Teinar [tay-NAR] is an underground city on Earth. Facing threats from both above and below, Teinar is a place of resourceful survivors and daring explorers. They value practicality, skill, and utilitarianism.

Though Teinar maintains outposts above ground to facilitate the movement of goods and people to and from the city, the majority of Teinari live below ground. Above them lie the Wastelands, uninhabitable and polluted, and below and all around them stretch the unknowable, black depths of the subterrain, filled with dangerous creatures and unexpected hazards.

• Teinar's first people were refugees from many of the Earth's nations.

• Teinari are ethnically diverse. Due to the mixed population and the wasteland's unique environment, strange hair and eye colors and mutations (most of them minor) are not uncommon.

• Psionics and magic are both rare among Teinari, with one exception. Earth/metal-based magic is highly sought after and occurs more frequently.

• Teinar's society is merit-based. Being useful, skilled, and putting the community first are important to Teinari.

• Due to lack of space, most Teinari live with their extended families in close quarters.When marriage occurs, one spouse will move into the family home of the other.

• There is neither a stigma nor a celebration of sex.It is a mundane part of life for Teinari.

• Marriage is not a high ideal in Teinar. Adaptability and practicality are.

• Women often go out of their way to sleep with outsiders in the hopes of bringing in new genetic material to the city, which suffers a lack of new blood due to the inconvenience of getting to it. They are given a generous living stipend if they conceive from an outsider.

• Laziness and pleasure-seeking are disdainful to Teinari. Adolescents get jobs as soon as they are able, to avoid ridicule and embarrassment.

• Their food consists mostly of subterranean plants. Many, such as cave molds, fungi, and mosses, are considered unsavory outside of Teinar. This diet is supplemented by dry goods from trade and animal flesh (of great variety) that hunters bring in. Teinari eat with chopsticks.

• Teinari's economy is based on a barter system. The government controls most of the distribution of water, food, and energy so that as few people as possible go without.

• Guarded foraging parties venture out daily into the subterrain to collect plants. Hunting parties also go out daily. In addition, Teinar maintains subterranean gardens and farms. Their takes are distributed to vendors by the Teinari government.

• Giant elevators connect the surface outposts to the city below.

• Teinar is about a mile and a half underground. The mile and a half of space between Teinar and the surface is called deadearth. It is the zone where surface life ends, but before the true, vibrant variety of the subterranean ecosystem begins.

• Teinar began with a single building—a huge Aedolian laboratory station built to research the subterrain's unique ecosystem. That building now serves as the central seat of government in Teinar.

• Teinar is a patchwork city. New buildings are added on with whatever material is convenient at the time, in whatever way is most efficient given the location and landscape. Predictably, much of the city is made of stone.

• Teinar's actual borders are erratic. Their borders fall wherever they can form the best defensible position against the creatures that prowl the subterrain.

• Though they are erratic, Teinar's borders are also rigid and defended. Floodlights point outward into the encroaching darkness, gates surround all entry points into the city, and armed guards patrol the borders. It is the subterranean beasts they guard against—any citizen may enter or leave Teinar.

• Teinari use a particular bio-luminescent vine to line many tunnels and passages that don't need full electric lighting. The glow is dim compared to electric bulbs, but it provides them with both a cheap emergency light source and clean oxygen.

• Much of Teinar boasts a grungy, run-down, old look to it. New things are hard to come by. Teinari reuse and hand down whatever possible.

• Citizens can legally carry weapons. Most citizens' weapons will be melee, as bullets are expensive and hard to come by in Teinar. Even in the military, melee weapons are in frequent use.

• Teinar's government is comprised of an elected chairman and their chosen staff. A chairman is elected every five years, but a popular vote of the people can force a chairman out of office early.

• Teinari value scrutiny, transparency, and accountability for the government. The people are quick to question and quick to make their displeasure known in the form of voting, strikes, and riots.

• Unions are common. Many tradespeople form them to ensure the government takes their interests into account.

• Teinar makes do with as low a form of technology it can get away with. The simpler a thing can be, the better.

• Teinar has its own private, wireless network that works only within the city. It is designed specifically to connect computers and televisions to important information from the government. Outside networks cannot reach Teinar.

• There are no cell phones. There are, however, landlines.

• The main form of entertainment is a sport called Motorrail. It's a surprisingly high-tech diversion, as the people love it and thus end up filtering a lot of money into it. Essentially, it is subterranean hoverbike racing. The racing takes place outside of Teinar, in broad stretches of the subterrain that the government secures specifically for this purpose.

• There is little television beyond government news, announcements, and Motorrail broadcasts.

• There are few personal computers. There are, however, computer stations located around the city for citizens to access.

Inspired and wanna hop on in?

Then head on over to Teinar's joining board where you can register your character!