THE JEWEL CITIES

Once provincial fishing villages isolated from the centers of religio-centric iaret culture, what are now known as the Jewel Cities are an independent but fractious power in their own right. As the gateways to the decadent Suzerainty, they grow fat and cosmopolitan on the imported riches of the Known Earth. Now undisputed centers of trade and learning, they are home to a new form of power, one backed by erudition and coin rather than force of arms and industry.

Despite their present independence, the tale of the Jewel Cities is in large part the tale of the Suzerainty. For as long as there have been cities in the deep jungle, there have been settlements that enjoyed the bounty of the Sea of Riches. Before the ascendancy of the Dynasts, that bounty was of aquaculture: fish and kelp to feed the inhabitants of the coastline. It was from the sea that the greatest boon came, for the apkallu brought learning to the iaret and taught them the necessary skills to the first great civilization upon Geb.

The preserved writings of a pre-Dynastic traveler to the coast in approximately YD 749, however, speaks of a place little changed by the vast evolution taking place in iaret society. “The wisdom of Geb is felt but lightly here. The temples are small and rustically furnished, with prayers sung only daily if at all. I have been witness to quaint local festivals of the sort unknown to civilization, such as the Lights Upon the Water wherein some among the teachers herd schools of jellyfish close to shore and the sea glows late into the night. Muruch move freely about the villages with their trinkets, and beastkin are accorded great liberties. My own guards and attendants keep me safe, for the priestly laws hold no sway here, with adjudication deferred to local wise men and women, and enforcement by little more than consensus.”

With aquatic trading burgeoning in this period, perhaps the Suzerainty might soon have taken a firmer hand but for the falling star. When it pierced Apsu’s breast, the devastation to the entire southern coastline was nothing short of cataclysmic. Tidal waves swept aside villages, uprooted the jungle for miles inland, and rewrote the shores. Great storms would wrack the Sea of Riches for a generation, and terrible creatures birthed from the depths of Apsu’s pain stalked the shallows as never before.

These threats kept the coastline primitive and hardscrabble for centuries as the inland empire of the iaret solidified into the Suzerainty under the reign of the Dynasts. As each successive Dynast pressed the mandate of rulership from horizon to horizon and pushed back the nightmares stirred up by the falling star. Finally through the strength at arms and magical puissance of the Suzerainty, that which haunted the Sea of Riches was banished again into the depths. With what was at the time the southern horizon secured the iaret again gazed inward.

After centuries of preoccupation with internecine religious struggle and Dynastic politics, a stronger line of Dynasts turned their eyes from a reunited realm to the horizons once more. Jade, the first of the Jewel Cities, was founded in YD 2900 as the center of the Suzerainty’s power on the coast. From there, Beryl was founded to protect that southern capitol, and civilization spread to the east and west along the shore.

Exploration beyond the Sea of Riches was soon to follow, and the explosion of commerce and colonization is what earned both the cities and the sea they bordered their collective monikers. New horizons had been discovered, promising wealth and the destiny of the iaret made manifest. Explorers, merchants and malcontents alike flocked to the coast to make their fortune.

Those fortunes, and those of the Jewel Cities themselves, waxed and waned for centuries. Their lustre was dimmed with the founding of Keltokel, and tarnished when the wars in the south sullied the honor of the Dynasts, and left untended by the Retreat, but never fully extinguished. Indeed, left to their own devices, the Cities flourished, looking to their own enrichment rather than serving only as a conduit to the decadent jungle cities. War and disaster came and went, but gold would always flow into merchants’ pockets, so long as there was safe harbor.

Untethered from the stifling religious orthodoxy of the Suzerainty’s priesthood, the Jewel Cities began to diverge, each coming into its own according to its geographic advantages or quirks of population. They remain loosely aligned, with a council held in a location which rotates yearly. There, representatives debate (and occasionally agree) on policies which affect the whole of the league of city states. What follows are brief descriptions of these wealthy and proud polities.

In the east, the city of Amber boasts the last deepwater port along the coast and is a center of trade with the Wandering Isles. Its markets are ever-changing as islands drift in and out of proximity with the city. Fortunes are made and lost as the plentiful becomes rare overnight and speculation is rife. During a period of Dynastic interest in the Isles, the city was rebuilt around a series of canals and a great inland shipyard was excavated. The Retreat abandoned these projects as it did all others, but the city has maintained them, and some of the most modern vessels in the Known Earth are constructed here. The emblem of the city is a trilobite frozen in amber.

