GALEA - Twilight City

 CITY INTRODUCTION

GALEA
FUMO
BRIGHT TOWN
POMERIUM
CALDERA
CALIDUM

HISS
TENEBRIS
MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

Artist: FreeMind93 Source

Organization of Notes:

Every district has a major Temple. This is located just below the District Summary. Every neighborhood is listed alphanumerically (e.g. A1, A2, A3, etc.) and has a special Shrine, which is the de facto name of the neighborhood. The contents of each neighborhood is listed below the shrine.

GALEA

It is an inhospitable, frozen slum. The cold winds of Sunless Rim shear across the district, freezing flesh black to bone. The living here wear thick furs, or are otherwise frostbitten. Graveyards and crypts for the undead to rest. Air peddlers linger on the stone steps, offering bladders of pure oxygen made in Tenebris to passers by. There would be a terrible stench, if flesh could rot in these clime.

The Temple of King's Crowns

The resting place of one thousand crowns plucked from the defeated helms of one thousand kings. This temple is a basilica, with pillars and floors of rough-hewn and very cold stone. It is administered by righteous kingslayers, rewarded with eternal unlife for their treachery. It is a frozen grave, guarded by the wights of shamed kings-guards. Crown-thieves are held in esteem.

(Monarchs, or those who serve them have their Morale halved here.)

Orlo the Usurper acts as High Priest. He is a thin and gangly ghast, braid-bearded frozen, carrying a hangman's noose. He is twice-received by the temple's powers, having killed his brother for the throne, and then himself. "Death is our most divine act."

The crowns are kept in unceremonious heaps. The central altar is simply a great mound of them. When chaos reigns and the crowns of kings go missing, they often end up here. 

Adding a new crown of a fallen dynasty generates a Blessing: one will be permitted to take any other one crown in its place.

1,000 CROWNS

d10	It is a crown of…	With…	And…
1	Stone	Thorns/Flowers/Vines entwined	Its band is broken.
2	Iron	Faded jewels inlaid	Its valuables have been plucked
3	Wood	Runic inscriptions	It bears battle wounds
4	Tin	Rusted edges	There is blood yet still upon it.
5	Bronze	Filigrees/Horns/Antlers	It is covered in filth
6	Copper	Precious stones	Time has horribly marred it.
7	Silver	Inscribed Images of Soldiers/Priests/Animals	It is well-worn.
8	Gold	Holy Symbols circumferenced	Its edges are sharp to the touch.
9	Platinum	Desiccated Furs	The skull of its wearer remains underneath.
10	Reroll Twice	The World in Miniature Atop	It still holds magical power.

Three famous Crowns lie within the piles (as well as any others one might want). An enchantment is placed upon that heap that makes them all seem mundane. Only a Sage's advice or a historian could pick them out. Stealing a crown from this pile will marshal the wights to defend the temple.

The Crown of Command - 1/Day: A chosen subject which can hear you must obey a single command to the best of their ability, or otherwise perish.

The Black Crown - A ring of black runic stone. In the oldest language: "May Destined Perish". Those of royal blood who place this upon their helm instantly die. (If one makes no claims to any thrones, having less than 1/16th royal blood is usually enough to avoid death.)

The Mundane Crown - A dull wooden crown. The wearer may not cast or utilize magic, and magic will not effect them.

A1. The Bone-Armed Man

This shrine is a statue of a starved man, thin and dry like a shrink-wrap person. His right arm and hand are exposed bones.

Give your arm a gentle bite, praying to the spirit of the shrine. The next time you are starving, you can muster the will to eat your own limbs without rolling.

Necromancer

Beloth is a wheezing elf living in a ramshackle snow-covered house. Says he doesn’t mind the cold anymore. Looks half dead. His chin and cheeks have turned black with frost. He’ll do necromancy for wine, or even grain alcohol, but has a serious drinking problem and can barely control the undead he raises.

Tombs

A graveyard for the Houseless, who died without a contract ensuring their servitude. The hypoxic below-freezing air helps preserve the bodies. Skeletons and zombies sometimes prowl the grounds, searching for replacement parts.

As Houseless, the legal protections over their bodies are weak, and parts may be taken in particular rites. These, however, are rarely enforced.

