Gethamane

From Thirdexalt

Directly north of Whitewall, and another frequent stop in northward journeys for traders, lies the mountain-city of Gethamane, set like a gem among the Northern peaks. While the city dates back to the First Age, no one knows the origins of this ancient fastness. The inhabitants tell stories of how their distant ancestors came here a century after the Contagion, fleeing plague and starvation and beset by raiders. They named the place Gethamane—“Sanctuary” in the tongue of the Old Realm. Its large halls are covered in intricate and beautiful carvings of unknown plants and beasts, strangely designed pictures that haunt the memories of visitors. The entire city is lit with glowing crystals that brighten during the day and dim at night, so that a man can live happily within for years and never see the sun. Fortunately for its inhabitants, Gethamane is distant enough that the Realm has never demanded that it pay tribute or attempted to make it a satrapy. Gethamane consists of hundreds of twisting corridors that connect countless rooms. The only remaining traces of the prior inhabitants are the three strange temples, carved with ancient depictions of fl ying creatures, and the sunken gardens of mosses and fungi that feed the city. The temples are served by priests who are called in their dreams, answering a message that they cannot refuse. Those who make the attempt go stark mad and flee the city, seeking the snow-bound silences of the mountains instead. Beneath the city lie endless tunnels that delve into the darkness far below. These delvings riddle the foundations of the city like wormholes, black and slick to the touch. Guards watch the dozens of entrances and bar the way against the things that, occasionally attempt to force entrance. Those who enter Gethamane’s underways to seek long-lost treasures do so at their own risk.

