AT A GLANCE: a western frozen merchant citadel, milled by undead. The previous stage of a civil conflict between two deathless warlords. Once home to prosperous salt mines, now heavily reliant on seaborne imports and commerce. Beyond the core citadel, an eerie free people haunt the forests.
STATUS: the Merchant's people can enter Sa-Hareth freely, after their survival efforts helped oust death king Unhalad and reinstate his rival Anurr — an undead embodiment of ancient cold winds
La Rea: a renown and swarming bank, managing local and foreign interests.
The ports: several, typically focused on the type of import ware. The lifeblood of Sa-Hareth’s economy.
Main market: the centre of administration, justice and taverns, alongside auction houses.
Merchants' squares: a fairly wide variety of traders still visit the merchants' arena, setting up fleeting stalls or collaborating with existing shops. For the right price, you can find anything from strangely exotic herbs to books, weapons, charms and... ah! Quartz translation pieces.
The House of Dew: a declining luxury brothel.
The customs: highly regulated exits.
BEYOND THE CITADEL
Salt mines: now largely closed off with wards and stone by Anurr.
Tundra plateau: atop the salt mines. Previously held by Unhalad, with some camp instruments and weapons still abandoned thereabout.
Lower mountain forests: housing the elusive free people, their trees of trial and a cursed lake.
The farmhouse: former seat to Anurr. Brief shelter to the Merchant's party, until it largely burned down during Unhalad's siege.
The Imperious: the crown jewel of a merchant fleet, now also half-burned down, a theme!. Drifting nearby the Star's Bridge.
POLITICS: as of the end of Arc I, Anurr has recovered control of Sa-Hareth and its outskirts, abolishing the last of Unhalad's armies. This has also broken off a substantial supply chain providing undead infantry to Unhalad's brothers east.
The free people welcome the return of their master. Many of the living prefer Anurr's tyranny for the measured approach of his demands. Some citizens, who supported Unhalad, have fled Sa-Hareth or fallen gravely out of favour and therefore begrudge the Merchant's party.
Ancient home of magic and academia — resplendent and renown! Water-bound, the citadel is divided into districts by a myriad of waterways that permit daily boat transport. Denizens of means wear lavish costumes and masks to illustrate their rank or affiliation. With limited private defences, Taravast has relied on the good will and military influence of its neighbours, paying in the tutelage of its many sorcery schools. Newcomers are both frequent and welcomed.
CONCLAVE & DOXE Taravast lies under the stewardship of the Conclave — a largely domestic diplomatic alliance that includes foreign officials and merchants, as well as recent common delegates. The coalition is led by the Ilia Doxe — a position now held by Macaluso Spina, after a party-assisted civil revolution that deposed his grandfather Bonaccorso. Vannozza Spina — cousin and previously rival of Macaluso, as well as her grandfather's intended target of bodily possession — serves as counsellor. Macaluso is keen to develop relationships with neighbouring nations, although word that Taravast financed the undead Brotherhood with magical weapons during his grandfather's rule has estranged several citadels.
Macaluso Spina is a friend to the party. He is supported by the witches of Bessis, who have slaughtered their once enemies-then friends-then enemies once more: the court sorceresses of Attaryl. Supporters of Bonaccorso, the Attaryl specialised in prolonging lifespans, mental magic and illusions — feats that sparked and stoked a magical rivalry between Taravast and the elusive, undead-savaged citadel of Ellethia
While Taravast devotes itself to decorum, the siege of the Beastmaster and Huntress during the party's stay, along with civil rebellion, have all but decimated the necromantic and healing districts, as well as the witches' sector. The main canal dividing the bookish, trade and political north from the artistic and magical south is crossed by ten bridges — each hosting artisans of different trades: jewellers and forgers, painters, poets and thespians, costumers, potters, sculptors, cartographers and dealers of books and ancient text, sellers of delicious foods and wares, keepers of animals and exotics, and... curious potion brewers and talisman sellers. Taravast is governed by perpetual spring.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ Palace of the Doxe: a centrally positioned, sprawling estate held by the acting Ilia Doxe. Under reconstruction after Bonaccorso Spina's command to burn down the civilian protesters that had encircled it. ■ The Spina hunting grounds: a peripheral mansion in north-eastern Taravast — home to Vannozza Spina. ■ Rooms of Justice: the Conclave's immense negotiation chambers. Open to the public. ■ Magical academies:schools of various reputes and affiliations. Many require hefty tuitions. ■ Healer Halls: the home of medical arts, covering magical, spiritual and bodily rejuvenation. Local healers are thoroughly attested and ethically bound, and often report back to the Conclave. Damaged during the recent siege. ■ Necromancers' district: where corpse-revivers, illicit potion brewers and the keepers of interesting magic loiter. Many necromancers are skilled in healing and willing to proceed with more experimental or risky interventions. Likewise greatly impaired by the recent offensives. ■ Merchant squares, banks, theatres, bridges. ■ The beacon: shrouded in the heart of the piazza, forgotten and defunct. Breathed its last after reanimated Attaryl witch Hatisse opened it to send some of party members to their home worlds. The beacon transported some travellers, but — aged and its energies depleted — could not withstand full journeys for the entire group.
A cluster of three villages that encircle the now dormant Ke-Sanwon volcano — Waihu-Jeou, Waiar-Seong and Waicai-Lian. Legend claims Ke-Sanwon is a stairway to heavens, the grave-like temple of the House of Ravens its first step, and the villages mere believers prostrated at its feet.
The villages are splintered by strips of barren stone land and forest enclosures, crossed by fragile high bridges. Journey between the villages is rare, with much of the communicated conducted by... bird. The villages largely sustain themselves through hunting and agriculture, but have experienced deep spells of recent drought and the ‘poisoning’ of their wells with dark, viscous and unpalatable water. Local vegetation is bare and wispy close to the villages, but lush and vibrant in the deep, labyrinthine and inevitably haunted forests.
Frequent visits from official urban dignitaries have accustomed natives to foreigners, but the villagers remain politely reserved and secretive towards their visitors. They harbour a superstitious faith in curses, the dead, pilgrimage and atonement.
All of the villages boast healers, priests, taverns, sites of local governance, merchant stalls and marketplaces. Law enforcement is scant and carried out by civilian and formal police watches.
KE-WAIHU
Originally, Jeou-Waihu. Nearest village to the coastal line and the classical first point of entry to the village circuit. Publicly ruled by a luhien mayoral office, but informally subservient to the influential Hok-Shinn clan — an assembly of dubious tradesmen, outlaws and oily bureaucrats. Many residents of Ke-Waihu believe the other villages — which prevented them from monetising the deforestation of the mountain — are far too radical in their spiritual observance. Ke-Waihu has fallen under the wrathful thrall of spirit foxes, whom they placate with tragic weddings.
KE-WAIAR
First named Waiar-Seong. The second most accessed village, home primarily to woodsmen and huntsmen. A martial residence, facing frequent siege from forest creatures that seem to scent blood on guilty hands. At night, many villagers partly or fully turn into wolves or werewolves and are released into the forest, while Ke-Waiar is gated closed. Several tall trees in the nearby forests have been equipped with rope and tree houses, allowing villagers to find shelter if they're caught out. The villagers appear to show compassion and care to those who bear the lycanthropic curse.
KE-WAICAI
Once known as Waicai-Lian. ‘The first point to godhood.’ The least visited village, only truly welcoming of pilgrims and zealots who wish to ascend to divinity or to the purity required to meet the gods. The villagers of Ke-Waicai are true and faithful worshippers of the mountain and of the House of Ravens. Further details to come.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ House of Ravens: an ancient if ruined temple, home to hundreds of ravens that villagers now feed with human sacrifice, on pain of endless drought and curses. The temple's location is deeply secretive, the route known only to a handful of village elders who take tribute up the trail every season.
■ The Lady’s forests: mist-drenched and prosperous, scaffolding the mountain all the way near to its top. Difficult to navigate, as local spirits and demonic animals inject hallucinations and lure confused travellers deep into the forest — where they become pray to local fauna and crumbled abysses.
