"What do you mean 'Where are the roads?' We don't feel the need to carve paths and lay stone. The paths are there already, if you look for them. Placed there by foot and pad and hoof. If you want a path that you can't miss, look to the rivers."
The History
The Fellowship of Bata did not begin with one people, but with many. The Breaking of the World displaced hundreds of thousands and many of them perished in the storm of chaos that followed. There are tales of those who still wander, forever lost in strange lands under stranger skies. Those who would reach and settle the lands of Bata might have been one such group were it not for meeting the pathfinders. They were a group of men and women journeying across the same landscape that seemed to go on forever. They spoke of a world than was not known to those who fled the Breaking, a world where the Gods of Ashiel did not hold sway. These pathfinders were seeking a way back to their home, but that way seemed to have closed, they chose to try and help the survivors of the Breaking. It took several years but the pathfinders guided them back to the world in the aftermath of the Breaking. The land which would come to be known as Bata lay before them.
The land was dense jungle except for the range of mountains that stretched across the land and the wide rivers that wound their way through the jungle. It was not an entirely safe place for the chaos storm had washed over these lands and left them altered and changed. Plants and animals, and even the earth and stones themselves could prove to be treacherous and deadly. Even the smallest of insects could render a grown man dead in mere moments. It was not a place where living would be easy, but it was a place where they could adapt to it. Dangers could be protected against. Poisons and venoms could have antidotes. People could be educated in what to look out for. They had survived the Breaking of the World, had they not? Was that not proof that anything could be survived if only you were smart enough and prepared enough for it?
The people then began to do just that, building places to live and exploring and learning about their new home so that they could survive. At first, they built their homes on the shores of the land but as time went on, they went into the jungle and built their homes there, but even that was not without problems, though they soon found a way to coexist with land. So much so that in the present day the cities within the jungle of Bata are not sections of cleared land with houses on it, but instead buildings that incorporate the trees and are built around the natural pathways that animals travel. They are cities truly in harmony with nature, but we’ll talk more about that later.
Their history was not without strife, however, for there came a time when the people of the land grew to arguing and fighting over a great many topics. The nuances of which are far too great to go into here, but it is true to say that they fundamentally disagreed on what knowledge should be preserved as well as what should be sought after. What the nature of their government should look like. It was a conflict which lasted for generations, for they were not a people to rush to a judgement when the situation did not call for it. Finally, it became apparent that a compromise could not be reached together and so the people split apart. It was not into two or even three factions the people separated into, but into five. One remained where they were, the largest of the factions and thus with the most entrenched position. The other four spread out along the coast in either direction finding a place for them to settle and set up their own way of doing things. As time passed this happened again but on a smaller scale until there were nine of them, similar in many ways, but different enough to keep them all from truly being considered one people.
This all changed with the discovery of Kalech. It was during a journey into the deepest and darkest parts of the jungle following a terrible echo storm that a grand crystal temple was discovered. This temple stood in a place that many believe held nothing for there had been journeys through here before and the temple had never been mentioned. Outside the temple standing in stone with golden letter each the size of a man was a word written in common. Kalech. And inside the temple according to the one man who survived and managed to flee were strange rooms of such alien design that he barely recognized them. And the denizens of this temple were constructs but at the same time they were also undead, for the stench of rotting flesh was evident. In the deepest and coldest part of the temple the man’s breath fogging as if the coldest months were upon the world, Kalech awaited.
In a voice like the shrieking of metal on stone Kalech spoke to those who had ventured in, questioned them, tortured them to know more about the outside world. The being referred to itself as Kalech, The Dark Spider, God of Webs. Of the party of twelve, one man fled and managed to escape back to a city and though he died shortly thereafter, he warned them of the threat of Kalech. Word spread quickly to the others and meetings were arranged, more missions were sent to learn more about Kalech, and some even to try and speak with him, but it because obvious that Kalech did not value life, for all who were sent to him ended up being not only killed but used in the creation of the strange undead known as Kalech’s minions.
It was from this common enemy that an idea was broached. While they all knew that they would never agree, exactly, on how things should be run. The years had proven that they could coexist with each other without wars breaking out. Perhaps they didn’t need to all do things the same way in order to still work together. Over the course of a fortnight the leaders of each country talked and came to a compromise in what is now known as The Summit of The Nine. The Fellowship of Bata was born to not only provide a unified front towards the problem of Kalech, but also to any such large problems in the future.
The Land
The People
The Culture
The Government
The Laws
The Gods
The Dangers
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