Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)

2026-05-10T12:41:39Z

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{{Infobox:TwilightAgeGroup
|Type = Zu'aan city
|Name = Kal'im City Zu'aan
|Parent Groups = N/A
|Descended Groups = Unknown
|Areas Controlled = [[Budalu Canyon]]
|Date Founded = 4E 432
|Date Disbanded = N/A
}}

==History==

Set in the [[Budalu Canyon|Budalu Canyon]], Kal’im is a dangerous no man’s land. The people here are rejects of society. They are brought here in masses every year by three neighboring cities. They are left here in the canyon to live or to die. Luckily, many of them found refuge in the cave systems within the canyon wall. There are many different groups here ruling over the canyon and the close proximity and animosity towards each other makes Kal’im a place of nightmares. There are constant territory wars going on. Resources are low and it is dangerous to scout for more considering that scouting parties could be caught and slaughtered just for being with the wrong set of people.

Kal’im has always been used as a place to scare children into behaving.and as it is the stuff of nightmares, travelers either know not to go there or are warned by locals of the area. The people that are dropped off in the canyon are often criminals who have stolen or murdered, begars who have diseases that the cities are trying to isolate from their citizens or people with some sort of disability or mental health disorder. The weak are instantly killed by the gangs who come across them but the strong are often recruited to join the ranks. Rarely do women survive Kal’im.

Horrible things happen to them and they often die in the process of their torture. There are never children in the city and if the rare occasion happens where a child is dropped off, that child is used as a slave until they come of age and is dealt with by the gang they have been captured by, either becoming part of the gang, or being tortured and killed. This place is harsh and unforgiving. With thinning resources, it is a constant battle for survival. Many call this death canyon and that’s exactly where the city got its name. Kal means black and im means death.

The city of Kal’im thus translates to black death city. The city is known for its death. Unfortunately the city is surrounded completely by a huge mountain range that stretches far across miles and miles so that the only way to the other side is through Kal’im’s Canyon. Most of the citizens on either side of Kal’im have never seen the other side. Before the breakout, trade through the Canyon had been plentiful and the Canyon saw many feet travel through it but not only is it overrun by thugs and murderers but it is also a dangerous place to be at night when the kin’toni come to seek victims.

The weak are usually left to fend for themselves. These can range from sick or injured to even those that have done something wrong in their gang and are now discarded in the canyon. The kin'toni are never far away since they know where to get their prey from. They will come to hunt here constantly and always strengthen their numbers in the canyon.

==Psychology==

Kal’im is the epitome of dog eat dog. It’s a dangerous city where the strong rule and the weak are fed to kin’toni that roam the canyon every night in large, dangerous numbers. That is why Kal’im citizens never feel safe and they are never quite at home in the hell they had been brought to live through. Many of the citizens of Kal’im are hardened criminals brought to the canyon to be left to their own devices by soldiers of other cities. It is a stressful and frightening area of the empire now. Before the kin’toni came, the area was a trade route that was safe and people would never be harmed or threatened but since many of the zu’aan cities close by decided to abandon their rejects of society here, it became dangerous.

The people of the city do not trust even the members of their own gang. They live in constant fear of their lives ending on the whim of someone’s will. The strong leaders who took control of the many different types of gangs living in the city of Kal’im are constantly trying to steal from other gangs or trying to gather the most resources. Many gangs have met their end in the canyon and yet many of them have started afresh with a new leader and new members. It is a wave of constant change that can leave the most mentally strong individual feeling drained and exhausted.

The citizens live in constant fear that they might be the next meal for the kin’toni or that they might even be killed in their sleep. That is how citizens often meet their end. It is often known as the quickest and easiest death to endure. That is why many of the citizens will hope for this death rather than being tossed into the canyon at night where they might become kin’toni themselves, slaves to their own hunger. This is a depressing place that has no sense of community and after a while it starts waning on the individuals of this city.

They become aggressive because they have to be to survive. They don’t trust anyone, even in their own gangs. If an outsider comes into their canyon they will either kill them or make them go through a test to test their strength. It is always a do or die mentality here. The people here are weak because of the limited resources. Even the stronger gangs have to fear anyone else they encounter. As far as the psychology goes, it is a dire place and no one is truly ever happy living in this place. Because there are no children and barely any women, there is no sense of family or caring. The men here are cutthroat criminals that would sooner kill you than attempt a friendship.

To come to the canyon is to enter death valley. There are many cases where individuals die of starvation or dehydration or illness. If not murdered they will become murderers themselves.