■ Witches’ huts: a misnomer for the abodes and trade sites of surgeons and necromancers, who have been pushed to reside and practise their unsavoury arts close to the forest and away from good men.
■ Crossroad of possession: certain crossroads within and outside of villages are considered 'places of misfortune.' They become the gathering sites of beggars, orphans, thieves or of those who believe they are born under unlucky stars and who leave their families to spare them exposure to their bad luck. Inevitable sites of underground networks. Villagers often offer alms to those assembled here.
■ Mouths of hell: hyperbolically-styled deep cracks that serve as entrances into the volcano. Created during the last and final (?) eruption of the sleeping Ke-Sanwon. It is said the entrances transform to match the shape of the latest travellers who entered them and lost their lives to the twisting inner pathways — hence mouths to those whom they have consumed.
■ Fortune fetters: the violently battered ruins of a fortress that once defended the coastline, in between Ke-Waihu and Ke-Waiar. (Largely) blind beggarly priestesses read the fortunes of visitors in snake venom, while hundreds of serpents hiss from inside the walls. Some say beastly creatures, half snake and half men, plague the relics at night.
■ Ancient temples: largely small and ruined, dedicated to troubled spirits of the dead, animal gods, noble heroes and the elements. If it stood still long enough, a villager probably raised it an altar. Common recipients of worship include deities of water, keepers of the mountain, wolves, foxes, gods of agriculture, marital guides and otters.
Behold Serthica, seat of aerial steampunk dreams. Once a lone citadel, it was fissured years ago in the two semi-autonomous regions of Eidris and Minaras by the spectre of long-gone sickness and civil war. Every 12-hour cycle, one of the citadel halves is covered by an invisible magical protective field and succumbs underground, while the other rises. Eidris emerges at 6:00, while Minaras replaces it at 18:00. The citadel half that is overground has full aerial access, while its counterpart rests below amid looming caverns.
The two citadel halves meet overground during 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00 on broad, neutral zone corridors that crystallise between them. All magical barriers drop down and allow free movement via temporary stay papers.
Characters can slip into other citadels and extend their stay past a 12h cycle, but must be discreet and avoid ID checks. An underground network of ‘eye rentals’ has also developed: for 3,000 coins, you can buy six hours of possessing the (willingly conceded) body of a citizen in the other citadel half.
Each region governs itself. Resources run vast and inexhaustible in Serthica’s great underground mines. Formal hostilities between Eidris and Minaras have ended, but fresh conflict seems imminent — both citadels accuse each other’s populations of not being human.
Frustratingly, necromancers and the spiritually sensitive cannot detect any spirit or dead things in all of Serthica, even from fresh corpses.
On a better note, the local population of cloud sky whales has never been more prosperous.
The former east of Serthica and house to its parliament, Eidris rises overground each day at 6:00. It remains bound to myth, tradition, magic and the dragons that once built up the citadel. Many of Eidris’ citizens are sorcerers, priests, exorcists and temple keepers, who foster and accept every strain of faith and magic. The forever resplendent Eidris retains its appetite for wealth, tall architecture and luxury. Many nobles patron magic, the arts and support and breed dragons.
Eidris operates a magically reliant economy: golems support local terraformation and agriculture, a neutral gnome population handles mining, while technology is typically imported from Minaras and iminently optimised to run on magic rather than Minaras’ fuels. Sprits in Eidris run carefree, unburdened, indolent and high, led by Serthica’s monarchy — which refuses to concede it has lost control of Minaras.
✘ DRAGONS
While Eidris has adopted some of the zeppelins and base planes of Minaras, day-to-day transport between skyscraper palaces is achieved by small breeds of white dragon.
■ White dragons freely enter companionship with some of the graduates of Eidris’ flight schools. A bond with a dragon is not guaranteed, and the creature must accept its rider. Each dragon typically serves up to five citizens throughout its lifetime.
■ The relationship between dragons and riders is somewhat symbiotic: during flight, the rider’s mind is fully open to the dragon. The creatures communicate non-verbally through pulses of feeling through this mental link, or millisecond fragments of images. A dragon, for instance, might soothe its rider with the visual memory of a still lake.
■ Riders feel echoes of the danger or damage suffered by their dragons and are compelled to protect them.
■ Dragons offered for transport are typically 10 to 30 years of age and lack fire or offensive magic. Larger, veteran dragons affiliated with Eidris’ army have such powers.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The Palace of the Sun: the gilded and precious lodgings of Eidris’ monarchy.
■ The House of Parliament: another vestige of administrative power, running local operations.
■ Merchants’ markets: most useful for those seeking luxury goods (gems, pelts, exotic animals, spices) and magical artefacts.
■ Refreshment wells: small well mouths or streams that give a temporary boost to magical reserves or stamina. Found scattered and marked across Eidris, to help the magical population.
■ Dragon flight schools: eight such establishment across Eidris, open to all those who can pay an 8,000-coin fee. Characters should take a minimum of a month’s time to learn flight properly, but may have intermittent access to a dragon after two weeks.
■ Dragon grounds: large towers that serve as dragon shelters during Eidris’ underground period and as the creatures’ heavily heated breeding nests. Only dragon physicians and carers are allowed within.
Moody, maudlin and night-bound, clockwork Minaras occupied the west of Serthica and raises its head overground at 18:00. For years, tech and light-loving Minaras has housed the scientists, technicians, merchants and brave minds behind Serthica’s innovation.
The numerous laboratories, factories and academies of Minaras are constantly at work, building off metals imported from Eidris to create fire weapons, fuels, large air ships, watch towers and, obsessively, medical units, vaccines and health treatments.
The mood of Minaras is highly structured, disciplined and surveilled, with most vulnerable areas requiring clearance papers. Indoctrination for new arrivals is inevitable. The average citizen of Minaras thrives under government care.
Short trains can take you through Minaras, but many choose to travel by airplane — for a handsome 5,000 coins and a three-weeks’ work, you too can earn a pilot’s license.
Of late, the eye of the ruling government — which rejects the former Eidris-based monarchy of Serthica — has turned on clockwork droids, beautiful and subservient mechanical creations that can improve local industry.
✘ CLOCKWORK DROIDS
■ The city’s elite and many of Minaras’ PC arrivals — at player discretion — receive a clockwork droid assistant, which accompanies its master assiduously.
■ Assistant clockwork droids do not have pre-programmed offensive abilities, but can excel at planning, grooming, cooking or some aspect of logistics. Depending on its cost and model, a droid can be prodigious or inept — choose your own!
■ Clockwork droids obey some of the the expected laws of robotics: they cannot harm humans or allow humans to come to harm through inaction. They cannot wilfully ignore an instruction they understand or can enact. They also cannot allow the interests of one (human) to take priority to the welfare of the many citizens of Minaras.
■ Droids are equipped to provide basic medical care and report back injuries and sickness to government facilities.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Aerial academies & flight schools: institutions that respectively create and loan planes or train pilots. The small public transport planes do not come armed.
■ Mechanical factories: building everything from base weapons to engines and droids.
■ Health institutes: constantly inspecting and generating cures, vaccines, bio-enhancements and mechanical parts engineered for human use.
■ Underground and public trade markets: from weapons to metals to forge instruments, if you want raw materials or tech, someone in Minaras has it — on the books, or in a convenient dark alley.
■ The Place of Sigil: the sprawling seat of government — diligently attended by zealous ministers and a hotspot for (typically unsuccessful but worryingly frequent) assassination attempts.
■ Watch ships:great airships that patrol Minaras for any sign of crime or infiltration.
Science and magic combine in the tight Neutral Zone: a circular stretch of land of no more than 5 km2, which remains overground at all times. It adjoins either Eidris or Minaras, when the citadel halves rise up for their assigned time overground.
