Lore
Overview
|
Nan oro maduro kóren go, Breton vatan dovayen gargoen toxtante, Gagoxidavude só madil naren miect tantoxve, Gacebtiran cebran sá grevan bretyan rietanrie, Mervan só jheva dancan gebyen ontan, Gléa, godavude co mamadilyen ó ahóye miect on. |
 |
Sixteen anchors to hide in shadow, Fifteen companies to break their walls, Twelve young gods from darkness rise, Ten shattered nations swear oaths of blood, Five lost lords to reign from high, And one young dreamer to raise the blackest tower. |
When the Scouring of the Nations, as it was called, turned the land into miles of bleak and broken desert, the survivors forged a pact called the Compact of the Nations, that never would they war openly on the others. Though, as time would prove, occasional raids for cattle and horses were deemed acceptable.
In the lands above the Daventhiél River, the Scouring had been gentler and small towns and cities began to thrive, isolated and protected as they were from the new, vibrant Ramanian Empire in the south. Three generations after the Scouring, a young man named Muzad came out from the highlands of Vetú.
His blood sang with songs of the Bright Raven who is Fate, and he learned secrets that were never meant to be known by a mortal. Muzad's voice rang out in prophesy, and driven out of Vetú he came to the ruins of the city of Sávatch Ken on a volcanic island in the middle of where the Daventhiél River grew widest. There, he gathered to him those old ones who had haunted the darkness for long centuries, and with them he raised the Tower of the Raven and the City of Shadow, the city that would come to be called Dardalani.
Introduction & Geography
Dardalani, the City of Shadow, sits atop a small island in the flow of the Daventhiél River that runs down out of the Sílan Highlands and east until at last it empties out into the sea.
To the north stretches the Great Plain that is framed by the river on the south and west, the sea to the east and empty arctic plain as one heads ever further northwards. Small towns and cities have grown about its perimeter, along the river or the sea, and since the Scouring have begun trade and cultivation. Wars are not unknown, and bitter rivalries have kept any from allying with any other for long.
To the south of the city on the river is the greater part of the Scouring. Bleak desert and isolated clans of nomadic and semi-nomadic herders and raiders are all that remains of the once great Nations, though they call themselves Nations still.
Dardalani, The City of Shadow
Dardalani is a walled city with three bridges - one on the north bank, two on the south. The city is divided into two areas, an Inner City and an Outer City. The Inner City is restricted to the Shak, the "Soulless" who rule the city, and certain prisoners of the ruler of the city, the Muzadi. The Outer City is the home to the teeming masses of humans - craftsmen, slave-soldiers, and food. Sixteen totemic anchors were long ago placed around the city to keep a permanent darkness over the city.
The Shak
The becoming of a Shak involves a human forsaking any food and drink but human flesh and blood, and more of the latter by far than the former. A Shak must feed on flesh perhaps once a month, but must drink several times. The process of drinking is rarely fatal, and in fact, killing a human by drinking is considered crude and unsophisticated. The Shak use most often a bowl that is edged along one-half. They press this sharp half into the skin of the human (who, if they want to live, do not struggle) and empty the blood thusly into the bowl, from which they then drink.
Most of those who fail to successfully complete the process of becoming a Shak die, but those who do not die but still do not succeed in the transformation become what are called Gaunts, drained shadows neither Shak nor human with some traits of each. Gaunts may mimic emotion, but they feel nothing, neither emotions nor physical pain. Those who continue their service to the city are used; those who go mad are loosed into the catacombs beneath the city and are more commonly referred to as ghouls.
Astronomy
The world, called Suyol, is not Earth. The world is physically smaller than our world, but denser, and circles a yellow-green gas giant called Pelava. Like most large moons around gas giants, Suyol is "tidally locked", meaning that one face always faces Pelava. Dardalani is positioned such that Pelava is always low on the horizon and appears in the sky about four times the size of our moon.
Suyol is not Pelava's only moon, too. There are four others called "The Four Brothers" which are: Mern and Merna (both about half the size of our moon), Puloi (the largest, but still only about two-thirds the size of our moon) and Krasshei, which is little larger than a bright speck in the sky. The Brothers orbit Pelava - not Suyol, and as such do not have a very irregular effect on tides. Moreover, Pelava itself exerts a very strong, very predictable effect on the tides, resulting in very high and very low tides - coastal settlements and docks are build accordingly on floating moorings.
