Quechua

Quechua shares Tamoanchan's Central District with Nazca as one of its two advanced realms: a rugged, mountainous interior behind low, fertile, jungle-clad coasts on the Acua Gulf. Its tall, bronze-skinned people descend in spirit from Atlantis, which ruled here in the First Age; the Quechua tribe seized Atlantean learning and faith when the empire withdrew and bent both to its own purposes. Metal overlays still gleam on walls and statues, though the priests tore down the old pyramids of Atlas and reused their stones.

Every citizen is tested at puberty, first for the Priesthood, then for the Warrior-Priest (paladin) class, and anyone who fails both becomes a Commoner, so rank rests on ability, never birth. Priests rule absolutely as the go-betweens of the gods; Warrior-Priests enforce the law, guard the borders and push conquest; Commoners face slavery for small crimes and sacrifice for repeated grave ones, yet stay loyal in hope their children will rise.

The ravenous god Tici Viracocha, Atlas merged with a tribal deity, wants his own worshippers as sacrifices, and the priests' Lottery supplies them, conveniently often choosing the priesthood's enemies. Rich in copper, silver, lead, tin, gold, quartz and turquoise but lacking iron, Quechua feuds with Nazca over its iron valleys and pays dearly for Taracuan iron. Commoners may make metal goods but not own them, and with no pack or riding animals, every load moves by porter or sedan chair.

Only Commoners are subject to the Lottery, and the upper classes enter only as volunteers, which almost never happens. On average six lotteries a year choose 36 victims, who are sacrificed on the next holy day; the god's symbol, the moon, runs through Quechuan art. A few weak splinter cults exist among the upper classes: one shrinks and animates whole bodies as spies or familiars, and the Sons of Belial, brought in by a foreign-born Warrior-Priest, seek to sweep away the state religion.

Warrior-Priests wear quilted cotton armor and face paint and fight with obsidian clubs. Conquered stone-age tribes pay food and furs in tribute, and the fiercer coastal tribes of the Acua Gulf fish with nets and barbed-bone harpoons. Hunting is the mainstay of the diet, supplemented by mountain terraces, lowland produce, and fishing and frogging around Lake Titicaca.

Expansion has stalled against Ecua and Nazca, with border raids that achieve little and a stalemate over the empty jungle of Paragua. Quechua wants either direct trade with Atlantis or to conquer Taracua's ports; for now, iron arrives about once a year by log barge-raft at the small gulf post of Ayamagua. Its metal-inlaid quartz sculpture is reputed the finest in the world, and its ceremonial centers are built of sun-dried brick or precisely fitted stone in the Atlantean manner. Commoners may not build in stone or brick, and live in anything from huts and log houses to floating reed villages on Lake Titicaca and cliff dwellings.