MelWong/Crystal

Crystal

Geographical Layout

The city of Crystal lies on a plateau a few miles southeast of a rocky, almost impenetrable mountain range bisected by a great glacier. It is in that glacier and in those mountains where the mineral wealth making Crystal prosperous is mined. Within those mines, blue, violet and clearest white diamonds can be found. Glowstone crystals the size of a man's head have been found within, and more valuable still is the light, strong iron called feathersteel. All this precious ore locked away in the mountain ranges of the North makes mining a lucrative, if highly dangerous occupation, and every summer the Guild caravans wend their way up to the city to trade.

Further south along the trade routes is a frozen tundra most commonly traversed by yeddim-dragged caravan, dog-sled, or more commonly from other Haslanti cities, airship. Yet further south is the frozen White Sea where fishermen make their catches, and hunters harpoon seals on the ice. The fresh catches are kept edible by packing in ice and salt, and fast-couriered to trading posts on ice-boats harnessing the strength of the wind to coast along the mirror-smooth ice of the floe.

Architecture And Building Styles

The city itself is built around the husk of a former First Age battlement - the huge fortress wall that forms the entrance to the city seems to have grown up from the blue-gray rock of the plateau, instead of having been built with brick and mortar. Openings seem to yawn out from the smooth stone, the iron portcullis grates having been a later addition. The opportunistic Haslanti folk living in the city have used those openings as docks for smaller airships, although scorch marks on the floors and copper rails in the walls seems to suggest that they once housed First Age artillery. The parapet is broken in only one direction - towards the trade road down south, which suggests a forced invasion of the fortress. The people who inhabited the ruins later carved handsome stone steps out of the roughly torn crack in the plateau over years of toil, and closed the tall, narrow gap with gates of bronze and narwhal horn.

Inside the battlement walls a massive crystal monolith stands, pointing slightly East as it juts rudely through the rock. It is from that great monolith that the city gained its present name. Savants of the First Age have identified it as the sword-blade belonging to an ancient sculpture glorifying one of the Forsaken. Of the sculpture, only chunks of rubble remain, among those a great hand of white marble resting near the base of the monolith. The rest has been blasted beyond recognition by arcane weapons of the First Age and mostly been salvaged for building use within the city. The oldest buildings in Crystal can be identified by the fact that they were made of white marble, rather than the more usual blue slate and mammoth-ivory.

Inside, few of the buildings are higher than two to three stories tall. The older ones were constructed from marble and bear a semblance of the grace of the First Age, but the massed habitations of the city's recent expansion seems more cozy than grand despite their sturdy construction. Moreover, the many barracks within the city walls have been converted into dormitories for the airdock workers and other maintenance staff who handle the openings and closings of the airship gates.

The streets are crooked and narrow and seem to follow a skewed logic of their own, and the low buildings seem to huddle close together for warmth. An ingenious system of walkways allows the people to travel freely regardless of snowfall or bitter cold. The winter doors are on the warmer ground levels of the streets, leading out to covered walkways sheltered from windchill and inclement weather. In warmer seasons, the summer doors on the second levels of most homes are used, and inhabitants walk on the roofs of their sturdily built covered walkways.

The streets are lighted with blubber-burning blown-glass lamps or resin torches in wrought iron holders, or in the richer sectors of town, cold blue glowstones the size of hens' eggs in bronze candelabra. Windows are made from translucent horn, or for the more affluent, clear panes of quartz or even Chiaroscuro stained glass. Due to the near-white shades of mammoth ivory and bone, marble, and the unrelenting blue-gray of the slate, the locals prefer some color on the outsides and insides of their homes to add some cheer to the long nights.