Four hundred miles north of Whitewall, some 80,000 people live in the small city of Gethamane. Their subterranean city grants them unmatched protection from the perils of the North. Living in the heart of a mountain, Gethamanians do not fear winter storms or barbarian attacks. Supernatural gardens remove the threat of starvation. Nevertheless, Gethamanians live in fear. The circling tunnels of their city connect to an immeasurably vaster, deeper labyrinth of underways beneath Creation—and from these nighted caverns come horror. As much as anyone else in the North, Gethamanians require constant vigilance to survive. HISTORY Like many of Creation’s great cities, Gethamane began in the First Age. Its history, however, is stranger than most. Perhaps it’s a good thing the Gethamanians don’t know it. THE FIRST AGE Gethamane was originally called the City of the Mountain Gateway. The Solar Deliberative ostensibly tunneled a city within a mountain as a trade and diplomatic nexus with the Mountain Folk and other strange inhabitants of the caverns far below Creation. Indeed, a great deal of contact with the underdwellers took place there. The Deliberative chose the location because of the Celestial Gate to Yu-Shan lodged in the underways beneath the mountain. As a bonus, a colony of Pteroks—a winged race of the prehuman Dragon Kings—lived on the mountain’s heights. The subterranean metropolis was also called Six Gates. In addition to the Celestial Gate, the city held a black jade portal to the tunnels of the Mountain Folk and four immense doors of jade and orichalcum steel that led into the mountain from north, south, west and east. Nothing exciting happened at Six Gates for more than a thousand years. No Solars were in town when the Usurpation began. The Dragon-Blooded easily blocked any contact with the rest of Creation. By the time any loyalists in the city might have objected, most of the Lawgivers were dead. Only the Pteroks knew what was happening, and they flew away and out of history. CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 35 Shortly thereafter, the City of the Mountain Gateway died. When the founders of the new Shogunate realized that their conspirators in the city had not restored contact, a Dragon-Blooded team investigated. They found the city’s gates sealed but everyone gone. Not even corpses remained. So, a group of Sidereal Exalted came to Six Gates. Neither Charms, sorcery nor the Loom of Fate gave any clue to what happened. The city’s past seemed as thoroughly eradicated as its inhabitants. The Shogunate stripped everything valuable and portable from the City of the Mountain Gateway, then sealed it. No one entered for several centuries and the city was forgotten. THE SECRET PAST Six Gates was a lot more than a trade nexus between the Old Realm and the underdwellers. Its true purpose was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Solar Deliberative. The city’s connection to Creation’s underways, however, brought about its doom. By now, discovering the truth would be extraordinarily difficult. REALITY ENGINES Back in the Old Realm, a perceptive geomancer might observe that the City of the Mountain Gateway’s combination of a high peak, a connection to Heaven and alignments to the cardinal directions appears at one other location: the Imperial Mountain, the axis of Creation itself. This was no accident. Deep in the highest-security areas of the city—areas never shown on any map, hidden with the help of the Maiden of Secrets herself—the Deliberative emplaced 25 reality engines. These devices, the height of Old Realm magitech, emulate the Elemental Pole of Earth by stabilizing reality against the Wyld. If some unimaginable catastrophe overwhelmed the Blessed Isle, these engines could turn the mountain of Six Gates into a replacement Elemental Pole of Earth, around which Creation could regain its stability. More than half the population of Six Gates was Dragon- Blooded or God-Blooded. A great many of them functioned as guards, whatever their official duties were. Neither the Mountain Folk nor anyone else was supposed to know what the small city held. These reality engines still exist in a ring between the Garden District and the underways. The entrances are virtually undetectable and open only to a Solar’s anima. Further defenses protect the vaults of each machine. THE ULTIMATE HORROR The second secret of Gethamane began with the Primordial War. When the first Primordial died, its dying Essence and alien ichor generated a new entity: a hekatonkhire, or ghost-behemoth. Most hekatonkhires dwell in the Underworld, but the one called Vodak exists simultaneously in the Underworld and Creation. Vodak took shelter in the underways. Every few centuries, Vodak woke to prey upon the underdwellers, destroying whole cities’ worth of the Mountain Folk and other races. When the blood of almost 300 Solars fell on Creation’s soil, the Essence-taste of its progenitor’s killers roused Vodak from slumber. The Mountain Folk conceived a desperate plan to trap the hekatonkhire. As the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals stalked and battled the last of the Lawgivers, the Mountain Folk captured numerous Solar offspring. They used the Golden Children as bait, luring Vodak to Six Gates. It arrived hungry. While the monster swept through the city like a silver ocean of death and madness, the greatest savants and sorcerers of the Mountain Folk cast their spells and activated potent artifacts. After six days spent devouring the city’s population, body and soul, Vodak returned to the depths to rest and digest its meal—and found it could not leave. The hekatonkhire now lurks in the deepest caverns below Gethamane, deeper even than the underdwellers know. When it sleeps, its dreams call to the underdwellers and fill them with its own hunger, hate and rage. When it wakes, the terror of its presence drives underdwellers to flee the depths into the city. Sometimes it reconstructs past victims from its own spectral flesh and plays murderous games with them. Vodak refrains from invading Gethamane for now, fearing the possibility of further traps. That may change… especially if Vodak scents Solar blood. VODAK AND THE REALITY ENGINES The Mountain Folk had few options in binding Vodak: They decided that nothing less than a city could distract the hekatonkhire long enough for them to cast their spells, and few cities connected to Creation’s underways. Storytellers might decide, however, that it was no coincidence the Jadeborn sacrificed a city stocked with reality engines. Conceivably, the Mountain Folk knew about the secret devices, used Vodak’s attack as cover to seize them and re-tuned them to supercharge their spells. Characters who discover the reality engines and remove them to use against the Wyld could unwittingly release Vodak on Creation. Storytellers might prefer instead that the Mountain Folk did not know about the reality engines. In this alternative, if the Mountain Folk had conferred with the Solar Deliberative, they could have lured the hekatonkhire into a trap: Once Vodak was between the reality engines, these mighty artifacts would have created a space that was too real for the spectral horror to exist. But that didn’t happen, and Six Gates died because of the bitter history between the Jadeborn and the Sun’s Chosen. Either choice presents opportunities for Storytellers. Decide for yourself which (if either) is true. 36 RESETTLEMENT The Great Contagion did not affect the City of the Mountain Gateway, because nothing lived there. If the invading Fair Folk noticed the empty subterranean city, they did not enter. A century after the Contagion, though, a band of refugees fled North, beset by plague, starvation and savage Wyld barbarians. Their God-Blooded leader, Bethan Redeye, led them through the Black Crag Mountains in hopes of finding safety in some whaling village on the White Sea. Instead they found a cave that turned out to be a minor tunnel into the abandoned city. As an alternative to starving, freezing or being eaten by Wyld barbarians, the uncanny city looked pretty good. They named the city Gethamane— Old Realm for “Sanctuary,” in hopes that naming it thus in the language of Heaven might provide a good omen. The refugees lived off whatever game they could catch in the mountains until they discovered the city’s magical Gardens. Fortunately, the Gardens are remarkably easy to operate. Within a month, the Gardens produced edible fungi and moss and the refugees became settlers. Not even the discovery of the dangers in the lower tunnels could persuade them to leave. Bethan Redeye worked out a system of allocating daily shares of food from the Gardens and whatever hunters and gatherers found outside. This system eventually became known as the Dole. Life was still hard, though, for the Gethamanians had little with which to work besides wood, leather, bone and stone. COMING OF THE GUILD For many years, the rest of Creation did not know about Gethamane. That changed when the Guild started sending caravans into the North. One caravan met a group of hunters from Gethamane. The caravan’s factor quickly realized that the subterranean city would make an excellent base for trading ventures through the North. He also saw the Gethamanians’ lack of outside sources of food, clothing and other commodities. Bethan Redeye (then in her 70s, and still leading the Gethamanians) traded food supplies and animal pelts for cloth, spices and metal goods, beginning the city’s partnership with the Guild… but she didn’t let the Guild know about the buried Gardens. (The Guild found out eventually, of course.) To keep the Guild from subverting and absorbing Gethamane, Bethan Conta Gatewa ente t North barbaria o Se min alternativ barba Sa lang live mou magica dens rem th an p s Gard outside Li Gethamanian woo m k w ing caravan fa w ventu Getha clot Red th an meta partnersh l G eventua ing CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 37 made the Dole contingent on labor for the city. What’s more, she decreed that no one could stay in the city for more than a month unless a Gethamanian family adopted them and they entered the Dole’s labor register. Adopted citizens could pay in jade or goods instead of labor, though. The system discouraged Guildsmen from building strong connections in Gethamane, and the ones who did paid dearly for the privilege of long-term residence. Bethan Redeye died at age 93, survived by two husbands and a dozen children. She trained all her children in administration, but named her second son Gerath as her heir. The office of Master or Mistress of Gethamane has stayed in Bethan’s line ever since. TO THE PRESENT Gethamane grew slowly but steadily. In time, it formed relationships with other Northern societies, usually with the Guild as go-between. In RY 586, this policy drew Gethamane into a trade war with the nascent Haslanti League. On the whole, though, Gethamane enjoyed a remarkably placid history. Its people have no desire to conquer others—that would mean leaving the mountain. No one else, not even the Empress, ever found an effective way to attack Gethamane. The disappearance of the Empress and the rise of the Bull of the North troubles some Gethamanians. The current Mistress of Gethamane, Katrin Jadehand, and her advisors draw up contingency plans for situations ranging from an attack by the Bull to a takeover bid by the Guild. Most Gethamanians, however, figure that the city can ride out any crisis the way it always has before: Expel any troublesome outsiders, shut the impregnable doors, live off the Gardens and wait a few years. They don’t like to remember that the greatest threat to Gethamane has always come from the endless dark tunnels underneath. GEOGRAPHY Gethamane does not pretend to control any territory beyond the slopes of its own mountain, but its hunters and gatherers see most of what happens within the nearest 20 miles or so. The hunters sometimes venture farther, out of the mountains and all the way to the White Sea shore. Sheltered valleys within the mountains sometimes hold patches of taiga that the Gethamanians cultivate and harvest with care—a tree can take 50 years to grow 10 feet high. Tundra covers the lower mountain slopes with hardy lichen, moss and patches of grass and herbs. The icy upper slopes are nearly barren. This far into the North, in a direct line from the Elemental Pole of Air, winter lasts much of the year and the growing season is just three months long. THE SUBTERRANEAN CITY Everything important about Gethamane is underground. The city consists of five layers: the Temple District at the top; the Upper Ring below that; the central Guild District; the Outer Ring, by far the largest sector of the city; and the Garden District, with the Gardens themselves at the center. Proximity to the source of the Dole makes the Garden District the most prestigious sector of Gethamane, while the Upper Ring’s distance renders it the least desirable place to live in the city. ENTERING GETHAMANE The north and south sides of Gethamane’s mountain hold sets of immense steel doors, a foot thick and gleaming the distinctive hues of jade and orichalcum alloys: pale blue in the north and reddish in the south. They are immune to all Shaping effects, whether sorcery, Charms or the powers of the Fair Folk. Inside, large wheels move stout bars to lock or unseal the gates. Beyond each gate stretches a tunnel 50 yards long, 10 yards wide and 10 yards high. The tunnel ends in a large antechamber with heavy portcullises of orichalcum-infused adamant at either end. Guards constantly man these posts. They never raise both portcullises at the same time. Cunning mechanisms, activated from the guard post, are intended to collapse the entrance tunnels in the event