The Hallowed City

The Hollowed City is nearly entirely human in population, with some small smatterings of elf, dwarf, and a very small population of gnomes.l

The Hallowed City is governed differently than most other cities in Meria. It is governed entirely by the priesthood of the Church, with the Theologian Primus being the 'mayor' of sorts, as well as effectively the ruler of Jarentasar as a whole and arguably aside from the Grand Inquisitor, the second most powerful person in the entire Empire.    The Theologian Primus oversees the Holy Council, an appointed council of priests in the city that are chosen by the Theologian Primus himself. They oversee and advise the Theologian Primus on decisions regarding the governing of the city. These are technically permanent positions but change often as priests fall victim to the ire of the Theologian Primus and are killed, removed, imprisoned, or worse. In order to disperse the duties so the Theologian Primus does not take his entire days governing every aspect of The Hallowed City, and as is normally done there are unique positions for specialized, trained and hand picked priests.    Master of Coin, Master of the Watch, Master of Trade, etc.   These priests, even above their stations are considered royalty and even more important regarding their roles beyond simply being a priest. Afforded more wealth, more protections, and more political power, they are excellent friends, and dangerous enemies.

The defenses of The Hallowed City are numerous and powerful. One of the most forefront in the mind of any would be attacker is the residence of the Order of the Bloodied Blades. Widely considered one of the most ruthless, brutal, and fanatical orders of The Assembly, this group of individuals alone provides a reputational shield over the city that deters many from even trying to harm The Hallowed City. Beyond that, frenzied and zealous leagues of city watch stand atop massive stone walls layered in three layers from the outer shell, the mid-city wall and the inner core walls. Siege weapons always ready to return fire upon an approaching army or host stand at the ready.    Beyond even that the spiritual arts come into the equation. The priests of the city can bring to bear frightening magic drawn from their lord god Harbinger. Additionally the great Theologian Primus himself is a force of war and hatred, and Verden Korlic is a being that no sane man or general would ever wish to find himself in contest with.

The inhabitants of The Hallowed City work in many manner of industries that provide valuable economic sustenance to the city. The District of Cloth provides a great manner of exports that are purchased at great value and bring immense economic benefit to the city. Beyond that, the forges of the District of Iron provide immense amounts of weaponry and supplies that are provided to the rest of The Empire at cost, thus ensuring even more income for the city as a whole.   The religious tithe provides even further income as do donations from traveling pilgrims.

The infrastructure of The Hallowed City is second only in grandeur, impressive feats of architecture, and size versus the capital of The Empire itself, Setrak. Massive walkways over one another in criscrossing patterns high above the street level forged of steel reinforced stone. An impressive and functioning sewer and plumbing system lines the core city, making it one of the most advanced cities in the world, again only behind Setrak.   The largest aqueduct system in the world ferries immense amounts of water from the high mountains across the lowlands into the Hallowed Walk and Hallowed City so that it may provide sustenance for the denizens of the city.   A massive silk and fabric district forges clothing at an industrialized rate that are some of the finest in the world for those who can afford it as well as cheaper more normal clothing for the average man. Fabric shipped from Ortis, Jinsa, Althia and Turas is turned into these articles in the District of Cloth.   By far the most impressive feat of infrastructure and arguably the greatest feat of engineering in the entire world, is the Hallowed Walk. Build through the center of The Hallowed City, the Hallowed Walk is a truly insane feat of construction. A bridge of immense magnitude, so wide and long it is hard to describe, it can only be described through the tale of its creation.   Near the site of The Emergence, it is said that Harbinger himself saw a range of mountains where the peaks were lower between two points where it spiked upwards. He motioned to them, and said that between those high peaks, the low peaks themselves would be demolished, flattened, shorn down. On top of these now shorn mountains, reduced to simply flat expanses of rock thousands of feet in every direction would be a bridge of towering design. A city in it of itself, the bridge would connect those two high points, and bear civilization on it. It would be known as the Hallowed Walk.   A bridge of truly absurd proportion, it is roughly 20 miles wide and 500 miles long. Repurposed stone carved from the bricks out of the mountain's stone that was gathered from their destruction, the Hallowed Walk is a truly stunning creation towering hundreds of feet above the Stone Plains of Damnation where the truly condemned are damned to live out the remainder of their pathetic lives between the immense gaps of length betwen one support of the Hallowed Walk to another.   Upon the Hallowed Walk, Basilici, Churches, towns and settlements have been founded and created and to this day yet stand ever as they always have. The Hallowed Walk is a living city near apart from the Hallowed City that towers above the seeing capital of Jarentasar yet it's engineering magnificence is not lost upon any of the priests or the Theologian Primus who dominates the City of Devotion, for all who worship in its rays worship in the shadow of the Hallowed Walk.