This also affects light in the sky - Zara, what the Suyoli call their sun, appears only as third as large as our sun due to the size, though in fact Zara is somewhat larger. Pelava, the gas giant, gives off about half the light of the sun, and Suyol receives more heat from Pelava than from the sun. This means that while Suyol still has night and day, if Pelava is out during the day, it will be bright, if not, somewhat muted, and if Pelava is out at night, it will be brighter than a full moon is here. Moreover, there is less of a difference in heat between night and day, and it is mostly dependant on whether Pelava is out, not so much the sun.
The Shadow
Shak, the Soulless who are the ruling caste of the city of Dardalani, fear the sun and are injured by it. When the Muzadi came to the place where he would build the city, he wanted to ensure that the Shak would not need to fear Zara, the sun. The Muzadi used sorcery, which alters probability, and sixteen "anchors" to tie a twist in Fate to the city such that for two miles in any direction of the city there it is always overcast.
Shak still prefer to be about during the deepest part of the night, but they are not harmed by the day which can, despite the overcast, still be bright when Pelava, the gas giant, is in the sky during the day.
Food
The river plain of the Daventhiél River is, even with the Scouring, a fertile place. The humans of the city subsist partly on fish caught from the river, but primarily from tribute brought into the city. Corn and rice are both common, though corn is more common away from the river valley itself, and rice near it. Dates, too, are bought from the Nations to the south of the river in the heart of the Scouring. Human meat, too, is sold in the market, but only as a food for certain high festivals and even then it is prepared in certain very proscribed manners. Horse and dog meat is strictly taboo.
Animals and Pets
Horses are considered holy, and only the Shak are allowed to ride. The slave-soldiers, the human janissaries, do not ride. If a human is caught on a horse, both rider and horse are killed to cleanse the pollution. For a human to even touch a horse requires gloves and special licenses, and these are expensive and rarely granted.
Rats and cats both live wild in the city, though not dogs. Cats are considered bad luck, and though some people do feed them, food is expensive in the city, and wasting it on an animal like a cat is considered irresponsible. Hunting hounds are owned by wealthy humans and Shak alike, however, and are carefully cultivated for war and hunting, though never for simple companionship - dogs are considered working animals. Rats are often kept as pets by both the poor and elite; they are easy to tame, intelligent, and will eat anything, all traits which are useful in the city despite the problems wild rats cause in the warehouses and in spreading disease.
Another pet of the elite are certain spiders. The giant preothai which are the size of a cat are, due to their web-spinning, not kept as pets, but other, smaller, carnivorous ones are, and are fed on rats and other rodents.
Tribute
Dardalani is the center of a very lage tribute empire. By subduing nearby settlements, it extracts promises by them to, twice a year, send tribute in the form of raw materials, food and humans into the city. Dardalani is a center for crafts in the region, and encourages artisans to develop their skills and expertise in the city. As a result of this, jade, turquoise, silver, iron, clays and other precious materials are very important parts of the tribute sent into the city.
The second class of tributary items is food. Dardalani, due to the Shadow above, is in no position to acquire enough of its own food to support itself. Fishing from the docks (for there are no boats permitted) only provide a certain amount of seasonal fare, so the majority of food must enter the city from without.
The third class of tributary items is the blood-tithe. Nearly every settlement under Dardalani's dominion is required to send a certain number of young men and women to it twice a year. The number is never so huge as to affect the population of the titheing settlement, but this is one part of the tribute that cannot ever be forsaken upon pain of the settlement being decimated. Those brought into the city are generally left to fend for themselves after an initial testing to determine if any are suitable to be trained as slave-soldiers, Those Who Serve, human janissaries. Most such who are not so chosen wind up in the Shambles, with only the brightest escaping. Those humans with special priviliges - artisans, reeves and so on, are generally second or third generation decendants of those brought into the city for the blood-tithe.
The Social Order of the City
Dardalani's culture is organized in castes and sub-castes.
