Peleg: War Lords

The War Lords of Peleg are a culture of raiders and slave traders. They consist primarily of Minotaurs, but these War Lords tend to employ many Druid mercenaries. The Minotaurs have their roots in the battlefields of Xanadu.

When Peleg was first colonized by Xanadu, most of the colonists were either of the royal family, or of the warrior clan who came to protect that family. However, soon after the establishment of the colonies, certain prisoners of war from Xanadu, were brought to serve as slaves. These slaves were a combination of Xanadu-War-Lords (Kobolds) and Xanadu-Barbarians (Minotaurs.)

The Xanadu Colonies on Peleg were relatively small at that time, and not well suited for preventing prisoner revolts. The Kobold prisoners organized the Minotaur prisoners, and defeated the small forces of guards that served as their task masters. These rebels seized several of the Imperial ships, and escaped into the vast islands of Peleg.

The Minotaur and Kobold culture mixed quickly, taking the advantages of each. These new Peleg-War-Lords kept the martial arts of both cultures, the survival skills of the Minotaurs and the Battlefield strategy and literacy of the Kobolds. (Though due lack of resources, firearms technique was lost, and totally replaced with archery.) This extremely male dominated warrior culture grew rapidly, but was mostly passed on to Minotaur heirs, because few female Kobold prisoners had been sent to Peleg from Xanadu. With in just a few generations, the Kobolds among the Peleg War Lords were extinct.

This new group of Minotaur War Lords maintained the notion that the War Lords where the world's elite. However, with no Kobolds to keep racist notions in check, the words "War Lord", "Minotaur," and "Elite" have synonyms in the War Lord language. Racism against other races of intelligent species is standard, and such races are considered to be beasts of burden who are just slightly more cleaver than other livestock. Usually larger live stock has to be used to feed the Minotaur population, so slaves are critical to War Lord agriculture.

These War Lords do discriminate heavily against Druids however. Soon after the escape from the Xanadu Colonies, the prisoners were taken in by indigenous Druids who prevented the budding culture from starving to death. Even though the indigenous Druid culture is different from the Peleg War Lord culture, alliances have remained common. The similarities between the general body shapes of the Druids and Minotaurs has also influenced the War Lord tolerance of Druids.

The most popular sport among the Peleg War Lords is to hold gladiatorial tournaments with their slaves. The battles take place in a massive pits, where the slave teams are armed with hand weapons, to fight to the death against other teams of slaves. Usually the spectators outnumber the combatants, and the spectators are armed with projectile weapons in case the armed prisoners should try to escape. The prisoners are not allowed to use armor or shields. The War Lords often train their slaves to fulfill strategies in the pits, and the honor of the victory goes to the War Lord who trained the winning team. (As a rule, dead slaves are always eaten by the War Lords, except in the extremely rare case that the slave was a Druid or another War Lord.)

The War Lord economy is built on slave labor and other resources obtained through raids of other culture's settlements (and sometimes the settlements of rival War Lords.) The War Lords do not trust their slaves as guards or warriors, but they often employ Druid mercenaries. Labor is divided in terms of sex, with the males serving in war raiders, guards, or occasionally as chiefs. The females control the slaves to accomplish domestic needs, and also serve as the craftsman, making the weapons, armor, fortresses and long slave-powered row boats that War Lords depend so much on. Both sexes participate fully in sporting events.