Most of that color is supplied by nubby, round-framed, goat-hair tapestries woven by the womenfolk of the house, hung like gaily pennants inside and outside their homes. The goat-hair is often taken from the family's pet goat (vital in a land with rudimentary garbage disposal), and dyed by hand. Those tapestries are often in demand by collectors in other parts of the Threshold, and the finest examples fetch fine prices when they reach the bazaars of Nexus. Other splashes of color are provided by mosaics in the streets, often installed at great expense by a wealthy city inhabitant as a show of largesse to the rest of the populace. The best mosaic-layers are often the targets of patronage wars, and the costs for their services can rise to astronomical proportions.

Powers that Be

Crystal is ruled by Lady Maerta Hammerfall, Mistress of the Winter Market, one of the thirteen Oligarchs of the Haslanti league. A matronly woman in her early fifties, she has lost the vernal beauty of her youth, but is still a rather striking figure, with her hawklike amber gaze and her pure white hair. She dresses in restrained but opulent robes, just the bare minimum to flaunt her authority as Oligarch. A simple filet of silver adorns her lined brow, and her voice is deeper than a woman's wont; perhaps roughened by years of barking orders. She is often seen smoking hashish from her fragrant water-pipe, and she smells of the attar of roses (a ridiculously expensive scent in the barren North).

Her son, Sigre, is a handsome young man with sapphire-blue eyes and hair the gray of an oncoming storm. Like his mother he cuts a striking figure, but her almost insufferable arrogance seems a birthright in him, and it is more often than not tempered with a self-conscious good humor. He is rumored to be god-blooded, the result of Lady Maerta's dalliance with an air spirit in her wild youth. The Lady Maerta is grooming him as her understudy so he can take over as Oligarch and Master of the Winter Market after she retires, but in unguarded moments, he looks to the north dreaming of adventure, and perhaps, his father's people.

Beneath the Lady Maerta is a council of guildmasters, made up by the most influential and affluent of the merchant and tradesmen classes. Among them are Keniz Black Diamond, the head of the miners' guild, and Frejeya Snowblind, the head navigator of the lucrative airship pilots' guild.

Economy

Mining is the key industry of Crystal, followed shortly by airship-making and smithing. The trade of fine mammoth-ivory, seal-leather crafts and other sundry items also keeps the jade flowing.

The mines in the glacier up north are professional, clean-cut operations staffed both by free miners and slaves. Most of the time, paid freemen tend to the mining work requiring a more delicate hand, like the harvesting of glowstone crystal. Only the most grueling work, like the quarrying of slate and the mining of feathersteel in the heart of the glacier, is done by slave labor. Most of the slaves are convicts sentenced to hard labor, and few live to see their release dates. What with the poor food, little rest and dangerous beasts that roam unused mine tunnels, only one in nine convicts lives to be freed. The rest die one by one in the chill heart of the glacier.

The professional freeman miners, however, are treated very well - their labor is honest, not the punishment for a crime, and their guildmaster, Keniz Black Diamond, is a hard but fair man who pays a good wage and gives the families of maimed or killed miners a generous compensation package. Some complain that his generosity cuts into the bottom line of his enterprise, but happy miners are much less likely to pilfer, and much more likely to work carefully.

The techniques of airship-manufacturing are more art than science, the secrets held selfishly by a few master craftsmen and grudgingly passed on to only the worthiest apprentices. Those who are judged unworthy spend their entire careers varnishing hulls and baskets, or stitching balloons from silk, in hopes of ingratiating themselves with their disapproving masters. Most of them spend their entire lives slogging away as apprentices without advancing, but a very few manage to impress their masters enough with their persistence to be given a second chance.

The other trades in the city are pretty much like they are in most other cities, and do not require mention in this section.

Trade with the Guild is lucrative, to say the least. Much of the luxury goods entering the Haslanti Republic, and Crystal in general, are traded for at the bustling Summer Market while the caravans visit. The ruling Oligarch sees the Guild as a competitor and a necessary evil - without competition; there can be no such thing as competitive pricing. In any event, the presence of the Guild keeps her on her toes, even if she would insist on written contracts, double-checked with an advocate, before agreeing to any deals with them.