Situated on a promontory with a small but nigh-impregnable harbor, Beryl has always been a fortress city. It was originally founded by the Dynasts to command the coastline against pirates and marauding muruch and provide arms to Satrapy forces in the colonies. With the immediate fall of Keltokel in the Gate War it became a natural locus for military forces fighting the soldati invasion. The initial soldati offensives targeted trade routes and industrial centers vulnerable to land invasion, and the Jewel Cities were allowed time to prepare before soldati fleets threatened the Sea of Riches. Ever since it has been known as the Mercenary’s Harbor and its standing army formed the core of the heavily armed and armored Jewel Cities marines during the war. The banners of the city bear a hexagonal pillar of their namesake gemstone to symbolize how the city stands against all threats.

Calcite sits tucked against the Serpent’s Back and lacks the large and well-developed harbor of the other Jewel Cities. Instead, myriad mountain fjords provide ample cover for smaller smuggling vessels plying the waters between Calcite and the marshes of Bracken. Smuggled goods then enter the port without tariff and are sold on into the interior of the Suzerainty. Calcite also enjoys strong trade ties with the ozrut and ptak of the mountains and does brisk business in hand-crafted exotic goods. Always small among the coastal cities, with an iaret population rivaled by mountain folk, Calcite has a reputation as rustic and a little wild. Showing the influence of its non-iaret inhabitants, the symbol of the city is a white flower in crystal.

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When it was founded, Jade was to be the crown jewel of Suzerainty culture and power on the coast of the Sea of Riches. No expense was spared in the construction of its broad avenues, stone piers, and glorious temples. For centuries the bells tolled to proclaim the might and sagacity of the Dynasts from horizon to horizon and act as a beacon to ships returning from the farthest reaches of the Known Earth laden with tribute. However, it was never the center of religious authority like the jungle cities at the heart of the Suzerainty and swiftly developed a dark underbelly of proscribed and deviant worship. Renegade priests and cults expelled from polite society found refuge and flourished here alongside foreign religions and strange syncretic churches. Here also the wealthy and noble of the Suzerainty could visit the “frontier” without the dangers, physical and social, of straying too far from the jungle. The city catered to decadent tastes best savored slightly beyond the notice of the Dynasts’ laws. Now a true melting pot, mortals and invaders alike can be found walking the streets of Jade. The city is one of the two “Eyes of the Gods” and it is represented by a jade Eye of Ranute.

The city of Moonstone was founded in YD 4090 by a historically obsessed Dynast intent on a never-revealed occult purpose. Various astrological and numerological requirements dictated its layout and construction, of which “the first stone must be laid 100 years to the day after the re-founding of Keltokel” was only the most simple. Troublingly, she died under mysterious circumstances the day before the last stone was laid and her body vanished before it could be entombed. As part of the city plan, vast libraries and scriptoriums were built within the city, and it became a center for esoteric research, learning, and magical experimentation. During the period of the Mercantile Wars this focus was turned to weaponry, and persistent rumor accuses illicit experimentation with unleashing lycanthropy on the Known Earth. This city’s symbol is a spindle shaped blue moonstone known as the Eye of Ash.

When the apkallu first came ashore, legend holds it was on the site where the city of Pearl was built. The city is sometimes called the Road to the Depths as it specializes in trade with the people still known by the iaret as “teachers.” Pearl is renowned for its schools of engineering and mathematics, as well as philosophical thought. The city also is home to one of the few apkallu monasteries on the surface, and supplicants come from all over the Known Earth to study, train, and meditate with the monks there. Broad canals and manicured lagoons welcome muruch to the city, but these are less extensive than found in Amber, and the city lacks as well-developed a harbor as its fellows. Iconography for the city features a white pearl with a black pearl as its shadow.

The city of Topaz sits the furthest inland of the Jewel Cities, floating deep within a long bay at the mouth of a river delta. While other cities enjoy river trade, the powerful Sethrum flows from deep in the interior of the jungle, much farther than the dominion of the Suzerainty extends. Where overland routes to the north must contend with impassable jungle and deadly monsters, the river bypasses some of these threats. Thus the city is now famed as a jumping-off point for expeditions north into the unknown reaches of the continent. A hotbed of adventurous natural historians, Topaz is full of strange beasts and stranger tales of undiscovered lands and peoples. On its heraldry, the yellow namesake of the city is split by a sliver of the rarer blue variant to symbolize the river that is its lifeblood.