LA C'tis, Desert Tombs

Lore

C’tis is a river valley surrounded by sandy deserts. Once the valley was fertile and great swamps surrounded the great river. Now the deserts spread and the swamps grow fewer and smaller each passing year. The valley is the home of an ancient sacral kingdom of lizard-like humanoids. In ancient times, the High Priests of C’tis mastered the craft of embalming to preserve the remains of their kings. Since the dawn of the kingdom, tombs have been constructed in the desert to contain the mummified kings and priests. With the Awakening of the God, the Sauromancers, great mages of death and rebirth, have re-emerged and taken the place of the Marshmasters. Through studies of ancient lore they have perfected dark rituals that awaken the kings of old to lead the stirring dead as the Lizard Kings lead the kingdom of the living. At the top of the C’tissian society is the Lizard King. The King is the highest priest of C’tis. Under the King are the High Priests and the enigmatic Sauromancers. After a great rebellion most of the carnivorous lizardmen were slain or fled to distant lands. There is a widespread fear that the predators and their Sobek masters will return as foreseen in their Seventh Book. The C’tissians are somewhat slow in movement, but have thick hides that protect them from cuts and bruises. Both lizardmen are cold-blooded and become exhausted very quickly when fighting in cold provinces. They have partial resistance to poison. The inhabitants of C’tis prefer to live in warm provinces. The Tomb Kings and Tomb Priests are able to reanimate the dead.

General Overview

LA C'tis is very unlike its predecessors. In addition to losing the majority of the unique features of MA — Disease-causing and income-increasing dominion, as well as the Sobeks, but keeping the empoisoners — the nation also parts ways with some of the common features of both earlier eras, losing access to all predator lizards, including Elite Warriors and Shamans, and giving up all their water access and the majority of their nature.

What remains is a nation with an extremely narrow focus: Though the nation has gained a slight proficiency with fire magic, and picked up a medium-heavy infantry unit, almost everything the nation can be said to excel at is death-related. Sauromancers remain recruitable death 3 3 mages with some randoms of death 4 4, and the nation gains a line of no-research reanimator-priest summons which, at the cost of a hefty sum of death gems for the late age, turns LA C'tis into something of a freespawn nation, providing them with an unending supply of size 4 tramplers in the form of the Tomb Chariot.

With Sauromancers as the only workhorse mage, however — supplemented by Empoisoners for assassins and minimal nature access — and the nation's recruitable units being extremely sub-par for the era, LA C'tis typically struggles; this is exacerbated by it being hard to find the gems in LA to finance its one main strength, and the nation's narrow focus leaves it very vulnerable to being hard-countered.

Not that anything stone-walls Bane Fire.

National Features

Race	Military	Magic Access	Priests	Buildings
Prefers +2 Lizards: High MR (11-14) Low Morale cold-blooded swimming swamp survival poison resistance(5-10)	Medium infantry Dual-wielding falchioneers Poison slingers Reanimated chariots Reanimated Tomb Wyrms	4 (Rare 5) 2 (Rare 3) 1 (Rare 2) 1 (Rare 2) 1 Summable 3, 3 *Can't be summoned natively	Recruitable 3 Summonable Undead Reanimator-Priests	Standard forts (Citadel)

Capital Special Sites

add the site pics

The Temple Marsh	Empoisoners Guild
Enables recruitment of: Keeper of the Tombs, Tomb Guard. Generates 13 per turn.	Enables recruitment of: Poison Slinger Empoisoner.

Units

All national commanders and units have at least MR 12, cold-blooded, swimming, swamp survival and poison resistance(5-10).

Beware - Despite having some poison resistance, they are still susceptible and may die from too much accumulated poison. This is not usually a problem, as your enemies will typically die from it faster than you, but do not mistake your resistance for immunity.

