Board Thread:Roleplay Ideas/@comment-26210095-20160901214120/@comment-26863727-20160905232313

Faction: Abantu Confederacy

Geographical Area:  A coastal region full of plains and forests, with many settlements along the twin rivers that feed their agriculture, and in between the two, called Isibanda("the scar", for it is crooked and almost still) and Inkemba("the sword", for it is straight and swift), there are mountains, including three volcanoes where most of their metals for weapons come from, including the prized metal ayina, or "Abantuan iron". It is rare, worn as armor only by elite soldiers and the highest bidding outsiders. It's black in color, as dark as the old volcanic caves it's found in. Ayina is twice as durable as steel and the same weight.

 Language&Education : All children learn both Abantu (Zulu) and the Common Tongue. Further education depends on what class they're in: the higher up, the fancier the education. The poor receive government funded education so that they may know their culture and are literate with decent understanding of arithmetic, but nothing more. These individuals have roughly the equivalent of a second grade education.

 Faction Race: Abantu. They possess darker skin(like halfway between someone of Arabic and someone of African descent), stand on average 5'11 for the females and 6'1 for the males, and possess long black hair they wear neck length with between 2 and 8 braids on the sides and one on the back, where it is grown longer. Both men and women wear it in this fashion, as their parents, grandparents, and great-great-great-grandparents did before them.

 Racial Origin: Unlike the other races, they aren't what they were made as by the gods. They  are the result of eugenics projects by a long extinct group they call the Ezizungezayo, or the "Tormentors". What little is known about them besides Abantu folklore, reveals that A), they were some kind of Elf long ago, B), they called themselves something completely unpronouncable for a Human larynx, and C) were probably destroyed by their own pissed off god.

 Fashion:  They lack a great deal of dimorphism in fashion. Clothing(disregarding the undergarments) is consisting of a white sleeveless undertunic fastened on the left side, and a sleeved shirt of any color is worn over this, and it is fastened at the front with several clasps/buckles/whatever the heck you want. Caligae are the dominant footwear.

 Military: They have a quality based army. With the exception of the horse archers, they carry clipeus shields. An ayina-bladed bastard sword(the rest is just steel and a katana style hilt wrap ) with a literally razor-sharp edge (the durability of the material allows for that). They are trained in how to fight on foot, but are cavalry by default. They wear steel lammelars made by riveting together the scales, which protect most of the body. They wear "lobster-pot" helms. The principal weapon of the heavy cav is an ayina headed spear, while the horse archers use springsteel recurves in the neighborhood of 100 pounds. The Abantuan Knights (numbering only about 1,500*) are probably the best equipped fighters in the world, as their equipment is entirely ayina, down to the last buckle.

 * I think that this world should have armies around the size of those in the Renaissance and Antiquity, which dwarf the sort of things found in Middle-Earth's Third Age.