The districts of The Hallowed City are laid out in a similar structure to most major cities in The Empire, a ring like structure around the Imperial District.    The Imperial District of The Hallowed City is of standard form despite its highly gothic, dark and brilliantly designed stone carved buildings, statues to religious figures, lines of scripture inscribed into the walkways and in general a far heavier emphasis on the religion of The Empire, as would be logical given for the religious capital of it. Still though it bears all the hallmarks of a typical Imperial District aside from the religious focus, the central governing palace in which the every day operations of the city is ran by the Council priests and menials.   The Church District is where an overwhelming concentration of the most grand and awe inspiring cathedrals and churches tower above the streets. Hundreds of feet high and more being constructed always as the population continues to grow, these works of art are overseen and often take dozens if not hundreds of years to complete. Stained glass from Ghray-Lekor, the world's finest marble and stone mined from the quarries in South Jinsa, gems and valuable ores mined and retrieved from Edrias and Ortis, all brought here to this continent and this city to construct some of the most breathtaking feats of construction and engineering ever seen. Utilizing magic in order to bypass some of the natural laws of nature regarding physics and gravity has only enabled The Empire to create true works of art that draw visits not just for worship but simply to view them.   The Seven Spires of Bhal-toroth, The Bloody Church, the Circle of Martyrs and so, so many more are merely the tip of the iceberg regarding this immense district.    The Iron District is home to the Church Militant, the military wing of The Church that defends Jarentasar as its sort of unique, own military outside of the Imperial Army. Still grandiose and deeply religious of course, the Iron District is home to massive military bastions and redoubts, forges of industrial size capable of producing massive amounts of firearms, blades, armor and more.    Prayer squares hundreds of meters wide that can hold massive formations of religious warriors in formation that are blessed en masse by priests, massive sites of ritual for these deeply devoted nigh fanatical warriors. The Iron District is often considered the least friendly to outsiders due to its more militant and even for The Hallowed City, zealous occupants who are prepared at any moment to strike out on crusade and destroy the enemies of Harbinger.   The Bloodied Blade Order of The Assembly has its headquarters in The Iron District. Built into the side of the mountains, an unsiegable and unimpregnable fortress known as the Fortress of Blood.    The Parade Grounds of Harbinger, the Yetranian Mass Altar, and more are grim, dour and serious sights that one can see in this district.   The District of Cloth is one of the leading cloth and clothing production districts in the world strangely enough, beginning as a small fledgling area that was more or less simply a residential district. Famed and highly skilled clothworkers, tanners, leatherworkers and seamstresses by coincidence inhabited this area and over the centuries the concentration grew and grew until eventually it was known as the District of Cloth. Now it produces the finest and more mundane cloth and clothing, woven together by simply machine or for those who can afford it, the hands of those masters that oversee their factories and lines of employees.   The District of Cleansing is possibly one of most dour, frightening, and extreme of any district anywhere in the world of Meria. A district dedicated entirely to the cleansing of one's sins, it is essentially a district of consensual torture. Those who have sinned will venture to this frightening district in search of one of the many Houses of Cleansing that dot its dark, sinister streets. Worse still, those who have 'sinned' and do not go willingly are dragged there by cruel and frenied fanatical followers of the Creed to be 'cleansed'. What occurs in these Houses of Cleansing are tortures and horrors beyond description. For those who are good citizens who have strayed the path for a moment, it may be flaying, bleeding, heat or wax, weight based torture, waterboarding, and so many more creative forms of pain thought up by the Cleansing Masters of these Houses.   The more severe punishments can leave individuals mutilated, scarred both mentally and physically, and even dead if their body and mind can simply not handle it. Thrown into the streets or the aptly named Gutter, a massive ghetto where the mutilated, injured, dying and dead reside, they rot for the remainder of their short and painful lives. Only those who can rise from such circumstance and suffering deserve any respect, for their god, the one true god Harbinger has endured pains a thousandfold worse.   Even worse somehow, are the Purification Chambers. If by some unlikely means one of the peoples deemed 'unclean' are caught around, near, or inside The Hallowed Walk, they are taken to these horrific chambers and subjected to a widely known process named The Purgation. They are ritually skinned alive and yet remain alive after this horrible process is done. Their body is then inscribed with tattoos of scripture upon their bleeding, red, bare muscle, tendon and ligament. The scripture is to purify their unclean blood, and then they are strung up and crucified upon a cross shaped in the Imperial Signet. For seven days and nights they suffer untold torment at the hands of naught but their bare, exposed nerves. On the morning of the eighth day, they are allowed to die, beheaded by a purified greatsword. Their skulls are cleaned, cleansed, and added to the Pile of the Redeemed, an immense pile of skulls in the Basilica of Hate.    Their skin is then dried, stretched, tanned and hung in the rafters of the Basilica and all other churches as a sign of the cleansed watching over the living. It is even rumored that the flesh and other pieces of the now 'Redeemed' are treated and eaten as religious protection, taking into their flesh the flesh of one now with Harbinger spiritually.   Yet even still in this district it is not uncommon to see repentia flayed and whipped in the streets on crosses, public displays of devotion through starvation, poisoning, bearing acids and more. The streets and alleys are alight with the screams and exultations of the name of their god and the scripture that was written in his name. The District of Cleansing's streets run red with blood more often than not, and it is a dark place, for a dark people.

