SISSEKAI: A Brief History of Rhodeia Polis

Prelude

Rhodeia Polis is an ancient city; one that has witnessed calamity time and again. Founded in antiquity by dragonborn descended from survivors of the Simorghem, there are historians who place it as the very oldest of the seven city-states that once formed the alliance that held all of East Avaria for nearly three thousand years. It lies on the eastern coast of Avaria, the last of the three city-states that once sat on the coast of the North Sea, and even now commands a sizable swathe of the boreal lands that surround it--though even this area pales in comparison to the territory it once controlled, at the height of the Praxis Alliance’s power.

The Midnight Dawn

Before the canals and towering buildings of Rhodeia Polis, there came a humble tribe of dragonborn refugees, fleeing east in the wake of a host of falling stars. In those centuries between the fall of the Old Empire and the rise of the new, East Avaria was a lawless land, teeming with monsters old and new. Even their fellow survivors of the Simorghem, mortals just like them, would sooner cross spears or steal their bread than harbour them. Huddled in rags and plagued by sickness, monsters, and hunger; forced to trek through dark forests and over icy mountains and across a roaring river; the refugees’ arrival in the farthest-flung east was not the triumphant homecoming that one might associate with the founding of possibly the oldest continuously inhabited city on the continent of East Avaria. It was the stuttering final crawl of a badly wounded animal, struggling its way onto death’s doorstep for no other reason than blind desperation.

When they finally reached the coast, miles from the fertile banks of their river, it was in the midst of a brutal, exhausting chase. Wights, tribal and territorial, had hounded them through the mountains, only to be exchanged for a horde of startouched forest beasts the moment they crossed the river. In the darkness of the night, the beasts could not be fought, could not be hidden from; they could only but be outran. The moment the dragonborn touched cold sand, heard the crash of waves against rock, there was no relief among them, no prophetic realisation that this beach would one day become the bedrock beneath the final bastion of a three-thousand-year-old civilization. No: on that first night on the coast of the North Sea, when those few dragonborn survivors finally dropped everything but their weapons and turned to dig in their clawed heels and fight for their lives, the sea spray meant only that there was nowhere left to run. When they turned, it was with the full expectation that they would die.

Except they did not. The moment that the last dragonborn head turned away from the ocean, away from the east, a brilliant orange light poured out from behind them. Though dusk had fallen scarcely six hours ago, dawn had come again, and brought with it the holy light of the sun. The beasts that had hunted them so ravenously squeezed their hundred eyes shut, unable to withstand its liquid glow; and when they turned tail to flee, their dragonborn prey found themselves suddenly rejuvenated, the months and weeks of harrowing wilderness undone in an instant. They charged after the monsters, slaughtering them all. And, when the battle was done, they reconvened on that golden shore, now lit quite fully by the light of day, and agreed to the man that this hallowed ground was where they would make their new home.

From that day on, they were the tribe of Sal Rhodeia--‘sal’ meaning salt, ‘rho’ meaning waters, and ‘dei’ meaning goddess, particularly Belladonna Praxis, the goddess of sun and war who had created the dragonborn race in antiquity. The tribe of the moment that the sun touched the sea.

The Nemesis River

The bloodline of Sal Rhodeia has always had a conflicted relationship with the Nemesis River, the largest river that has ever fallen within Rhodeia’s borders (whether one counts from the height of their power or from what territories they hold in the modern day). Named for the sea god Nemean Narinder, mercurial and often wicked third son of Nerea Akhione, it alone claimed three dozen lives on that miserable trek eastward, dragonborn lost to its rushing waters and the monsters that lurked in its depths. Before the development of the Hydraugur, its yearly floods were known to strike unpredictably, often swallowing up farmers and livestock that the city depended on for its survival. And no fewer than twelve separate monsters of titanic proportions have taken up residence in the river’s waters over the millennia.