==Culture==

There is very little culture in Kal’im. The citizens of the various different gangs have left most of their culture behind. Very few of the gangs still follow their cultures that they brought from their city home. Because the different gangs roll in their own groups there is very little to fight about as far as culture goes. One of the biggest cultures is Lyduli culture. It is a very strong culture that is based on the theory of evolution. They believe that only the strong survive. That is why the gangs of Lyduli are the most feared out of all the gangs that make up Kal’im.

The Lyduli have been brought up to understand that if you are not strong, you are bound to be discarded and these people do their hardest to avoid that. They have a drive to fight to survive. As such it is vital for most other groups to avoid this one. Keduk is another city that will abandon their unwanted citizens into the canyon to begin their battle between life and death. Keduk’s culture is far more tame than that of Lyduli. Being mainly a herding city relying on elduke to sustain the city Keduk’s culture is far more peaceful.

It is no wonder then that anyone from this city will have a high chance of being killed immediately upon entering the city. Keduk are not fighters and thus are taught peaceful and polite ways of conduct. The culture dies upon reaching Kal’im. It has no place among the stronger of the citizens. Keduk normally bring their infirm and ill to come and die in the canyon. They also tend to get rid of their orphans here. That is the only way a culture of Keduk can exist but most children shift their culture to the gang that has taken them in. The last of the cities to throw their social rejects here is Muvon.

Muvon is one of the most vicious cities in the entire empire. This is mainly due to their bloodthirsty leader. Muvions will normally take what they want, when they want and they grow up learning that if you do not take, someone else will. That is the psychology of the Muvions living in Kal’im. The Muvions being left here are the most dangerous of society. These are people who attempted to assassinate the ‘king’, people who have killed more than once and those that have destroyed the peace in the city of Muvon by setting a building on fire or attacked and injured multiple people in the city.

It is these kinds of people that are thrown at Kal’im to make the city even more dangerous than it already is. The fact that little to no cultural markers survive this city is a testament to their sense of community. The community is none existent, forcing each individual to only take care of themselves and their own needs. That is the predominant feeling of culture here. Only the strong survive Kal'im

==Government==

The moment that Kal’im came into existence, the need for a government vanished. The city has no laws. Those that make the rules are the gangs at war with one another. They each control their own sector and the leaders are the undefeated and strongest fights of that particular gang. This might be a no man’s land but it is also a city full of ever changing rules. Despite the fact that there is no centralized government, the fact that there are leaders scattered around the place lends some structure to the chaos encircling Kal’im. For the most part the gangs that run the city will always be matched equally as far as strength and power go.

They will constantly fight over resources but there is never a gang that rules over the rest. With the arrival of new citizens, some gangs do grow stronger than others and it often depends on who is brought here from the neighboring cities. The citizens of Kal’im do recall what it was like to have a government and some of them still desire that kind of governing but the dictatorship among the gangs soon destroys that hope. It is said that there once was a gang leader who wanted to unite the gangs so they could share resources and be safer overall but it obviously didn’t work.

This visionary was called Timori and he was soon assassinated by a rival gang member who hated the idea of a council under one governing chosen leader. There had been a price on Timori’s head the moment he even suggested a governing body to rule over every single gang. There is far too much animosity among the citizens to ever think they’d be able to get along and split resources. Each leader wants to only prove themselves stronger than the other.
In the minds of the citizens of the city they believe that the government of their home cities have brought them to this spot.

They have learned to distrust authority which includes the government and the military. They would rather struggle for survival than go back to what they believed was a difficult life lived under the authority of others. They have come to believe that the worst thing that could happen would be to work together to create a government. Even if they did try and do that, they wouldn’t be successful. There is too much animosity between the gangs and bad blood between the citizens. They are angry and hateful people and they will never adhere to what they believe to be control.

They think control would be a weakness and they are not willing to show their weakness yet. Whether this will change in the future, remains to be seen but if this city does pull together there is no doubt that they will be dangerous for the rest of the empire. For now, the infighting between gangs and tribes are set to reach a boiling point in the near future unless something drastic happens to change that.

==Military==

Considering the fact that the city is full of chaos rather than control, there is no military. If the city were to form a centralized government and learn to work together to form a strong city, the military would be one to fear. The city is full of death and bloodshed with strong fighters and determination to fight. The congregation of fighters in the city is outstanding and they could boast of strong warriors but unfortunately, the infighting prevents that to the extent that any type of military power would be fairly impossible to organize.