of a breach. (Obviously, these have never been tested.) The antechamber guards record the names and brief descriptions of every visitor to Gethamane. Free visitors must pay a silver dinar to enter. Slaves pay half a dinar (a concession to the Guild). Visitors short of cash can register to pay through labor: Plenty of menial tasks always need doing, such as cleaning passages. Slave caravans usually pay for the slaves’ entrance in this manner. No one enters the city without registration, though. Guards quickly move in to capture anyone who makes a ruckus, while drumbeats signal for reinforcements and a runner races to the Guard’s headquarters. About half a mile further up the mountain, a dozen small tunnels lead from the icy slope to clusters of chambers and from there to the Temple District and Upper Ring. These passages are all well camouflaged. Over the centuries, the Gethamanians also installed a variety of locking cast-iron doors, false tunnels, dropfalls and other traps for uninvited visitors. The mountainside chambers bear various THE MISSING ENTRANCES What happened to the eastern and western entrances to the City Under the Mountain? They still exist. Landslides covered them long ago, but the early explorers soon found the passages to them. Some settlers proposed excavating these entrances, but the Gethamanians eventually decided to leave them hidden. In fact, they walled off the tunnels and plastered over the walls. Only the Mistress and members of her advisory Council know about the spare entrances. If something should prevent the Gethamanians from using any other exit from the city, they can excavate the buried gateways in a matter of days. 38 inscriptions in a script unlike that found anywhere else in the city. Centuries ago, a visiting savant of the Realm identified it as the High Holy Speech of the Dragon Kings, and chiefly consisting of heretical prayers to the Unconquered Sun. CONSTRUCTION Most Gethamanian tunnels are square or rectangular. The floors and ceilings are the mountain’s own dark gray stone, plain and slightly rough. Other forms of stone or concrete sometimes cover the walls. Smaller rooms tend to be plain, but intricate and beautiful geometric carvings adorn the walls of larger passages and chambers. Some rooms have stone doors; others have new makeshift doors of wood or leather. Gethamane’s current population exceeds that of the old City of the Mountain Gateway. Many Gethamanians live in apartments formed by partitioning larger chambers or passages. Wealthy families mark their compound with screens of metal or elaborately painted wood. The poor make do with makeshifts such as leather, cloth, paper or scraps of wood salvaged from a merchant’s cart. UTILITIES Large crystals of pale violet set in the walls and ceiling emit a clear white light. The crystals glow brightly during the day outside and dim when night falls. Still, the crystals stay bright enough for most people to continue working. Guards can patrol, farmers can work in the Gardens, merchants can haggle and artisans can work on all but the most demanding tasks. Gethamane stays active all day and all night. People sleep to fit their work schedule. Gethamanians cover the crystals if they want darkness, but few people outside the visitors’ section ever do so. Most Gethamanians are used to constant light: True darkness frightens them. Damaging the crystals is a major offense. Gethamanians learned centuries ago that removing a crystal from its setting darkens it forever. For water, Gethamane has at least four large public fountains on each level. Citizens draw off water as needed. The Outer Ring additionally has two still-working bathhouses whose large, tiled pools magically heat the water in them. Two others no longer function. Unfortunately, most of the city’s internal plumbing corroded to uselessness during the long vacancy. Gethamanians make do with chamber pots and rather stinky non-flushing commodes. THE UNDERWAYS At least a dozen tunnels descend from the Garden District and the Outer Ring into deeper layers, called the underways. Rounded tubes and irregular caverns replace Gethamane’s square corridors and circular or rectangular chambers. The rock darkens from gray to black. The highest layers of the underways continue the concentric circular design of the city, but the deeper reaches become twisting, apparently random tunnels and caverns with no limit ever discovered. The underways have no light crystals. People do not live in the underways, but horrible and deadly creatures sometimes emerge from them to attack the people of Gethamane. Every entrance to the underways has a gate of iron bars—but that doesn’t stop every potential intruder. Despite the danger, people sometimes come long distances to visit the underways. Sometimes they return with treasures: strange artifacts, jewels—such as vibrantly violet diamonds—and rare ores hacked from the walls of distant caverns. Explorers even find small quantities of soulsteel. Sometimes, of course, explorers do not return at all. Gethamane’s leaders permit these explorations, in return for half of whatever valuables the explorers bring out of the underways. SOCIETY Gethamane is one of Creation’s most orderly societies. The security of the Dole keeps Gethamanians in their city, but organizing the production and distribution of so much food from a single source requires extensive control of people’s lives. Gethamanians register their occupations and record every hour of labor to justify their daily ration of fungus from the Gardens. What the clerks don’t know, spies must discover, for Gethamane cannot afford any disruption. Any civil unrest could not only leave people starving, it could leave the city vulnerable to invasion from below. Like most societies, Gethamane has its divisions of class, wealth and occupation. It has a literally stratified society. The wealthiest Gethamanians live nearest the all-important Gardens in the city’s lowest level. Middle-class citizens chiefly dwell in the Outer Ring. The Upper Ring receives Gethamane’s poor. Six great divisions of labor, based on activities vital for the city’s survival, provide an alternative set of social LOST MAGITECH For an Old Realm metropolis, Gethamane shows a distinct lack of Essence-powered conveniences. Only the light-crystals and the Gardens remain, for only they were both durable enough to resist Vodak’s passage and impossible for the Shogunate to remove. (In the centuries when the city was sealed, creatures from the underways might also have scavenged the city.) Nevertheless, the city is woven with hidden Essence accumulators and conduits, which all still function. Of the tens of thousands of jade-alloy plugs that once dispensed the Essence, only a few hundred remain (mostly in the Temple District and Garden District). These can still power any magitech device capable of connecting to them, as if each was a onedot hearthstone. Essence-channeling people cannot use the plugs: They function only for devices. CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 39 classes or interest groups that cut across divisions of income. The farmers maintain the magical Gardens. Hunters and gatherers bring additional food and other commodities from outside. The Guard preserves civic order and defends against the monsters of the underways. Artisans fashion the tools and implements needed for daily life. Merchants trade with the Guild and other outsiders. A large administration of clerks and bureaucrats keeps everyone else working together efficiently—or at least tries. Gethamanians often follow the same occupation as their parents. THE PEOPLE Gethamanians do not look like other Northerners. At least half the people never go outside, giving their skin an unnatural pallor. Only the hunters and gatherers, who must spend much of their time outdoors, show color in their cheeks, roughened skin or other signs of exposure to sun and weather. A hundred yards of insulating stone and the heat of 80,000 bodies keep Gethamane warm. Within the city, SECRETS OF THE UNDERWAYS The underways are not entirely natural. The Mountain Folk used to inhabit the upper layers, and someone familiar with the Jadeborn can recognize the workmanship of these tunnels and chambers. (Incidentally, this is why the Gethamanians cannot simply wall off the underways: The City of the Mountain Gateway’s air circulation system extended to the Mountain Folk districts of the city. Sealing the tunnels would disrupt that system, eventually rendering the entire city uninhabitable. Early Gethamanians learned this the hard way.) Many of the artifacts found in the underways are Mountain Folk workmanship. Races and creatures of which humanity knows almost nothing, such as the centipede-like and savagely bestial cthritae and the eldritch underfolk, shaped other parts of the underways. Most of these “darkbrood” are more or less hostile to humans while entities such as the Leech Gods are utterly malignant. Vodak’s presence subtly draws the most malevolent of these creatures and inflames them with hatred of Gethamane; but most of the gems and ores found by explorers come from mines initiated by underdwellers. Some of the creatures that attack Gethamane, however, are underdwellers slain and reconstructed by Vodak. The hekatonkhire itself created the soulsteel found in certain underways, as the intensity of its necrotic Essence transforms veins of iron ore when it passes. Scroll of Fallen Races is the principal source of information about the Mountain Folk. See also Dreams of the First Age: Book Two—Lords of Creation, pages 118–121 for brief treatments of the Mountain Folk and underfolk, while The Books of Sorcery, Vol. IV—The Roll of Glorious Divinity I describes the monstrous Leech Gods on pages 69–70. 40 Gethamanians dress lightly. Most citizens wear cotton or silk robes or tunics and trousers. Guards wear tunics and trousers under their armor, though they also wear boots instead of the usual soft slippers. Farmers wear simple brown robes. Hunters and gatherers, of course, need heavy wool, fur and leather when they go outside. Regardless of occupation, Gethamanians prefer deep colors, grays, black or brown. They reserve brightly hued clothing for the bedchamber. FAMILIES AND ADOPTION Family and class intertwine in Gethamane. The prosperous folk of the Outer Ring and Garden District generally belong to clans who number in the hundreds and occupy large sectors of tunnels and chambers. The poorer folk of the Upper Ring still manage to live as extended families with dozens of aunts, uncles, cousins and kin all together. Quite simply, it takes a degree of wealth to acquire enough space for a family to stay together; but a family that stays together can also economize through hand-me-down clothing, stacking relatives in bunk beds instead of renting more space and similar expedients. The truly poor live in whatever disused corners of the city they can find. Their children are lucky if they can stay with their parents until adulthood. Many waifs make their own way in the city because their parents are too poor to care for them. Gethamanians reckon descent through the female line, though a woman’s current husband is legally the father of all her children. Families often adopt children too, a custom that began as a way to make sure that orphans—future workers— would survive and to provide childless couples with heirs to care for them in their old age. Now the custom has a life of its own, and most large families include a few adopted members. Adoption ends all ties to the former family, legally and (Gethamanians hope) emotionally. Gethamane doesn’t treat unions between cousins as incest but forbids unions between adopted siblings. Constant adoption prevents serious inbreeding, but many tragic plays deal with youths who fall in love with adopted siblings. (Such plays usually end with murderous rampages and suicide, or one lover nobly choosing exile. Comedies end with one lover adopted into a different family, making their marriage permissible.) When a Gethamanian of humble birth shows great skill and dedication, a wealthy and socially prominent family may adopt her. Not only does this provide Gethamane with a unique form of social mobility, it prevents the leading families from becoming stagnant and complacent. Most citizens are known by their personal name followed by a family name. For extra formality, Gethamanians give a person’s name followed by “of the such-and-such family.” Distinguished Gethamanians add a descriptive epithet, the way Bethan was called Redeye or the current Mistress Katrin is called Jadehand for the martial prowess she showed during her youth as a Guard. LEISURE Citizens who perform sufficient labor to earn their Dole can do whatever they want with any spare time. Respectable pastimes include quiet exercise, productive crafts (the current fad is carving imported driftwood), watching morally uplifting plays and writing pastiches of barbarian epics about honor and virtue. Gethamanians also enjoy music, favoring wind instruments or soft string instruments. Music never includes drums: Such instruments are reserved for the Guard’s use. Lives constrained by tunnel walls, crowded families, dependence on the Dole and vigilance against invading horrors result in many Gethamanians feeling the need for stronger and stranger release from tension. Behind closed doors (or pulled screens) they take a wide variety of drugs, from imported opium and qat to hallucinogenic local mushrooms. Casual sex, quite outside of marriage, is also common. Some Gethamanians seek pain instead of pleasure, leading to private sessions of torture between consenting (or paying) adults. Scarification is currently fashionable, sometimes undertaken using drugs to intensify the pain. Gethamanians