The Old City

An old document I found on my PC. It'll see light in some of my fiction, albeit in a slightly different form and it's a bit scrappy here. I hope you enjoy, nonetheless. 

The City

There's a city, old but not yet ancient, with step pyramids and stone mansions, surrounded by lower grade buildings and mud huts. The twin lion gods, one a lord of light and fire, the other of darkness, the hunt and warfare, are worshipped here; appeased by human sacrifices. Criminals are bent backwards over the altars, their hearts cut from their chests and burnt with sweet incenses.

The city is huge, housing half a million people and divided into three areas, the central and highest section is the Old City, dedicated to the temples, although most of them stand abandoned, and palaces of the rich and powerful. This is surrounded by a wall, one built since the Queen took over the city. Beyond that is the second part of the city, a bustling section of the metropolis that's full of bazaars. The outer ring of the city is composed of slums, shanty towns and bone yards. There is no wall to protect the city from outside. A huge aqueduct leads from the west from the city, transporting water to farmland and to the closest of the Queen's captured cities.

The city is built on the ruins of older metropolises, and the tunnels under the city teem with creatures, including giant scorpions.

Places

• The Great Temple – Set at the highest point of the city, doubling as a palace for the Queen, this imposing building is dedicated to the twins, crowned by a huge ziggurat to them.
• The Abandoned Temples – Also filling the Inner City, these structures have stood silent and empty for a century. Their contents are untouched, attempts to steal from them are common and guardian sphinxes protect the treasures within.
• The Arena – A great arena in the Middle City. Gladiators are often purchased as concubines by the elite's women, under the pretext of them being body slaves.
• The Slave Market – In the Middle City, where many slaves are sold. There are many such markets in the city, but the greatest is adjunct to the Grand Bazaar.
• The Grand Bazaar – The greatest of the bazaars, full of merchants from across the World.
• The Gardens – Located in the Inner City, the Gardens were created at the birth of the city and are counted as a wonder of the world
• The Wall – surrounding the Inner City
• The Plague Pits – Located to the south, this is where the dead of the Great Plague were places. It's still believed that the dead carry the contagion of the Plague. Lately it has become the home of ghouls and other monsters.
• The Square of Gods – a place where the underground cults gather to proselytise.
• The Undercity – where the old city lay, now built over countless times.
• The Docks – Lining the Spine, the docks bring trade to the city.
• The Pumping House – where the water from the River (the spine of the world) is pumped up into the city through great stone channels.
• The Wheel House – a vast waterwheel that drives some of the devices in the Outer City.
• The Boiler House – a vast steam works where river water is heated to power devices in the city. This drives devices in the Inner City.
• The Lizard Kin Embassy – Inner City, a strange, alien looking building covered in brightly coloured lacquer.
• Farms along the banks of the river, growing food.

Languages

There are a number of tongues spoken in the City, principally the High and Low languages native to the metropolis. The High tongue is used for science, ritual and government, whilst the Low is the language of the streets, trade and warfare.

The Lizard Kin tongue, a sibilant tongue of hissing sounds for the most part, is also a common thing to hear.

There is little writing, most texts are memorised by heart and passed down orally. Writing is reserved for royalty and deities, as a way of preserving their names eternally.

Defence and Crime

The City only gained its own, standing, army in the wake of the Queen's victory. Beyond that it was guarded by a citizen's militia, which is where most of its troops come from today. There are professional warriors though, in the form of the Pride and the Warrior Societies that have grown up. The societies protect the Inner City and also perform duties that relate to military exercises other than defence. At least one skirts the edge of heresy; its rituals are secretly dedicated to one of the other gods.

Weaponry tends to be spears, javelins, bows and arrows and daggers (there are no swords). In the arena there are variations on this, new weapons are trialled for the crowd's amusement. These vary from cat claw like punching daggers, strapped to the backs of the wielder's hands to modified agricultural and fishing tools (flails, nets and tridents).

