Locations/DemonCityTibar
Tibar, Demon City of the East
Tibar, Demon City of the East, lies now outside the reckoning of mortals, and beyond the ken of even the wise. Its location and eventual fate are lost to man, but its history is long and fabled.
Once, it was Tibar, Citadel of Five Towers, and it was a bulwark against the Wyld and a staging ground for every expansion of the Old Realm’s power in the East for millennia. Peering from the garrets of the Cobalt Spire, the Pansophist monitored the various peasant populations, essence-flows, and mystic oaths that bound the fragile periphery of false Creation that the Solar Exalted had circumscribed over turbid Wyld. Working from the Subterrane Absolute, the Lady Anodyne neutralized threats to the rule of the Deliberative’s duly appointed agents, and spent many an hour overseeing the interrogation of rebel god and upstart Exalt.
(The titles of the other children of the Unconquered Sun who lurked within the gilded courts and lambent walls of the city are lost to time, savants say. But after the Exalted slid into degeneracy, pieces of sobriquets found their way into nightmares and wives’ tales, used to frighten children and the impious alike in the days of the Shogunate, and so to this day the young still shudder at the mention of the All-Consuming Suzerain, little understanding the true nature — and horror — that lay behind the title .)
After the destruction of the Solar Exalted, the Dragon-Blooded found their reach wanting, and what was once one of the jewels of the middle Eastern reaches became a border outpost, staffed with only a token force overseeing an increasingly ignorant and debased population, whose numbers swelled as distant frontier-towns emptied and the borders grew close.
The masses of humanity, pressed in and fearful, proved a detriment to the Dragon-Blooded when the Contagion fell upon the city, and the Dragon-Blooded were cut down by the Hungry Dead and opportunistic shades that sallied forth from the Underworld through shadowlands which sprung up where the dead were piled chains high. Even those who curse the Terrestrial Exalted in this age of sorrow would have sung their praises as they fought to their last breath, daiklaives held high, armor holding against ghost and nemmissary alike.
The last of the Dragon-Bloods, hiding in warded redoubts, summoned demons to man the city’s weapons, hoping that any hand, no matter how benighted, might be enough to save the city. When the Fair Folk stabbed through the ancient wards and brittle reality of the false Creation built by the Solars, Tibar alone stood against them, the city’s ancient weaponry repulsing the Fair Folk again and again, it’s few surviving guardians manning the control-centers and turrets and warstriders that protected the walls, until only the city’s ancient automata protected it. Wishing for victory, the hammer of Lord Chrysanthemum’s forces fell, once, twice, thrice, but the walls of Tibar held.
To this day, Tibar may stand against the Wyld, safe. Empty and haunted, but safe. It’s halls are walked only by demons and the shades of the dead, its doors proof against all who would plumb its secrets.
- (posted by Eric Brennan @RPG.net)
Suggested Alternatives
In truth, as the savants and loremasters will tell you, the title Demon City is not strictly accurate. Admittedly, Yozi-spawn can be found there, but they are not the primary inhabitants of Tibar, nor the ones that it drew its name from.
It is well-known, to those who study the First Age, that certain among the Solars spent time experimenting with (and, indeed, on) more or less anything that they could get their hands on, just because they could. Tibar was once the home of a legendary Twilight, who had a certain fascination with gods.
Ever wondered what'd happen if you used a spirit-scalpel to spit a little god in two, removed several of the essence-structures that serve them in place of internal organs, and splice in parts from humans, demons, ghosts, and fae? Want to know what happens if someone takes take several thousand of these mutilated divinities, lock them in a city proof against their escape, and then inconsiderately dies and leaves the mechanisms put in place to feed and tranquilize them unmaintained? Want to see what you get when you leave this untended garden of mad gods for thousands of years without any contact with the outside world?
If you do, go to Tibar.
If you're mortal, odds are you'll be sucked dry of Essence or forced to participate in incomprehensible rites of worship and punished whenever you fail the often contradictory tasks set for you. If you're Exalted, then you'll probably escape this, but there are other dangers. Gods have long memories, you see, and they recall that their original tormentor/creator was Exalted. Thus, they view the Chosen with a mixture of fear, adoration, and milennia-old hunger for vengence. Expect roughly equal proportions of the distorted once-deific beings fleeing you, bowing down at your feet, and plotting your death.
There are, granted, potential benefits to be accrued. The inhabitants of the city have odd hobbies, and among them are those with a taste for soul-forging. If you're brave and strong enough to steal from the hoard of a soul-smith, and you grab the right thing from their pile of mad artifices, you might be able to acquire an artifact the likes of which has not been seen since the First Age. Or, on the other hand, you might grab the one that transmutes all of your Essence into Wyld energy in a way that certain beings find perversely pleasurable. It's all in the luck of the draw.
A few of the warrior-savants of the Shogunate, and even fewer from the contemporary Realm or Lookshy, have entered Tibar in search of knowledge and riches. Notably fewer have left. None, as far as the records would indicate, have gone back a second time.
So, given that you and your sworn brotherhood are standing outside the soulsteel gates and all the divinations have indicated that the only possible way to banish the Fae that have swarmed half the Blessed Isle is deep inside, the question you should be asking youself now is, how lucky do you feel?
- (posted by Random Nerd @RPG.net)
The city of Tibar was raised from nothing on the edges of creation, crafted into being be an ancient Twilight caste summoning demons of immense power to shape the landscape and city into such designs that made men break into tears, into songs of joy, question the meaning of existence and even give slavish loyalty to the Solar Deliberative.
It was a city of art, designed for impact on the human senses like no other structure in creation. It brought forth works of music, art, science, literature and magiks like none seen before, and not seen since.
Then the Usurpation came, having foreseen such an event in his paranoid mind of madness, upon the Solars death the city’s defences activated, summoning a demon of immense power and its offspring into the city, and becoming the city, seeking out the traitors and spys.
The city still lives today, a small mass of calm in the Wyld that surrounds it. The demon still occupies the city, never completing its endless oath to seek out and destroy traitors to the solar cause. Heroes have travelled to the city in scores before, few have returned, and those that do are driven mad, whispering only of the great beauty and the great horrors which they saw.
Several artifacts have been brought back from the city, most now reside hidden away in the Imperial Manse, Lookshys Armoury or secreted in a Sidereal cache. Although not powerful weapons in the usual sense, the meresight of some of these pieces has driven entire villages to build shrines to the Unconcoured Sun, mass suicide or gibbering madness.