The Neutral Zone is financed by both citadels, but governed by none. It offers sanctuary to those caught in the hostilities between Serthica’s warring parts. No weapons are allowed in the Neutral Zone, which is defended by its own magical wards and clockwork droid infantry.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Vassarizhia, the Old Heart:Serthica’s tallest building, a behemoth clock tower that sets the time of all of Serthica. It announces the time when the citadel halves must emerge or submerge and contains the mechanism that allows these daily transitions. The artificial heartbeats of all the droids of Minaras are programmed to synchronise with it.
■ The Sanctuary: formerly an embassy for foreign dignitaries, now largely the site of diplomatic talks between Eidris and Minaras. The Sanctuary’s school of diplomacy prepares negotiators from either side and hosts the citadels’ rare peace or administrative summits. Some say the Sanctuary’s ruling conclave has been the single beneficiary of Serthica’s civil war.
The tubular, labyrinthine underworld of the Mouse House surrounds Serthica like a filthy, coarse and industrialised chokehold. Built to the 50m width of a large vessel, the Mouse House comprises makeshift stone roads, defunct rail tracks and uneasy pathways from the ports into Serthica. Expect no windows, crammed community homes and no real prospects for the Mouse House’s largely criminal and heavily impoverished exiled population. Only light incense sedatives keep the region’s many thieves, beggars and murderers relatively tame.
A coal train traverses the Mouse House daily, bringing coal deliveries from the ports to Eidris and Minaras. Small, humble paths lead furtively into whatever half of the citadel is burrowed. The many denizens of the Mouse House often feel as condemned as the mutated, large rats they coexist with, and dream of a day when they might be received overground.
Alem most Holy, built on the bones of hell. Gate of Reckoning and last bastion between the shielded west and the eastern forces of undead warlord Rathakku. The fortress was erected on and within cursed Mount Attevar — mouth of the netherworld. It connects to a cluster of forges, underground glacier lakes and mines of gold, iron and saltpetre. Looming and proud, Alem has stood alone for generations — but Rathakku will see it fall.
LAY OF A DOOMED LAND
You enter Alem during winter, a year into Rathakku’s siege. The citadel’s drawbridges and tunnels facilitate a critical trade route that serves both war parties. Much of Alem’s provisions are bartered with gold from passing merchants, but greed and resentment over the citadel’s past hubris have sharply risen the exchange rates. Young king Deimar seeks kinder terms.
Claustrophobic, cold and bustling, Alem spreads over three overground levels and two underground ones within the mountains. Deimar has accepted the citadel’s inevitable downfall and is biding time for the population’s slow evacuation through thin, crumbling, labyrinthine passageways. He also waits out the magical rites his sorcerers perform to seal away the netherworld evils of Mount Attevar.
Sleep is cold comfort here, between the incessant uproar of working forges, Rathakku’s battering rams and the howling wind that whips the watch towers. Hunted, exhausted, often starved, the population of Alem is insular, battle-ready and paranoid — an occasionally deadly combination, when strife sparks needlessly. Newcomers are suspected of working for Rathakku or the merchant guilds and hazed with increasingly gruelling tasks to ‘prove themselves.’
LEVELS
OVERGROUND
■ The Watch: 150m above the mountain. Both the string of towers that peer overhead and the topmost level of the citadel. Most vulnerable to aerial attacks and the cold. Find stored arsenal and explosives. Harshest living conditions and perpetual deployment.
■ The Keep: 80m above the mountain. Median overground level, hosting infantry, civilian barracks and Deimar’s court. Seat of interests, intrigue and frequent clashes between those who wish to fight to the death and proponents of the citadel’s surrender.
■ The Crossing: mountain level/ground-zero. The crowded, perpetually lively ground level walked at all hours by merchant caravans. Traders stop to barter or for scrupulous checks of their wares. Rathakku has pledged not to send spies among merchants, but open attacks are fair game. Frequent riots. Envoys and ground troops depart from here.
UNDERGROUND
■ The Wards: 50m within the mountain. The injured, crippled, weak and young gather here. The evacuation convoys are also prepared at this level. Depressed, forlorn, prone to minor hauntings.
■ The Gut’s Bind: 100m within the mountain. More underground womb than structure, a set of corridors leading to active forges and mines, the glacier lakes — or a large Room of Seals, where newcomers are not permitted, but Alem’s most trusted sorcerers toil day and night to (re)inforce the magical wards that keep hell from spewing forth. At times frozen or unbearably hot.
Years of thriving glory have kept Alem’s long gaze off its forsaken roots. Now, its people remember, sealing away fissures into the netherworld to stop the spillage of demonic and deathly presences. Destroying Alem would give Rathakku access to these prime resources. Battle-hardened sorcerers and paladins ran rampant and keep the rites of preserving Alem’s seal a dire secret.
Hauntings are subtle (?), but frequent: blood bursts and seeps down from the snowed mountain, typically after Alem has suffered great losses. The drawbridge chains rattle like bones. You feel watched. At night, you hear raging steps, or dream of a horned demonic creature that hunts you down — only to wake with scratches or gashes on your body. A fatigue sickness can overcome you for several days, inexplicably.
Extend your stay in the underground, and you are exposed to intrusive voices that fill your mind with doubt, stoke your worst instincts, or propel you to anger or betrayal. Self-serving, they prefer to keep you alive.
Elusively, Alem has seen a string of sudden deaths within the citadel, the victims found unmarked — except for a white string bound to their wrists.
Commanding an army of demonic summons and fresh conscripts from his brothers, Rathakku has carried out a patient, symbolic and unyielding war of attrition against Alem. The warlord’s forces surround the citadel each way at the base of Mount Attevar and often climb or infiltrate through growing tunnel fissures in the mountains. Every few days, Rathakku climbs up battering rams against the fortress walls, or sends the gargantuan dead dragon Irenia to rain frost fire down from above.
Periodically, Rathakku carries out the Clawing, forcibly raising the nearby dead or necromancers of Alem in his service. Cruel, cunning and decisive — he yet accepts envoys.
Veteran travellers might recognise some of the magical weapons and talismans of Taravast and Ke-Waihu tributes, now undead, are in the warlord’s use.
Yancai the Sunken — a stale, eerily silent fishermen’s village crossed by a web of lakes and waterways. Sea and forest-bound, the village’s key fixtures perch on ‘islands’ of formerly high ground, while several low houses sleep inundated. Humid, balmy weather keeps tempers sleepy, spirits high and food healthily spiced.
The village is served by thin, delicate piers and small rowing boats, boasting a healthy traffic of (sea) passengers, merchants and pirates. Newcomers are quickly adopted, but seldom relinquished. Peaceful, scantly defended, trade-prone and lively — Yancai yet sinks.
WATER, BEING WET
Yancai’s waters run clear, its fish fat, free and hastily replenished. Lotus, watercress, never-shuttering floating candles and braziers litter the waterways. Expect pearls, dyed silks and gossipy but helping hands.
Nothing rots, lavish vegetation seemingly unwilting — but a stubborn black mould climbs sunken constructions and clings to the careless like sickness. The seed-stream of holy waters protects the site from the living dead, but each pier pillar is scratch-marred. Buildings are steadfast and immutable, or dust and barren. Men cannot enter the dark woods that border Yancai’s outermost lakes without inviting retaliatory harm or sickness into the village. The dead go missing. Time feels at utter, syrupy standstill — or you blink once and morning’s trickled into a twin moonrise.
TIME WILL TELL
Magic is playful and welcome — but the ladies of the lake, a native witches’ cult that recruits furtively from the village, are anathema. They have cursed Yancai into their plaything, the village condemned to shift back and forth in time — perhaps to a time point where its now defunct beacon sparks alive again Residents' memories reshape to weather the flux. What is real and what is false recollection? The council of village elders, led by the newly elected Quanze Tsaymien, seeks to unmask the village witches and release Yancai from its curse.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ The White Harbours: recipient grounds of the latest merchant ships, lined by inns, where travellers can briefly alight without entering Yancai's time trap.
■ Fisheries, forges, storage grounds. Schools, apothecaries, merchant squares and markets, banks and road stages. One sad postal office.
■ The Storm’s Stage: a half-sunken, half-risen former palace, now abandoned. Its twisting corridors have led many to drown.
