Thorida

Thorida is home to about 67 thousand people and the city is truly multicultural in its makeup. Maronite warriors keep the peace, Nilotes craftsmen build and maintain the city and its infrastructure, Qaran judges and teachers are heard making their pronouncements in court and schoolroom, Toutatrikos farmers feed the people, Huaren lawyers and diplomats negotiate contracts and agreements in the city’s merchant houses and courts, and Thalassanos merchants are the lynchpins of the local economy.

Thorida is formally ruled by triumvirate, with the three rulers being drawn from the three primary power-block communities of the state: the Worker’s Guild which claims to speak for every farmer, fisherman, labourer, local sailor, local merchant and producer in the city, the Host which is the city’s army, and the Council of Priests. Each leader is known by the title Spokesman, and each Spokesman is placed in charge of one of the communities that he or she does not originate from.   Below the Spokesmen, there are three councils of leading citizens, each with 5 members. For the Workers Council, membership is determined by elections, which are held every five years. The politicking that influences these elections is fierce, albeit far more open than the schemes of the Great Houses of Kratiros. Wealth, and the influence that it can buy through favours to the rich or financial support for the poor, is a key determiner; so is reputation. For the Council of Priests, membership is divided among the two major faiths of the city: 3 Wayist Praevians and 2 Beruzen Cursors. The proportion of Wayists to Beruzenites is determined by a census of worshippers in the main temples of the city, a system brokered after intense inter-faith conflict in the city about a century ago.

The main city centre is surrounded by a reinforced wall, crafted from locally quarried sandstone. The wall is 4 metres high, with towers that rise up to 6 metres, and about 2 metres thick. Three great gates allow for travel to and from the surrounding countryside. Immediately outside these walls, there is a dry moat to further impede invaders.   In addition to the static defences of wall, moat and towers, the city maintains a standing army of about 8,000 men called The Host. This professional standing army performs all the necessary duties of a military, from keeping the peace to patrolling the countryside against bandits to culling the Undead. The Host provides 4 shifts of 500 watchmen to keep the peace within the city as well as another thousand men in patrols of the countryside to keep the farms and herds of the citizens safe.

In terms of trade, the city exports pearls, fish, marble and tar to other cities on the coasts of the Pesterion Gulf. It imports timber and foodstuffs from those same cities. There is also an overland caravan route to Naros, along which iron is exported while tungsten and cobalt are imported. The two desert city-states also trade foodstuffs, ensuring each other’s continued viability as settlements.

Thorida is a prosperous city thanks to its trade and the regular immigration of armies from Empagia to scour the desert for the Undead. This is reflected in the city’s infrastructure and aesthetics. Most of the roads in the city are paved with cobblestones and these roads extend out into the surrounding countryside for several miles around. One of the city’s major projects to support the urban poor is to offer a small daily wage to those who are willing to spend the day in a work party assigned to keep the streets clean in the city centre or assigned to make repairs and clear obstructions from the roads further out in the countryside.

Charter Schools of Sorcery – The Chartrites maintain a Charter School in the city. Sorcerers here are known across the continent for their mastery of fire magic.   Nation of Free Mages – There are two Secret Enclaves of Free Mages operating in the city. One is tasked with serving as a conduit to nearby Acyra for news, intelligence and the occasional runaway or rescued sorcerer. The other secretly supports the Host in culling the Undead that roam that desert.   Chalkiniptos Guild – Although it is a long way from their typical domains in Kratiros, the Iron Men maintain an office in the city to try to keep an eye on what they perceive to be their chief competition in all of Exokkos. This office is located in the Merchant District, which is not as close to the craftsmen's district as they would like, but was as close as the Workers Guild would allow knowing full well the real reason behind the office's presence.   The Workers Guild – The Workers Guild is one of the three governing factions of the city. As the representatives of the majority of the city’s inhabitants, this faction is both the largest and the one most prone to internal politicking.   The Council of Priests – The Council of Priests is one of the three governing factions of the city. Like the Workers Guild, this is also a faction of the city with much internal politicking, albeit for very different reasons. The Priests, as they are often colloquially known, are mainly Wayists as the confluence of so many different ethnic backgrounds has meant that Praevians dedicated to each of the Wayist gods are present, but there is a mission from the Church of the Light of Beruzen that has gained significant traction in the last century. The Wayists view the Beruzen as upstarts and do their best to minimise their influence while the Beruzen work to improve their standing through winning converts among the populace and   The Host – The Host is the name for the Thoridan army, which forms the third of the three governing factions of the city. As a whole, the Host keeps itself apart from the general politics of the city in order to maintain the trust of all citizens in their defence of the city.   The Red Scorpion – The Red Scorpion is a local band of thieves and brigands that are a perennial nuisance to Thorida and its environs. They are desert dwellers, moving their camp from oasis to oasis in the Nisida Skonis. They typically commit petty crime within the city such as pickpocketing and confidence schemes. On occasion, however, they will band together to raid small merchant caravans travelling the overland route to Naros or to loot outlying farms.

