Notes on Map N4 (The Eastern Hutan Mata)
The map covers a narrow stip of the Hutan Mata in between the southern reaches of the great forest and the Gunang Singgasana.
Running along this gap is the remains of the Road of Skulls, the Jalan Tengkorak. This road was one of the major highways of the Rakhokalia empire here, keading towards the capital and the well fo the demons. The road itself is largely overgrown and broken but is still quite distinct and can be seen in patches winding through the rocky outcrops and dry riverbeds that characterize the eastern Hutan Mata.
The Hutan Mata used to be relatively fertile and farmed, but when the weather patterns shifted it was left rather arid and since then has been abandoned by most poeople.
Gunang Embas, or blowing stone, is a knife-edged ridge across which the wond blows fiercly and causes dreadful moaning and howling souds when the wind is low, rising to shrieks of torment as the wind rises.
Gunang Tiga, the Three Brothers, are three raised bluffs. There is a fort on top of each, concealed: Rakhokalia beasts still prowl the ruins.
In the Hantu, the valley between the three brothers the Jalan Tengkorak is covered in low mounds- each is the fallen body of a Rakhokalia warrior or a mindslave (mostly Yilani). Items of power can be found here, as can the spirits of the strongest Rakhokalia which were capable of holding on to existence even after the body died. These are fierce and covet life essence to drain to bring their own powers back up to the level where their will can warp reality sufficiently to reclothe their bones in flesh.
Gunang Panca, the fifth brother, is another large bluff. The fourth brother (or hatchmate- the Rakhokalia lay typically five eggs in a clutch) is supposed to have been banished for treating with the enemy, leaving a great gap in the defences which allowed the forces of the enemies to flood into the Hutan Mata proper. "May you suffer the fate of the fourth" is a popular curse from the undead here. The spirit of the fourth brother is chained at the well of demons in the capital.
Gunang Kilat, the mountain of sheet lightning, is the main watchtower for the entry to the Hutan Mata. Its fortress is built into the rock that makes a sheer cliff face. Rakhokalia Demons still watch the pass for intruders but there are none to be summoned to fight them and the watchers are bound to their posts, eternally vigilant.
One spur of the road of skulls leads into the depths of the great forest. The paths are kept clear by the demon brothers who have broken the mental shackles originally placed on their minds by their Rakhokalia masters and rule the twin cities, originally called Tanda Sah (The City of Law) and Tanda Tangan (The City of the Word). The two demons, Kabut (Mist) and Berasap (Smoke) endlessly war between each other, sending great aries for forest creatures and mind-slaves against each other. They heate each other yet somehow they know that neither should ultimately win and they have evolved an elaborate code of combat accordingly because they actually have rather limited troops and if they killed all the mindslaves in a battle they’d never get to fight the next moon. Each plots and schemes continuously against the other and has advisors and a court of minor demons to do their bidding.
The cities were swallowed by the great forest as part of the war between the Rakhokalia king Rastkrinkati who ruled the Hutan Mata and Queen Vjestica who ruled wat is now Perahu. Vjestica won, but the price was a weakness, for she had had to expend so much of her magical strength in defeating Rastkrinkati and laying waste to the Hutan Mata that she had little power left to drive the invading Kemes and Pithekos tribes from her lands. The forest itself is the preserve of strange, dark gods, some of whom are worshipped by the Kemes and the pagoth but whose primary allegiance is to the trees and the forest. The gods of the forest are extremely bloodthirsty and require live sacrifices once per moon; even the demon brothers fear them sufficienctly to ensure that they always offer the sacrifices, often from the ranks of the minor demons and the bred mindslaves.
The mindslaves here are generally of Rakhokalia servant race stock- Yilani principally, with some others (create these!). The Hutan Mata as a great kingdom fell an age before the spread of the Pithekos tribes and so forth so there are no Pithekos mind slaves. There are a few Kemes and Pagoth asthey were just beginning to appear in the world when the empire of Rastkrinkati was falling. The greatest of the demon kings that remain can actually create mind slaves so there will be the odd wanderer enslaved by them.
The forest itself is gradually expanding its boundaries, even though the Hutan Mata is under the curse of Vjestica and is thus mostly barren. The dark forest gods are powers in their own right and seek to expand their lands. They may seek to use th company or bargain with the pagoth to expand their range. The chief trouble that they have is that the curse prevents 999 out of 1000 seeds germinating at the edge of the forest so the forest can only creep forwards year by year. It has already engulfed perhaps a hundred miles or more in the thousand years since the fall of teh Rakhokalia kingdoms.
To the north of the Gunang Kilat are a nameless range of mountains whose forested slopes are extremely steep, with cliffs in odd places are virtually no visibility. These formed a natural barrier that defined the limits of the Hutan Mata and Perahu Rakhokalia kingdoms.
Most of the other interesting or hostile creatures in the Hutan Mata are demons summoned via the well that was the source of King Rastkrinkati’s power. Although the curse of Vjestica prevents any but the most minor demons slipping through the well, the realm in haunted by dozens of bands of these inhuman, subhuman or just plain hideous creatures. Think carnivorous goblinoids, for example. Also think dopplegangers who can be determined because they don’t blink or sweat. The beheaded demon-king Berbisadaran who rules the central Hutan Mata uses these as spies.
There are two cities reduced completely to rubble, shattered and burned by sheet lightnings of the great wars. The first of these is Mahkamah, the court of Justice. The second is Menjaga, city of the guard, which was the first of the great cities of the Hutan Mata to be destroyed in the war.
Notes on Map N6 (The Western Hutan Mata)
The Hutan Mata High Plateau is here bounded to the West and South by the Penghalang, an impressive line of sheer cliffs. There are several paths up the Penghalang, mostly guarded by relic forts. The more Northern reaches are less steep and more passable.