■ The Silver Lakes: a set of three lakes and four waterways close to the sea, whose currents have pulled in and drown even some experienced sailors. Superstitious denizens now drop in silver coins to pay for their lives, as they pass. The lake floors glisten.
■ Numerous taverns serving hard sailors’ swill and delicate teahouses.
■ The Woods: thick, dark, resplendent, silent. Some say the now-vanquished dead lord Beastmaster once made them his hunting grounds, and some of his creatures came home after his passing.
It is said the sun learned to set as it bowed before the gilded glory of Ephes. Bright, sprawling, serene, the citadel stretches as a pristine pale collection of temples, political and gladiatorial stages — encircled by trade markets, private villas, and the riffraff of crammed plebeian districts. Magic and necromancy are permitted, but widely regarded as the uncouth work of the lower class. At all times, Ephes bustles: observe incoming merchants, artists and teachers. Exiting morals. Flocks of rising politicians, or once-upon favourites, dead at the gates. Priests and opiate sellers, calling their faithful. The ruthless marches of the ever-present, ever-growing city army of the Hand. And the growls of the arenas, thundering for blood.
In Ephes, only the main river waterway is pure. The people all come tarnished: publicly virtuous, but privately obscene and fiercely ambitious, the upper patrician echelons have never met one of their own they wouldn’t have for dinner. Debt and nightly revelry are paramount: only boors don’t have five creditors. Those born without means now have a rare ticket to attain them: talent and skill are currently in demand, as, under the prosperous rule of Senate leader Caius, Ephes sets sights on imperial expansion.
Notable locations:
■ The High Senate:Ephes’ expansive political arena and court of justice, closely guarded.
■ Temples of the Chained: now home to multiple religions, Ephes first honoured the world-making and eating god who was chained to avoid the end of humanity. The oldest and largest such temple, containing the citadel’s Beacon, is currently closed off to host the Senate leader during his meditation.
■ The Patrician district: no one wears wealth as well as Ephes, with its string of villas, pools and nearly nightly fetes. Hosts compete in providing the grandest and most exotic entertainments and keep their homes constantly open to the fellow 1%.
■ Numerous tea, wine, opiate and pleasure houses.
■ The Fishmongers’ Square: seat of day-to-day trade and stage of news shouters or orators looking to advertise the politics of their masters or inject their new ideas for public debate. Anyone can speak out their thoughts to rouse support — or incite rebellion. This is also where new bounty and assassination contracts are made or announced.
■ The Fields: widely attended gladiator arena that holds performances at least once a week and every day of festivity or triumph. Moderately-sized, with exorbitant fees.
■ Barracks of the Hand: located at the very outskirts, with numerous such settlements doubling as the defence walls of Ephes. Compact but impossibly clean and barring civilian access.
■ Creditor markets: where there is a will, gangs of highly questionable individuals find the coin to pave your way — for a price of gold or services repaid at the appropriate time.
Nominally, Ephes thrives under the democratic rule of 40 senators, each leading organised gangs within the citadel. The law openly favours the rich: bribes and nepotism are frequent, killings and sabotage abound. A man who has not had an assassination contract issued on his name is hardly worth his salt. Lawmakers, nobles, merchants and orators, only a handful of Senators have military experience, barring the leader Caius — leaving them intrigued by the conquest proposal of undead lady Mesallina. Senate gatherings take place each midday, to discuss anything from high politics to acceptable civilian robe dyes and the price of wheat.
THE ARENAS
Captives or willing professionals, the gladiators of Ephes are highly skilled martial showmen as much as warriors, who know to throw a fight with gusto as long as the public is entertained. Championed as gods in the marketplaces and invited for private performances at highbred homes, they hold considerable sway over the common man and the vote of the public opinion.
THE HAND
What intrigues of conquest the minds of the Senate sow, the military Hand of Ephes reaps. Highly regimented, efficient and ruthless, the Hand earned its name for the unusual discipline of the 50,000 soldiers it comprises. They act as one, each of its five contingents — or Fingers — united in perfect and unflinching synchrony. Members are conscripts, former slaves or career soldiers, who sleep in isolated barracks and camps, seldom engaging civilians. They are recognisable for their red capes and silver armors. Largely listless, they practise a cult of brutality, frequently consume stimulant opiates and communicate in code.
THE HIVES
Clusters of peaceful — manually, mechanically or magically attended — agricultural settlements bundled at the outskirts of Ephes and tasked with raising the citadel’s prized crops and animals. Agricultural goods are the foremost export assets of Ephes and diligently guarded by the Hand. Access is nearly impossible (?).
MESSALINA
Two months before the group’s arrival, undead mistress Messalina arrived with an opulent convoy to Ephes under a banner of peace. She speaks of a man Matthias who wakes, empowers and enslaves the undead — asking for the Hand of Ephes to join her forces in defeating him and his undead Brotherhood. In exchange, she promises the territories of the Brotherhood as provinces of Ephes. She keeps her forces of undead peacefully encamped outside the walls of Ephes, while the squabbling Senate judges her plea.
” We met with moonlight in Hatthevar Like children, we chased in the bazaar Your cheek so pale, no flush could mar Your mother wept you’d died at war. ”
All roads lead to death and Hatthevar — a citadel like a crossroads of labyrinths, passageways and bazaars, surrounded by formidable fortress walls. Half folktale, half gelid wasteland, the citadel survived at the largesse of rich patrons who chased oracles to materialise their ambitions and necromancers to retrieve their beloveds.
There is little industry in Hatthevar and less cohesive rule: governed by clusters of magical castes and underground groups, the citadel thrives off trade in supernatural artefacts and favours, divination and boons. Coin is often unnecessary — exchanges of favours or memories can suffice. Covenants are king, and pledges are often blood-bound. It is forbidden to ask a name that is not volunteered or seek out a hooded face that does not reveal itself first.
Less than a year ago, Hatthevar was freely travelled by the living: now, spirits and the revived dead make the lion’s share of the citadel’s roaming population, drifting aimlessly in silent, eerie peace across the streets. Some beg aid as they search for their memories, or learn how to live again in flesh forms; others, crafty, resume the vicious passions that governed their existence, preying on innocent onlookers to satisfy their cruelty, vanity, greed, lust or bloodthirst. More still, too long dead, have fallen into apathy and crowd in gambling dens, chasing easy thrills. Silvered fox spirits saunter in packs, oft interceding to remove newcomers from harm’s way.
Here and there, you might see spirits wearing gilded shackle-chains and attending storm-eyed merchants who coaxed them off the streets with promised to give back their memories after a few years of service. The spirits who foolishly offered out their true names to devious necromancer-slavers face a worse fate, trapped in eternal service.
Tepid rain drip-drip-drips on Hatthevar at all hours, turning bloody for fifteen minutes at sunset. It lingers in your footsteps, if you’ve ever claimed a life. You cannot buy an umbrella: you must always receive it from a local, in exchange for a boon — a bow, a boon, a kiss, a tale — and return it by nightfall. Stay more than 20 minutes in the rain, and you begin to slowly lose your appetite, energy and enthusiasm, only for them to return once you have dried.
Few residential homes survive within Hatthevar: many, rain-trodden, have been repurposed as homes for spirits and the convalescing revived. Some serve as taverns and inns for exorbitant prices. Someone always watches through holes in the wall.
Following the arrival of undead creator Matthias, the living may enter the citadel for one hour after sunrise. The dead — those who were killed, revived, practise necromancy or are otherwise death-touched — may come freely. The rest will need to consume potions that absorb their shadows and partly mute their powers to pass for dead and gain passage. They must never reveal themselves as living and should create false identities — including death stories.
Sprawling, rowdy, incessantly cluttered: the bazaars reunite the dead and the living, strange or exotic magical artefacts, sales of curses and curse-breaking, necromancy and healing. In the crowds, amid desperate sale pitches and artistic performances, you might encounter the droves of newly revived dead, brought in from all corners of Akhuras — and beyond.