are quite strict, though, that indecorous amusements not leave a mark or disturb the neighbors. Even the young who want to shock their parents keep their scars or welts hidden beneath clothing, so they can show a placid, pale and unmarked face in public. Likewise, Gethamanians only complain about a neighbor who copulates with imported goats if he doesn’t keep the noise down. The great unwritten law of Gethamane is simply this: Don’t make a fuss. Don’t disturb the functioning of the city. And, don’t be loud. Many ears are listening… and no matter what you do or where you do it, you want to hear the distant alarm-drum or the nearby hiss or scuttling that means the horrors are loose and you must run or fight for your life. FOREIGNERS While Gethamane has its poor, people from outside the city form the true underclass. By law, foreigners can stay in Gethamane for just one month a year, and they are strongly encouraged to stay in the Guild District. (Visitors who wander soon find Guards asking, with edged politeness, if they are lost. Visitors who wander near the Gardens find Guards drawing steel on them.) Shopkeepers overcharge them. Other Gethamanians treat them rudely. Even the beggars who smile and plead for coins then sneer and mock when no outsiders watch them. Foreigners stand out. They lack the subterranean pallor, the clothes, the accent and ways of speaking that characterize a Gethamanian. The only way a foreigner can stay indefinitely in Gethamane is for a native family to adopt them. Even marriage does not suffice: Gethamane does not recognize marriages to outsiders. Someone must attest that she takes the foreigner as a son or daughter. The adopted outsider then must register for the Dole and turn in timesheets that prove her daily labor, just like every other citizen. Such adopted citizens still endure chaffing and snubs for a while, CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 41 but they eventually learn to fit in and other Gethamanians learn to recognize them. Very few foreigners win adoption into Gethamanian society. Families reserve adoption as a reward for outsiders who make themselves truly beloved or who perform extraordinary services for the city. The Guild has tried for centuries to get agents adopted into Gethamane. So far, the result has been not the subversion of Gethamane but the disgrace of any family the Guild bribed or deluded into performing the adoption. The harvest goes to depots where the farmers issue the Dole. Minor administrators check the identity of each claimant and issue the requisite amount of food for the citizen’s family. Several Guards stand watch at every depot. These parts of the Garden District stay constantly busy, with queues of people waiting for the Dole and actors, musicians and other entertainers hoping to make a bit of silver by amusing them. The core of the Gardens holds a knot of small, oddly shaped caves with a pedestal in the center. The fungi overflow the trays here to cover the floor and walls, though never the pedestal. Glyphs engraved on the pedestal make the Garden’s basic operation obvious to anyone who studies them. Back in the first Age, a Dragon-Blooded manager of the Gardens wrote these instructions using the Craft Icon Charm (see The Manual of Exalted Power—The Dragon-Blooded, p. 130). Advanced procedures (involving alchemical treatments, special lighting conditions and the like) enable the Gardens to produce any sort of vegetable matter, but these are scribed on the walls in ordinary Old Realm script—and bioengineering jargon that few people in the Second Age could possibly understand. Over the centuries, the Gethamanians figured out that this cave is a powerful manse (Earth ••••), whose power is entirely devoted to fueling the Gardens’ magical fecundity. It has no known hearthstone. GUILD AMBITIONS In case it needs to be said, the Guild wants Gethamane. The Guild already uses the city as its hub for commerce in the Far North. The residency rules, however, inhibit factors from building long-term business relationships. Over the centuries, many factors have drawn up plans for using the secure location and food supply of Gethamane as the anchor for a commercial empire in the North. For instance, one plan calls for using troops from Gethamane to secure the bay to the North and turn it into a home port for an ice ship fleet that could contest Haslanti dominance in the White Sea. Such plans remain idle fancies, however, unless the Guild can bend Gethamane to its will. MAKING A LIVING However strange Gethamane seems to outsiders, its people still need to eat, craft tools and otherwise secure their livelihoods—even if they do things a little differently. FARMING The Gardens occupy a complex of long, dark caves. The entrances have light crystals, but the Gardens themselves are dark except for faint luminous streaks that mark the edges of paths and growing fields. Various sorts of fungi grow in shallow, bathtub-sized trays set in the floor. Only a few trays are cracked and no longer function. The entire circular array of chambers is two miles wide—probably the most productive acreage in Creation. The dung and offal that the farmers dump in the trays are wholly inadequate to sustain the mushrooms and other fungi that grow with unnatural speed to feed tens of thousands of people every day. Despite the unsavory fertilizer, the farmers keep the rest of the Gardens swept and scrubbed spotlessly clean. The farmers do not speak much as they work. Some farmers push barrows full of dung through the narrow paths between trays, then spread this fertilizer over the chosen beds. Other farmers add bits of the fungi they intend to grow or add water from wheeled tanks. A few hours later, the farmers trundle past with a new set of barrows for the harvest. THE FARMER CULT The Gethamanians do not realize that the Gardens’ manse is damaged. It hasn’t suffered any sort of power failure, but spending too much time in the Gardens can affect a person’s mind. Affected people become obsessed with providing the Gardens with… richer compost. A secret cult among the farmers conducts human sacrifices. Now and then, a criminal sentenced to work in the Gardens suffers a “fatal accident” that leaves him spread-eagled over a tray, bled dry and emasculated before the body is discovered. Only senior farmers participate in the cult. The Mistress and several other leading citizens know about the cult but choose not to get involved. The older farmers believe they must propitiate the Gardens and the gods of fungi in this manner. Other Gethamanians believe the farmers and fear to change any of their traditions. An expert in geomancy or Craft (Genesis) who examines the Gardens’ instructions can tell that the sacrifices are completely unnecessary. HUNTING AND GATHERING The hunters and gatherers supply far less food than the Gardens, but other Gethamanians value their contribution a great deal. The Gethamanians could live exclusively on 42 fungi from the Gardens (and have in the past, for years at a time) but the hunters and gathers supply flavor. The hunters bag reindeer, ducks and other game. The gatherers collect edible lichen, berries, bulbs from winter-hardy herbs and other foodstuffs. Hunters and gatherers can keep a fifth of what they bring to the city, to feed to their own family or sell. The rest goes to the Garden District depots for distribution as part of the Dole. Over the centuries, the hunters and gatherers absorbed just about every trade that involves bringing raw materials into Gethamane. For instance, Gethamanians consider logging a form of gathering. Some Gethamanians keep sheep and goats. During the brief summer, their herds graze on the mountain slopes. The animals spend the long winter inside the city with their owners, though. Gethamanians usually pen these animals in sections of the Upper Ring, among the poor. Their owners harvest huge amounts of hay to feed their beasts over the winter; as a result, animal husbandry is also treated as gathering. Five large warehouse-chambers, spaced around the Upper Ring, are kept cold with ice brought from outside. The city owns these chilled warehouses. Any Gethamanian can store food here, at a cost of one-twentieth the food’s value (or of the food itself). Hunters and gatherers often use this option, since keeping large amounts of valuable meat or vegetables in one’s home invites thievery. Plenty of Guards patrol the warehouses to protect their contents. The corridors near the warehouses bustle with merchants, beggars, hunters, gatherers and other citizens trying to strike deals. Wealthy Gethamanians can enjoy fresh reindeer steaks with cloudberry jelly. The poor hustle for suspiciously overripe snowshoe hare carcasses. It’s no accident that the poor folk of the Upper Ring suffer rates of food poisoning much higher than in the rest of Gethamane. Mining, too, is considered a form of gathering. Gethamane operates a few small mines for copper, salt and mica. The Guild operates several more, and Gethamane still gets most of its metal from the Guild. COMMERCE Guards direct all visitors to the Guild District of Gethamane, the site of most of the city’s commerce. Each of the 20 passages to this district has a Guard post. Three large central caves hold the principal markets. The next rings out serve as warehouses. Beyond them lie accommodations for visitors and whatever Gethamanians (chiefly merchants and artisans) choose to live near the places where they trade. The Guild claims a large sector for its own caravans. Lesser merchants and miscellaneous travelers rent rooms from the Guild or from Gethamanian owners. Some visitors just camp in the warehouses or disused corridors. The Guard watches the Guild District closely. Guards at each entrance keep careful records of everyone who enters and leaves, and what they bring to the city. In daily sweeps through the district, the Guard seeks and removes people who overstay their one-month welcome. Guards also remind visitors who have a day or two to go that they should prepare to leave soon. The Guild District sees a constant turnover as traders come and go. THE THREE MARKETS As its name suggests, the Food Market sells food, in bulk or retail. Many enterprising citizens have set up snack bars and cooking stalls. The large stalls for imported raw, processed or preserved foods occupy the center of the cave. Further out lie smaller stalls for cooking services or luxury foods (including wine and beer). The northern end of the great circular chamber holds stalls for drugs and medicines. The largest stall belongs to the city of Gethamane itself. It sells food from the fungal gardens at a low price to undercut most of the other food stalls, and bring more revenue to the city government. The Metal Market deals in goods made of metal or stone, both raw materials and finished products. Naturally, weapons and armor make up a good bit of the business. Some artisans set up shop in the market itself to forge items to order, keeping the market both smoky and noisy. The Metal Market is also the traditional spot to sell treasures recovered from the underways, even in the (admittedly rare) cases when such items are not mineral in nature. The Wood Market began by selling timber, firewood and furniture. It then branched out into cloth and by now has become a catchall for any commodity or service that doesn’t deal with food or metal. Knowledge is the Wood Market’s most distinctive trade: petty thaumaturges, charm-sellers and diviners, guides to the city and the surrounding countryside, books, and of course “true and verifiable” maps to the underways. The Guard turns a blind eye to such frauds, as Gethamanians believe that anyone stupid enough to fall for such a scam deserves whatever happens to him. In contrast to Gethamane’s usual mania for control, the city lets merchants hash out for themselves who parks their COOKERY Much of the Dole is simply washed, sliced, spiced and eaten raw. Living underground limits Gethamanian cooking: The ventilation system cannot handle a lot of smoke. People often stir-fry their food using dried grass for short bursts of intense heat. They also pack slow-burning, nearly smokeless fuel such as dried peat within a heavy crock and place a smaller pot within it. Gethamanians often freeze-dry foodstuff on the windswept mountain heights, then reconstitute it by stewing it in such a “Gethamane oven.” CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 43 stall where. The Guild naturally has the largest stalls in the best locations. All stalls are made of wood. Some trading groups arrange to use a stall in shifts as they enter and leave the city, so they can keep a good location. Some stalls stay in the same location for decades, which brings considerable respect to their owners. TRIBUNAL CAVE The most opulent chamber in the Guild District is reserved for consultations between Guild factors and local officials, or any merchants whose wealth or power earn them the Guild’s respect. Ornate gilded tables, chairs and divans, costly silks and brocades, ornaments of porcelain and jade and other fripperies serve to impress visitors with the Guild’s wealth. Costly liquors and exotic drugs impair a visitor’s judgment in other ways. The Guild can also bring in superb courtesans or anything or anyone else needed to bedazzle or befuddle a target. Meetings range from staid discussions of tariffs and commercial law to wild debauches—with a contract and pen offered at a strategic moment. The Guild uses its own mercenaries to protect Tribunal Cave, and keeps the city Guard away as much as possible. Naturally, the Guard takes every excuse to search Tribunal Cave. Indeed, the Guard takes any chance to ransack Guild quarters in search of incriminating documents or other evidence of