Commanders

Unit Name	—-SpecialAttributes—-	Comments
Hierodule 30 1 1	1 Sacred Poison resistance(7) Female	Cheaper than indie priests, but with zero leadership the hierodules generally do not have a niche.
Commander of C'tis 40 15 1	Poison resistance(7)	Not a meaningful improvement over independent commanders, between shoddy morale, no morale bonus to squads, no formation access and only 60 leadership.
Lizard Lord 70 21 1	Poison resistance(7)	80 leadership for only 1 commander point, and as such the most straightforward access to morale bonuses and formations available to LA C'tis.
High Priest of C'tis 80 1 2	2 Sacred Poison resistance(7) Temple trainer: Sacred Serpent Prophet Shape: Lizard King	A 2 priest with 40 leadership and the ability to temple summon Sacred Serpents, these will sometimes merit recruitment, but are not by any means a core part of C'tis toolkit unless large quantities of banishment are called for.
Keeper of the Tombs 100 1 2 Capital Only	111 9 Sacred Poison resistance(6)	Serviceable researchers in the early game, these mages are held back both by the poor quality of the Fire/Death crosspath and by competing for capital recruitment turns with empoisoners. They can in a pinch be used, as any fire mage, for fire elementals, but lack combat utility aside from this.
Reborn 125 1 2	11100% 9 Sacred Poison resistance(6)	Compared to their EA Reborn counterpart, these mages are a disappointment. The fire random results in a mostly-useless crosspath, and though the death random results in a cheap 2 mage, the infrastructure requirement means it struggles to justify its recruitment over additional Sauromancers. The Reborn does have a greater research-per-recruitment-turn than the Sauromancer, but is in every other way an inferior mage.
Empoisoner 90 6 2 Capital Only	11 9 Poison resistance(15) Stealthy(55) Assassin(2)	The nation's only access to nature, as well as being phenomenal assassins both with and without gems, on account of the chassis' access to both Swarm and Animate Skeleton. The built-in weapon is also useful, as the poison sling will generally make easy work of any non-resistant victim distracted by swarm bugs or longdead. These will generally be recruited every turn in the capital, starting quite early in the game.
Lizard King 230 5 4	3 Sacred Old Age(60/50) Poison resistance(7) Prophet Shape: Lizard King	With 120 Leadership, Lizard Kings are excellent, albeit expensive, army leaders. They also give the nation easy throne claiming, being priests which are recruitable outside of the cap. Unfortunately, while they may be desirable leaders, their cost of 4 Commander Points is hard to swallow, and though they can cast the national holy spells, they have no undead leadership.
Sauromancer 285 1 4	1311100% 10% 15 Sacred Poison resistance(8) wasteland survival	As a recruitable 3, every Sauromancer is a potent battlemage. All can cast Horde of Skeletons for raiding or in-battle use, all can cast Bane Fire or Shadow Blast against evocation-susceptible foes, and all can wreak havoc among undead enemies with Wither Bones; even raiding with Invulnerability and Soul Vortex is an option. Death randoms can cast Darkness or Rigor Mortis unaided, while Fire randoms become 3 with Phoenix Power and can summon elementals or put up Heat from Hell. Earth and Astral randoms are weaker, but provide the only access to these paths in the nation's roster. Unfortunately, Sauromancers have severe limiting factors as well. Due to Old Age, they have encumbrance issues which are only exacerbated by their Cold-Blooded trait. Astral randoms are also exceedingly vulnerable to Magic Duel, being the only astral mage available to the nation in an era of mass astral from most other nations. Despite this, they remain a very strong mage, even more so for not being limited to the capital. If desired, Twiceborn can greatly mitigate the weaknesses of a given Sauromancer, but this has anti-synergy with the nation's great need for death gems for other uses.

Troops

The recruitable units of LA C'tis have above-average protection for their resources cost due to natural protection, but still generally very low protection for the era, combined with all-around low stats. If possible, it is generally recommendable to purchase quality indies, such as crossbows, particularly if faced with an enemy with cold scales.

Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
Militia 7 2 5	Poison resistance(7)	Indie militia with worse morale, somewhat resistant to your own poison, but with no armor other than their own scales. Generally useful only if cheap, massed, non-mindless bodies are needed; if obtainable, indie militia with shields are generally superior.
Light Infantry 10 5 11	Poison resistance(7)	As light infantry without armor but with javelins, these have a slight niche in some expansion parties, but are generally useless against player-recruited units in LA.
Heavy Infantry 10 15 11	Poison resistance(7)	With only 10 strength and a 3-damage spear, these hit for an unimpressive 13 piercing, and are thus not capable of damaging most units in LA. At 16 body prot, they are the nation's sturdiest non-sacred, but still fail to survive for any length of time against most opposition.
City Guard 10 10 11	Poison resistance(7)

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