The shadow where Rakhmon was raised. Taiga is a cold, mostly pine and birch-forested world, where dinosaurs (often patterned in white and dark green, for camouflage) and more 'normal' mammals exist side-by-side. The land is generally hilly or flat, with very few mountains. There are few lakes and large rivers, and no seas. The weather is generally cold, with short, cool, wet summers, and long, cold, snowy winters. The presence of large dangerous dinosaurs has limited social development so that the vast majority of humans live in cities, usually walled with an outer perimeter containing fields etc., linked by roads or railways along which travel armed and armoured steam-truck convoys or steam trains (huge, utilitarian, and billowing steam). Even so, dinosaur or bandit attacks sometimes cut these links, or they are blocked by particularly heavy snowfalls. Most nations are independent city states. A few humans live in villages in the foliage of trees, where it is safer than the ground, but these are very much a throwback to the past, and a few brave, rich individuals have fortress-estates carved out of the forest (often with their own private armies). Cities include Taganrog, Poltava, Kozelec, Lebedin, Tihoreck, Uzlovaja, Serpuhov and Cupalejka.
In the forests, and, it is rumoured, in the cities, live rare individuals who can change their shape, into were-creatures and other monsters, or simply for disguise. Generally considered mythical, these beings do in fact exist, though they are often mad, and malevolent.
The social structure is generally that of the worst of Victorian England, with large, fixed, social divisions between the different social classes. Cities are ruled by Dukes or Lords. Below that administration varies. Some cities (including Taganrog) have lesser nobles ruling sections of the city (and conniving amongst themselves to get the more plum areas). Other cities have mayors or elected councils below the Duke/Lord. The type of dress, and the level of technology are also roughly late-Victorian, though there is no electricity, and a few Babbage Engines exist. Cities tend to be divided into the houses of the rich, and the cramped, dirty rookeries and back alleys of the poor, with a middle class of merchants, engineers etc. and a few workhouses for those of the poor unfortunate to be unable to support themselves any other way. In some cities elevated railways run on brick or iron piers. The streets throng with vehicles, mostly horse or dinosaur drawn, but also a few steam lorries etc. Most cities are very sooty and grimy; chimneys belch smoke; the city snow never stays white for long. The poor generally only mix with the rich if they are servants, or if a rich person is slumming. Most cities have at least one large, gothic cathedral, usually smoke-stained
Go to the backgrounds of Rakhmon Version I or Rakhmon Version II.