Sheba

Sheba was founded by First Age Atlantean settlers, and many Atlantean traditions survived the empire's fall to shape it. Hesperian Amazons later conquered the colonists' descendants, and the Shebans kept female rule even after Hesperia withdrew to handle problems at home. Left alone, they built a strong culture of their own that made them a leading economic power: from Atlantis they took architecture and a love of magic and science, from the Amazons female dominance, strict authoritarianism and the ideal of trained mind and body, but they replaced militarism with a quest for magical knowledge and commercial expansion.

Offshore, the island of Raamah holds the port of Aram, and Bathsheba bears the barrows of an old death cult. The poorer mainland has few estates; its mostly Common Class herders, hunters and farmers, many still semi-nomadic in family groups, feed the islands and towns. Coastal villages serve as stops for traders, many hosting a single naval ship with sailors and marines, and the biggest havens, Sabalah and Kemul, are devoted to the fleets. Small forts along the edge of the Great Desert draw off and withstand hit-and-run Turanian raids, though they could not stop a united assault, which Turanian disunity makes unlikely.

Shebans live to grow rich, and their ships dominate the Red, Erythraen and Baku seas almost to the exclusion of others while traveling far beyond, keeping the major nations of the hemisphere in touch. Their trade partners, especially Qaddan, Punt, Kush, Joktan, Meluhha, Magan, Massawa and Marhasi, have pledged to defend Sheba, a vital pact since Sheba's own forces are thin and each ally is weak; the Shebans trust their survival to these allies, a small effective navy, a simple militia and hired mercenaries. Only the Turanian tribes, including those of Zin, threaten them, and despite nearly constant border fighting they are easily contained, so the High Citizens on their island strongholds feel safe. Sheban captains also carry news and ideas, spurring change in distant regions.

Several families, the Queen's the largest, run great trading houses whose High Citizen owners reinvest profits in companies, estates and possessions while Common Citizens manage and crew them; small independent traders, some with one ship, seek routes the big houses ignore. Tin, mined around Kemul, is the only plentiful native resource; most cargoes are rare goods from distant lands. Sheban shipwrights, among the world's best, build large, very seaworthy and formidable ships on an old Atlantean design at Bersheba and Aram, with repair yards at Sabalah and Kemul. Sheba trades with its rival Tharshesh at far Marhasi and chiefly through Qaddan, whose land bridge and canal link the Red Sea and Mediterranean; both powers want that isthmus but will not risk offending Qaddan.

The Queen commands the army and holds final authority, but Queens have long delegated day-to-day rule to the Princesses (every royal woman) and to viceregal officials of any sex or birth whom she picks for merit. She may take any number of husbands; her chief consort may serve as Chief Advisor, outranking other viceregal officials but below the Princesses, though the post is optional. Royal men, and consorts other than the Chief Advisor, are Princes with High Citizen status but no official power, though ambitious men often manipulate female rulers. Society has four classes: High Citizens of wealth and property, including royal families; Common Citizens; Low Citizens without work or proper homes; and Slaves, born so or sentenced by the Queen's criminal judges, usually for life though some serve fixed terms, and freed by owners or royal decree.

A powerful necromantic death cult of Baal once thrived, even among past Queens, one of whom gave it northern Bathsheba for barrows where the dead became undead guardians serving the High Necromancer and Baal, drawn by promises of undying life and indulgent rites like those of the Sons of Belial and the Gorgons. It was outlawed long ago and has no power now, though a few may still follow it in remote places. Most Shebans now worship Ishtar, a Young Goddess of pleasure and sensuality whose cult has grown steadily for a century; other Young and Old Gods have cults, none strong. Astrology and Sorcery are the magical arts most linked with Sheba, though both have waned somewhat. The Sheban Lion is the realm's emblem.