Ghiscari Empire

The Ghiscari Empire is a power in Essos. A confederation of Slaver cities in the Slaver's Bay ruled by an ethnocrat calling himself an "emperor", the empire is a recent creation, no older than 30 years, but its dream predates millenia.

Geography
The Ghiscari Empire covers the area known as "the Slaver's Bay", so called for the slave trade that characterizes its economy, and recently colonized portions of Sothoryos. The Slaver's Bay is a vastly barren and desertic region, with very little resources but an ever-growing population. The main cities include:
 * Tolos, a former Valyrian colony. In the centuries after the Doom that destroyed Valyria, much of its bloodline was lost, and a mongrel Valyrian-Ghiscari race (although still more former than latter) estabilished itself as the ruling majority. The city had been ruled by a Sphinx Queen for centuries, until, few decades ago, the Valyrian city of Mantarys conducted a genocidal war against the people of Tolos. The city was razed and whatever remained of its population took refuge in the countryside. Not long after, the rising power of New Ghis, calling herself an heir to the Ghiscari Empire of old, conquered Tolos, Mantarys and Elyria, and started repopulating the former with colonists coming from its lands. Since then, Tolos has been a largely Ghiscari city, and the characteristic steeped pyramids now dot its landscape.
 * Meereen, the biggest city in the region. Situated on the Skahazadhan river, it considered herself the true heir of Old Ghis. Pyramids, big and small dot the cityscape, and the city herself has a very decadent atmosphere, with blood red dust clouds soaring over the city. The city is also known for its fighting pits, in which armed slaves fight to the death for the entertainment of the city's population. The current "emperor" comes from here.
 * Yunkai, the Yellow City, after the characteristic colour of its crumbling buildings and walls. It is known for its bed slaves, and, of all Ghiscari cities, its people are by far the least martial.
 * Astapor, on the Worm River. Astapor was, until a few decades ago, known for its eunuch slave soldiers, the Unsullied. Ostensibly modeled after the lockstep legions of Old Ghis, the Unsullied were men made machines in flesh. They had no soul, no feelings, no desires, and absolute loyalty and discipline. The Unsullied fought in a basic phalanx fashion, and were known to be invincible in battle. Very famous is the battle they gave at the gates of Qohor, when 3000 of them stood against 20.000 Dothraki screamers. By the end of the battle, only 600 Unsullied remain, but 3/4ths of the enemy army was destroyed. The Dothraki cut off their braids and gave them to the day's victors. Like most Ghiscari cities, Astapor is known for its steeped pyramids and crumbling, dust-producing buildings, characteristic of Ghiscari cities in the Slaver's Bay.
 * New Ghis on the island of the same name. New Ghis was founded by refugees from Old Ghis after the Valyrians conquered and razed the city. Of all Ghiscari cities, New Ghis is the least decadent, and its people, although being of a very similar stock as the other cities, have far more Ghiscari blood in their veins. Old Ghiscari is still spoken by its èlite and in some of the city's neighbourhoods. She is famous for her citizen-soldiers, modeled after the old Ghiscari legions, and for being the re-unifier of the Ghiscari people in an event known as the "Ghiscari Spring".

A Valyrian road known as "the Demon Road", connects Tolos to Meereen, passing through the rebuilt town of Bhorash. Its name derives from its high concentration of bandits hiding in its ruined forts. The Painted Mountains shield Meereen and Tolos, the northern part of the empire, from the Dothraki Sea. Beyond them lies the ruined Ghiscari city of Hazdan Ho, sacked during the Century of Blood by Dothraki. The Skahazadhan river flows from the Slaver's Bay into Meereen and then into the southernmost borders of the Dothraki Sea, where it also creates an affluent flowing into the flat grasslands of Lhazar, home of a peaceful race of shepards. Old Ghiscari cities along the Skahazadhan are known to be abandoned and sacked by the Dothraki during the Century of Blood. The Khyzai Pass leads from Meereen's territory into the fertile Khyzai Valley, untouched by the flames of the dragons and home of a sturdy stock of Ghiscari known for their herding customs. Another valley lies to the south, that is to the east of Astapor, much more barren than the Khyzai Valley, but likewise home of a similar race of Ghiscari shepards. To the south lie the Burned Lands, the old land of Ghiscar, where the old city of Ghis once stood. Ghiscar is now a deserted, glassed land. Almost noone lives in it, except in the northernmost regions, adjacent to the recently-claimed flatlands lying between Ghiscar and Lhazar, in the process of being settled. To the south of Ghiscar lies, in the Ghiscari Strait, the island of Ghaen, and to north-west, in the Slaver's Bay and literally in front of old Valyria, the Isle of Cedars, once home of Ghiscari and Valyrian cities. The Isle of Cedars is still affected by the Doom, 400 years after, and it is uninhabitable.