misbehavior. RELIGION AND THE SUPERNATURAL Most Gethamanians are not very religious. They leave such matters to priestly professionals. Gethamane’s own gods make few demands—they haven’t even given their names— and other gods show little interest in the City Under the Mountain. Worshipers of other gods can set up shrines in the Guild District. The city sets aside several rooms for visitors to dress in whatever temporary temple trappings they want. Only Immaculate shrines are not allowed—a centuries-old holdover from an encounter with exceptionally high-handed missionaries that went badly. Shrines are forbidden elsewhere in the city (though the Guards ignore portable traveler’s shrines unless they want an excuse to harass a visitor). As long as worshipers do not break Gethamane’s civil laws, the city government turns a blind eye. TEMPLES TO UNKNOWN GODS Gethamane’s temples consist of three spacious rooms near the top of the mountain. Their walls bear jewel-encrusted carvings of mountains and strange flying creatures. (The decorations include tiny quantities of moonsilver, starmetal, orichalcum and jade, but extracting a useful amount would take days of very public effort.) Blue-white Essence fires burn above the three circular altars. People who enter the temples feel an eerie sense of being watched, but no deity has ever manifested. Those who sleep in 44 a temple experience vivid, confusing dreams, often of frantic searching or desperate flight. Some dreamers find answers to questions that bothered them. This is the chief reason why Gethamanians visit the temples. More likely, dreamers spend the next few nights in sleepless anticipation or dread. A few feel called to serve as priests. A very few wake in screaming terror. They cannot remember their dreams but cannot bear to spend another minute in the city. Gethamanians know that such people may injure or kill themselves if kept from escaping. Fortunately, they seem to recover their wits once they depart and can no longer see the mountain. Gethamanians do not become priests deliberately. The priesthood began early in the settlement of Gethamane, when a few loners who slept in the temples then told Bethan Redeye that they had to serve in the temples instead of doing other work. The first Mistress of Gethamane acquiesced. All subsequent priests have been similarly dream-called. Priests receive a share in the Dole equal to that of a mid-ranking Guard or farmer. Priests abandon their old lives. They offer flowers and animal blood on the altars. Late at night, the priests cover the temple floors with complex designs drawn in ink, colored sand or, occasionally, their own blood, while chanting in an unknown tongue. The priests cannot explain either their mandalas or their liturgies, but they feel driven to perform both. Afterward, they clean and polish the temples. The acolytes themselves have no hierarchy. The Master or Mistress of Gethamane appoints a High Priest or Priestess, just so the city’s Council has a single person with which to work. Gethamanians call the other priests Father or Mother, regardless of their age. In addition to propitiating Gethamane’s nameless gods and assisting people who want to dream in the temples, the priests act as exorcists. When Gethamanians feel that some malign influence affects their lives, they call in a priest to conduct banishing rituals. These ceremonies involve lots of community participation. When the malign influence is a grudge between neighbors, the shared ritual can help ease the conflict. Yet, some priests study the thaumaturgical Art of Warding and Exorcism (see The Books of Sorcery, Vol. III—Oadenol’s Codex, pp. 141–144) in case the malign influence is a rampaging demon or other supernatural horror. THE DEAD By law, Gethamanians cremate their dead in the Essence-fires of the temples. Families keep the ashes in small ornamental boxes, scatter them on the mountain slope or add them to the fertilizer for the Gardens. Some families do not want to relinquish the bodies of their loved ones, however, leading to a small industry of illicit embalming and taxidermy. These families bribe suitable bureaucrats to attest to a body’s cremation, then actually have the corpse preserved. Now and then, an embalmed (or stuffed) corpse is discovered in a hidden room or secreted in a family’s quarters. This always leads to a search of the area for other bodies and the arrest of everyone involved. No one knows the full extent of mortuary crime, but it is especially common among the rich families of Gethamane, who can afford the needed bribery and have the space to hide their ancestors. Despite this illicit ancestor reverence, Gethamane has no true ancestor cult. This is because Gethamane has no ghosts at all. Gethamanians accept this as normal. SECRETS OF THE TEMPLES The source of the chants and mandalas is obscure but not unknowable: The liturgies are in High Holy Speech, the language of the Dragon Kings. The temple walls portray members of the Pterok breed of this ancient, nearly extinct race. The inscriptions found in the chambers used by the hunters and gatherers are likewise written in this obscure tongue. The priests’ mandalas, however, come from the practices of the Mountain Folk. Each of the three temples houses a god of air, sky and flight. The Solars who built Gethamane recruited these three small gods to circulate the city’s air and keep it fresh. When the City of the Mountain Gateway died, the gods lost all their worshippers; the gods found no help in Yu-Shan, for the other gods were preoccupied with the Usurpation and losses among their own worshipers. So the three gods waited in their temples, alone and slowly going mad, but continuing their duty. The gods try to touch the minds of sleepers and help them with their problems, but they aren’t very good at it. Some dreamers catch a bit of the gods’ insanity and feel compelled to serve as their priests. Others receive the gods’ memories of the First Age city’s extermination by Vodak. This drives them mad with the need to flee. GHOSTS IN GETHAMANE Few of the materialistic Gethamanians become ghosts after death. They never last long if they do. Vodak spawns numerous smaller versions of itself that sweep through Gethamane’s counterpart in the Underworld, and immaterially through the city in Creation. Those with Essence senses (such as All-Encompassing Sorcerer’s Sight) occasionally see a wash of silver move swiftly through a room or corridor. The rush affects nothing in the material world, but any immaterial creature is most likely doomed. In the Underworld, Vodak’s spawn devour any ghost within minutes. CHAPTER THREE • THE CITY UNDER THE MOUNTAIN 45 THE EXALTED AND OTHER ESSENCE WIELDERS Gethamanians do not much like the Terrestrial Exalted, chiefly because of high-handed Immaculates and Dynasts. They also know the danger of showing such dislike. The Dragon- Blooded rarely stay in Gethamane for long, though. They have bad dreams as the maddened gods clumsily try to warn them and, through them, the long-dead Solar Deliberative. The people have no experience with other Exalted—that they know about—so they base their opinions on stories. They fear the Lunar Exalted as patrons of the icewalkers and other barbarians. The Bull of the North is distant but sounds dangerous. Of course, Gethamanians have no knowledge of the Sidereals. Other Exalted are too new for Gethamanians to know about them. Any Exalted who visit Gethamane, or Exalt among them, could determine how the people feel about their kind for centuries to come. Gethamane’s hunters and gatherers occasionally encounter the Fair Folk. The tales of the survivors ensure the Gethamanians’ thorough hatred and fear of the raksha. Fortunately for Gethamane, the local Fair Folk have no desire to enter a city that gives them the creeping horrors—not even fae who normally might relish such a strange and dramatic emotion. Fair Folk blame this aversion on the city’s jade and orichalcum gates, not on quiescent reality engines or an instinctual sense for Vodak’s presence. Demons rarely enter Gethamane—most likely summoned or sent there on a mission by a sorcerer or thaumaturge. Gethamanians abhor demons as much as most people do. Demons also seem to loathe Gethamane, and do not linger even when they have the chance. They feel something immensely darker and more dangerous than themselves lurking nearby. Gods and elementals avoid the city for the same reason, though none of these spirits can find the ultimate source of the terrifying Essence. Gethamane’s limited contact with supernatural creatures means the city has almost no God-Blooded citizens or other half-breed channelers of Essence. Gethamanians rarely try to enlighten their own Essence either, due to their cultural isolation and lack of any institution to encourage this practice. The Guard wants to recruit thaumaturges for the enchantments, talismans and alchemical medicines they can provide. The city has few skilled thaumaturges, though. Thaumaturgically proficient outsiders who want to join the Guard can easily wangle adoption into a family with strong traditions of Guard membership. DISREPUTABLE FOLK Most Gethamanians like to think of their society as prosperous and orderly, controlled and smugly secure. Nevertheless, the city has its poor, its discontented and indeed its actively criminal. THE JADE HOSPICE Not far from the temples lies Gethamane’s largest charity hospital, the Jade Hospice. Citizens who volunteer as a way to earn their Dole, and minor lawbreakers who pay their debt to society as unskilled labor or nursing staff, assist the staff of priests and healers. The hospice sees a constant stream of sick and injured poor people from the Upper Ring. The Jade Hospice does not have the best-trained staff of Gethamane’s hospitals, but it currently has the most reliable funding. Its director, the matronly Enath Daur, comes from a leading farmer family. She also holds a Council seat, where she works to improve the lot of Upper Ring folk, or at least make sure they are not further marginalized. THE JANISSARY VAULT Not everyone in Gethamane relies on the Guard for their safety. The Janissary Vault, located in the Outer Ring, supplies warriors, bodyguards and assorted muscle for hire. Its owner, the melodramatically named Vaultmaster (and yes, he goes masked) says that his service would never consider doing anything against the laws of Gethamane. Nevertheless, a sufficiently discreet client can arrange for any sort of thuggery short of murder. Many people suspect the Janissary Vault is a front for the Guild (mercenaries being one of the Guild’s core businesses). The Guild would like to own the Janissary Vault, but the business has stayed independent since it began 50 years ago. The Vault’s mercenaries are about evenly divided between outsiders who managed to wangle adoption into Gethamanian families, and Gethamanians who were expelled from the Guard or who found its standards of courage and discipline too difficult. Janissaries receive little respect, for they are not duty-bound to run toward monsters. Gethamane’s government does not accept Vault employment as any sort of service to the city, greatly limiting their Dole ration. Mistress Katrin and the Council would like an excuse to shut down the Janissary Vault, or at least force it to register every job and client. THE PHILOSOPHY CELL A collection of public meeting rooms in the Outer Ring hosts an informal club of amateur intellectuals and pseudointellectuals. Members range from young people who want to pick up some radical ideas with which to shock their parents, to careful scholars of Gethamane’s many mysteries. In between are unlicensed thaumaturges, drug addicts, devotees of self-created religions and people who just want to argue. Most members are harmless and frivolous. A few regulars are serious and capable savants, varying widely in their ethics—from Serret of the Bethanites, a painstaking amateur historian of the city, to the alchemist Tazar Pellan, who tests his concoctions on people who want “mystical experiences,” to Damaithe Yarni, a thaumaturge and closet demonologist. THE RAT’S NEST A gang of juvenile thieves makes its clubhouse in an abandoned, junk-filled storehouse in the eastern sector of the Outer Ring. Most of the children come from middle- or 46 upper-class families and think that their “Society of Thieves” is all a grand game organized by their leader, Jaxar. The children commit petty thefts, pull pranks and generally cause mischief. The children know that Jaxar isn’t really a fellow child, but they don’t think of her as really a grown-up, either. Jaxar is a dwarf with a preternaturally youthful face… and she works for the Guild. The children do not realize that the gossip they pass to their young-old playmate goes to the Guild— or that exposure of their naughty deeds could disgrace their families. Jaxar watches their parents to gauge who she could blackmail through their children’s misdeeds. She expects to build a cadre of citizens in Gethamane’s upper class who serve the Guild to avoid disgrace. SEVENTH HALL Despite their poverty, the Rasri family of dung-carriers, sweepers and garbage pickers have held this set of chambers in the Upper Ring for many years. They now use the Seventh Hall as the meeting place for a conspiracy of other poor and discontented Gethamanians. The conspirators are angry with the city’s government and want to replace it with the Guild. They imagine that they would get rich if they could own slaves to do the drudgery they currently perform, and that the Guild could make Gethamane the mightiest nation of the North. Family patriarch and conspiracy leader Yftar Rasri seeks Guild support for his conspiracy. So far, the Guild rejects his advances as obvious attempts at entrapment.