The citizens of the city have spent their entire adult lives fighting against authority figures so the fact that they would organize a military is not practical. They vie for power and resources. They don’t think along the lines of needing to protect their city. They only think of their own survival. There have been times that the gangs have banded together. They were strong and powerful against their adversaries since most of these men were brought up as fighters and survivors. They have gone past fearing death and they live for the bloodshed that they cause.

Many of the surrounding cities have attempted to clear out these bands of dangerous men but few have succeeded to even make a dent in the city’s population. When the gangs that call the canyon home mounted a defense against the armies that came to clear them out like pests, they overpowered the militaries and protected their control over the canyon. Many surrounding cities know that controlling the canyon could be a vital and strategic asset to any city or government but the cities that helped to create Kal’im have made a morbid mistake when they sent all their troublesome citizens there.

Now they own the strong hold and nothing and no one has been able to clear the path. Though Kal’im seems to be a place that is yet undefeated, there are quite a number of stronger cities rising up to present a danger to Kal’im. This threat is looming on the horizon every single moment and it’s a threat that is growing daily. Though the empire’s mishap with their experiments to make kin’toni has changed the empire as a whole, different cities are growing stronger daily and forming new avenues of defense. As these cities develop to have stronger military that could eventually overthrow Kal’im’s bunch of thugs.

The city and the many gangs that reside there will have to eventually make a decision on what to do in order to keep a hold of the place they had been fighting to keep. They will need to decide to stand together and survive or fall apart defeated as they have always done. It has now become do or die time for the entire city. If the city plans to survive they will need to join together and create a military powerful enough to hold their position in the Canyon for many years to come and maybe when they do this, they will be able to have a better sense of community to go along with it.

==Religion==

There is no space for religion in this cold harsh world that these people are being pushed to live in. Most of the people in the city have left their gods far behind. There are some citizens considered mentally ill that act like fanatics with their religion. They will walk around muttering prayers to their gods and goddesses but these fanatics are soon sent to join their idols. Their lives are short and they end in brutal ways. Once upon a time in each citizen’s life, they were part of a city, a community, a family and in that way they followed their religion but they were stripped of all that when they entered a life of crime.

Some of the citizens do end up praying and turning to religion during times of danger or hardship. Many of them hide their religious beliefs behind a cold, hard face that will not give away anything. They have long ago learned how deadly it can be to show your belief in religion. Followers of their religion have been tortured in brutal ways, mocked for their belief and murdered. That is why many of the citizens abandon their religious beliefs the moment they are left in the canyon. The main focus in the canyon is survival. If you do not have the ability to survive, you will be killed.

That is why religion is seen as a very unnecessary burden. Most of the citizens will avoid religion entirely. They become atheists. Gods won’t help them in Kal’im. It is an unforgiving city and wasting time on religion is most definitely not going to help an individual survive the harshness and dangers of the city. That is mainly why the city doesn’t have any religion to speak of and why they won’t even develop one like other newly formed cities. If the citizens are able to escape the city, they would follow their religion again. It’s more than a hobby for many in the empire.

They believe that religion is very important and being pious will offer you a good life because of the fact that it pleases the gods to have pious followers but there it is also believed that Kal’im is a cursed place where the gods and goddesses of the various religions do not venture. It is a place so cursed that even the prayers to the gods and goddesses do not reach their ears. The curse of death follows them all throughout their lives in the canyon. If there was any god that would be followed in this godless place it would most definitely be death and his curses on Kal’im.

As of yet, they have not decided to follow this god and have not formed a religion around him. It seems more than likely that they will happily remain atheists themselves since they don't see the value of religion at all. They believe religion to be a waste of time, strength and energy. It doesn't fit into their world and what doesn't fit in this world is discarded without a thought.

==Miscellany==

{{NearbyGroups
| Centre = {{PAGENAME}}
| North = Unknown
| Northeast = Unknown
| East = Unknown
| Southeast = Unknown
| South = Unknown
| Southwest = Unknown
| West = Unknown
| Northwest = Unknown
}}

{{CrossSiteAttribution
| User = [https://www.royalroad.com/profile/222890 angelsonggd]
| Holder = angelsonggd
}}

[[Category:5th-century Twilight Age zu'aan cities]]
[[Category:angelsonggd's contributions]]

Kal'im City Zu'aan - Revision history

Stevie Lambert: (via JWB)