Vendhya

Starting Languages

When a player selects a culture, they automatically gain ability in the primary language associated with that culture. This language represents the common tongue or dominant language spoken in that cultural region. Each culture provides a pool of additional languages that players can choose from. This pool should include languages associated with neighboring regions, historical influences, or significant trade partners of that culture. The number of additional languages in the pool can vary based on the diversity and historical context of the culture. For example, a culture with extensive trade routes or a history of conquest might have a larger pool. You may select an additional language from this pool for each point of edge you have in Intellect, and another for each additional point you gain as you level up in your adventures.

Starting Arms & Armor

Players are afforded their starting weapons, clothing, & tool proficiencies by the age associated with their homeland. So Stone Age cultures and Dark Age cultures might both grant ability with a mace for example, but only the Dark Age culture would grant ability with guns, for example. Over the course of your adventures you may choose to use your progression to gain proficiency in a different age's tools.

The Ruby of the South

Vendhya crouches in the jungles and coastal rivers deltas like a purring panther, beautiful and powerful, a magnificent civilization of ancient mysticism and pent vibrancy. Its villages are uncountable, its cities crowded and bustling. The hot sun and monsoon rains make it a steaming, mist-shrouded land of tropical splendor, decorated with squawking, colorful birds, indigo butterflies, and hauntingly enormous flowers draped in rich, dense foliage.
Like Turan to the north, it is a land-wealthy country, with vast stretches ripe for agricultural exploration as well as deserts, steppes, and mountainous regions. Rivers cross it everywhere, and despite the tropical heat in southern Vendhya, it is a flourishing, rich and cosmopolitan country, taking influences from Khitai to the east and Iranistan and Ghulistan to the west.

The People of Vendhya

Vendhyans are dark-skinned people of unmatched beauty, often adorning themselves in garlands and jewels, unashamed and unafraid to celebrate their country’s enormous bounty. Even the most common of Vendhyan peasants are wealthy by Hyborian standards, and the country’s ample bounty ensures that few go hungry. The ruins of many long-forgotten cities lie between the villages, their stones toppled, and overgrown, and stained idols of unnamed gods stand as silent sentinels over quiet crypts where the wary fear to tread.

Religion

Though they are largely worshippers of Asura and Hanuman, there are countless gods in Vendhya, and the cultures of the land are as diverse as the land is large. Westerners tell tales of opulent cities where monkeys run freely in the streets, and enormous elephants are harnessed like oxen or adorned with tapestries and jeweled howdahs. A thousand spices waft through the markets to mingle with perfumes and the aromas of street food simmering everywhere, and Vendhya does trade with Khitai and other lands further east, unknown or only thought legendary in the West.

Playing a Vendhyan Adventurer

Starting Arms & Armor: Bronze Ages
Automatic Languages: Vendhyan, Trade Tongue
Favoured Tropes: Soldier or Noble
Bonus Languages: Khitan, Hyrkanian, Afghuli, Iranistani, Kosalan