The main division is between Shak and human. The rulers of Dardalani - the Shak - subsist on human flesh and blood. Once human, they are now ageless and stronger, quicker, and with sharper senses than any human could ever have. By tradition they wear the black cloak, the better to hide themselves from the light of the sun which burns and can horribly scar, even kill them. No matter how high the human - or how low the Shak, every Shak is automatically superior to every human. Within the city there are about one thousand Shak and approximately twenty-five thousand humans, so for every twenty-five humans in the city there is one Shak.
Within the Shak themselves there are separate castes, moreover. The vast majority wear the black cloak and service the bureacracy of the city or serve as officers in the Muzadi's armies. These are referred to, generically, as Those Who Must Be Obeyed. Those of the black who are not Dedicates or Seekers or officers form the Conclave which meets to discuss the matters of the city and resolve by policy and consensus those issues internal to the city (for the Muzadi and the Five of the Council determine policy outside the city.)
The Dedicates have chosen to serve one of the Four gods worshipped openly in the city. They are, at the lowest levels, acolytes and scribes, and at other levels fanatic temple guardians. They wear their association with their chosen god with pride; those of Tan'da bear a sword, Hahtri a knife, Gohl-thi a spear, and Neoain a staff. Some Dedicated may become a priest, but this is not the rule. Dedicates wear the black cloak. There are only a couple of hundred Dedicates in the city.
The priests of the city are dedicates who have taken the next step and no longer wear the black cloak, but instead one of deepest red. Priests do not bear arms, and are guarded by Dedicates when they leave their temples. They speak for the Four, and by intellect, dedication and will strive to extend the knowledge, reach and devotion to their chosen god. They are responsible for the transitions in society, from human to Shak, from black cloak to Dedicate, from Dedicate to priest, from Shak to Daywalker. There are at any particular time perhaps sixty priests in the city, of whom over half are dedicated to Tan'da, the Giver-of-Blood.
The Daywalkers wear the white cloak with a white mask and cloth of white. They are those of the black cloak who directly serve the Muzadi. The Daywalkers are considered mad by the rest of the Shak, for they are the Hounds of the Muzadi and travel when the sun is high in the sky. If a ray of light touches them, they become horribly burned, and the maddness that lets them do this means that almost every Daywalker ends their life by at last, at the end, throwing off their cloak and mask and laughing as the sun eats their body to dust in a matter of minutes.
The Seekers are failed Daywalkers, Daywalkers who were driven totally mad by the initiation process and have been horribly scarred. Unwilling to let their marks of shame be seen, most commit suicide. Some, however, do not, and instead retreat to the catacombs beneath the city in a banishment from the surface of the city they once roamed freely.
Of the humans of the city there are also divisions. Many humans were brought into the city as blood-tithe from other cities subjugated by the Muzadi, but most are the children of others who were brought into the city.
Humans who have proven strong and loyal are sometimes given the grey cloak and become Those Who Serve, slave-soldiers in the Muzadi's armies and police for the streets of the city. The Proctor of the city is the highest ranking human of Those Who Serve, and it is his responsibility to keep the slave-soldiers in order and well-trained and, indeed, well-tamed.
Others, even more trusted, become reeves and act as judge and jury in the need for keeping order within the city. The system of reeves (who are guarded by Those Who Serve) emerged as the Shak do not concern themselves greatly with the affairs of the Outer City so long as humans do not interfere with the matters of the Shak, do not become disruptive or troublesome, do not attempt to escape, and, most of all, do not assault a Shak. Reeves are appointed by the different communities within the city, but are approved by the bureacracy that is the Conclave.
Of the common humans, the highest are the artisans and merchants. All are bound to the city, but as Dardalani has vast amounts of tribute flowing into the city, there is sufficiently great wealth that a vibrant economy has blossomed in the city.
Common laborers and fishers make up the largest number of humans in the city, and they work as they can, earning what coin or compensation that they can manage.
Those who cannot find work lurk in the Shambles, a broken, diseased and crumbling part of the city ruled by the heavy hand of controlled anarchy. The hands of the reeves and Those Who Serve rarely venture into this domain, but the awe and veneration of the Shak does, and woe to the one foolish enough to attack a Shak, for that one's relatives will likely be first among those striking him down so as to prevent the wrath of the Shak from decending upon them all.
There are vanishingly few humans who have consent to leave the city, but among them are the mavradi, mute dancer-acrobats who mime stories and epics, wandering from town to city to play before human and, it is said, even Shak, though this last is not spoken of in public.