Serriyam
From Enlil
| The following information comes from Solomon Knotbeard. |
| Solomon has learned of many topics through his years of research, and is an avid archivist. He has managed to pick up a lot of random facts, and has dabbled in many esoteric topics. |
Serriyam is a small port city on the north coast of Kadaras, between Laneet to the West and Bur to the South-East. Despite its size, it is historically a liberal city, inviting all travelers, and thus attracting temples of many faiths. When the Southern empire was whole, Serriyam served as an important stop for travelers, being on one of the main roads between East and West, as well as being a port to the North. Its nearby arable lands meant that it was not as dependant on often fickle outside powers for its food, allowing it to remain neutral through many of the wars between city-states, though this isolation also limited its own political power.
Contents |
[edit] History
After the Great War shattered Kadaras into many city-states, a powerful mage by the name of Urok Bletter took guardianship of the city. He built a tower outside of town to be his own place of study as well as a stronghold against any who might attempt to harm him. Under his reign, Serriyam continued much as it had, with a new emphasis on arcane studies.
Urok took an apprentice to aid him in his work. He was the natural successor when Urok passed on, and though he did not have the same interest in arcane academics that his predecessor did, he made up for this with political saavy. Under his rule, Serriyam found its borders expanding, due to deft political opportunism and the threat of a formidable military. He too, trained an apprentice, although neither he nor any to follow had quite the same flare for politics. Power passed on this way for generations.
Unfortunately, with each generation came less of a sense of duty to the people of Serriyam. This culminated when Omil's master and decendent of Urok Bletter, Toris Bletter, died and left Serriyam in his hands. Omil ruled with paranoia and jealousy. He destroyed the last vestiges of Urok's legacy, seeing the public study of magic as a threat to his power. This included an arcane library under the stewardship of Solomon Knotbeard. It was Omil's authoritarian policies that gave rise to the Serryic Knights, an eclectic group of dissendents who worked to undermine his power. While they seemed less of a threat to Omil than did outside forces, when he ventured North to seek out an artifact to increase his power, they were ultimately key in his undoing.
[edit] Present Day
With Omil gone and the Serryic Knights unable to construct a democratic government in his absence, there is a power vacuum. Serriyam is currently at the center of the war between Horace Ungerholt of Morche and Robert Thune of Kassr, who seem to regard it as an important piece in the balance of power in Kadaras.
It is currently occupied by Ungerholt's human and orcish military, though it seems he has only a tenuous hold on it for now.
[edit] Geography
Serriyam is split into distinct districts, each charactorized by its industries and inhabitants. While many farmers and laborers live outside the town walls, Serriyam houses many of its citizens in the city proper. The seat of government is traditionally in a tower to the South of town, outside the confines of the city walls.
Entry to the city can be gained through either the Western or Southern gate, and by ship, when the port is open. Solomon is also aware of some sort of underground passageway leading from the basement of the Acadamy of the Arcane Arts to a point on the rocky coast to the East of Serriyam, but it is said to have been blocked off to prevent access from the outside.
[edit] Docks district
The North-West district containing the docks, the industry to service them, and housing sailors and laborers.
[edit] Agricultural district
The South-West district largely containing industries for processing and packaging agricultural goods from the surrounding farmland. Mills, distilleries, and slaughterhouses, as well as some undergound warehouses serving as giant root-cellers can be found here, as well as housing for some of the associated merchants.
[edit] Serryic Knights Headquarters
The Serryic Knights make their headquarters in a warehouse and root cellar near the eastern edge of the Agricultural district.
[edit] City core
The commercial center of the city, containing many markets and upscale housing, as well as those government facilities housed within the city.
[edit] Southern gate
The city has two main entrances along the highway running through the city. One is in the south of the City Core. It was once a very busy thoroughfare.
| The following information comes from a plan shown to the party by Darius, before the attack on the southern gates. |
| This map was seen in the Serryic Knight headquarters, on 24 May, 312, before the meeting with Thomas Bladelaw at the Knotbeard family home. The following notes were found scrawled on it, beneath the map itself. |
- Ogre
- Gatehouse
- Small outdoor market (abandoned)
- Church with attached burial ground
- Former government building. Now a barracks.
- Large office building. Siege site one.
- Blacksmith and ferrier's workshop. Siege site two.
- Inn, currently used as barracks.
- Tailor shop.
- Apothecary
The outer walls come about thirty feet up and are topped with walkways with battlements. The gate towers have entrances on the ground floor as well as the top of the outer wall. At thirty feet, they connect to one another to form the top of the gateway. There are battlements at the top, roughly sixty feet above ground. The gate towers have copious arrow slits, and the gatehouse has murder holes built into its ceiling between the portcullises. The east and west gate towers control the inner and outer portcullises, respectively.
| End of Darius' map |
[edit] Knotbeard family home
Solomon's immediate family has their home in the south-east of the City Core, in an up-scale neighborhood. Solomon's parents, Attir and Cerol Knotbeard, brother Dunash, and maternal great-grandfather, Solomon Kilrudikud live together here, and outside of his library, this is Solomon's home.
