Gorgos

Gorgos is a group of four large jungle islands, Bogador, Mogador, Ogol and Ogarli, plus many smaller isles and rocky islets in the Sahara Sea. They are as lovely as Hesperia, yet the name means fear. The Gorgons began as an Amazon faction that rebelled against the Queen of Hesperia and wrecked the whole Hesperian empire in civil war; at their peak they held much of northern Gondwana and part of Mediterranea before later wars pushed them back to the islands. Hesperia and Gorgos have fought almost without pause ever since, and their hatred is proverbial.

Tall, tan-skinned and black-haired, the Gorgons are ruled with an iron hand by warrior-priestesses. Women dominate and men are slaves, treated far worse than in Hesperia and sometimes sacrificed to Sefar, the snake god of war and magic. Children are raised to love killing and conquest, and dissenters are burned as offerings. Sefar's sacred beast is a rare giant hooded cobra with swift, deadly venom that only the Gorgons have ever tamed; trained cobras go into battle beside them, and only the unicorn, Hesperia's emblem, is immune to the bite. Gorgons give no quarter, and one historian called them the Makara of the land.

The only sizeable towns are the warship ports of Ogara and Abalessa, which have warehouses but no shops, guilds or entertainments beyond what war and shipbuilding need. Gorgons attack Atlantean and Hesperian ships but rarely touch Tharshi vessels, reportedly spared in return for a heavy silver tithe, and raid Dar, Dabba, Qaddan and Hesperian lands for slaves sold to Tharshesh.