The western edge is defined by the canyon once carved by the Sungai Berair, a once-mighty river whose course is now dry. Changing the weather patterns so that the Sungai Berair dried up was one of the major components of the curse.
Down the western side of this canyon are the three mountain pinnacles of the Gunang Badak (Rhinoceros mountain, so called because of the shape of its horn) Gunang Pribadi or the Pinnacle which contains a Rakhokalia fortress and Gunang Kerja (The prize- won by a historic battle between Rakhokalia kings).
The foothills of the great Gunang Kosong range rises in the west.
The Sungai Diam, the silent river, flows here into Teluk Melindungi, the Bay of Shelter. The coast is dotted with fishing villages, mostly settled by people from the City-States of Loyismos and by e-irates who chose to settle down here in the remarkably affable and sheltered Teluk Melindungi. While there is some farming and a few tracks, most of the settlements are quite recent and have not really established land links. Nearly all trade is conducted by sea. Many villages are in defensive positions because there are some outlander tribes around, although they are few in number and stone-age in technology. They are however very bloodthirsty and the local gods demand a high price for their protection in the shadow of the Hutan Mata, so one of the chief fears of the fishermen is that the outlanders will come and seize some of their youngsters for food.
Pelabuhen Batu (Stone Harbour) is one of the settlements founded by an ex-pirate chief, now ruled by his sons who have deposed the old man. The people mostly live by fishing but practice the odd spot of piracy if the opportunity presents itself- there is some trade along the coast which they prey upon. The village is backed by cliffs around an excellent natural harbour. This limits the size of the village to its current size of 200 people; there is precious little farmland available and wood has to be shipped in, but the position would be a nightmare to take by land and pretty difficult by sea. They only have a dozen boats and many are small or badly-repaired because of the difficulty in getting lumber and because they have no dry-dock- they have to hire those sorts of things from the people in Pelabuhen Empang.
The other side of the cliff is an older village settled by people out of Loyismos several centuries ago. They are a bit wary of their new neighbours but have had lots of interesting things to trade with them. They have caves behind their village which serve as stores and sources of fresh water; there are also mushroom farms and secret passages to hidden fields atop the cliffs which they’ve tried very hard to conceal from their new neighbours. This village is Pelabuhen Empang, the village of the dam, so called because they improved and enlarged their harbour with a sea wall. This village is larger, about 400 people and twenty fishing boats.
Pelabuhen Alamat, the village of the portents, is a colony of religious nutters worshipping a minor deity called Kejar the Hunter, originally of the civilized gods but whose currently worshipped form is more like an outlander god. The villagers have converted one of the local outlander tribes to the worship of Kejar the Hunter, who is now called The Hunter Of The Prey Which Speaks. The god is a bloodthirsty killer of men and (especially) women with fairly repulsive rites of worship. The god hunts sacrifices each full moon; around this time all worshippers are sworn to silence so that the god will know to pass them by. Their main aim in life other than feeding themselves is to gather enough sacrifices for the god’s monthly hunt. They prefer fit people, women especially, to give the god a good run. Since the god generaly kills all the victims but eats only one, the villagers and the tribesmen get together the following night to cook and devour the flesh of the rest of the hunt victims. The villagers are as a consequence fairly well-fed but also prone to certain wasting diseases contracted from the flesh of their vicitims.
There are ruined Rakhokalia cities on the two islands in the delta, although much has been deveoured by the changing river pattern there are still some remains visible. These are haunted by Rakhokalia ghosts and also some mind-slaves and Yilani remain in the area. The city at the mouth of the delta was called Kehijuan, the green river.
Yilani troops still use the fortress in the pinnacle but most of it is inhabited by Primal Svika and their wasps.
The Lovac are the Hunter tribe; their range includes Pelabuhan Alamat and is fiercely disputed by the Iskidati (tear to pieces tibe- they sacrifice captured war vicitims by tethering them between metakeenos and having them torn apart) and to the west by the Neistina (the liars- they consider anyone outside their own tribe to be subhuman and no oath sworn to them to have any weight). The Iskidati worship Krava, a humanised metakeenos with huge fangs and claws, who gives life but whose will must be obeyed. The Nestina (whose range extends up the canyon as far as can be easily walked, which is to about the pinnacle and as far as the Sungai Diam) worship Cavka the Jackdaw, a trickster god who likes to make jokes at his worshippers’ expense.
All of these tribes are dirt poot, unsophisticated and quite small- a few hundred members each. They warfare always used to be ritualised to avoid too much bloodshed, but since the conversion of the Lovac to worship the Hunter about ten years ago the warfare has got much bloodier because the Lovac figured that the best place to find a couple of victims for the hunt each month was their traditional enemies. They used to rustle metakeenos- now they steal teenage children.
On the high plateau opposite the pinnacle and flanked by the two forts that guarded the route up from the pinacle lies the ruins of the Capital City of the Hutan Mata- Kemuliaan the Magnificent. Kemuliaan was crafted of silver and gold and Tiger’s Eye and was arranged so its colours changed and shone and sparkled throughout the day, looking like a golden jewel at sunset and an obsidian fortress at dawn. Even the power of the curse wasn’t able to destroy all of the city and the palace still stands, containing the well of demons.
Kemuliaan is now ruled by Berbisadaran, the greatest of the demons that used to serve King Rastkrinkati. Despite having his head severed by Vjestica he was still too powerful to die and now rules the central and western regions of the Hutan Mata. His huge body (over 50 feet tall) still lies in the throneroom by the well of demons, oozing deadly poison from its severed neck and twitching in its prolonged death throes. His head has been carried to the new courtroom constructed from the ruins and is waited on by demonic courtiers and servants.