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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.