Na-Keb

Na-Keb stands as the oldest continuous civilization in the known world, a fact that its citizens and bureaucrats never tire of mentioning. While Sarmania’s gods were still battling Tiamat in the cosmic depths, Na-Keb’s engineers were already raising their first obelisks. By the time nations like Maurkim developed their first seaworthy vessels, Na-Keb had already discovered and dismissed the ruins of Atlantis, having decided that absolute perfect optimization of their own society was the only worthwhile pursuit. The sheer weight of their history serves not as inspiration but as precedent, with every decision requiring extensive documentation proving its alignment with thousands of years of procedure.

Daily life in Na-Keb moves with the precision of a water clock, each citizen playing their measured role in an impossibly vast bureaucracy. Children are assigned their future professions based on careful analysis of regional needs projected decades in advance. Marriages are arranged through complex algorithms accounting for genetic diversity, professional compatibility, and projected resource allocation. Even the smallest change to any procedure requires approval from multiple departments, each staffed by administrators who can trace their department’s traditions back centuries. The rare Na-Keb citizen encountered abroad tends to view other nations with a mixture of pity and mild disgust, seeing their spontaneous, unplanned societies as hopelessly chaotic and inefficient.

Visitors to Na-Keb often remark on the strange serenity that seems to permeate the land. The great obelisks that rise from the landscape cast long shadows that seem to bring a peculiar stillness to those who dwell beneath them. While the official histories claim these monuments are part of an ancient river control system, some scholars have noted that Na-Keb’s people grow noticeably more placid and accepting of their station the longer they remain in their homeland. Each generation seems more content than the last with their assigned roles, more resistant to change, more… stable. The Board of Directors speaks often of achieving perfect sustainability, though none outside their circle truly understand what that might mean. Yet year by year, the cycles of life in Na-Keb grow more regular, more predictable, more eternal.