But with the bad comes also the good; the river’s very flooding is what makes its soil so rich and fertile, enough so that feeding a city of half a million souls is possible without any large-scale agricultural magic. It was also the Nemesis’s flooding that ended the efforts of the orcish warband of Chief Magon to lay siege to Rhodeia Polis, back in the days of the Praxis Alliance’s infancy; she had foolishly had her warriors build their bunks in the floodplains themselves, such that they could snatch the grain bound for the city the moment it left the soil. The twelve monsters that have settled in the Nemesis were each opportunities for brave Rhodeian soldiers and heroes to test their mettle against a true beast, even if most were ultimately slain by the Alliance’s draconic protector; and, for that matter, the conundrum of a mana-efficient method of restraining the river’s flooding led to dozens of breakthroughs in the field of manipulating fluids with magic, including the Hydraugur--the means by which the city of Rhodeia now commands the Nemesis and the North Sea as freely as its own gates.

Artificial Dungeon

Dungeons--those compressed liminal spaces that marry the realm of Tiresia with one of its colleagues, sealing off dimensional incursions in such a way as to qualify as their own little pocket dimensions--have always been a matter of curiosity to wizards and scholars, and in this the learned of Rhodeia Polis have never been an exception. Though Modernis University is one of the oldest institutes of knowledge in the world, and its extensive library is known as the Grand Library for very good reason, one could argue that the relative lack of dungeons in Rhodeia Polis’s immediate vicinity meant the city never really had a chance to be a real centre of research into dimensionalism, and the study of how dungeons intersect with reality.

Until, that is, the birth of Cadylliman Phineas. Known as ‘the mad wizard of Modernis’ long before the experiment-gone-wrong that tragically took his life, Cadylliman Phineas was the purveyor of a large number of experiments across a large number of magical disciplines. Though most of his designs were summarily rejected by the Board of Modernis University, over various concerns such as ‘posing an existential threat to our city’ and ‘being most certainly against the will of Belladonna in all respects,’ a few did make it past their scrutiny. And among those, naturally, was his Proposal to Generate An Artificial Compressed Spatial Anomaly.

The specifics of the experiment, regrettably, are lost to time: Cadylliman doubtless had them at hand when he activated the arcane device that he’d designed for this purpose, and when his soul and body were obliterated by the process (along with those of his three students, who were assisting in the experiment), they would have been obliterated too. With them went the majority of the three top-most floors of the Grand Library, where the experiment was conducted, and where any additional copies of the experiment’s notes would have been stored. However, in spite of all the deaths and property damage that were caused by this experiment, one thing can be said for it; whatever Cadylliman did to generate this ‘compressed spatial anomaly,’ it worked.

And now, the Tessellarium flickers at the top of the Grand Library, an enormous copper cube that intersects eerily with the dome of its original roof, its top-most corner pointed at all times to the centre of the sky. Exploration teams have determined that this dungeon is in all ways equivalent to any naturally-occurring dungeon in the world, barring the unique circumstances in which it was created, to the extent that it even generates its own monstrous protectors and labyrinthine layouts--and study of it, over the centuries since Cadylliman’s tragic death, has led to leaps and bounds in the Rhodeian understanding of dungeons, dimensionalism, and the fundamental nature of the world as it exists.

Tree of Akhione

Like a Tree of Caduceus, a Tree of Akhione arises as a percolation of divine energies in a site of great interest to a particular god. Trees of Caduceus owe their existence to the third Sister, Tesel Caduceus; Trees of Akhione sprout with the attention of the fifth Sister (and reigning queen of the gods) Nerea Akhione. However, where a Tree of Caduceus deals in the transfer of magical techniques, a Tree of Akhione provides mortals with the means to enhance their own innate attributes. Quickness of foot or of thought; strength of arm or of will; whether mental or physical, the Tree’s power grants it all.