Originally, Thorida was founded as an outpost of the Himekon Empire to try to combat Undead incursions from the Nisida Skonis across the Monabon Mountains. When Himekon collapsed, the city initially turned to the newly formed nation of Empagia for support, but was shunned by the financially oriented merchant guilds that had come to power there. Not yet stable by itself, and concerned about the growing potential dangers of Undead numbers increasing in the deep desert of the Nisida Skonis, the Thoridans turned to the kingdom of Anidrios for support, which the Anidrian kings were happy to provide in exchange for the fealty and tax revenue of the citizens.     For about 200 years, Thorida grew and prospered under this arrangement, benefitting from Anidrian patronage as well as protection. Many of the city-state’s finer structures and more expansive pieces of infrastructure were funded by Anidrios.   The city finally became fully independent in 893NE, an event that was barely contested by Anidrios.   In 1162 NE, the city experienced a period of

In the centre of the city stands the Troikan Tower, where the main business of government is conducted by the triumvirate of Spokesmen and their councils of advisors. This stone spire is five storeys tall, crafted from basalt quarried just outside the city environs.     Next to the Troikan Tower is the similarly impressive structure of the   Just east of the city is a ruined fortress that is built into an outcrop of basalt. The fortress is a relic of the Mage Wars, although it does not bear the hallmarks of having been a Magelord’s Tower. Nonetheless, the locals avoid the place if at all possible, and being assigned to the annual patrol of the place to clear any Undead presence is considered a punishment detail.   To the east of the city, beyond the ruined fortress, tar bubbles up to the surface to create a field of tarpits. This tar is harvested and exported from the city to help waterproof the hulls of ships.

The buildings themselves are a more eclectic mix of adobe bricks, stone slabs and even some concrete constructions, but all are well maintained by their owners. For the most part, the architecture is functional, however wealth has its perks and so the houses and monuments of the patriciate district are of a more lavish kind.

Lying on the edges of the Nisida Skonis, Thorida experiences a generally arid climate. The average temperature is about 21 degrees and about 0.3m of precipitation falls throughout the year. Most of this is experienced as rain during the wet season, which lasts about three and a half months, while less than 0.04m of rain falls in the average dry season, which takes up the remainder of the year.

While trees and timber are nearly absent from the nearby countryside, there is stone aplenty. Marble, sandstone, basalt, travertine chalk and limestone are all quarried from the environs of the city. Much of this stone is used for local building, but the more exotic marble is frequently exported abroad.     There is also iron ore in the nearby rocks, and while the deposits are nothing like the scale found in the Sideron Hills, they are eagerly exploited for local use. The superior skill of Nilotes smelters and smiths ensure that Thoridan steel is competitive and sought-after in the region despite independence and therefore disapproval from the Chalkiniptos Guild.   Local farmers till the sandy, chalky soil to produce a number of crops. Millet, onions, garlic, tomatoes and brussels sprouts are all grown for consumption by the denizens of the city and it is a rare building that does not have a garden where at least some of these foodstuffs can be found in addition to the fields that are cultivated near the crater lake.   As well as foodstuffs, Thoridan farmers grow fields of hoopvine. The plant has many uses, from the weaving of its fibrous stems to make baskets and decorative furniture to the use of the purple juice of its berries as a cheaper alternative to the dye extracted from snails in the east. The plant also has medicinal properties when powdered and consumed directly or brewed as a tea.   Plant crops are supplemented in the city-state by fish, harvested from both the lake and the ocean. Trout is the most commonly caught fish from the lake, and fishing is a common pastime for those wealthy enough to be able to afford leisure time. Working fishermen, however, tend to prefer taking their boats to sea to catch sturgeon and harvest oysters in the coastal shallows. The increased prevalence of sand in the vicinity leads to a greater rate of pearl formation, which fetch a high price with traders bound for the rest of the continent.