Contents 1 GOVERNMENT 2 THE RULING CLASS 3 THE INTELLIGENCERS 4 THE COUNCIL 5 THE ADMINISTRATION 6 LAW AND CRIME 7 THE FIRST RULE 8 THE SECOND RULE 9 THE THIRD RULE 10 TRIAL AND PUNISHMENT 11 SLAVERY IN GETHAMANE 12 THE GUARD 13 THE GUARD ENTIRE

GOVERNMENT

Administering the Dole requires a small army of petty bureaucrats, who monitor every citizen’s activities to make sure that she deserves her share of the fungus gardens’ bounty.

In some ways, however, Gethamane’s government remains that of a small town. At its heart, the city’s government consists of a leader, an old, rich and powerful extended family, and a small group of cronies.

THE RULING CLASS

The descendants of Bethan Redeye still rule Gethamane. The city’s monarch, called the Master or Mistress, chooses a successor from the Bethanite clan—usually a son, daughter, niece or nephew, but sometimes from remote cousins. The monarch always must have a designated heir, though the designation can be changed at whim. In Gethamane’s only recorded coup attempt, the disgruntled Mineko Threebrand of the Guard tried poisoning all the then-Master’s close relatives. The Master quickly adopted three leading Gethamanians (all remotely descended from Bethan Redeye) as his offspring to replenish the clan. Today, the Bethanites number more than 2,000—all of them potential heirs. Most Bethanites work as administrators, magistrates, accountants and scribes. They form much of the city’s civil service. Bethanites often undergo basic training as guards or farmers as well, the better to deal with those important institutions. Indeed, custom holds that a Bethanite who wants to administer some aspect of city life should have practiced it as well. Most of all, though, Gethamane needs educated clerks and shrewd negotiators to distribute the Dole and deal with Guild. Some members of the clan choose occupations ranging from painter to swordsman, but they all start by learning arithmetic, reading and writing.

Gethamane’s current ruler is Katrin Jadehand, a woman in her 50s who has been Mistress for 10 years. She was both the previous Master’s choice and a popular favorite. Katrin spends a great deal of time pondering how best to assure her city’s stability and survival. While she pragmatically realizes that Gethamane might need to ally with some greater power, she would rather avoid this—and she will try not to accept any alliance that she cannot afford to break later.

