Ecua

Ecua lies in Tamoanchan's Central District, bordered on the east by the Acuan Gulf, on the west by the Elysium Sea, and on the south by Quechua and Nazca; northward a narrow isthmus joins it to the continent's northern and northeastern peninsulas. It is mountainous but has a thriving, fairly sophisticated river-valley civilization amid the jungles along the Caucas River and its tributaries. Ecuans are short, swarthy and straight black-haired; the upper classes wear bright robes patterned with geometric designs, the lower classes loincloths. They farm a little but prefer hunting, with bows and arrows tipped in venom from the colorful arrow-poison frog.

The strong central state is ruled by the Cua, 'the Perfect Human', and society ranks everyone by degrees of perfection, judged by strength, intelligence, wealth and fame; rank begins as hereditary, but most can rise or fall on merit. The Cua is an absolute monarch who delegates to five elected advisory councils, one for each citizen class: Warriors, Craftsmen, Shamans, the Highborn and Ecua.

The Highborn are the Cua's family and the very rich or powerful, including all councillors. Warriors, the active military in six ranks, wear animal-skin headdresses and clothes and fight with short bows, clubs, spears, obsidian daggers and hide shields, often working themselves into near-berserk frenzy with coca leaves or fermented fruit drinks. Shamans of both sexes rank below warriors because of hostile neighbors to the south, and powerful ones are rare. Craftsmen include anyone with a productive skill, from potters and hunters to sages, wizards, musicians and witch-hunters used against the Quechuans, ranked by skill. The Ecuan class holds the unskilled, poor, criminals and many women, who in practice get less training. Slaves, all foreigners, war captives, criminals or slaves' children, have no rights but six ranks of their own, from those never unchained or left unsupervised to those wearing only a symbolic neckband, often of precious metal; only the Cua can free them.

The capital, Cauc, runs about seven miles (sixty stadia) along both banks of the Caucas and never extends inland. Each 10-stadia stretch belongs to one class, rising from a dormitory of the lowest slaves at the north end, through mud-and-thatch huts, to massive stone buildings and the Cua's mansion at the south. Other cities, Gualilagua, Oguayaquila, Ocatagua, Sogamo and Atarata, are laid out as spirals with the highest ranks at the center. Ecua is wealthy, rich in gold and fairly well supplied with silver, copper, turquoise and emeralds, and its craftsmen adorn even simple objects with carving, inlay, relief and paint.

Stable and strong, Ecua has held off Quechua and Nazca for centuries but cannot win ground from either, so a permanent war has become largely ritual. Religious leaders set strategy and even battle plans by combining astronomical, religious and historical precedent; no Ecuan general would fight on New Year's Day under a full moon, because that day marks the terrible defeat at Tolimo eight centuries back, and a full moon has ever been an ill omen for battle.