Life on a Broken World

The word privation best characterizes life on the ancient and doomed world of Harkanis. Survival is uncertain and childhood non-existent. Even those who survive to adulthood rarely live to 35. Forty is considered venerable. The food is bland and tasteless at best. The dry mountains and deserts that cover the land forbid agriculture. The poisonous jungles and slime-filled swamps are filled with clouds of insects that shred crops before they can reach maturity. Thus hunting and gathering are the norm, and much of daily life is spent in the pursuit of sustenance. Shelters are crude. In the deserts, villages consist of stone and mud-brick huts. Mountain-dwellers live in shallow caves. In the swamps and jungles simple structures are erected from wood, sometimes built in the treetops or in the middle of lakes to prevent attack. Clothing is rudimentary, little more than roughly spun robes and animal skins. Evening entertainment includes song, storytelling, dance, and athletic pursuits. With the exception of family heirlooms, weapons are limited to clubs and stone axes, daggers, and spears. Where wood is available, some learn to hunt with bow and arrow.

Nomads
Nomads roam the empty wastes. Since the beasts of Harkanis are too large and vicious to tame, nomads must carry what they can upon their shoulders. Everything else must be left behind. Nomads never stay in any one place long. Hidden oases make the best resting places, but more often, nomads must be content living in caves and ruins or simply lying down under the stars at night. Nomads tend to be more  accepting of outsiders than Harkanians. Some even fashion themselves as traders. Others consider outsiders prey that can can be captured and worked as beasts of burden or enjoyed as concubines.

Savages
Savages live by the sword and die by the axe. Conflict is both a way of life and means of survival; for  savages prey on other men as if they both were beasts. These vicious marauders are led by their strongest warrior or most cunning tactician. While some savages fight with honor, most favor surprise attacks initiative beneath the stars or else during mealtimes or celebrations. Between battles, savages live in the dwellings of their massacred victims, only moving on to the next village when resources dwindle. Savages possess deadlier weapons than destitute villagers or nomads. Their swords and axes are often crafted from iron and steel, trophies claimed from fallen adversaries.

Scavengers
Ruined cities and monuments of bygone ages and fallen civilizations dot the landscape. Time is the unrelenting devouter of all great men. Covered by desert sands, overgrown with vines, or sinking into the slime-filled bogs, much that once was has since been lost to it. Still, small bands of resourceful scavengers are able to live off the relics of the past. They dwell in the corpses of ruined cities and outposts. Whereas savages live standing above a pool of blood, scavengers scamper below the weight of ages. Ancient technology is the scavengers' lifeblood, though their understanding of it is rudimentary. Little, however, can be said of scavengers as a whole, for their bands are small, secretive, and scattered. Many live underground, inside the skeletal superstructure of superhuman construction, only returning to the surface in desperation when their life-giving technology fails. 

The Enlightened Few
Few have managed to rise above privation. Those with the will, intellect, and opportunity to fully embraced sorcery and the mysteries of the ancients can be considered enlightened, at least for a time. They are the guardians of cyclopean temples and towers that pierce the sky. They are the keepers of lost knowledge and the practitioners of the sorcery that keep the Old Ones at bay. Many consider themselves the watchful protectors of men or even the future saviors of all Harkanis.

Decadents
Corruption and faction are the diseases that crumble empires from within. Few stay enlightened forever without falling into decadence, becoming jaded aristocrats, autocratic tyrants, corrupt priests and wicked sorcerers. Demon worship, human sacrifice, wanton sorcery, drug abuse, and wild sexual fancy become all too common. Yet many once-enlightened conclaves manage to stagger on for generations before finally falling into abject ruin.

Degenerates
The last survivors of decadent civilizations resort to feuding over dwindling resources or are driven away by beasts and savages. Fleeing into the wilderness or deep underground beneath their ruined cities, they sometimes start to inbreed and devolve into something no longer entirely human.