THE INTELLIGENCERS

Everyone in Gethamane knows that Bethanite family members pass information to the city’s Mistress. To learn what citizens and visitors don’t want the government to know, the Mistress has spies called Intelligencers. Undercover informants are difficult to recruit, though. Adopted outsiders can’t pass for native Gethamanians, and the strong tradition of family loyalty means that few Gethamanians would serve the Mistress ahead of their own kin.

The Head Intelligencer, a man called Shakan who poses as a Deputy Almoner in the Dole administration, solves this problem through blackmail. His agents all watch for criminal activity. Shakan then threatens the criminal with exposure and attendant disgrace to her family. Once a blackmail victim works as an informer, she is caught: Gethamanians despise the Intelligencers, so an exposed agent suffers worse ostracism than she might have received from her original crime.

Shakan has agents throughout Gethamanian society. He has no agents among the priests, whose religious obsessions sever them from most aspects of mundane life. The Head Intelligencer has a few spies among foreign merchants, but he does not trust them very much. Shakan very much wants to recruit informants within the Guild, as he does not trust the merchant princes one bit.

THE COUNCIL

The Mistress of Gethamane appoints a committee of 15 advisors: three each from the city guards, the farmers, the hunters and gatherers, the artisans and the merchants. Bethan Redeye began the custom and now no one would dream of challenging it. The Council meets three times a month, though the Mistress can call for special sessions.

These advisors have no official power, but serving as the voices for their occupations gives Council members great prestige and influence. Any member of their interest group who wants to lobby the Mistress does it through his delegates. On the other hand, a shrewd Mistress knows that she must keep the five great factions happy, and so treats her Council with respect. Mistress Katrin often acts more as a mediator between the delegates than as an autocrat (and some past Masters and Mistresses became virtual puppets of powerful Councils).

Council members hold their posts until they die, resign or are fired by the city’s Mistress. When a faction loses a delegate, senior faction members offer the Mistress a list of possible replacements. The Mistress then selects a new Council member from the list. Vacancies on the Council result in a frenzy of politicking from the faction in question, from other Council members seeking the appointment of allies and from the Guild. In the event that all three of a faction’s posts fall vacant, the Mistress can appoint new delegates without consultation, as the city most likely faces an immediate crisis.

THE ADMINISTRATION

All of Gethamane’s government offices occupy the outer circles of the Garden District. Each location actually consists of several large rooms and corridors. Here, clerks keep the Dole lists and records of visitors to the city. The Council meets in one large chamber, adorned with portraits of past Masters and Mistresses. Citizens can visit the Hall of Records and Hall of Maps to check on property lines. (Outsiders can consult these records as well, for a small fee.) Magistrates resolve civil disputes and try criminal cases in the Courthouse.

Children who receive any education beyond basic literacy and arithmetic go to a school connected to the City Library.

Bethanites staff many of the government posts but at least a third of the clerks and officials come from other families.

Even more than the rest of Gethamane, the administrative areas stay busy all the time. Each shift of functionaries simply takes the desks vacated by the shift before them.

Children attend school in shifts as well, and mobs of children surge through the tunnels at each shift change. Only the Council doesn’t work around the clock, though sessions may last for days as members debate especially knotty or contentious issues.

The Garden District includes the rooms and offices of Gethamane’s ruler, passed from Master to Mistress for centuries. It’s a point of pride to change as little as possible from Bethan Redeye’s original sparse furniture and belongings.

LAW AND CRIME

Gethamane’s law centers on the Three Rules set down by Bethan Redeye. Both civil disputes and criminal trials often hinge on whether or how one of the Three Rules was broken.

THE FIRST RULE

Blood pays for blood, but it must serve the city: All crimes of personal assault shall be paid as debts to Gethamane, and Gethamane shall reimburse the victim in turn.

The First Rule covers all assaults on another person, from public brawling to rape or murder. Minor assaults are punished by fining or a period of forced labor. Half the proceeds go to the victim and half to the city (or all to the city when both parties are culpable, as when a quarrel escalates to a public fight and no one can prove who started it). Maiming, accidental death and rape result in major fining, a long period of hard labor, exile or some combination of the three. Murderers are condemned to permanent hard labor, exile or execution. A dead victim’s share of any restitution goes to her family. In cases of homicide, proof of self-defense or extreme provocation can reduce a sentence but not eliminate it completely: Gethamane cannot tolerate the loss of any citizen’s labor.

THE SECOND RULE

Jade pays for jade: All crimes of theft or other trespass on another’s goods shall be repaid twofold, once to the victim and once to the city.

This law covers all forms of theft, including forms of fraud such as giving short weight or delivering goods of lower quality than promised. Damaging a person’s possessions (including slaves) also falls under this law. Under the Second Rule, it’s a crime to charge outsiders less than a citizen of Gethamane — this is stealing from the city’s prosperity as a whole. The city’s magistrates and accountants measure losses to the last grain of jade and insist on precise repayment, though transactions use the Guild’s silver more often than jade.

THE THIRD RULE

What we have, we hold: All crimes of trespass on another’s domain shall be paid for by a gift of land in turn, or the Dole shall be remitted and the trespasser cast forth to starve.

If people who dislike each other cannot escape each other’s company, their enmity can escalate to murder. Gethamanians, therefore, value privacy as much as life and property, and trespass on another family’s territory becomes a serious crime. Gethamanians treat malicious gossip about another person’s activities as a form of trespass.

When two disputing parties share a property line, the penalty usually consists of moving that boundary by a foot or two to give the victim a section of the trespasser’s territory.

This results in many instances of two families sharing a room, with screens set up to give them an illusion of privacy. It can, indeed, be grounds for lawsuit to respond to anything one hears on the other side of such a screen… though noise of a sufficient volume (or sufficiently disturbing nature) that it cannot be ignored is also an offense. When disputants do not share a boundary, the city confiscates part of the trespasser’s property, then allows her family to “buy it back” and pays the resulting silver to the plaintiff’s family. Gethamanians are strict about privacy and property, but not insane.

The Guard can go anywhere in pursuit of a monster from the underways, and people fleeing a monster likewise have a right to cross another family’s property. (Indeed, a civic defense crisis trumps all questions of privacy and territory.) Families usually forgive trespass by children when a game of hide-and-seek gets out of hand (though their parents might be notified). Persistent trespass by older children can result in lawsuit, though, and the child’s family suffers significant disgrace.

Trespass becomes treason where the Gardens are concerned. Any citizen who helps outsiders enter the Gardens commits a crime comparable to murder, for they endanger the city itself.

TRIAL AND PUNISHMENT

Trials take place in the Courthouse, a set of variously-sized chambers. Three magistrates hear every case: a professional judge who is usually a Bethanite, a senior Guard and a senior farmer. The accused and the plaintiff both state their cases to the panel of judges. If a plaintiff cannot speak on her own behalf, a relative or Guard can become her advocate (the latter usually in cases of homicide). Gethamane’s courts accept information obtained by magic or bound demons. The three judges deliberate on the evidence, consult precedents and deliver a verdict and sentence. Any attempt to influence a judge, whether by bribery, threats or magic, is a major personal assault and punished accordingly.

Judges reserve execution as their ultimate sanction.

More often, a murderer, traitor or other major felon is blinded, branded and condemned to work in the Gardens for the rest of his life. (Which might not be that long, as such convicts become favorite victims of the farmer cult.)

Judges actually regard exile as a merciful punishment, and often use it to punish crimes of passion. An exile can even serve his sentence in Gethamane’s mines, and so remain loosely connected to the city. Temporary exile usually lasts five years. After that, the criminal can resume his place in the city and among his family.

SLAVERY IN GETHAMANE

Even though lawbreakers can be sentenced to a life of hard labor in the Gardens, Gethamane forbids individuals from owning slaves. Any labor must be hired, and hiring an outsider carries a hefty tariff. Gerath, the second Master, made this law so that citizens could find work and to forestall slave uprisings. Some merchants lobby to repeal this law, but most Gethamanians want to preserve tradition. They identify slavery with the Guild, and while Gethamanians know the Guild is necessary, they also know the Guild is not their friend. Gethamane’s law does not emancipate slaves who enter the city, however. Therefore, Guild caravans regularly bring coffles of slaves through Gethamane. The Second Rule applies to slaves within the city, and so the Guard can prevent serious cruelty to slaves. If Guards witness beatings or other mistreatment, they can and do arrest everyone in sight on charges of “damaging another person’s property.” The owner of the slaves then must testify that he was damaging his own property, or ordered another person to do so on his behalf. No one suffers any punishment in such cases, but the confusion and delay caused by the trial does not help a slave caravan’s profits or reputation.

