Katapesh

Katapesh is a nation dedicated to trade and little else. Its bazaars are known across Golarion not just for their size, but for their incredible (and sometimes immoral) variety of wares. No item is too rare or taboo to be found somewhere in the tents, shops, and wagons of the nation’s merchants: magical reagents, forbidden spells, holy relics, and deadly poisons. In Katapesh, those with the gold make the rules, and the only question is whether one can afford their desires.

Strangely, Katapesh was founded by a group of Sarenite refugees. Fleeing south from pogroms in Osirion, these devout settlers founded two cities that would eventually become Solku and Katapesh. Yet life was hard on Katapesh’s plains, and constant assault by gnolls, bandits, and destructive sandstorms led subsequent generations away from the faith, seeking salvation in something more concrete.

They found it in pesh: a rare cactus growing in the nation’s interior, the sap of which could be distilled into a powerful euphoric drug. Trade boomed as residents of the Inner Sea region clamored for the new drug, and with the influx of money came warring gangs and pesh dens full of helpless addicts. As the economic boom and influx of foreign trade allowed local merchants to expand into other wares, the fundamental anarchy of a drug-fueled economy continued under a loose 2560 ar

The Oath Wars end as the Laws of Mortality spread throughout the new nation of Rahadoum.

4079 ar

Qadira invades Taldor.

4300 ar

The Templars of the Five Winds imprison the efreeti warlord Jhavul, ending the Genie Wars. 4603 ar

Taldor and Qadira reach an uneasy truce.

4609 ar

Osirians overthrow their Keleshite rulers and install a Garundi pharaoh, Prince Khemet I.

4701 ar

Gnolls besiege Solku in Katapesh before being beaten back by paladins of Iomedae. 4709 ar

Pale Mountain partially erupts, leaving a massive crater on the side of the mountain and exposing the remains of Xotani the Firebleeder, one of the Spawn of Rovagug.

4714 ar

Pharaoh Hakotep I returns from the dead to reclaim his throne and is narrowly defeated. His flying pyramids crash down across Osirion.

NOTABLE FIGURES

The following are key public figures in the region.

PACTBROKER HASHIM IBN SAYYID While the Pactmasters rule Katapesh absolutely, their desires are implemented by the Pactbroker, making him the effective ruler of Katapesh.

RUBY PRINCE KHEMET III Osirion’s current pharaoh focuses on securing elemental and extraplanar pacts that strengthen the nation while leaving mundane rule to the Council of Sun and Sky.

MALDUONI, KEEPER OF THE FIRST LAW Wildly popular and elected to an unprecedented fourth term, Malduoni has united Rahadoum’s factions against the threat of their changing landscape.

SATRAP XERBYSTES II The ruler of Qadira is notoriously brooding and constantly rankling at the Padishah Emperor’s refusal to authorize an invasion of Taldor. consortium of corrupt merchants and outright criminals.

The Pactmasters changed that. Seven feet tall, robed and masked to hide their forms, the Pactmasters arrived from parts unknown and took control of the city of Katapesh—and by extension the nation—in a bloodless coup that no records can explain. Though they didn’t end the city’s freewheeling approach to trade, they stabilized and formalized it. Under their guidance, usually filtered through humanoid mouthpieces like Pactbroker Hashim ibn Sayyid, the nation has become perhaps the largest black market in the world, its independence maintained by economic ties and a constabulary of metal constructs known as aluums.

The city of Katapesh is so large in comparison to other settlements that many visitors don’t bother distinguishing between capital and nation. In its vast markets— both the legitimate bazaars and the seedier Nightstalls—merchants and buyers of a hundred different kinds mingle with the human majority. Gnoll slavers, nomadic gnomes, and dwarves from mines in the Brazen Peaks rub shoulders with visitors from far-off lands such as rakshasas from Vudra or even immortal traders from the Great Beyond. Although Katapesh has a bustling slave trade, slavers who deal in the business consider keeping track of one’s property a personal responsibility, so those who manage to escape slavery often find it easy to set up new lives among the city’s throngs of traders, fugitives, and expatriates.

Outside the city, the landscape quickly gives way to scattered herders, hardscrabble villages, and pesh plantations. All of these are regularly beset by natural predators like lions, bulettes, and hyenas, as well as more cunning foes like harpies, gnolls, pugwampis, and genie warlords. Given the Pactmasters’ laissez-faire policies, defending these holdings is up to the residents, and mercenaries do a brisk business guarding these scattered settlements from a landscape that seems intent on devouring them.

Pesh

The euphoric drug known as pesh comes from the milk of a cactus of the same name, originally native only to Katapesh and important enough to the local economy that their nation is named for it. The drug has several different forms, but the most valuable is the refined version—and hence the version most commonly smuggled abroad—a tarry, chunky black paste made by cooking the cactus’s milk along with its resin and other additives. When eaten or smoked, the drug gives users a sense of well-being, sometimes combined with hallucinations, though these can also turn to paranoia, aggression, and exhaustion. It’s also dangerously addictive, as its dealers know all too well.

Pesh (refined)

ITEM 1

Traits: alchemical, consumable, drug, ingested, inhaled, poison

Price 2 gp

Usage held in 1 hand; Bulk L

Activate ◆ Interact

Saving Throw Fortitude DC 12; Onset 1 minute; Maximum Duration 6 hours; Stage 1 stupefied 1 and a +2 item bonus to saves versus fear effects (1 minute); Stage 2 temporary Hit Point per level (first time you reach this stage only), +2 item bonus to saves versus fear effects, clumsy 1, and stupefied 1 (1 minute); Stage 3 clumsy 2 and stupefied 2 (1 hour)

Okeno

Originally a pirate enclave, the Yellow City has become the undisputed center of the slave trade in the Inner Sea. Run by a coalition of slavers under the oversight of the ruthless Governor Morio Midasi, Okeno is the only settlement of note on Stonespine Island—a place of cosmopolitan luxury that makes no effort to conceal the misery funding it. Slaves of every description are held in the city’s notorious Fleshfairs, brought in from the Skindock through the underground Sweatways. Though primarily human, the citizenry is also diverse, with a sizable contingent of gnolls and ratfolk. While Andoran’s abolitionist Eagle Knights have tried for years to shut down the port, they’ve been stymied by the slavers’ yellow-sailed fleet and the political power of those elites from other nations who come to frolic in the city’s pleasure pits. Even if someone managed to ransack the port, rumor holds that the truly powerful slavers rule from secret treasure-vault compounds high in the island’s trackless Stonespine Mountains.