Districts and Neighborhoods

The Winter Market The Winter Market is the exclusive province of Lady Maerta - her underlings may record the transactions, but it is her eagle eye overlooking every jade talent changing hands, down to the last cracked bit. Despite its name, the Winter Market is open year round - in fact, it is where most wholesaling is made.

The Winter Market is held year-round under great tents of bleached mammoth-hide held up with bronze and bone tent-poles. A gallows set strategically under the eternally cold Northern Wall of the fortress, is made of whale-jawbone and iron hooks. It holds great, butchered sides of meat from which the butchers' apprentices split great lumps off from for sale. The cold of that area ensures that the meat stays fresh; meanwhile, bronze braziers full of dried yeddim dung are lit to warm customer and merchant alike. The fuel is surprisingly inoffensive to the nose, if a bit sooty. Still, it beats standing in the cold and on slow days the porters and apprentices are seen warming their idle hands over the warmth of the slow-burning fires.

Grains, dried fruit, cheeses and pickled vegetables are also sold there, and there are many pushcart vendors selling all manner of foodstuff ranging from yeddim kebabs to sticky honey buns. Often, a dutiful child is rewarded with a sticky bun for helping their mother carry a basket full of lighter goods around. Sprawling south out from under the great tents is the regular bazaar, where non-perishable goods are sold. The only exception is for weapons - those are sold at the smiths' shops, and not at the Winter Market for fear of misuse. The smaller stalls are covered with canopies made from wool to prevent snow from spoiling the arrayed goods.

The Summer Market

Also known as Maena's Regret, the Summer Market is where the Summer Fair is held. An open square in the middle of the city, it is often bypassed in the colder months in favor of the warmer covered walkways. Still, it is in Maena's Regret that the first signs of summer can be seen. In the middle of the square, a bronze statue stands. She is presumably the namesake of the place, but the origins of her name and the reasons for her regret have been lost to time.

The statue is that of a woman, queenly in mien and stately in bearing. Her hair is unbound as befits an unwed maiden, and a sword is girt to her side with a girdle of bells. Bronze wind chimes hang from her earlobes and tinkle in the slightest gust. A gilded circlet, in which is set a large, fine glowstone that lights the square by night, graces her brow. The most interesting thing about the statue is that her hands are cupped as though to drink from them, and her cupped hands are the source of a fountain that remains frozen almost all year round.

"Summer starts when Maena's Cup runs over," is a common local saying, and it refers to the melting of the fountain-spout in her hand, which flows only during the brief summer months. It is also then that flowers bloom in the tiny patch of ground at her feet. "Maena won't be drinking this long season," is another local saying, in reference to a long, bitter winter.

When the waters in Maena's hands start trickling with the melt, the Oligarch announces the Summer Market open, and a mad rush for spaces begins - the Guildsmen with their imported goods from the rest of Creation, the icewalkers with their exceedingly fine tribal crafts, willingly traded for forged steel weapons, and the local merchants seeking to profit from the carnival that takes place with the arrival of new trade - all of these people, and more, rub shoulders uneasily in the Summer Market under Maena's blind gaze.

The Street of Faces

The Street of Faces is the old residential district of Crystal, where the wealthy and influential meet. This street owes its name to the practice of one having one's ancestors immortalized in cunningly laid mosaics so as to remind everyone else of one's claim to the fine marble estates in this district. Of course, what an ancestor might think of the world treading on his face might be regrettable, but better to flaunt one's bloodline than to hide it like a thing of shame. This is where most of the guildmasters live. The Oligarch's own chateau is also in this district, closest to the white marble hand at the Forsaken's Blade.

Forsaken's Blade

The massive crystal monolith that the city owes its name to has been dubbed Forsaken's Blade by the locals, for the stories that it had once been the blade belonging to a statue of a Solar Anathema. The crystal itself seems inert, if wondrously clear, but on nights of the Aurora Borealis when Luna dances among the Maidens, unreadable runes seem to shimmer within the depths of the rock.