The Hallowed City is immense in its assets. Immensely wealthy due to religious tithes paired with taxes that are rather high 'for Harbinger', The Hallowed City shows and flaunts its wealth in the more, gaudy areas of the city. Priests on the council of the city live in immense luxury. The trade connections the city has forged over the last 1,000 years prove greatly valuable to the exchange of goods, and it bears some ore and gem mines of its own that provide a manner of economic sustenance.

The guilds of The Hallowed City are all but crushed underneath the priesthood, and the Church in general. Nearly all other forms of faction or guild are subservient to the ruthless ruling priests that provide order, control, and tyranny to the general populace. There are some, such as the Clothworkers Guild, the Iron Guild, and the Cleansing Guild. These deal in the orders of the clothworkers, the smiths, and the Cleansers regarding their professions and how to best deal with them.   Some priests are bought and paid for, extorted, blackmailed, or perhaps hold genuine belief in these guilds and other smaller ones to bring their ideas to council, and in general an overall understanding regarding their needs is held by most priests as to not choke and suffocate one area of their settlement over another or their own greed. As such, generally a peace is kept between all in a mutual form of self preservation and understanding.

The history of The Hallowed City is one of brutality, cruelty, and utter fanatacism. Founded as one of the first cities conquered by Harbinger and his forces, Mes Ya was left behind to begin the great work of converting this once great city known as Kelham's Rest, into a loyal and devoted city of worshippers that would become the religious foundation of their new empire. She remained here for two years with an entourage of similarly devoted priests and cultists, preaching the word of their god.   It worked. Over time, it worked. Slowly the masses began to see that their gods that they had worshipped for generations as naught more than pretenders. Parasites. Leeches. For when had they walked the world, when had they brought order and peace to the earth. Never. As such, the citizenry were either converted, or purged ruthlessely by the garrison of Immortals and fanatical zealots that had been stationed in the city.   After the Glorious Dawn the city was quickly renamed to The Hallowed City, and the construction of The Hallowed Walk began in earnest. Even in those early days though, the holiness and importance of the city was made clear. It was the center of the now burgeoning religion that many fought, but many began to believe in and trust.   As the centuries passed, it only grew stronger and stronger with every passing year as The Hallowed Walk grew closer and closer to completion and the religion, the creed, grew stronger and stronger. It brings us to now, when The Hallowed Walk is a city of immense importance, only lesser in value due to the fact that the Emperor himself does not live there.

