Xuaocaon and Kazrio
Where is Kazrio?
Along the banks of the river Shiabon, which flows from the mountains of the Valerik Range, the people of Kazrio have cut clean what was once a forested theome to make of it an urban theome.
How is Kazrio classified?
Xuacaon is classified among the Benevolent land gods, who in protecting the Fates of the lesser divinities allowed their numbers to grow until they had consumed the forest.
What kind of economy and population does Kazrio have?
Kazrio largely serves the sea trade. Ore, metal, and stone flow south from the Valerik Range along the river Shiabon, and is briefly caught in Kazrio where it is shipped elsewhere in turn. The Shiabon is barely navigable across its short length from its mountainous sources to its mouth at the sea, and might not have much traffic were it not for good evermines and everquarries in the high hills of Valerik looking for a way to get their cargo to Kazrio with a minimum of effort.
The stone trade from Kazrio is of note, for although the local construction is largely of wood from the nearby forests, Xuaocaon has empowered local artisans to produce a kind of well-sealed box that when closed gives a certain cotton-like quality to whatever is sealed up within it. The intended purpose and thus primary use of the boxes is to carry stone at sea, and they disenchant unpredictably if used improperly. If used only for stone and returned every few years to Kazrio for a spot of restorative prayer by local geomantic artisans, these are faithful enchantments that can travel freely across many theomes, and thus the stone from the Valerik Range can travel in large quantities and for great distances by sea.
Kazrio is a very hilly urban theome, which increases its appeal to some who love the hills and decreases its appeal to others who detest hauling their things up and down hills.
Cargoes of lumber are also sold from Kazrio. The city built up with a reckless disregard for sustainable lumber usage, but it remains adjoining to theomes full of more sustainably forested wood. The price is workable but not exceptional here, as the local wood is highly valued for maintainence and construction in Kazrio itself. This extensive use of wood is by no means unique to Kazrio, but it is slightly unusual; the immortals of Theoma often prefer the permanence of stone, which requires rebuilding and maintenance less often.
What is Xuaocaon like?
Xuaocaon is an interesting study in the potential mercuriality of land gods. At the dawn of time in Theoma and for the whole of the era where Primordial Souls were commonly incarnated, zie was a forest-tending land god who incarnated to warn away travellers. Zie sought to have no settlement in Kazrio while keeping down the death toll by which land gods enforce their prohibitions against settlement.
Yet at some point, for unclear reasons, Xuaocaon seems to have had a change of heart, and to have begun welcoming in reckless lumberjacks and other industrious people who would turn the theome's wilderness over in short order. No careful forestry was practiced here, but the whole of the local wood supply was used up swiftly in construction, until a city developed whose appetite for lumber outstripped local supplies and provided a trade stimulus of sorts.
Xuaocaon's incarnate form is usually a short Vohntrai with a gleaming halo, but there were reports from the pre-settlement era of a great god-beast that showed up personally to smash constructions when people ignored the polite requests of the short vohntrai that they should settle elsewhere.
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