[edit] Enlightenment district
This North-East district is home to the legacy of Urok Bletter. It houses academies and libraries, almost all of which are now defunct. In their place, many people have taken up residence here, and it's proved to be less touched by crime than other districts, probably owing to its relative lack of commerce and industry as well as its proximity to the Noble district. Solomon's old library is located there.
The Enlightenment district's name is a play on both its tradition for education as well as the presence of the city's lighthouse on its Northern shore.
There are thought to be catacombs underneath the city in many places, but the ones in the Enlightenment District are the only ones that Solomon knows that are readilly accessible. As a young and unpopular boy, he was once tricked into following some classmates into them, through the basement of the Academy of the Arcane Arts, where he was quickly abandoned. Luckilly for him, he was not led terribly far in, and managed to find his way out, thanks to his darkvision.
[edit] Academy of the Arcane Arts
The Academy of the Arcane Arts was originally an arcane research institution, dedicated both to training people in the use of arcane magic for military purposes as well as the pursuit of knowledge through arcane means. Its history is long and varied, at various times expanding to meet great demand from a kingdom in need of mages for its army, and at others, receding into research about the structure of the cosmos, or the very nature of magic.
During the Great War, it is no longer secret that they conducted extensive experiments, often cruel and torturous, on sorcerers, gnomes, magical beasts, and others that had an innate ability to use magic without training in an effort to find a way to grant these powers to others, or else to create their own beasts for the war effort. While little came of this research, many suffered in its pursuit and subsequently, the acadamy shut down for a period of time until Urok Bletter reopened it when he took control of Serriyam.
A wildly unpopular move at the time, Urok reopened the Academy because he saw the need for a disciplined approach to the study of magic. He integrated the mages' guild into the function of the Academy, so that arcane magic's use could be controlled. They created and issued pendants that would allow the wearer to use magics of certain types and strengths within the confines of the city. This was enforced legally, but the pendants would also paralyze the caster of unlicensed magics, as well as facilitating the scrying of the pendants' holders for a brief time. While the wearer was able to remove the pendant, doing so carried with it a harsh legal penalty for any licensed mage within the city.
These pendants gradually fell out of use for less powerful mages due to their worth and the cost and overhead of scrying upon their users. This decline followed the post-war decline in powerful mages about the land, as they died from natural means or from the vicious power struggles throughout Kadaras. Eventually, they were retired entirely, most likely being sold off by Toris Bletter.
Aside from its regulatory duties, the Academy also continued its pursuits of academics, quickly becoming the foremost center of astral planar cartography and the localized effects of planar energy interactions. Solomon's library, The Urok Bletter Arcane Energy Archives, was at one point an outgrowth of this era of the Academy's work. However, as Serriyam's leadership grew less interested in the abstract pursuit of knowledge, work at the academy withered, until Omil finally shut down the last laboratories on 2 January, 292.
[edit] Categorical: Historical
The Categorical: Historical is one of the largest libraries that continued to operate throughout Omil's reign. Unlike most of the city's libraries, it had very little in the way of arcane literature, and thus was not seen to be a threat to Omil's power. Instead, it focuses on historical works, both histories and historical documents (largely government documents).
Members of the Snubsnoot family of gnomes have been the proprietors of the Categorical: Historical since its beginnings. The most recent proprietor to Solomon's knowledge was a gnome by the name of Runk Snubsnoot. Solomon has a working relationship with Runk, but knows little of him, other than the tight grip he keeps on the books in his collection, and the outrageous prices he charges for their sales.
The Categorical: Historical is in the North-Westernly section of the Enlightenment District.
[edit] Noble district
While not strictly the domain of nobility, this district houses the most upscale citizens of Serriyam, and has recently been the best protected by the city police.
[edit] The Peacock
The Peacock is an upscale tavern in the Noble district, known for their food and their fine whiskeys. The Peacock attracts a wide variety of nobility of many ages to mingle and see bards perform. Notably, the party has met Erik Surefoot here on occasion and have reason to believe that it's a haunt of Thomas Bladelaw's.
[edit] The Swordsman's Club
The Swordsman's Club is an adventurer's club with ties to Bladelaw. "Big" Bill Wirtsworth operates the club and administers the combat lessons. It seems to cater to restless nobility, and as such has inflated prices and showy but not particularly useful equipment.
The Swordsman's Club is located near the west edge of the district.
[edit] The compound
Serriyam's ruler has traditionally maintained power from a compound to the South of the city. While the ruler has always been the executive ruler of Serriyam, most of the city-specific government offices are within the city walls, in the core. Instead, the compound has traditionally served as the seat of the regional government and military.
Most notably in the compound is the tower, the personal residence of the head of state, most recently Omil.
[edit] Catacombs
Serriyam has several series of catacombs running beneath the city, from various points in its history. One of these connects the basement of The Academy of the Arcane Arts to an opening outside the city, which is how we gained entry into Serriyam. There is another entrypoint in a graveyard in the south of the Noble district. It is said that In His Shadow uses these catacombs at least for the purposes of movement around the city.