THE GAMBLING DENS
Twelve lavish, repurposed teahouses, strewn on each side of the river Liu — foremost is the gilded Sanctuary. Constantly busy, loud and frequented by both patrons of the games — bone dice, cards, riddles, demonic chicken races — and courtesans, dancers and performers. Opiates, cloying incense and eccentric food abound. Freshly revived spirits risk their few remaining memories, their supernatural powers, years of servitude or even their new lives. Each night, the passcode to enter a gambling den changes and must be coaxed from shady gamblers in the bazaars.
THE WHISPERING HOUSES
Long removed from human existence, spirits now pay handsomely for any scraps of memories that can connect them to mortal life. In the Whispering Houses of northern Hatthevar, some memory sellers even offer the opportunity to repackage one of your existing memories as incense that you may burn in the company of someone else you’d like to experience it.
Not all memory trade is kind: beware dark alleys where shy urchins beg your help to light their lanterns, only to capture threads of your memories are you are inexplicably unable to look away from moths dancing in the lamp. Recover your recollections by breaking the lantern before it’s sold off in a shady shop.
Wish makers charge steep prices to materialise wishes, break curses or improve your fortune. People are sometimes sold as good luck charms.
THE ORACLE HALL
One the main attraction of Hatthevar, the temple of the Oracle asks supplicants to walk up its 10,000 steps with a lit candle that incoming ravens try to put out. Spirits begging succour attempt distractions. Stop or gutter your candle and you must start again. Reach the topmost dais of the temple, and you must wait until sunset on your knees while increasingly intensifying phantom pains assail you — before the Oracle receives you.
THE WASTELANDS
Descended from the wastelands, three key areas surround Hatthevar: half-sunken, knotted ships that house a decayed flooded temple, a deserted underpass home to scorpions and the so-called path-of-blood walked by holy pilgrims and shadows.
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PREVIOUS ARC LOCATIONS
Check the welcome & ease of access status of each location in its respective blurb...!
ARC I: SA-HARETH
STATUS: the Merchant's people can enter Sa-Hareth freely, after their survival efforts helped oust death king Unhalad and reinstate his rival Anurr — an undead embodiment of ancient cold winds
The free people welcome the return of their master. Many of the living prefer Anurr's tyranny for the measured approach of his demands. Some citizens, who supported Unhalad, have fled Sa-Hareth or fallen gravely out of favour and therefore begrudge the Merchant's party.
ARC II: TARAVAST
Taravast lies under the stewardship of the Conclave — a largely domestic diplomatic alliance that includes foreign officials and merchants, as well as recent common delegates. The coalition is led by the Ilia Doxe — a position now held by Macaluso Spina, after a party-assisted civil revolution that deposed his grandfather Bonaccorso. Vannozza Spina — cousin and previously rival of Macaluso, as well as her grandfather's intended target of bodily possession — serves as counsellor. Macaluso is keen to develop relationships with neighbouring nations, although word that Taravast financed the undead Brotherhood with magical weapons during his grandfather's rule has estranged several citadels.
Macaluso Spina is a friend to the party. He is supported by the witches of Bessis, who have slaughtered their once enemies-then friends-then enemies once more: the court sorceresses of Attaryl. Supporters of Bonaccorso, the Attaryl specialised in prolonging lifespans, mental magic and illusions — feats that sparked and stoked a magical rivalry between Taravast and the elusive, undead-savaged citadel of Ellethia
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ The Spina hunting grounds: a peripheral mansion in north-eastern Taravast — home to Vannozza Spina.
■ Rooms of Justice: the Conclave's immense negotiation chambers. Open to the public.
■ Magical academies: schools of various reputes and affiliations. Many require hefty tuitions.
■ Healer Halls: the home of medical arts, covering magical, spiritual and bodily rejuvenation. Local healers are thoroughly attested and ethically bound, and often report back to the Conclave. Damaged during the recent siege.
■ Necromancers' district: where corpse-revivers, illicit potion brewers and the keepers of interesting magic loiter. Many necromancers are skilled in healing and willing to proceed with more experimental or risky interventions. Likewise greatly impaired by the recent offensives.
■ Merchant squares, banks, theatres, bridges.
■ The beacon: shrouded in the heart of the piazza, forgotten and defunct. Breathed its last after reanimated Attaryl witch Hatisse opened it to send some of party members to their home worlds. The beacon transported some travellers, but — aged and its energies depleted — could not withstand full journeys for the entire group.
ARC III: HOUSE OF RAVENS
A cluster of three villages that encircle the now dormant Ke-Sanwon volcano — Waihu-Jeou, Waiar-Seong and Waicai-Lian. Legend claims Ke-Sanwon is a stairway to heavens, the grave-like temple of the House of Ravens its first step, and the villages mere believers prostrated at its feet.
The villages are splintered by strips of barren stone land and forest enclosures, crossed by fragile high bridges. Journey between the villages is rare, with much of the communicated conducted by... bird. The villages largely sustain themselves through hunting and agriculture, but have experienced deep spells of recent drought and the ‘poisoning’ of their wells with dark, viscous and unpalatable water. Local vegetation is bare and wispy close to the villages, but lush and vibrant in the deep, labyrinthine and inevitably haunted forests.
Frequent visits from official urban dignitaries have accustomed natives to foreigners, but the villagers remain politely reserved and secretive towards their visitors. They harbour a superstitious faith in curses, the dead, pilgrimage and atonement.
All of the villages boast healers, priests, taverns, sites of local governance, merchant stalls and marketplaces. Law enforcement is scant and carried out by civilian and formal police watches.
KE-WAIHU
Originally, Jeou-Waihu. Nearest village to the coastal line and the classical first point of entry to the village circuit. Publicly ruled by a luhien mayoral office, but informally subservient to the influential Hok-Shinn clan — an assembly of dubious tradesmen, outlaws and oily bureaucrats. Many residents of Ke-Waihu believe the other villages — which prevented them from monetising the deforestation of the mountain — are far too radical in their spiritual observance. Ke-Waihu has fallen under the wrathful thrall of spirit foxes, whom they placate with tragic weddings.
KE-WAIAR
First named Waiar-Seong. The second most accessed village, home primarily to woodsmen and huntsmen. A martial residence, facing frequent siege from forest creatures that seem to scent blood on guilty hands. At night, many villagers partly or fully turn into wolves or werewolves and are released into the forest, while Ke-Waiar is gated closed. Several tall trees in the nearby forests have been equipped with rope and tree houses, allowing villagers to find shelter if they're caught out. The villagers appear to show compassion and care to those who bear the lycanthropic curse.
KE-WAICAI
Once known as Waicai-Lian. ‘The first point to godhood.’ The least visited village, only truly welcoming of pilgrims and zealots who wish to ascend to divinity or to the purity required to meet the gods. The villagers of Ke-Waicai are true and faithful worshippers of the mountain and of the House of Ravens. Further details to come.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ The Lady’s forests: mist-drenched and prosperous, scaffolding the mountain all the way near to its top. Difficult to navigate, as local spirits and demonic animals inject hallucinations and lure confused travellers deep into the forest — where they become pray to local fauna and crumbled abysses.
■ Witches’ huts: a misnomer for the abodes and trade sites of surgeons and necromancers, who have been pushed to reside and practise their unsavoury arts close to the forest and away from good men.
■ Crossroad of possession: certain crossroads within and outside of villages are considered 'places of misfortune.' They become the gathering sites of beggars, orphans, thieves or of those who believe they are born under unlucky stars and who leave their families to spare them exposure to their bad luck. Inevitable sites of underground networks. Villagers often offer alms to those assembled here.
■ Mouths of hell: hyperbolically-styled deep cracks that serve as entrances into the volcano. Created during the last and final (?) eruption of the sleeping Ke-Sanwon. It is said the entrances transform to match the shape of the latest travellers who entered them and lost their lives to the twisting inner pathways — hence mouths to those whom they have consumed.
