Twilight City - The Allies

Conquered peoples federated by the Novans, who bested them by stealing the protection of their gods and sacking their towns. They pay no tribute, but are required to send cohorts of warriors when the Novans go to war. For this they are granted a portion of the spoils, and enjoy the sacred protection of Novan mutual defense.

Metatarses

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They have never used tools. Instead, they use their hands and feet, which become tougher than steel by adulthood. They mine through the rock with hands like picks, grasping and pulling away the stone with calm strength. Their warriors are fierce and feared in the melee: pulling apart shields, shearing swords in half, prying armor and flesh apart with slow strong fingers like hydraulic vices. 

They are a birdherding folks who live in the hills and coldplains of the north. They live in underground hobbit-holes which they can quickly dig at a moment's notice. They are particularly fond of worms, considering them the greatest delicacy.

They have a King elected from among a cohort of youths who pass the Test of Flame. The youths must pass into the netherlands and collect a globule of molten magma with their bare hands, delivering it to their holy place to be slagged upon its shrine. From those who are eligible, a council of elders votes upon their kingship.

Unlike many of the other Allies, they have a tradition of marriage. Men are expected to leave their families and return married, typically after several years of indentured labor to their host family, whose daughter they court. Folk tales abound about greedy or overly-protective elders who ask for further and more elaborate labors for the young men to prove their worth before giving them marriage leave, and said young men who by strength and determination meet them, like the labors of Hercules.

Mar the Worm God was their highest patron - a god of counting, many, and plenty. The Novan cleric Fingol charmed Mar with a musical performance gifted to her by consuming the Mead of Poetry, boiled from the lifeblood of bards and granting god-wooing inspiration. So moved was Mar by the fiddling song that they abandoned the Metatarses in their moment of need to dance until they tired.

Incubi

Their skin is like aged black bronze, catching rainbows in the light. Their eyes are pale pale red in the dark, like bloodshot eyes in the woods in a cartoon. They live under the mountains in great tunnels and caverns, and are immune to Curse. They can freely touch and use Cursed objects. It tingles their skin and nothing more. Some elders even suggest bathing in the warm light of cursed stone to rejuvenate themselves. They can be dangerous to stand around and even more dangerous to touch.

They are intensely superstitious, believing that every action they take is watched by a singular vengeful spirit known as Balat. Whenever anything goes wrong they curse his name and make votive offerings to him. This love/hate relationship frequently confuses outsiders.

Their warriors wear goat-horned helmets like devils and they scream shrilly in combat. Before battle, they ritually purify themselves, believing that while Curse can bring health benefits, it also brings the ire of the gods.

A great number of sorcerers are renowned amongst their people - they whose magic derives from personally-forged relationships and bargains with the gods of the wild. They travel always alone, but say they are never alone. It seems, about them, that the woods grow eyes and the stones subtly shift beneath their feet to make way for their coming.

Their god Hakaldo, god of smoke and dreams, was stolen from them by a young priestess named Quenze, daughter of the House of Victory, who in a grand heist smuggled the smoke-god from his temple in her herculean lungs. To this day it is said she exhales dreams.

Konami

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Small reptilefolk who lives on the beaches and small islands of the Feyfjord. They primarily eat fish and seaweed, and love sea urchin innards most of all. They are agile swimmers, and can live indefinitely on the waves if they wanted. For fear of their historical rivals the Salmonfolk, they prefer to make their fort-like homes on land.

They distill paralytic poison from the urchins. They use it in darts and harpoons to paralyze fish. And they make love potions. There's an entire economy around love potions. Konami love is a famously expensive and fickle thing, with heads of house often spending a considerable portion of their income on enchanting lovers. The Queen of the Konami supposedly has hundreds of such consorts, maintained by a wealth of love potions and careful politics.

They raise pegasi, who frequently graze upon both land and sea. The 'sea-horses' (as they're called) are excellent swimmers, but can generally only fly upon the air in short bursts. Their silver scales, when they are seasonally shed, make fine decorations, being both luminous and lightweight like silver mirrors and filigree. They are quite social and proud, regarding the Konami something like little brothers or servants.

Legend has it that Nemor, who the Novans call Nix, was the protector goddess of the Konami. She was seduced before the Battle of Three-Finger Fjord by Nemus, a young man of impossible beauty, who drew her attention away from the battle with his superlative loveliness. Whenever her attention would wander, he would offer greater and more dangerous acts of pleasure. He went so far as to give his life in the process, drawing Nix's lust unto his own devouring. To this day Nemus is regarded as a masculine ideal to the Novans.

Caudi

Migratory salmonfolk renown for their beauty, cruelty, and Stoic philosophers. Their children live in the freshwater streams of the Feyfjord, independently of the adults, who live in the Estor Ocean catching crustaceans and hunting fish. Every year or so, a great number of adults migrate back past the estuaries and mountain rivers in order to spawn in a violent cataclysmic orgy of death. During this journey, they adopt a stark sexual dimorphism, with males growing enormous chins and sword-arms, and females growing long teeth and adopting a bright red color.

Their government is something like a Logan's Run-style democracy. Any who accumulate enough age, influence, and power all the sooner hear the biological call of their doom and are called to the streams to fight and mate to the death. Power tends to be in the largest age cohorts, which can vary from year to year due to the variance of a cohort's fertility or the proclivity of war.

When they do go to war, they go as a cohort after the spawn. They drag their rotting flesh to death in battle, unafraid of throwing themselves at the enemy. A large cohort can be a terrifying thing: singing songs of yearning and death that draws their enemies to throw themselves on their tridents.

Marlink was their patron god. To the Novans he is Timir. His loyalty altered after a contest of pain between the Novan priestess Cordatha and the Caudi champion Tresshi. Each sought the cruelest torture they could inflict upon their enemies, to entertain the sadism of Marlink. Tresshi presented devouring crucifixion - in which one was slowly devoured by a million stinging corals over many weeks. Cordatha presented immortality - so that one could be tortured forever, inevitably.

Leves

A farming people from the north. They use undead for agriculture, and believe the soul and the body permanently separate after death. Their bodies belong communally to their villages, hence their use of corpses as labor. They organize themselves into tribal councils within each region, typically composed of the heads of important families and any heroes of note.

But the real power lies within their caste of necromancers, who hold the knowledge of how to communicate and negotiate with the throngs of undead which outnumber the living. They are skilled in wizarding ways, and provide credible witness and judgement of oaths. They wear great wide and tall hats, and capes of brilliant feathers. The Levi way of law is convoluted and unwritten, kept in a series of oral agreements between the living and the dead - the later of which do not speak in ways easily comprehensible.

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The undead have their own way of doing things, and they do not always make the living privy to their business. One wonders whether the living truly are in charge, or they merely serve the dead in ways they do not understand.

Graia, who the Novans call Grachus the Door was their god. During the siege of Levimatrothal, the priest-necromancers awoke one day to find their impenetrable gates flung wide open, the armies of November waiting calmly inside the walls for them to wake. Betrayed from within by their undead watchmen, they surrendered immediately, throwing themselves before the mercy of the Novans. Since no ram had technically touched gate or wall, the Leves were spared massacre.