Under the Second Rule, Gethamanians cannot claim animals that escape their pens: They must return the beast to its owner. The Guard, however, seldom chooses to help owners find slaves who escape in Gethamane. An escaped slave who is adopted into a citizen family also leaves the Second Rule’s purview, as she becomes a citizen herself.

Gethamane includes a few abolitionists who encourage slaves to escape and come to them for adoption, though the city government does not encourage this practice.

FOREIGN RELATIONS Gethamane has little direct contact with the rest of Creation. Few Gethamanians travel, and few other people want to visit this remote bastion of civilization. No one can conquer Gethamane, and Gethamane cannot threaten anyone else. Most Gethamanians know very little about the rest of Creation. Gethamane’s Mistress and Council now believe, however, that they must learn a great deal more about their neighbors… particularly the Bull of the North.

The Realm never troubled Gethamane. Dynasts occasionally visited to seek treasure in the underways, and far-traveling legions occasionally bought provisions at Gethamane, but the city never paid tribute. The Empress once commissioned her strategoi to evaluate Gethamane for conquest: These worthies concluded that the feat was possible for the Dynasty but not worth the trouble. Past Masters and Mistresses did not flaunt their defiance of the Realm, so the Empress never felt the need to make an example of the city.

Since the Empress’s disappearance, no one in the Realm pays much attention to the remote subterranean city. Whitewall is the closest that Gethamane comes to an ally. Neither city has many other neighbors (that are human, at least). Gethamane’s leaders cultivate merchants from Whitewall just to remind the Guild that they can be replaced; and it’s often cheaper to buy Whitewall’s metalwork directly than through Guild intermediaries.

Gethamane has an unfortunate history with the Haslanti League, and Guildsmen still disparage the Haslanti. Nevertheless, the Mistress and Council now seek better relations with the League as another alternative to the Guild.

Every year or two, an icewalker tribe follows a mammoth or reindeer herd through Gethamane’s territory.

Gethamane’s hunters pick off straggling beasts, which the icewalkers do not like. On the other hand, Gethamanians sometimes trade with icewalkers for meat, furs, hides, horn and ivory; but much of this trade goes through the Guild. (The walrus-hunters along the coast form a notable exception. Gethamane’s hunters trade with these barbarians directly.)

Even the isolationist Gethamanians hear stories about the Bull of the North, and what they hear frightens the city’s leaders. They don’t credit Realm propaganda about “Anathema,” but anyone who can massacre Dynasts—hitherto the city’s standard for powerful, erratic individuals—is a danger the Gethamanians don’t want to face. Some Council members believe the city can shut its doors and defy the Bull, just as it has defied every other threat. Others are not so sure, fearing that the Anathema warlord could break the gates like a paper screen. They all agree that Gethamane must learn more and acquire whatever power and allies it can find.

THE GUARD

Gethamane has no army as such, only a Guard that keeps order and defends against creatures from the underways. At 5,000 soldiers, the Guard is quite a formidable force for a small city—but the Guard has no experience operating in groups larger than the 20-man platoons. Guards wear red lamellar armor and carry target shields blazoned with a white mountain on a red field. They favor heavy weapons such as sledges, great axes and pickaxes—the sort of weapons that can hack, pierce and crush eldritch horrors. When riots erupt in the Guild District or elsewhere, half the responding Guards carry leather-padded clubs, but the Guard never operates without the threat of lethal force and big damage.

The Guard’s overall commander occupies a Guardhall in the Garden District. Here the Guard trains, gathers to organize hunts for invading monsters and imprisons lawbreakers.

Unlike the subdued tones of the rest of Gethamane, bright red pennants mark all entrances to the Guardhall. Doors in this complex are always high-quality iron.

The current Captain of the Guard, Golden Stag, is of icewalker descent, abandoned by his tribe as a child and adopted by a poor Gethamane family. Every other sentence or so, he reminds people how he worked his way up the ranks. Golden Stag is now in his 50s, a good leader of soldiers and convinced he has plenty of time before he needs to train a successor.

Beneath Golden Stag are the North Gate and South Gate Captains. The South Gate Captain, Mindros Yami, stands out for his refusal to accept bribes from merchants.

The North Gate Captain, Gavne Wheelright, came from an artisan family but joined the Guards to avenge the death of his wife at the claws of underdwellers. A traveling Immaculate monk also converted Gavne. He lobbies (though not loudly) for the Council to permit an Immaculate shrine. These three officers command various district and shift lieutenants, and Guard posts are spread throughout the city.

Each Guard post has a large drum mounted on the wall.

In any disturbance, one soldier beats a signal on the drum to alert other posts of the nature and location of the trouble, and to call for backup if this seems prudent. In the case of major disturbances such as monsters from the underways, riots or rampaging Exalts, a runner is additionally sent to the Guardhall with a report and a request for full mobilization.

A few hundred Guards bunk in the Guardhouse at all times, ready to go wherever they are needed.

Despite the high death rate that Guards suffer in monster attacks, the organization never lacks for recruits. In part, this comes from the high prestige of the job (and high ration of the Dole). Less nobly, Guards receive greater opportunities to meet outsiders… and collect small gifts and gratuities from them in return for assistance with the city’s bureaucracy. Golden Stag cycles his soldiers through gate duty so everyone gets a fair share. Large bribes, however, or attempts to subvert a Guard into serious breaches of the law, constitute “injury to the city” and result in the Guard’s arrest if he is caught.

SAMPLE COMBAT UNITS All Guards are well-trained troops. Unfortunately, they have no training at fighting in larger units than a platoon—in most of Gethamane, it just isn’t possible to gather more soldiers in one place—and so cannot deploy units of higher Magnitude. When several platoons act together, an overall commander must attempt to coordinate them. So far, Gethamane has never fought an enemy that it could not defeat in this manner.

THE GUARD ENTIRE

Still… what if such an enemy did appear—an enemy that somehow could penetrate the jade-steel gates, or a major invasion from the underways? In such a case, the entire Guard might need to function as a single combat unit, against a single other combat unit of invaders. The Guard would suffer from its lack of training at large-scale tactics and inability to concentrate its forces, reducing its effective Drill. Then again, the enemy could not concentrate his forces either. The battle would consist of house-to-house (or cave-to-cave) fighting.

The Guard, however, would frequently gain the advantages of hard cover and fortification from their superior knowledge of Gethamane’s tunnels.

Gethamane’s people could also turn their partitions into engineered obstacles comparable to fields of stakes or brushwood-filled moats. For a simpler approach, a Storyteller could simply raise the Guard’s Might by one, treating its superior command of the territory as a form of special equipment. In any case, ranged combat is effectively impossible in a citywide fight.

Commanding Officer: Golden Stag Armor Color: Red; target shield bears a white mountain on a red field Motto: “Let none of them survive!” General Makeup: 5,000 medium infantry with lamellar armor and slotted helms, half carrying great axes and half with pickaxes and target shields

Formation: Each platoon has a sergeant and a relay that signals other platoons using drumbeats. All the soldiers are heroic mortals. Talismans, thaumaturgical enchantments on weapons and special training at surrounding and ganging up on foes supply the unit’s Might. While individual platoons normally fight in close formation, in a citywide battle they are effectively stuck in skirmish formation. So are their enemies, as troops scatter through the tunnels.

Notes: Gethamane pays little heed to the rest of Creation, and has little capacity to influence everyone else. On the other hand, it’s exceedingly difficult to obtain any leverage on Gethamane. The dominion’s external bonus points come entirely from its alliance with the Guild and other merchants. These points pay for Gethamane’s single dot of Awareness and a second dot of Craft. Gethamane’s bonus points go to a second dot of War and the dominion’s many specialties. Gethamane has no savants or sorcerers.

In Limit Break, Gethamane resolves its internal conflicts by returning to its principles of absolute self-sufficiency and absolute social control. The government expels all outsiders, locks the gates and forces the population to live on the Dole for at least a season, and maybe as long as a year.

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