Slums

Poorest of the poor live here on the mountain top. Houseless, matronless, destitute. They live with zombies and skeletons, almost that themselves. Tiny little ramshackle houses stacked like playing card castles, only not a fire hazard because the air itself is so thin.

Little Orania is more bundles than flesh. She's a short stack hidden behind a hood pulled tightly around her face. People come to her when they have the very specific kinds of problems: usually interpersonal disputes. Most consider her a fair judge. She doesn't have the resources to help with the food/warmth/oxygen problem, but considers that her highest priority.

Monument to the Wind

Sometimes eagles come here to die. Their cold-preserved broken bodies lie strewn about on the rocks.

At the highest part of the highest peak there is a wind-eroded stone, that whistles through a narrow aperture. The words upon the stone have long faded into smooth obsolescence. If one can stand the icy grip of frozen death, one can hear the words of the Spirit of the North Wind. He knows things as a confused old man would, and only about things where the wind has gone.

Extremity Buyer

A house shaped like an upright finger, hidden between two ramshackle apartments. Inside is as an extremity emporium: dangling frozen-black ears, fingers, toes, noses, and sometimes even less savory things.

Cautious, the Finger Merchant, is a many-fingered necromancer (six on the left, more on the right), who specializes in grafting undead parts. She will buy frostbitten extremities for a fair price, and reanimate them with crone-like cheer.

A2. Harbath!

This shrine is a statue grinning man ear to ear with sharp chin, hands tucked in robes. The people here call him "Harbath!" with gusto every single time, like it's an inside joke.

Shout "Harbath!" right at the shrine as you pass, like a loud toast. If you don't shout at the shrine every time you pass you'll see the grinning image of the man as you die.

The Frozen Stair

Runs throughout most of the district. A single stone stair carved into the mountain. Winds blow across it like an air tunnel, and the locals usually avoid it. Covered in snow. Sometimes hidden ice. It is said that the stair was built upon one much older, and that sometimes the figments of strange humans can be seen climbing, but not descending the stairs.

The Spirit of the Stair is a trickster of bad luck, which manifests as an impish child of icy eyebrows and hair. If things are going well for you, the Stair will be safe. If things are going poorly, the Stair will be a hazard - black ice, snow-hidden spikes, cruel whistling winds and sharp teeth embedded in the stone (where previous victims had fallen).

Sometimes old women take people they care for here to ascertain their luck. A small disaster can be a good litmus test to prevent a greater one.

Soup Minders

A smoky community soup kitchen, filled with desperate people of all stripes. The wood shavings of leftover Dreamwood from Fumo make a particularly smoky and hallucinogenic fire. People who come here say that ghosts dwell beneath the floorboards - ghosts of asphyxiated rats.

Servius Houseless knows how desperate these people can be. He is a soup-sustained bag of skin and bones, and a fine self-taught cook with zero connections whose talents for the culinary arts are masked by his mediocre procurement skills. He'll make soup out of anything remotely containing calories. He organizes the cooking effort, and keeps a mental list of miserable and desperate persons - who is willing to do what and for how much. Often it's not much.

The Crows

A “bathhouse” for the undead. They meander up the hill to be ‘cleaned’, which means to be scrapped and peeled of rotting flesh using knives and curved hand-scythes. Their flesh is discarded to the birds.

The crows come far for food, weak in the high altitude but still desperate for food. But sometimes they are not simply crows, but Drow dressed in their feathers. They are a mystery cult devoted to the secrets of the Crow Queen, who they say lives off in the wake of carnage and decay. These cultists eat carrion, and flense with the skill of practiced butchers.

Down the mountain, one can find crows' nests with hand bones and jewelry. The Crow Queen takes these cleaned trophies as tribute.

Air Merchant

They’re sold in bladders made of some fungi that roll along semi-buoyant if loosed. Yurgo the Air Merchant is a short, barrel-chested man. He hires black-coated mercenaries to protect his wares, as he travels from Tenebris to Fumo to Galea selling pure oxygen. An absolute gouger, with the air of a snake salesman. He sells other cure-alls, too. Diluted silver nitrate and suppositories

His goods are highly flammable if pierced. He is thinking of investing in some slave-staffed pleasure houses once he's got the right matron.

Coffin Row

A hive of apartments for the undead and the desperate. Thousands of them. Such proximity has produced a gang of rats to make home in the spaces between the coffins, who scavenge the graves and make skeletons out of bodies.