WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0114 0114
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become bustling frontier marketplaces. Merchants set up
their tents, receiving local traders and striking deals, taking on new cargoes, or just dispensing objects they bring
with them. Stalls are opened to sell extraneous goods
while cook-fires are lit. Idle caravan workers arrange
games and sporting events and otherwise relieve themselves of their pay in squalid, unseemly activities.
Caravan Beasts
Every caravan relies upon its beasts of burden. Thakal
most often haul cargo either in enormous pack trains or in
smaller carts suitable to their size. Thakal do not work well
in teams, but can be beaten into cooperation if necessary.
Thakal masters often walk alongside their animals, whipping them to more effort or shifting their attention to take
a different track than the one preceding them.
The enormous cargo wagons are hauled by the dangerous trisaurs, the three-legged dragon-kin found in the
deep wastelands. Trisaur harnesses lash to the beast’s sides
and put its powerful hind leg to use pulling its load. Never
domesticated, trisaurs must be captured in the wild. This
dangerous process involves drugging a wild beast into
passivity with enormous foot-long darts. Deaths always
occur when securing a new trisaur and breaking it for
use, so these tasks often fall to unskilled and expendable
slaves. Never fully broken if alive, trisaurs often turn on
their drivers viciously; as a result, trisaur drivers are well
paid, and only the toughest make a career of it.
Elephants and colossadants are also common in caravans, even far from their native equatorial grasslands
and forests. Difficult to harness, these massive animals
instead bear howdahs fitted to carry passengers or freight
or enormous nets stuffed full with crates, amphora, and
boxes. Elephants and colossadants tolerate each other
well, but hate the smell of thakal. Handlers keep the
thakal downwind from them whenever possible. Disturbed elephants and colossadants are sometimes difficult to control, and may stampede if subjected to thakal
smell for too long. The dimwitted thakal remain indifferent to the other beasts around them unless attacked.
A caravan’s many animals leave behind a trail of excrement that, in turn, attracts a variety of carrion. Scavenging
creatures follow in the entourage’s wake, drawing a variety of hunting carnivores. The normally silent wastelands
teem with life along the return trail of a large caravan.
Caravan Wagons & Vehicles
Any vehicle might be found among the varied caravans on Khitus, especially when encountering those
fleeing adversity of any kind. Most caravans, however,
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adhere to using those proven most useful, effective, and
durable for travelling the swiftly changing Khitan terrain. These include thakal carts of varying sizes and
trisaur-drawn “mahuuth” wagons or the rolling palaces
called “shavinants.”
Simple thakal carts are commonly made of wooden
frames with treated leather covers, using only a sparing
amount of metal for axles or hitches. One cart and its
thakal can normally carry six to eight blocks of weight,
the cargo always roped down to keep the load in place
over the difficult path.
A single-chamber mahuuth hauls massive raw materials in wooden wagons reinforced with dragon or trisaur
bones. Loads can be as much as 40 blocks of material at
a time (or roughly ten tons). The top is open so the entire
wagon can tip over for rapid unloading; slaves general
load the single compartment from a ramp or other specially prepared place that can overhang its gaping maw.
The interior lip has locations for two archers at each corner who enjoy the protection of reinforced leather shields.
The entire structure rolls on two enormous wooden axles
and four wheels that often need repair or replacement.
Three-chambered mahuuth are similarly built and
protected, but they have covered roofs to protect cargo from scavengers, birds, and bad weather. Separate
ramps and entrances provide access to the front, center,
and rear compartments. Three distinct cargoes can be
hauled without them mixing along the journey.
Shavinants are boastful luxuries reserved for the richest merchants and dignitaries. Their many-cushioned
compartments serve only the conspicuous pampering
of their owners and their guests. Their kitchens prepare
fine meals served in audience chambers large enough
for elaborate entertainments even while on the move.
All their surfaces smell of spices and fine oils. Guards
grace their bannered exterior battlements and slaves
walk behind in chains. None approach a shavinant uninvited, as guards always erect and man a perimeter of
pre-fashioned stockades when caravans are at rest to
keep the curious or dangerous at a safe distance.
Caravan Followers
Caravans draw all manner of undesired followers. Anyone moving along behind it without direct employment
is tolerated but rarely afforded any guard protection and
never allowed to directly share in its profits upon conclusion of the journey. Many wives and families travel
along so, as do usurers, brewers of every sort of liquor,
gamblers, women of ill repute, and all manner of unsavory characters. The moving caravan attracts every vice
it does not already host itself.