■ Fortune fetters: the violently battered ruins of a fortress that once defended the coastline, in between Ke-Waihu and Ke-Waiar. (Largely) blind beggarly priestesses read the fortunes of visitors in snake venom, while hundreds of serpents hiss from inside the walls. Some say beastly creatures, half snake and half men, plague the relics at night.
■ Ancient temples: largely small and ruined, dedicated to troubled spirits of the dead, animal gods, noble heroes and the elements. If it stood still long enough, a villager probably raised it an altar. Common recipients of worship include deities of water, keepers of the mountain, wolves, foxes, gods of agriculture, marital guides and otters.
ARC IV: SERTHICA
Behold Serthica, seat of aerial steampunk dreams. Once a lone citadel, it was fissured years ago in the two semi-autonomous regions of Eidris and Minaras by the spectre of long-gone sickness and civil war. Every 12-hour cycle, one of the citadel halves is covered by an invisible magical protective field and succumbs underground, while the other rises. Eidris emerges at 6:00, while Minaras replaces it at 18:00. The citadel half that is overground has full aerial access, while its counterpart rests below amid looming caverns.
The two citadel halves meet overground during 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00 on broad, neutral zone corridors that crystallise between them. All magical barriers drop down and allow free movement via temporary stay papers.
Characters can slip into other citadels and extend their stay past a 12h cycle, but must be discreet and avoid ID checks. An underground network of ‘eye rentals’ has also developed: for 3,000 coins, you can buy six hours of possessing the (willingly conceded) body of a citizen in the other citadel half.
Each region governs itself. Resources run vast and inexhaustible in Serthica’s great underground mines. Formal hostilities between Eidris and Minaras have ended, but fresh conflict seems imminent — both citadels accuse each other’s populations of not being human.
Frustratingly, necromancers and the spiritually sensitive cannot detect any spirit or dead things in all of Serthica, even from fresh corpses.
On a better note, the local population of cloud sky whales has never been more prosperous.
Check out character team assignments to figure out their mainstay location.
Image source.
EIDRIS
The former east of Serthica and house to its parliament, Eidris rises overground each day at 6:00. It remains bound to myth, tradition, magic and the dragons that once built up the citadel. Many of Eidris’ citizens are sorcerers, priests, exorcists and temple keepers, who foster and accept every strain of faith and magic. The forever resplendent Eidris retains its appetite for wealth, tall architecture and luxury. Many nobles patron magic, the arts and support and breed dragons.
Eidris operates a magically reliant economy: golems support local terraformation and agriculture, a neutral gnome population handles mining, while technology is typically imported from Minaras and iminently optimised to run on magic rather than Minaras’ fuels. Sprits in Eidris run carefree, unburdened, indolent and high, led by Serthica’s monarchy — which refuses to concede it has lost control of Minaras.
✘ DRAGONS
While Eidris has adopted some of the zeppelins and base planes of Minaras, day-to-day transport between skyscraper palaces is achieved by small breeds of white dragon.
■ The relationship between dragons and riders is somewhat symbiotic: during flight, the rider’s mind is fully open to the dragon. The creatures communicate non-verbally through pulses of feeling through this mental link, or millisecond fragments of images. A dragon, for instance, might soothe its rider with the visual memory of a still lake.
■ Riders feel echoes of the danger or damage suffered by their dragons and are compelled to protect them.
■ Dragons offered for transport are typically 10 to 30 years of age and lack fire or offensive magic. Larger, veteran dragons affiliated with Eidris’ army have such powers.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The House of Parliament: another vestige of administrative power, running local operations.
■ Merchants’ markets: most useful for those seeking luxury goods (gems, pelts, exotic animals, spices) and magical artefacts.
■ Refreshment wells: small well mouths or streams that give a temporary boost to magical reserves or stamina. Found scattered and marked across Eidris, to help the magical population.
■ Dragon flight schools: eight such establishment across Eidris, open to all those who can pay an 8,000-coin fee. Characters should take a minimum of a month’s time to learn flight properly, but may have intermittent access to a dragon after two weeks.
■ Dragon grounds: large towers that serve as dragon shelters during Eidris’ underground period and as the creatures’ heavily heated breeding nests. Only dragon physicians and carers are allowed within.
Image source.
MINARAS
Moody, maudlin and night-bound, clockwork Minaras occupied the west of Serthica and raises its head overground at 18:00. For years, tech and light-loving Minaras has housed the scientists, technicians, merchants and brave minds behind Serthica’s innovation.
The numerous laboratories, factories and academies of Minaras are constantly at work, building off metals imported from Eidris to create fire weapons, fuels, large air ships, watch towers and, obsessively, medical units, vaccines and health treatments.
The mood of Minaras is highly structured, disciplined and surveilled, with most vulnerable areas requiring clearance papers. Indoctrination for new arrivals is inevitable. The average citizen of Minaras thrives under government care.
Short trains can take you through Minaras, but many choose to travel by airplane — for a handsome 5,000 coins and a three-weeks’ work, you too can earn a pilot’s license.
Of late, the eye of the ruling government — which rejects the former Eidris-based monarchy of Serthica — has turned on clockwork droids, beautiful and subservient mechanical creations that can improve local industry.
✘ CLOCKWORK DROIDS
■ Assistant clockwork droids do not have pre-programmed offensive abilities, but can excel at planning, grooming, cooking or some aspect of logistics. Depending on its cost and model, a droid can be prodigious or inept — choose your own!
■ Clockwork droids obey some of the the expected laws of robotics: they cannot harm humans or allow humans to come to harm through inaction. They cannot wilfully ignore an instruction they understand or can enact. They also cannot allow the interests of one (human) to take priority to the welfare of the many citizens of Minaras.
■ Droids are equipped to provide basic medical care and report back injuries and sickness to government facilities.
NOTABLE SITES
■ Mechanical factories: building everything from base weapons to engines and droids.
■ Health institutes: constantly inspecting and generating cures, vaccines, bio-enhancements and mechanical parts engineered for human use.
■ Underground and public trade markets: from weapons to metals to forge instruments, if you want raw materials or tech, someone in Minaras has it — on the books, or in a convenient dark alley.
■ The Place of Sigil: the sprawling seat of government — diligently attended by zealous ministers and a hotspot for (typically unsuccessful but worryingly frequent) assassination attempts.
■ Watch ships: great airships that patrol Minaras for any sign of crime or infiltration.
Image source.
THE NEUTRAL ZONE
Science and magic combine in the tight Neutral Zone: a circular stretch of land of no more than 5 km2, which remains overground at all times. It adjoins either Eidris or Minaras, when the citadel halves rise up for their assigned time overground.
The Neutral Zone is financed by both citadels, but governed by none. It offers sanctuary to those caught in the hostilities between Serthica’s warring parts. No weapons are allowed in the Neutral Zone, which is defended by its own magical wards and clockwork droid infantry.
NOTABLE SITES
■ The Sanctuary: formerly an embassy for foreign dignitaries, now largely the site of diplomatic talks between Eidris and Minaras. The Sanctuary’s school of diplomacy prepares negotiators from either side and hosts the citadels’ rare peace or administrative summits. Some say the Sanctuary’s ruling conclave has been the single beneficiary of Serthica’s civil war.
Image source.
THE MOUSE HOUSE
The tubular, labyrinthine underworld of the Mouse House surrounds Serthica like a filthy, coarse and industrialised chokehold. Built to the 50m width of a large vessel, the Mouse House comprises makeshift stone roads, defunct rail tracks and uneasy pathways from the ports into Serthica. Expect no windows, crammed community homes and no real prospects for the Mouse House’s largely criminal and heavily impoverished exiled population. Only light incense sedatives keep the region’s many thieves, beggars and murderers relatively tame.
A coal train traverses the Mouse House daily, bringing coal deliveries from the ports to Eidris and Minaras. Small, humble paths lead furtively into whatever half of the citadel is burrowed. The many denizens of the Mouse House often feel as condemned as the mutated, large rats they coexist with, and dream of a day when they might be received overground.