The new empire also holds lands to the south, in the distant, green continent of Sothoryos, home of several colonies.

People
Although the modern Ghiscari take pride in their Ghiscari heritage, not much remains of the original Ghiscari bloodline. Indeed, the modern Ghiscaris are very much a mongrel breed driven together by the old empire and by its fall at the hands (or, dare say, mouths) of the Valyrians and its dragons. This difference is reflected in this people's attitude. While the old Ghiscari were born conquerors and a population of builders, the modern Ghiscari have been a largely lazy, unproductive people until a few decades ago. Only their patriotism (largely instilled by the city of New Ghis and by the pride of many of their Masters) woke up their spirits and made them and still mades them today into something vaguely resembling their fabled ancestors. Of course, this doesn't means that the modern and old Ghiscari are absolutely different peoples. Both peoples' society and economy have been structured around slavery and, in both cases, both old and modern Ghiscaris made of slavery an art, although for different reasons. The general appearance of the population, despite the racial mixing, has remained remarkably similar to the appearance of the Old Ghiscaris, with the characteristic wiry red-black hair and amber skin being very common in both old and modern Ghiscari. The modern Ghiscari people today speak several dialects of the language of their conquerors. The Yunkai and Astaporese dialects in particular are more like a mispelled High Valyrian with a few old Ghiscari loan words, while the Meereenese, true to their belief of their city being the only true daughter of Old Ghis, speak a dialect full of Ghiscari loan words, other than containing the characteristic growling, hissing accent of old Ghiscari. The dialect spoken in New Ghis is, despite the distance from Meereen, even "purer" and closer to Ghiscari than Meereenese is.

But, in an ocean of Valyrian-Ghiscari speakers, a few Ghiscari retain their old language, particularly in Ghiscar, Ghaen and especially in New Ghis. Old Ghiscari has also become, in the recent decades, the language of the new aristocracy, eager to become culturally nearer to its ancestors, other than the language of administration. Also, other than the characteristic old Ghiscari accent remaining in the dialects of New Ghis and Meereen, the Ghiscari people, even the ones speaking the Valyrian-Ghiscari creole dialects, are known to still write in the old Ghiscari glyphs.

Ghiscari religion is largely polytheistic and characteristic of the plurarily of their origins. Although the Ghiscari gods are largely autoctonous, their origins can be traced to several peoples who were imported during the time of Valyrian domination. Of the old Ghiscari gods, not many remain, although the noteworthy ones are the Harpy, very much a national symbol of the Ghiscari people, Grazdan the Great, the founder of the old empire, worshipped as a heroic demi-god, said to have mated with the Harpy, the Ghiscari people being their offspring, and the Builder, a god worshipped in a monotheistic or henolatric fashion, although the origins of the latter are disputed. Although common wisdom sees the Builder to be a re-packaged and re-defined old Ghiscari god, whose name was lost to history and replaced with the actual vague one, historians can't manage to trace its origins to anywhere. Cultists of the Builder usually insist that he was, in fact, the original god of mankind, and that tracing its origin to any culture at all is a waste of time, as it is knowing its real name. Ghiscari priesthood is composed of Graces, priestesses wearing coloured robes according to their job. Graces are known to engage in sacred prostitution, medicine and other jobs useful to society. More recently, a caste of Graces wearing black robes has become the group responsible for developing a Ghiscari school of sorcery.

Ghiscari people are known to be divided in at least slaves, mostly of foreign ancestry and captured from foreign countries, and local freedmen.

Ghiscari freedmen, the proper Ghiscari, have been known as a lazy and greedy people for centuries, keeping their lives afloat through slave trade (the only viable trade in the region) and becoming rich and fat from it. And while laziness contributed to slave trade, greed contributed to make the geopolitical situation of the cities in the Slaver's Bay the same for centuries, with the cities engaging in a friendly rivalry, but never going to war. As a result, while the people of New Ghis were bloodied with the blood of their enemies, the Astapori used slaves to make their Unsullied, and Meereen and Astapor fielded completely inept armies of slave soldiers led by even more inept generals, only compensated by companies of foreign and local sellswords. Still, the resurgence of pan-Ghiscari patriotism finally gave these people something to do:

the Ghiscari people have become pioneers, emptying entire neighbourhoods of their cities to settle in Sothoryos and in the borderlands with Lhazar, becoming decent farmers and landowners, while engaging in several trades at home.