When Rhodeia’s own Tree of Akhione rose from a sapling in what had been a leading general’s private orchard, and a visiting priest identified it for what it was (and proved it by partaking of the tree’s strange green fruit himself, which gave him strength enough to batter down his host’s front gate in a single blow), the city’s leadership and clergy descended into a fervent debate over the implications for a year. Belladonna and Nerea were aligned in many of their virtues, it was true, but did the sudden appearance of the latter’s favour imply the former’s disfavour? Was the newly matured tree a test? If the city did not promptly switch to Nereanism, abandoning their Belladonnism--and almost certainly the six other members of the Praxis Alliance, who would hold this shift in religion to be treasonous, Tree or not--would the Goddess of the Sea bring forth a tidal wave to obliterate Rhodeia Polis for its ingratitude? If she did, would Belladonna Praxis reward the city for its loyalty to her by protecting it?

In the end, the Council of Elders’ verdict was to change nothing. The tree had grown, undetected, in that general’s orchard for many years until this point; that Nerea Akhione had not seen fit to withdraw her favour at any point spoke to her mercy and her compassion. Clearly, the Council’s finest orator opined in the town amphitheatre, Nerea had simply granted the city her boon in light of its importance as a fishery and a harbour and a port. They assigned the most eminent priesthood dedicated to the sea--the Order of Benedictus Mariner, whose primary function was assessing the seaworthiness of Rhodeia’s many seagoing vessels, and then blessing the ones that they deemed fit to set sail--the additional duty of monitoring and caring for the new Tree of Akhione and the orchard that it grew in, then leaned back and washed their hands of it. Either choice risked incurring the wrath of a deity; when the proverbial flood came, it would be better by far to be a part of the continent-spanning empire of the Praxis Alliance than actively fighting against it.

For their part, the Order of Benedictus Mariner was delighted to assume this new responsibility, and promptly set about constructing a plaza, replete with druidic fountains, to house this living holy relic. It was just as well; two thousand years later, when the First Calamity poisoned the North Sea and rendered the Order’s primary business of inspecting Rhodeian ships obsolete, the Tree meant that they still had a reason to exist.

The Blighted Sea

One of the events credited for the decline of the Praxis Alliance was the First Calamity, one of a pair that appeared over a two-hundred year span and brought general ruin to East Avaria. Though she had no direct involvement with Rhodeia--she was primarily summoned to lay waste to the city of Mons Boreas--Cetus Calamitus has nevertheless caused deaths and devastation untold to the city, thanks to its activity in its waters.

A vast sea monster called from the very stars above, Cetus breathes a deadly poison with each one of her roiling, titanic breaths. This poison lingers in water of all kinds for years and decades after it has been released; most living creatures that are exposed to it, whether via physical contact with or ingesting polluted water, are converted into glassy rock, bit by bit, until they die. The rate of petrification varies, depending on the extent of the exposure; those who go after Cetus herself and suffer a direct hit from it are turned in a matter of minutes, while someone simply passing through waters that Cetus last entered a year ago may go for many years before their petrification is completed.

The ailment itself is called Ebonblight--so named for the dark, glossy texture, lined with rivulets of colour, that affected flesh takes on--and though cures for it do exist, they are difficult to make, and require ingredients that are fiendishly difficult to come by. Even most curative magic simply fails when used on Ebonblight: it takes a powerful healer indeed to save a victim from this illness.

Because of Cetus and her Ebonblight, Rhodeia Polis has not been able to conduct any of the maritime trade that was once its lifeblood in nearly a thousand years. Its canals, once bustling throughways that citizens, soldiers and merchants alike rowed down at all hours of the day to conduct their business, now sit as dry as bones, the deadly water of the North Sea held out of them by magical barriers. Its docks and piers lie idle and unmaintained, having disintegrated from disuse over the centuries of Cetus’s rule, extending mournfully into the ocean as dismal reminders of their city’s former glory. But the people of Sal Rhodeia have always been survivors: they have witnessed calamity, time and again. What’s one more?