Etrusca

Etrusca is a sprawling, messy city featuring little of the Republican architectural discipline for which it has become so renowned. A bustling city of over 50,000 living within the city limits, and a further 130,000 living within its Agerian limits, Etrusca is a beating heart of commerce, culture and co-operation located at the foot of the Ager Plains.   Points of interest for visitors are the Scholasta Mechanicus, a famous school from which the finest Imperial engineers, architects and mathematicians are produced. Many fine patrician families send their children to learn at this institution, causing great wealth to flood in to the city of Etrusca, as well as wealthy plebeian families vying for a seat with coin and favour.   In addition to the Scholasta, the Forum Secundus is a vibrant marketplace with the crossed northern and southern cultures of the Empire making its way up the Tiberas River and across the Via Imperialis in the backs of aspiring merchant carts. All manners of delicacies, cloths, metals, jewels and fine works can be traded for in the Forum Secundus. Weary travellers may also rest their head at the household named Way-Inn, where legend has it that the settlement of Etrusca sprung up around as it served as a vital point of trade, safe harbour and rumour-mongering.   Dominating the skyline of Etrusca are the twinned barracks, or castrae, located on the northern and south-eastern roads of the city. Formerly, the Castra Fidelis serves as a barracks for near 10,000 Imperial Legionnaires and is home to the 14th [Grim Executioners] and 3rd Legions [Shield of Etrus] respectively. These Legionnaires keep the township safe from harm, as Etrusca is an unwalled town, as well as collecting tithes from travelling merchants, craftspeople or farmers for maintenance of the Via Imperialis. The legionnaire barracks are located outside the Pomerium of the city, which is the decided boundary where civil life ends and military life begins, marked and ploughed every year by the city officials of Etrusca; as it is for all Rozani cities not under arms.   Her sister barracks, the Castra Arbites, serves to house a small cohort of Dwindalian Paladins and Cult Imperialis soldiers. A beautifully adorned place, covered in symbols of the Arbiter, bursting with brilliant gilding of burning braziers and formidable precision of Imperial architecture, it serves as both a fortress and a monastery for the Cult officials and officers.   Within the city proper, the Quarta Artifex, the quarter of the city in which the many artisans of Etrusca practice their craft. Filled with dyemakers, potters, smiths, jewelers, candlestick makers and many other craftspeople, it is a bustling area where the majority of the halfling, gnomish and elvish population live. Incidentally, this is also where the great aqueduct, Aqua Album, brings water from the ice-mines of Lake Weisshaupt.   Finally, of note within the city is the Proconsular District and the Ruins of the Antonine Walls. These walls serve as a stark reminder of the city's seditious past and that the Legionnaires, whilst there to protect them, are also there to prevent a much more serious, treasonous catastrophe from occurring. The Proconsular district is largely in ruins, once a well-built palace, sporting four domes each larger than the last, said to have large enough halls to accommodate over 1500 guests for banquet, slumber and dance, it now serves as a grim monument to the terrible, brutal power of the Empire and the price of defiance. Where previously the administration of the city was carried out in the Proconsular district, it is now carried out within the Temple of Dwindal, situated on the Hill of Etrus, overlooking the great Forum Secundus and Artisan's districts, as well as the rolling fields of the Ager Plains so reminiscent of Elysium.   Life within Etrusca, day-to-day, can be said to be some of the best living within the Empire. Its citizens are largely safe from attack, trade flows freely, the city is constantly in flux with renovations of old structures and new public works being carried out. Citizens may find themselves waking up to new works completed each day, ranging from public baths, to new racecourses, as well as new altars to Dwindal, freshly paved roadways, additional mercantile stalls or new insulae for the urban poor.   Politically, the citizenry are very active, with 32 of the currently seated 400 senators of the Empire hailing from or residing within Etrusca. Debate is encouraged within the Forum Secundus, justice is readily dispensed by the Praetors of the city with much input from the citizenry, as well as the fact that many of the politically revolutionary ideas within the Republic and later Empire came from Etrusca. Indeed, it is said that the current Imperial structure was designed and modelled after the writings of a then-thought-mad political philosopher named Octavianus Cicero.   Still, there is a darker side to life within Etrusca, as it is unwalled, black market goods readily flow into the city with too much of an unguarded perimeter even for the 10,000 strong legion to man. Indeed, it could be said that many are paid to turn a blind eye, though levelling such accusations may quickly find you with some unfriendly faces in your part of town, ready to cause property damage or physical damage if the claim is not recanted. Moreover, the Unsleeping Eye of the Cult Imperialis is ever watchful, with the Imperial Censor policing unruly elements of the city with the aid of Cult officials, spreading the word of the divinity of the current Emperor, the manifest destiny of the Empire to once again rule from the soil to the stars, and the weakness of the former Republic for allowing chaos to overtake the world. Moreover, many political enemies of the Cult find themselves locked up, ostracised, assets seized or sometimes, in extreme cases, banished or slain for their perceived crimes. Nevertheless, the Cult maintains a fanatical popularity within the city, riding the wave of the Emperor's good deeds at Etrusca nearly a century ago; breaking the body of Vuthasjach, the Black Cloud, one of the Moradin Conclave which enslaved much of the Empire during the Crisis of the 2nd Century.