The Eternal City

The Universal Temple serves as a meritocracy, elevating it's adherents according to ability, but the core governmental group is the paterfamilias, the base unit defined by the Pact of Twelve Tables, the initial constitution that legitimized the Eternal City and formed the Empire. The great patrician families still sit behind the scenes, pulling strings to achieve their aims, and several of the "independent" cities of the Shattered Peninsula have an aristocracy of noble titles, all subordinate to this family or that, or absorbed and traded between the shadowy patricians as deals are made. The many fractured cities have their own governments, but all bow to the Universal Temple and it's Highfather, who represent the Divine on Earth. Although internally a coalition of city-states, the entire Shattered Peninsula bows to the Eternal City and it's Highfather, who dominate and control all interactions with those off the peninsula.

The Eternal City is protected by sturdy walls, manned by the armies of the patrician families and the various dukes and monarchs of the scattered cities of the Shattered Peninsula, backstopped by the infinite armies of Dis, commanded by the Highfather of the Universal Temple.

The Eternal City owns land throughout the northern reaches, largely tombs, cemeteries, and catacombs where the dead are interred and pilgrimage sites that generate much wealth from the faithful which is shared by the Temple organization with local monarchs, generally on a 70/30 basis (though the Temple will increase it's cut as often as possible). The Temple acts as a bank for the nations and leaders of the Mare Nostrum, offering loans to any crown willing to bow to the Highfather and supplanting those who refuse.

The Eternal City founded the Republic that became the Empire, and it's traditions are Imperial, including it's community spirit. The Eternal City, indeed the whole of the Shattered Peninsula, formed the foundation on which the Empire was built, and the patricians set a standard of living comparable. Water and food are abundant and amenities readily available. Indoor plumbing is commonplace. The additional resources of Dis ensure sanitation and maintenance, affording a luxuriant lifestyle unimaginable elsewhere.

The city itself is divided into fourteen districts, each named for it's most prominent landmark/feature, and is overseen by a vicomagister, a city official appointed by the Lords Cardinal to oversee public works and fund the Vestal Order in maintaining the temples.

The Eternal City commands the resources of the Shattered Peninsula, albeit divided by regional leadership, as well as the infinite production of Dis. Prior to the Eternal Secession, the Lateran Palace was entrusted with the responsibility of minting Imperial coinage, ensuring the coins held a composition equal to standards set by the Senate. This contract is still in effect, and is held as a sacred trust, ensuring that the Empire continues to send bullion to be converted into properly assayed coins.

The patricians are factions to themselves, even those who cannot claim a power of Dis among their resources. Wielding great power, beneath them are the architects and artists who have formed trade guilds to perfect their various crafts and grade and thus control the value of their works. These guilds manipulate prices and supplies, amassing incredible wealth the Lords Cardinal draw from Dis for their own needs and stimulating desire for the produce of the guilds across the West. Merchants plying their trade across the West convert their gains into standard coin here, and this has given rise to powerful banking houses who rival the guilds (but not the Lords Cardinal) and manipulate prices across the West, but not the Empire itself.