Savants have been unable to read the runes within, and those who stare too long at them seem spellbound or transfixed by its beauty and have to be forcibly dragged away. It is why the locals avert their eyes from Forsaken's Blade, when the northern lights are in the sky, in superstitious fear of being bewitched by the strange writing.

The Airship Docks

Set in the South and East walls of the battlements, the Airship Docks are actually housed in what used to be First Age artillery bunkers for the defense of the city. The weapons are long gone, to a fate nobody knows, but the voids left by their presence have become very useful to the inhabitants of Crystal, indeed. Tiered one on top of another, they make useful bays for docking airships and provide easy access to the ships, for maintenance crews, without taking up too much ground space. Iron portcullis gates cover bays not in use, so as to prevent unauthorized entry, and all arrivals and departures are coordinated by the head of the airship pilots' guild. Complex bronze astrolabes and sky-glass telescopes are important tools in the trade of the navigator, and on busy days one has to be especially alert for fear of fatal accidents. One collision and much could be lost.

People

The folk of Crystal are a handsome people in general, of intermingled Northern and Western stock. The indigo hair of the Western island people is more prevalent among the fisherfolk and whalers among the southern reaches of the Haslanti League, along the ice floe, but the mixed ancestry is still visible among the inhabitants of Crystal. Builds tend toward the broad-shouldered but graceful, complexions tend to be fair but burned brown from rays of sunlight reflected off ice and snow, and hair colors range from the throwback ocean shades of Western intermingling to the pure white of fresh fallen snow.

Despite the harshness of the north, they are very much civilized and are consummate traders and merchants - the Haslanti League is after all a mercantile nation, and a common joke making the rounds in the taverns is how one can tell a merchant from Crystal from a normal Guildsman - the Crystal native can actually sell an icewalker ice.

The natives tend to have a rather strong curiosity regarding outlanders - few are the visitors outside of the riotous Summer Fair, and outsiders are considered exotic and to be probed for information of a world they have never seen. A visitor during the Summer Fair need never pay for his own ale as he will acquire a ready group of hangers on willing to buy him drinks for news of the Threshold, and stories of wondrous sights beyond the White Sea.

Justice

Most justice in Crystal tends to be of the swift and sometimes draconian variety - while the lists of crimes are few, those that are listed do bring swift retribution. For severe crimes such as murder and rape, slavery in the glacier mines is the invariable course of justice - few survive such sentences, and few would feel any sympathy for any black-hearted villain sentenced to such a fate. For lesser crimes such as theft, vandalism or slander, monetary restitution is the most common punishment. For those who cannot pay, the criminal is often sentenced to indentured servitude under the plaintiff, so as to make good on the damages he has wrought.

Clemency can only be granted by the Oligarch, and is rarely gifted upon the unfortunate who has broken a law. However, on the Oligarch's birthday, the surviving slaves working the mines draw lots - one of them will be granted freedom as a gesture of the Oligarch's indulgence. Unfortunately, the freed slave will be shunned heavily by most locals and might wind up enslaved again after he turns to crime to feed himself.

Slavery is illegal except in the case of judicial penalty, but indentured servitude is fully legal - one may sell one's services for a pre-arranged period of time in return for monetary assistance or other more nebulous favors. Indentured servants are not to be mistreated - a master ill-treating his servant will have to answer to the law, and in the cases of gross mistreatment, their positions may be reversed, and the master will see himself serving his former servant as punishment.

Religion

Ancestor worship is a matter of course in Crystal. Every home will have an altar near the hearth, where daily offerings are laid out for the delectation of the honored ghosts. After death, the deceased will be exposed to the winds until their bones are laid bare, and then their skulls will be kept in the homes of their kin as effigies. Should a wedding or other large family occasion take place, the skull-effigies occupy places of honor as though they still lived.