There are many points of interest in the dark and intriguing Hallowed City.   

The Basilica of Hate: The main and ultimate church inside the city's walls, the Basilica of Hate is the ultimate church dedicated to the Creed of Harbinger. Headed by of course Verden Korlic as its head priest and the leading priest of the faith, the Basilica of Hate is a truly monstrous building in its size and scope. Only being fully finished 300 years prior, the Basilica is in the Imperial District of the city and sports the highest point of material in the air, standing over a mile tall. Thousands of slaves worked and died on the project with many thousands of mages assisting in its gravity defying works. The central dome is so large and tall and vacuous that it is able and does foster its own cloud and rain cycles inside of it, resulting in the possibility of rain, clouds and even thunder and lightning during sermons. It is said that these sermons are the most blessed. Anyone who visits the city must see the Basilica of Hate and the Blood Floor of Harbinger.

The Blood Floor is a massive circular chamber that is dotted with spatters of blood all across it from pilgrims across a thousand years. To begin your pilgrimage, one must first cut themselves on Harbinger's own blade positioned in the Grand Circle of Setrak, journeying from there to this very room to pour their blood onto the ancient stones here in a display of their affection, care, and zealous love of their god. These pilgrims are annointed as the Blooded Few and are greatly respected amongst the denizens of The Hallowed City, of Jarentasar, and The Empire as a whole.  

The Seven Spires of Bhal-toroth: Seven massive spires that nearly top the Basilica of Hate in their raw height, these seven spires all serve the same massive cathedral complex known as The Seven Points. Served by those dedicated to it, the Seven Spires bring inspiration to all who see them for their utterly masterful artwork and carvings. Many consider this complex to be of even greater beauty, more artistic than the Basilica of Hate itself.

The Bloody Church: A church in which all of the stones that were used to build it were allegedly coated in the blood of sanctified, true saints of the Creed of Harbinger. From this, their purity and sheen has never faded ever, the church a noted deep crimson outlier amongst the deep gray stone of the usual building inside The Hallowed City. The priests here focus on the worship of blood, the connection that blood has amongst families and to Harbinger himself. It is rumored that here they practice dark and bordering heretical forms of blood magic. Despite this, the mere spectical of this unique cathedral and its priesthood warrants visiting.

The Circle of Martyrs: A place of immense, but holy suffering, the Circle of Martyrs is a massive circular point off the center of the city that bears exactly 36 suffering martyrs upon crosses at any time. These martyrs are chosen by Verden Korlic himself from amongst the most devoted of fanatics in his sermons to suffer and eventually due upon their crosses in religious ecstasy as they bleed, suffer, scream and ultimately exalt their god upon their death crosses before finally succumbing to the countless wounds they have endured. Those who travel to their cross sites are encouraged to pray and even wound further these condemned martyrs. One who may strike a killing blow with a rock or spell is rumored to be marked by Harbinger himself as a great future savior of The Empire.

The tourism inside The Hallowed City is actually rather high, but with religious intersts at heart of course. Fanatics even amongst the normal citizenry of their respected townships, hamlets, or cities, they who journey all the way to Jarentasar and The Hallowed City are not toursits, but pilgrims. Otherwise, this dark and serious city is considered naught but the exact approximation of death and seriousness in a world that alread bears to much of this.

The architectural style of The Hallowed City is a highly gothic, high, vaulting and noble style of architecture that overpowers the senses themselves with the oppresive, powerful carved stone that looks down upon one as they journey through the city.

The Hallowed City utilizes access to the glaciers and water of the moutains while obtaining necessary sustenance from trade via ships bringing necessary required wheat, barely, spices and more. It is a mountainous town that does not have the capability to entirely rely upon itself. As such it does rely upon import's from the rest of The Empire to truly prosper.