Armour is non existent for many combatants, the professional warriors wear leather tunics covered with riveted bronze and copper plates but the majority of soldiers fight either clad in a loincloth or naked.

For the most part cavalry is unheard of (there are exceptions but the lack of stirrups limits the use of such troops), but war chariots are coming into their own, thanks to the development of 'chariot armour' that protects both driver and warrior.

Out on the streets, the citizenry are policed by the City Guards, a newly created group which has evolved from the old Citizen's Watch. This Watch is usually armed with long cudgels and large shields.

The criminal underworld is not controlled by a thieves guild, but instead several gangs work against each other to try and control parts of the city. Bandits and river pirates operate outside the city, preying on trade caravans and ships on the Spine.

The Queen

The city is ruled by a queen priest, a conquering heroine, whose horde of soldiers swept into the city and put all the opposition to the sword a century ago. She claims to be the daughter of one of the twin gods, or of both of them. She brought the deities with her and gave the city to them after her conquest. She makes regular appearances in the city, but nobody alive has ever seen her face; she hides it behind a beautiful mask of pure gold. She is guarded at all times by her Pride, her personal guard who are rumoured to be her lovers as well. She is certainly a keen supporter of the city's tradition of polyandry, going so far as to bless multiple weddings in the great square in front of the great temple.

She is a cruel, but fair ruler, sustained by the sacrifices offered to the gods but willing to share her power with her followers, granting divine powers to her priests and champions in times of need, encouraging learning. All it takes is acceptance of her divinity: entry into her fathers' cult. The nobility, who have traditionally been members of the Council of Advisers that support the King Priest are all members of the cult; those that refused to join were put aside, and about half the Council is composed of the Twin Gods' high priests. The majority of the city's bureaucracy is handled by the Queen's cult, noble families who once shared power have been ousted and isolated, which breeds resentment in their ranks. It is only fear of the Queen that keeps them in check.

No other cults are tolerated, they have been driven underground, to lurk in the ghettos of the outer city; their temples stand empty, gathering dust. Their gods have grown smaller, quieter. Perhaps in another century they will have fallen silent: in the meantime they find their worshippers where they may. In the outer city a square has been co-opted by the cults, their priests proselytise here, operating from tiny, makeshift shrines. There are regular raids, with harsh punishments meted out for the rebel priests.

Other Gods

Despite the interdict on the worship of other gods, or Yazadi (meaning 'worthy of worship'), their cults blossom underground, either surviving amongst the poor or hidden in the ranks of aspirational classes. For instance the Anack the Builder God's worshippers are enmeshed in the Mason's Guild, hidden from the gaze of the outside world.

The First Goddess: A Creatrix and river Goddess, she is the deity that was first worshipped in the city. She is depicted in many ways, usually as a composite of woman and reptile. In older depictions she is shown as having the hind quarters of a dragon, in more modern versions she often has wings and a tail.

Her provinces are Creation, Water and Motherhood

Mattaki The War Dancer: Originating from a city to the south and east, he is a deity of fire, fertility, dance and war. Depicted as a youth with fiery hair, usually clad in bronze armour but barefoot either holding a large horn or a pair of spears, his cult has a strong tradition of performance and athletics.

Anack the Building God: A stone skinned giant, often shown as crouching amidst a huge palace. Anack is seen as the father of mathematics and geometry. His cult does not preach in the Square of Gods, and of all the old faiths it stands the closest to being accepted if only because the knowledge he specialises in is so vital. It is said that the stone skinned demons that occasionally make their way into the world are Anack's creation, his labourers who rebelled and were cast out into the Howling Darkness.

Anushka The Storm Goddess: Shown with a drum and with her ankles and wrists girded with bracelets and anklets that make sound, Anushka's cult grew up in the north in a mountain city. Another dancing deity, her rhythms and dance is meant to conjure storms and other weather. Only women may enter her cult.