Should a person's body be lost in a rockfall or a mine cave-in, or at sea, it is seen as a grievous calamity, as the ghost can never find its way to the family altar to partake of offerings. Many families have beggared themselves paying for expeditions to seek the bodies of their lost kin, and the compatriot who brings a friend's body home to rest is often honored as a blood relative would be, for in their service they have bonded themselves to the bereaved.

Other offerings include blood, either that of sacrificial animals, or a few drops from the finger of a worshiper, incense, liquor poured into the brazier kept for burnt offerings, or, in the case of the wealthy, flowers imported at great cost from the East. In return, the dead advise their descendants through prophetic dreams. A high percentage of Haslanti dreams come true as a result of the auguries and influences of the honored ancestors.

Dream opals from the South are often used as dream-divination aids, allowing the dreamers to record dreams for further interpretation. Such acts are considered holy, and what one dreams has a massive impact on one's life.

Those dead who lack families to mourn for them will have their skulls placed in communal shrines, tended to by priests who appease the dead and prevent hungry ghosts from returning. Those ghosts are poor, but it is still a better existence than being devoured by one's own hungry ghost.

Way of Life

Family Structures Families tend to be matrilineal - bastardy isn't discriminated against, but neither is it encouraged. In the harsh winters of the north, most children would do better to have two parents instead of one so as not to be totally orphaned should the sole breadwinner pass on. Extended families are the norm, and it's not unusual to see aunts, uncles, grandparents and grandchildren down to the fourth generation, under the same roof (normally expanded a few times to accommodate new births).

Same-sex relationships are neither discouraged nor encouraged - it's a part of life, and if the ancestors and spirits smile upon the marriage, all is well. It's not as though they don't have enough mouths to feed. Adoptions by same-sex couples are seen as practical more than anything else - if they're willing to contribute to the family by adopting say, a late cousin's now-orphaned children, they're welcome to as long as they do a good job of it. Personal accountability is given much more weight than supposed proprieties, and responsibility is one of the greatest virtues.

Food and Drink Foods tend to be simple and solid - spices are ridiculously expensive due to the distance involved in the hauling, and the fact that a cold wet winter can ruin half the goods being sold. Still, during Summer Fair all but the poorest tend to stockpile at least simple spices like peppers and garlic. It's fairly usual to see dried peppers and braided ropes of garlic hanging from the rafters of a kitchen, and one can tell from the amount still hanging up there how long winter has been raging on. Salt is the once ingredient not lacking, for it can be gathered by boiling off the waters of the White Sea.

Vegetables tend to either keep, dry or pickle well, and many is the child who has used a large squash as a seat while playing with corncob dolls near the warmth of the family kitchen. Pickled vegetables include gherkins, cabbages, and olives in brine. Potatoes and other starchy tubers keep fairly well for winter eating as long as one keeps them from becoming frost-bruised - if the pantry-keeper isn't careful, the potatoes they put by for the harsh winter may be a sodden, slimy mess by the time they're retrieved for eating.

It isn't uncommon to see dried apples hanging in strings from the rafters, cored and sprinkled with some cinnamon to give them flavor of bygone summer, and clay urns of dried bilberries are laid down for winter food. To supplement that, there are also winter fowl such as geese and grouse, most often drawn and salted with the feathers on, fish like herring and salmon, either pickled or smoked, and the ice-preserved delicacies of winter crab. Smoked salmon and sturgeon roe is a delicacy used to flavor bland winter staples like oat porridge for savory meals like lunch, and also used to add a little color or interest to meals.

Most grain staples consist of dried corn, wheat flour (expensive), and legumes in sacks - the main course of almost every meal consists of meat. Mammoth is inexpensive most of the time, due to the great size of the creature, and the fact that large numbers of them are hunted at the same time. Bear is considered a tonic meat for the infirm, often stewed with berries and served with fried potatoes. Seal blubber is often given to infants to chew as they teethe, and seal liver is considered good for the blood. Hares, rabbits and voles are considered delicate game, and if caught plump enough, can make a very good stew for dinner.