ARC V: ALEM
Alem most Holy, built on the bones of hell. Gate of Reckoning and last bastion between the shielded west and the eastern forces of undead warlord Rathakku. The fortress was erected on and within cursed Mount Attevar — mouth of the netherworld. It connects to a cluster of forges, underground glacier lakes and mines of gold, iron and saltpetre. Looming and proud, Alem has stood alone for generations — but Rathakku will see it fall.
LAY OF A DOOMED LAND
You enter Alem during winter, a year into Rathakku’s siege. The citadel’s drawbridges and tunnels facilitate a critical trade route that serves both war parties. Much of Alem’s provisions are bartered with gold from passing merchants, but greed and resentment over the citadel’s past hubris have sharply risen the exchange rates. Young king Deimar seeks kinder terms.
Claustrophobic, cold and bustling, Alem spreads over three overground levels and two underground ones within the mountains. Deimar has accepted the citadel’s inevitable downfall and is biding time for the population’s slow evacuation through thin, crumbling, labyrinthine passageways. He also waits out the magical rites his sorcerers perform to seal away the netherworld evils of Mount Attevar.
Sleep is cold comfort here, between the incessant uproar of working forges, Rathakku’s battering rams and the howling wind that whips the watch towers. Hunted, exhausted, often starved, the population of Alem is insular, battle-ready and paranoid — an occasionally deadly combination, when strife sparks needlessly. Newcomers are suspected of working for Rathakku or the merchant guilds and hazed with increasingly gruelling tasks to ‘prove themselves.’
LEVELS
OVERGROUND
■ The Keep: 80m above the mountain. Median overground level, hosting infantry, civilian barracks and Deimar’s court. Seat of interests, intrigue and frequent clashes between those who wish to fight to the death and proponents of the citadel’s surrender.
■ The Crossing: mountain level/ground-zero. The crowded, perpetually lively ground level walked at all hours by merchant caravans. Traders stop to barter or for scrupulous checks of their wares. Rathakku has pledged not to send spies among merchants, but open attacks are fair game. Frequent riots. Envoys and ground troops depart from here.
UNDERGROUND
■ The Gut’s Bind: 100m within the mountain. More underground womb than structure, a set of corridors leading to active forges and mines, the glacier lakes — or a large Room of Seals, where newcomers are not permitted, but Alem’s most trusted sorcerers toil day and night to (re)inforce the magical wards that keep hell from spewing forth. At times frozen or unbearably hot.
COME HELL OR BLOOD WATER
Years of thriving glory have kept Alem’s long gaze off its forsaken roots. Now, its people remember, sealing away fissures into the netherworld to stop the spillage of demonic and deathly presences. Destroying Alem would give Rathakku access to these prime resources. Battle-hardened sorcerers and paladins ran rampant and keep the rites of preserving Alem’s seal a dire secret.
Hauntings are subtle (?), but frequent: blood bursts and seeps down from the snowed mountain, typically after Alem has suffered great losses. The drawbridge chains rattle like bones. You feel watched. At night, you hear raging steps, or dream of a horned demonic creature that hunts you down — only to wake with scratches or gashes on your body. A fatigue sickness can overcome you for several days, inexplicably.
Extend your stay in the underground, and you are exposed to intrusive voices that fill your mind with doubt, stoke your worst instincts, or propel you to anger or betrayal. Self-serving, they prefer to keep you alive.
Elusively, Alem has seen a string of sudden deaths within the citadel, the victims found unmarked — except for a white string bound to their wrists.
THE LORD WHO WAITS
Commanding an army of demonic summons and fresh conscripts from his brothers, Rathakku has carried out a patient, symbolic and unyielding war of attrition against Alem. The warlord’s forces surround the citadel each way at the base of Mount Attevar and often climb or infiltrate through growing tunnel fissures in the mountains. Every few days, Rathakku climbs up battering rams against the fortress walls, or sends the gargantuan dead dragon Irenia to rain frost fire down from above.
Periodically, Rathakku carries out the Clawing, forcibly raising the nearby dead or necromancers of Alem in his service. Cruel, cunning and decisive — he yet accepts envoys.
Veteran travellers might recognise some of the magical weapons and talismans of Taravast and Ke-Waihu tributes, now undead, are in the warlord’s use.
ARC VI: YANCAI
Image source.
Yancai the Sunken — a stale, eerily silent fishermen’s village crossed by a web of lakes and waterways. Sea and forest-bound, the village’s key fixtures perch on ‘islands’ of formerly high ground, while several low houses sleep inundated. Humid, balmy weather keeps tempers sleepy, spirits high and food healthily spiced.
The village is served by thin, delicate piers and small rowing boats, boasting a healthy traffic of (sea) passengers, merchants and pirates. Newcomers are quickly adopted, but seldom relinquished. Peaceful, scantly defended, trade-prone and lively — Yancai yet sinks.
WATER, BEING WET
Yancai’s waters run clear, its fish fat, free and hastily replenished. Lotus, watercress, never-shuttering floating candles and braziers litter the waterways. Expect pearls, dyed silks and gossipy but helping hands.
Nothing rots, lavish vegetation seemingly unwilting — but a stubborn black mould climbs sunken constructions and clings to the careless like sickness. The seed-stream of holy waters protects the site from the living dead, but each pier pillar is scratch-marred. Buildings are steadfast and immutable, or dust and barren. Men cannot enter the dark woods that border Yancai’s outermost lakes without inviting retaliatory harm or sickness into the village. The dead go missing. Time feels at utter, syrupy standstill — or you blink once and morning’s trickled into a twin moonrise.
TIME WILL TELL
Magic is playful and welcome — but the ladies of the lake, a native witches’ cult that recruits furtively from the village, are anathema. They have cursed Yancai into their plaything, the village condemned to shift back and forth in time — perhaps to a time point where its now defunct beacon sparks alive again Residents' memories reshape to weather the flux. What is real and what is false recollection? The council of village elders, led by the newly elected Quanze Tsaymien, seeks to unmask the village witches and release Yancai from its curse.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ Fisheries, forges, storage grounds. Schools, apothecaries, merchant squares and markets, banks and road stages. One sad postal office.
■ The Storm’s Stage: a half-sunken, half-risen former palace, now abandoned. Its twisting corridors have led many to drown.
■ The Silver Lakes: a set of three lakes and four waterways close to the sea, whose currents have pulled in and drown even some experienced sailors. Superstitious denizens now drop in silver coins to pay for their lives, as they pass. The lake floors glisten.
■ Numerous taverns serving hard sailors’ swill and delicate teahouses.
■ The Woods: thick, dark, resplendent, silent. Some say the now-vanquished dead lord Beastmaster once made them his hunting grounds, and some of his creatures came home after his passing.
ARC VII: EPHES
Image source.
It is said the sun learned to set as it bowed before the gilded glory of Ephes. Bright, sprawling, serene, the citadel stretches as a pristine pale collection of temples, political and gladiatorial stages — encircled by trade markets, private villas, and the riffraff of crammed plebeian districts. Magic and necromancy are permitted, but widely regarded as the uncouth work of the lower class. At all times, Ephes bustles: observe incoming merchants, artists and teachers. Exiting morals. Flocks of rising politicians, or once-upon favourites, dead at the gates. Priests and opiate sellers, calling their faithful. The ruthless marches of the ever-present, ever-growing city army of the Hand. And the growls of the arenas, thundering for blood.
In Ephes, only the main river waterway is pure. The people all come tarnished: publicly virtuous, but privately obscene and fiercely ambitious, the upper patrician echelons have never met one of their own they wouldn’t have for dinner. Debt and nightly revelry are paramount: only boors don’t have five creditors. Those born without means now have a rare ticket to attain them: talent and skill are currently in demand, as, under the prosperous rule of Senate leader Caius, Ephes sets sights on imperial expansion.
Notable locations:
■ Temples of the Chained: now home to multiple religions, Ephes first honoured the world-making and eating god who was chained to avoid the end of humanity. The oldest and largest such temple, containing the citadel’s Beacon, is currently closed off to host the Senate leader during his meditation.
