Author's Notes
Zanakwe
Zanakwe grew out of the need to have another strong power around the major trade routes. As I happened to have a bit of unused jungle, I made it an empire of dark skinned people.
I needed some twists to it, though, so I made it like a mirror of the Great Empire. Instead of gluttony, they revere physical fitness. Instead of constant expansion, they just keep their borders.
They do have their problems, though, and they mostly stem from blood magic, mostly fed by slave sacrifices. Their punishments are cruel and bloody, all to feed the blood magic. Now, it has reached some kind of tipping point, and contact is lost with remote villages in the jungle. No one knows what is going on, but fear and panic is spreading.
Vaguely inspired by a movie I don't remember the name of, where the very jungle plants came alive.