Despite the huge amount of hunting that most Northern folk do, they often go hungry even though not a single part of the animal is wasted - the cold makes hunger gnaw fast and hard, and even children need to eat much to keep warm in such weather.

Clothing Furs are a matter of course - unlike the styles of the Dynasts, who wear fur for its luxuriant appearance, the natives wear fur as a lining for their clothing to insulate them from the bitter cold. Homespun wool is the fabric of choice, and colorful embroidery is common to add some relief to the white of snow and the brown shades of the furs and soft, brain-tanned leathers. Trousers are worn by men and women alike, but while a man's unornamented sealskin coat tends to reach down to his calves, a woman's coat is most often made of finer fur like otter, and embroidered with seed-pearls or ribbons. Robes are also acceptable, but most often are matched with warm mantles to keep out the cold. Home-knitted scarves are common, and one can often recognize the men of one family by the common motif knitted into the rows of their wool scarves.

The wealthy often wear a layer of silk next to their skin under their suede, and the furs they wear tend to be finer, such as mink or ermine. Jewelry tends to be made of amber, particularly fine ivory, or of precious stones mined from the glacier mines, set in gold or silver. Much of the handiwork is particularly fine - cabochon cuts are favored over faceted stones, and the metalwork is particularly fine filigree. Scrimshaw is also a favored art, and whole panoplies of ivory can be crafted given a pair of mammoth tusks and a skilled craftsman.

Bells are a common accessory on earrings and girdles alike, to banish the whistling sound of the wind, and to also announce one's presence, as one with bells singing with each footstep cannot skulk like a thief, and therefore holds no ill intentions. Young maidens often wear veils not to conceal their faces from others, but rather, to protect the delicate bloom of their skin from the harsh snow. For those who have to venture out into the taiga or onto the glacier where snow-blindness can strike, horn and bone goggles are a must to protect the eyes with.

Hair is kept long for both genders to keep off the cold, and fine caps of sable and beaver are common on colder days. Unmarried individuals of both genders leave their hair loose, while married women tend to wear their hair elaborately braided to announce marital status and seniority in their family. Married men tend to club their hair back simply, or have their wives braid it back for them as a show of affection. A man with ribbons braided in his hair is not effeminate - he simply has a wife who really wants the world to know she prizes him above all.

Homes A regular home tends to be two stories tall, and the sleeping rooms are almost always on the ground floor near the hearth, out of the ways of drafts and the link. The upstairs rooms are used for storage and summer living, and in the coldest days are nearly uninhabitable. Due to the bland shades of bleached mammoth hide, ivory and bone, the women of most families weave tapestries of dyed goat-hair wool to decorate the home with. A particularly fine fur from an animal hunted by a family member may adorn the floor, otherwise the rugs are also woven by hand from rags, or hooked from wool. Chairs are often made from bone, leather and sinew - wood is prohibitively expensive, and larger tables are made from well-polished stone slabs resting atop wrought metal frameworks.

As garbage disposal is rudimentary at best, most families keep a long-haired goat or two as a pet - in the warmer summer months one can see them wagging their tails in the tiny yards, but in winter they are brought into the warmth of the kennels adjoining the kitchen, where the scraps from the midden go. Those goats often provide milk for the family, too, and are the source of the fine hair used to make yarn with. No family will consider eating their goats - the creatures are more companions than meat animals. The more well-off will also have a dog or two to pull a hand-sled with. Hardy and long-furred, those hounds are often brave enough to fight off the northern wolves and canny enough to keep musk-ox at bay.

MelWong

Comments?

I don't remember if I mentioned this back when you posted this on RPGnet, but I loved this then and I love it now. Makes me totally want to play a game set there. -- Charlequin

I agree with Charlequin. Beautiful work; I set a one-shot in your version of Crystal some time ago. Mind if I use your layout for my own take on Nathir? Jiba