■ The Patrician district: no one wears wealth as well as Ephes, with its string of villas, pools and nearly nightly fetes. Hosts compete in providing the grandest and most exotic entertainments and keep their homes constantly open to the fellow 1%.
■ Numerous tea, wine, opiate and pleasure houses.
■ The Fishmongers’ Square: seat of day-to-day trade and stage of news shouters or orators looking to advertise the politics of their masters or inject their new ideas for public debate. Anyone can speak out their thoughts to rouse support — or incite rebellion. This is also where new bounty and assassination contracts are made or announced.
■ The Fields: widely attended gladiator arena that holds performances at least once a week and every day of festivity or triumph. Moderately-sized, with exorbitant fees.
■ Barracks of the Hand: located at the very outskirts, with numerous such settlements doubling as the defence walls of Ephes. Compact but impossibly clean and barring civilian access.
■ Creditor markets: where there is a will, gangs of highly questionable individuals find the coin to pave your way — for a price of gold or services repaid at the appropriate time.
Image source.
THE SENATE
Nominally, Ephes thrives under the democratic rule of 40 senators, each leading organised gangs within the citadel. The law openly favours the rich: bribes and nepotism are frequent, killings and sabotage abound. A man who has not had an assassination contract issued on his name is hardly worth his salt. Lawmakers, nobles, merchants and orators, only a handful of Senators have military experience, barring the leader Caius — leaving them intrigued by the conquest proposal of undead lady Mesallina. Senate gatherings take place each midday, to discuss anything from high politics to acceptable civilian robe dyes and the price of wheat.
THE ARENAS
Captives or willing professionals, the gladiators of Ephes are highly skilled martial showmen as much as warriors, who know to throw a fight with gusto as long as the public is entertained. Championed as gods in the marketplaces and invited for private performances at highbred homes, they hold considerable sway over the common man and the vote of the public opinion.
THE HAND
What intrigues of conquest the minds of the Senate sow, the military Hand of Ephes reaps. Highly regimented, efficient and ruthless, the Hand earned its name for the unusual discipline of the 50,000 soldiers it comprises. They act as one, each of its five contingents — or Fingers — united in perfect and unflinching synchrony. Members are conscripts, former slaves or career soldiers, who sleep in isolated barracks and camps, seldom engaging civilians. They are recognisable for their red capes and silver armors. Largely listless, they practise a cult of brutality, frequently consume stimulant opiates and communicate in code.
THE HIVES
Clusters of peaceful — manually, mechanically or magically attended — agricultural settlements bundled at the outskirts of Ephes and tasked with raising the citadel’s prized crops and animals. Agricultural goods are the foremost export assets of Ephes and diligently guarded by the Hand. Access is nearly impossible (?).
MESSALINA
Two months before the group’s arrival, undead mistress Messalina arrived with an opulent convoy to Ephes under a banner of peace. She speaks of a man Matthias who wakes, empowers and enslaves the undead — asking for the Hand of Ephes to join her forces in defeating him and his undead Brotherhood. In exchange, she promises the territories of the Brotherhood as provinces of Ephes. She keeps her forces of undead peacefully encamped outside the walls of Ephes, while the squabbling Senate judges her plea.
ARC VIII / FINALE: HATTHEVAR
Image source.
” We met with moonlight in Hatthevar
Like children, we chased in the bazaar
Your cheek so pale, no flush could mar
Your mother wept you’d died at war. ”
All roads lead to death and Hatthevar — a citadel like a crossroads of labyrinths, passageways and bazaars, surrounded by formidable fortress walls. Half folktale, half gelid wasteland, the citadel survived at the largesse of rich patrons who chased oracles to materialise their ambitions and necromancers to retrieve their beloveds.
There is little industry in Hatthevar and less cohesive rule: governed by clusters of magical castes and underground groups, the citadel thrives off trade in supernatural artefacts and favours, divination and boons. Coin is often unnecessary — exchanges of favours or memories can suffice. Covenants are king, and pledges are often blood-bound. It is forbidden to ask a name that is not volunteered or seek out a hooded face that does not reveal itself first.
Less than a year ago, Hatthevar was freely travelled by the living: now, spirits and the revived dead make the lion’s share of the citadel’s roaming population, drifting aimlessly in silent, eerie peace across the streets. Some beg aid as they search for their memories, or learn how to live again in flesh forms; others, crafty, resume the vicious passions that governed their existence, preying on innocent onlookers to satisfy their cruelty, vanity, greed, lust or bloodthirst. More still, too long dead, have fallen into apathy and crowd in gambling dens, chasing easy thrills. Silvered fox spirits saunter in packs, oft interceding to remove newcomers from harm’s way.
Here and there, you might see spirits wearing gilded shackle-chains and attending storm-eyed merchants who coaxed them off the streets with promised to give back their memories after a few years of service. The spirits who foolishly offered out their true names to devious necromancer-slavers face a worse fate, trapped in eternal service.
Tepid rain drip-drip-drips on Hatthevar at all hours, turning bloody for fifteen minutes at sunset. It lingers in your footsteps, if you’ve ever claimed a life. You cannot buy an umbrella: you must always receive it from a local, in exchange for a boon — a bow, a boon, a kiss, a tale — and return it by nightfall. Stay more than 20 minutes in the rain, and you begin to slowly lose your appetite, energy and enthusiasm, only for them to return once you have dried.
Few residential homes survive within Hatthevar: many, rain-trodden, have been repurposed as homes for spirits and the convalescing revived. Some serve as taverns and inns for exorbitant prices. Someone always watches through holes in the wall.
Following the arrival of undead creator Matthias, the living may enter the citadel for one hour after sunrise. The dead — those who were killed, revived, practise necromancy or are otherwise death-touched — may come freely. The rest will need to consume potions that absorb their shadows and partly mute their powers to pass for dead and gain passage. They must never reveal themselves as living and should create false identities — including death stories.
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THE BAZAARS
Sprawling, rowdy, incessantly cluttered: the bazaars reunite the dead and the living, strange or exotic magical artefacts, sales of curses and curse-breaking, necromancy and healing. In the crowds, amid desperate sale pitches and artistic performances, you might encounter the droves of newly revived dead, brought in from all corners of Akhuras — and beyond.
THE GAMBLING DENS
Twelve lavish, repurposed teahouses, strewn on each side of the river Liu — foremost is the gilded Sanctuary. Constantly busy, loud and frequented by both patrons of the games — bone dice, cards, riddles, demonic chicken races — and courtesans, dancers and performers. Opiates, cloying incense and eccentric food abound. Freshly revived spirits risk their few remaining memories, their supernatural powers, years of servitude or even their new lives. Each night, the passcode to enter a gambling den changes and must be coaxed from shady gamblers in the bazaars.
THE WHISPERING HOUSES
Long removed from human existence, spirits now pay handsomely for any scraps of memories that can connect them to mortal life. In the Whispering Houses of northern Hatthevar, some memory sellers even offer the opportunity to repackage one of your existing memories as incense that you may burn in the company of someone else you’d like to experience it.
Not all memory trade is kind: beware dark alleys where shy urchins beg your help to light their lanterns, only to capture threads of your memories are you are inexplicably unable to look away from moths dancing in the lamp. Recover your recollections by breaking the lantern before it’s sold off in a shady shop.
Wish makers charge steep prices to materialise wishes, break curses or improve your fortune. People are sometimes sold as good luck charms.
THE ORACLE HALL
One the main attraction of Hatthevar, the temple of the Oracle asks supplicants to walk up its 10,000 steps with a lit candle that incoming ravens try to put out. Spirits begging succour attempt distractions. Stop or gutter your candle and you must start again. Reach the topmost dais of the temple, and you must wait until sunset on your knees while increasingly intensifying phantom pains assail you — before the Oracle receives you.
THE WASTELANDS
Descended from the wastelands, three key areas surround Hatthevar: half-sunken, knotted ships that house a decayed flooded temple, a deserted underpass home to scorpions and the so-called path-of-blood walked by holy pilgrims and shadows.