The city's history is somewhat checkered and hidden in myth, beginning with refugees running aground on the Shattered Peninsula back when it was the fields of Magna Graecia. Twins born during the wreck were abandoned by their mother (who may have died-records are unclear). The twins were raised feral and turned out to be lycanthropic, gathering a band of like creatures they forged into a band of bandits. They became known when they captured the women of the nearest city en masse and inducted into a rape camp, given over to the lusts of the werebeasts. The creatures festered like a boil and threatened to erupt over the peninsula, drawing the fearful neighboring cities to unite into a massive army bent on the camp's destruction. When the Wolf Twins saw the force marching on them, they sent forth diplomats who offered to parlay. Pack instinct and the fears of battling such a large force of monstrous shapeshifters lead those who held land to broker exchanges using a trusted messenger elite which evolved into positions as conditions lead to greater interaction. The twin leaders gathered leaders of the families to forge the Pact of Twelve Tables, a fairly comprehensive legal code spelling out the advantages of citizenship and an outline of governance that became the law. The pact was sealed when the brothers turned on each other in ritual combat, the families pardoned the survivor and negotiated a formal body to elect a king, using a messenger elite for sub rosa interactions between families and retaining the formal body to affirm law and advise this king. Those they elected are lost to history, collectively called the Zodiac Kings though their number and their names are unknown. The Zodiac Kings were all cunning and corrupt-the last of them cast out by a coalition of the shadowy patricians who ruled behind the scenes who dissolved the office and instead hired mercenaries and established a Republic. The Eternal Republic was well respected and the patrician families, the landowners, won over neighboring cities who adopted their ways, including the Shattered Peninsula and outlying islands, as well as colonies from the Hellas Peninsula who found prosperity under the patrician families, even forming their own under the same rules as the older patricians, adopting the familial ancestor cult that was the core of patrician belief. These cults were family oriented, lead by the father of the family, who was the connection to the divine for the entire family. The patricians reached beyond the known world to vistas beyond imagining, seeking wealth and power for themselves. The patricians arranged pacts, binding others as masters and sponsors to death and beyond, so a family collected spirits to further their goals all bound to the eldest male, who shepherded the family's interests. The good of the family was held even above Imperial loyalty, and the patricians soon decided running the Empire was distracting them from their goals. Their reports lead the patricians to the city of Dis where they soon developed a spy network of the familial dead that ultimately conquered the Iron City, giving the patricians a power base independent of the intrigues of the Empire, which soon held no more interest to them. The powerful Gaius family cast their net westward where they soon encountered the colonies of Qart-Hardasht and the giants of the Tin Isles, just as the other families expanded eastward to dominate the Hellas Peninsula through trade. It was the Divine Ivlivs who founded the Weald and hired the ogres of Dumnonia to pacify the Barbaric Wild after he used them to force the Triumvirate on the city until he could undercut his corulers and become First Citizen. The powerlust of the Gaius family was bound only to the Prime Material, and the patricians wanted so much more. This chafed very early. The reign of the Divine Ivlivs was a Golden Age in the Eternal City, cemented by manipulating the Khemeti succession so the Divine Ivlivs could wed their queen and absorb the Two Lands into Gaius holdings. This move was bolder, but not so bold as the brutal public assassination that prevented it, and vendetta law saw his nephew with an army in short order, a mistake the patricians would regret, for Octavian was as cunning as his uncle. The Elders bought time by dispatching him but were taken back when Octavian absorbed the Hellas Peninsula and the Orientalus Coast effortlessly with the army his vendetta allowed, troops loyal to the patricians until Octavian returned with Khemet as personal property and with it, the wealth to maintain that army, adequate to become Emperor of the Mare Nostrum, ending the Eternal Republic in favor of an Eternal Empire. As the patricians grew to resent the obligations of Empire, the Gaius family winnowed itself down with the last committing suicide five generations later. The end of the Gaius Dynasty was not the end of the Empire, for the Imperial Throne drew those hungriest for power on the Prime Material Plane, though the Elders of the Eternal City sought so much more in the Realms Beyond, the patricians lurking in the shadows building their own power both temporal and spiritual, maintaining the Empire for the stability they required to wage a war of conquest in Dis, the realm of the obscure Dispater, the name bound to the god they found amongst the Fey. While the world revolved around the Empire, the patrician houses circled Dis, a hell realm that was one unending city ruled by the patrician houses in coalition with each other. The obligations of Empire became problematic with the conquest of Dis. Patrician intrigues drove the capital eastward as the patricians orchestrated the sacking of the city and maintained mercenaries at the edge of the Barbaric Wilds, the Path of the Eagle and limit of civilization, driving the Empire off the Shattered Peninsula entirely, and leaving the Eternal City's westernmost mainland city at Ravenna. The brutal purge that drove all not members of a patrician family or closely allied with one provided the sacrifice that served to bind Dispater in the Iron Tower and give the patricians Dis. The peninsula burned, costing the Empire it's western holdings when the dwendi seized Terraconensis and the mercenaries along the Path of the Eagle were bought away by the patricians, not merely with wealth, but with the strange enlightenment the Universal Temple offered. With the Empire cast out, the patricians spread over the Barbaric Wilds, not ruling but harvesting, sending their dour priests to herd the dead, filling Dis with slave labor to gather it's infinite resources. The patricians are building slave armies to plunder the hell they rule through their own dead, offering their necromantic visions as the promise of eternity in the Iron City, glimpses they offer as standard of it's wonders until those embracing these visions find the reality of eternity in the Iron City. The Universal Temple sends it's members across the West, building mausoleums and forging sites where their magics are available, asking only submission to their regime, who anoints and blesses the rulers throughout the West, wherever the Universal Temple is the dominant faith.

The Eternal City has it's own, unique style, inspired by it's command of Dis. Great cathedrals with tall narrow windows of stained glass have replaced the boxy monuments of the Empire and mosaics and paintings save in the homes of the patricians, who retain the old Imperial stylings.