Tammuz The Agriculture God: A consort of the First Goddess (one of the many), the God of Corn is eternally wounded. His blood is said to give life.

Syssallar The Lizard God: Father of the Lizard Kin and another of the First Goddess' lovers. His cult is open only to the Lizard Kin.

Marris The Goddess of Arts: Shown as a young woman with an army of lovers each of whom has an artistic tool, she is shown as the ultimate muse full of beauty and character. Of all the human gods she attracts the most worshippers from the non human races.

The Cat Lord: A cat headed deity from the far south, he is lord of many things, most especially cleanliness, protection and medicine. A household deity for the most part, he is invoked to keep rats away from home, to keep disease at bay and heal the sick. He is often shown sat under a pair of trees, which are considered to be the bearers of the fruit that can cure any illness.

The World At Large

The queen's reign is good for trade, mercenaries escort ships, both human and lizard kin, from up and down the great river that forms the spine of the world. Across the plains that lead eastward to where the ocean lies come spices, silks and gold, whilst south and west the jungles that the queen hails from, a tribute of sacred leopards is brought every year, to prowl the wondrous gardens at the city's heart. The Sons of the Sky, savants who keep secrets that men must never know, who travel from their mountain fastnesses to the north in search of things that they will not speak of.

This does not mean that all is tranquil, or safe. There are noble families who remember the days when their station meant something, before the priesthood snatched their power away. There are guilds that will do anything if the price is right and in the bazaars and the temples there are treasures worth stealing, worth killing for. Strangers seek the city out, in vengeance for the queen's latest war or for the purposes of trade, or politics; other cities still keep their eyes fixed here, waiting for the twin gods, or their daughter to decide that she must be an empress no a queen. Still others come because dreams and visions guide them, because they have no choice but to do otherwise.

The Queen's Reach

The Queen has conquered four other city states, holding them in thrall. This generally means that she takes tribute from them, but otherwise they are left to run their own affairs, still it is an empire in all but name. Two border the river, one lies westward and the other lies south, on an island in the gulf where the Spine spills out into the sea.

A tribe of raiders from the deserts, where the women ride horses – they use javelins and bows and arrows.

Ruins of an old city, one built by demons at the behest of a Sorcerer King. It became ruins when he tried to corral the Demon Queen. She cursed the King and his acolytes, transforming them into monsters. Today the place is rumoured to be haunted by the old king, now transformed into a manticore. The other monsters are believed to scattered across the World.

Other Races

The Sky Sons are a race of giants, standing ten feet tall. They dwell in the mountains to the north and seem to have no real interest in the world beyond the acquisition of knowledge. Most never leave their homes, but a trickle head south to the city, usually seeking something. They seem to view much of the world with amusement and will trade knowledge for food, though they are often more interested in a like for like exchange. Their sole weakness seems to be for human women, there are stories of how one gave up all his learning for a night with a beautiful woman and it is as a result of their lust that the Nephilim came to be.

The Nephilim are barbarous creatures, huge giants with either great strength or intellect, coupled with a terrible hunger that mars their approach to everything. They are cursed with low willpower, said to be a mark of the disfavour of the Sky Sons, and often will stop what they are doing to pursue their vice. Most are mules, sterile, but there are rumours of some that can procreate and that they are breeding huge armies in the mountains to the north. Rumours say that Nephilim are stealing out of their camps to abduct women and carry them back to the mountains.

The Lizard Kin are a race of brightly coloured beings, covered in patterned scales. Their cities lie to the south but they're a common sight in the city, though it is mostly males that venture north. Females tend to be larger than males and can be extremely aggressive in their dealings with other races (there is a rumour that they eat humans when given the chance). Most females are marked by twin sacks of flesh on their necks that redden when they are angry or aroused. Few are poisonous, it is considered a great boon to have a venomous bite, and an even greater one to be able to spit poison.