Generally, the Ghiscari people are divided in three sub-groups:
 * the city-dwellers, once mostly slave traders, now engaging in other trades as well. City-dwellers compose the wealthiest class, since it is from them that the Masters, the richest slave traders, come from. City-dwellers live in the coasts of the Slaver's Bay. They're mostly slave-owners. Common men are known to wear linen tunics and cloaks with copper disks sewn on them. Masters are known to wear the tokar, a toga-like garment. Men are known to have their wiry red-black hair oiled and twisted in fantastic shapes, such as wings, fangs and so on. Women usually go around with their faces veiled, to protect from the stingy dust of the crumbling buildings in Ghiscari cities
 * shepards, spread in the Twin Valleys of Khyzai and anti-Khyzai and, more recently, in the lands bordering Lhazar. As the name implies, they live in hamlets and small villages, and they mostly engage in agriculture and herding. Their culture isn't too distant from the Lhazareen one, although their attitude is not as pacific
 * colonials, living in Sothoryos, being a cultural combination of the former two, both because of their mixed origins and out of necessities.

History
The Ghiscari Empire was one of the oldest and most succesful civilizations of antiquity. Their lockstep legions sacked their way into the central portions of Essos and planted the Harpy wherever they went. Conquered cities were enslaved, and indeed the old Ghiscari Empire made of slavery art and sport. The Ghiscari were also pioneers, going as far as the easternmost limits of the known world, founding cities such as the City of the Winged Men (whose real name has been lost to history) and being the first non-Sothoryosi to land in Sothoryos, founding the colony of Gorosh. This changed when the greed of the Ghiscari people overcame their reason. Five thousand years ago, a civilization of shepards, the Valyrians, learned how to tame dragons and harness magical power from them. Dragons allowed the Valyrians to build an empire capable of rivaling the Ghiscari one. Eventually, the Ghiscari became interested and conducted five wars against the Valyrians, each time being defeated, despite their military prowess. During the last war, Valyria razed Old Ghis, planted sulphur in in its ground, and conducted a genocide on the Ghiscari people. Most of their culture was forgotten, and their language was replaced by that of their conquerors. After the Doom that destroyed their enemies, the Ghiscari people of Astapor, Meereen and Yunkai, once irrelevant towns, became rich and fat from the lucrative slave trade they conducted and, slowly, started to recover whatever was left of the culture of their far ancestors. A situation of social stagnation and economic growth remained for the next four hundreds of years, until revolts sponsored by New Ghis resulted in the resurgence of a new Ghiscari Empire, unified in the form of a confederation of cities. The Ghiscari Spring, so are called the events that led to the formation of the second Ghiscari Empire, was particularly known for the events of Astapor, in which the local population engaged city guards and Unsullied in what came to be known as a "Perpetual War", characterized by urban guerrilla warfare. 30.000 people died during these days, and a monument in Astapor still commemorates their deaths. After the empire became united, the newly-united empire entered an era of exploration and colonization, fueled by the perpetual economic growth resulting from its slave trade. Still, this didn't last. In the east, Qarth created its own empire and took control of the local slave market, while in the west, a short-lived New Valyria, made out of the Free Cities, blocked Ghiscari slave trade first, and Ghiscari shipping after. The empire entered a period of isolation, and focused itself on accomplishing self sufficiency in food production and diversifying its economy, an effort still continuing to this day. Luckily, New Valyria fell, and since then, Ghiscari economy has been recovering.

Military
The Ghiscari army is an army of citizen-soldiers, an adaptation of the legions of New Ghis. Their soldiers go through a process of mental conditioning, although the total obliteration of the self characteristic of the Unsullied (and, consequently, their discipline) are still very far. Ghiscari citizen-soldiers fight in lockstep legions of spearmen fighting in a phalanx formation, and slingers. Armoured and towered elephants imported from Sothoryos are also present in every legion.

Ghiscari legionaries are armed with spears, short swords and shields, round or square, while slingers, something characteristic of Tolos and Yunkai and implemented as legionary ranged troops, are usually only armed with a silk tunic, a sling and iron projectiles.