phones, watches, visors)?

locations:

questions:

what are the different factions/city-states/countries around Deh-Nin, and what are their rivalries?
how did the previous power-grab of Deh-Nin occur, and how was it defeated? tied to Cataphracts? how long before contact was re-established (probably a depressingly short period of time)
what are the emissaries and other gifts made from? brass?
what is the broader terrain like? is there a river that runs down to Deh-Nin, before being boiled away/joining a steaming lake? don't make another circular/radial region! perhaps there's a shielding range of mountains that make the desert asymmetrical?
there's room for sub-infusions in this region
Are heat rays in haba-ish wand-shaped? Are pocket-emissaries ever in lamps?
third gender?
Deh-Nin's interaction with the brother
Deh-nin as a metaphor for "AI in a box"; think about how it, and the Emissaries think. how can they defect, and why don't they?

Type

Geopolitical, State

Demonym

Haba-ishi

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