The Third City

 

Far to the north of the Imperial territory, jutting out from the crimson alkaline shore of the northern sea and near to the impassable boiling jungles at the world's terminus, stands the ancient city of Rantine. It is called the Third City in official accounts, and, with varying degrees of disdain, 'The Exception' by Imperial subjects. To date it is the only state to have survived White City diplomacy with its political independence intact since the first Imperial campaigns of annihilation, nearly three hundred years ago. 

Rantine is large and populous, and very old. The architecture is quite unlike that found in the White City - the Rantines build in wood as much as stone, and they favour courtyards, one and two-story buildings, shadowed interiors, dark-tinted mirrors, and painted walls. It is called the Third City because in centuries past it was one of the three peer states that vied for supremacy in the region, alongside what is now the White City, and what was then the Old Capital. 

Rantine of old was a competing culture to those others. Its people were famous for producing and exporting dyes, fine lace, carved and treated wood, silk, and iron and brass mechanisms of great complexity and ingenuity. They kept a fearsome military, built around massed bombards and sophisticated rocketry, highly trained and disciplined infantry, and a famously pious noble caste of priests, officers, and administrators, known for their cultivation of miraculous, healing blood, and for the linked practices of blood-drinking and exsanguination on the battlefield.

Rantines are physically tall and bright-eyed, with pronounced features and especially large teeth and eyes. They will tell you that they are descended from the giants of the north. To their southern neighbours they are known as aggressive, loud, laughing, sexually crude, loyal to their friends and lovers, astutely observant, and impossible to lie to. They still file their teeth and dress in lace, and they still attach long streamers of coloured fabric to their limbs when they dance, although no longer when they go to war, because the Rantines have not fought a battle in centuries. Once a year the Great Bombard fires a blank charge, and once a year the 'army' holds a parade, during which the seven remaining 'Colour Exemplars' dress in their ancient harness and perform public displays of their martial and acrobatic skill. All of this is done to signal the exceptional status of the city, its defanged and neutered autonomy beneath the Damocles sword of the 'friendly' garrison of Imperial soldiery. 

The Promise

The Rantine pacification was the first major campaign that the White City fought during its ascendant rise from regional- to super-power status, three centuries ago. The modern Imperial war machine did not exist at the time, and the invasion forces were mostly comprised of drugged and surgically-treated 'myrmidon' citizen-soldiers, shod in bronze and fighting with heavy spears. The campaigns to subdue the Rantine were bloody and attritional - the two cities had been variously allies and enemies of convenience for as long as either could remember, but neither had ever seriously considered extinguishing the other permanently. Something changed at the moment that the White City military were, after decades of war, able to finally destroy the famous Rantine city walls - they were suddenly thrust into the novel position of dictating terms with total impunity. 

The king of the pre-imperial White City found himself unable to order their extermination - there was too much shared cultural history, and too much mutual understanding. The famous Image Game, which would be developed over the centuries of warfare that followed, is said to have its genesis in a Rantine board game played with glass beads, and popular in the White City at the time. He decreed instead that the Rantine nobility would govern independently, as the 'special friends' of their conquerors, and then organised a series of brutal purges in the military leadership, the complete disbanding of the Rantine army, and the crowning of a new and pliant puppet-king. This state of affairs has continued to the present day. 

Rantine of the present is a city held in a curious state of suspended animation. The political machinery is guaranteed by a foreign military, and all essential foreign policy decisions are made by the White City. Internally, the celebration of Rantine culture has taken on a sort of existential importance for certain elements in the city, and the old forms and rituals, which once formed a proud, vital, and living cultural practice, have been exaggerated in a vacuum, for effect. A large part of the economy of the city centres on the performance of this trapped/dead culture for curious onlookers from elsewhere in the empire - the dances, the blood-drinking, the rocketry, the elaborately layered lace clothing. 

Beneath this gaudy performance, Rantine is a wealthy and often-idle city. It is 'kept' by the Empire as proof positive of Imperial tolerance, and as such its populace live mostly comfortable lives, free of the labour expectations of other Imperial subjects. The weather this far north is unbearably hot for much of the year, and at the peak of the summer months the dead, ultra-saline, crimson sea begins to smoke and burn, releasing a smothering stench that burns the eyes and throat. The red sunlight brings strange dreams; makes one loud, laughing, blunt, aggressive, sexually crude. The city is the only place in the empire where Imperial law technically has no jurisdiction, and for this reason its sprawling districts are often used as safe-houses or staging points for Flare Children and other anti-Imperial elements. This concentration naturally leads to a high number of anti-insurgent and other irregular Imperials making their base in the city, and in the Empire it is said that the Rantine bathhouses host more spies, agents, desperadoes, revolutionaries, and thief-catchers than they do Rantine civilians. 

The Queen

The current queen of Rantine is named Sysophene. She is fourteen years old, and by all accounts a shrewd and capable administrator, and a good friend to the Empire. She is around six feet tall, with the socially required over-large eyes, long fingers, and thin, wide lips. She dresses in the formal Rantine style of the old aristocracy (white lace, since it is peacetime, built out to cover the whole of the body) and has had her teeth and fingernails replaced with white steel prosthetics. At fourteen years old she is also devoid of empathy, and monomaniacally dedicated to preserving the culture of her ancestors. Rantine blood-drinking is practised between noble worthies (they drink from one another), and on captives and criminals (all one way). Sysophene regularly organises elaborate blood feasts, exsanguinations, and public mutilations, and when she appears in public with her entourage she will endeavour to have the red-stained mouth, hands, and clothing that befit her station. 

Sysophene is also the secret carrier of a genuine miracle - the healing blood of the old aristocrats, thought to be extinct. She herself is unaware of this, because none of the nobles who have fed from her have been ill when they have done so. The discovery of the healing blood would be a political event of huge importance, and the Empire would work very hard to keep its existence a secret. 

If you were to somehow drink a litre or so of Sysophene's blood (this would take you a minute at minimum, unless you drink blood regularly), you would be healed to full HP and cured of all disease. If you were to do this every day for a week, you would regrow missing limbs and organs. If you let her drink your blood, she will bestow on you an ancient royal blessing, which no longer has any effect.  

The Rantine Nobility

The old ruling classes of the polis, now sadly reduced. They still practice blood-drinking, and many of them claim to keep the old martial traditions of the Colour Exemplars alive. Many now make their living showing curious citizens around their ancient estates, although some have also organised themselves into trading and export consortiums, and are fantastically wealthy as a result. There are various factions in the nobility, which mostly break down into two very broad camps: the modernists, who wish for a greater degree of cultural assimilation into the White City, and the traditionalists (who the White City supports indirectly) who wish to keep the ancient forms 'alive'. There are also those who argue for the rearming of the polis, and for a second independence, but they are not taken seriously by either their Rantine peers or the Imperial occupation. 

A Rantine noble is usually around seven feet tall, with the characteristic 'Rantine look'. A traditionalist will have tooth and nail prosthetics, designed to better facilitate blood-drinking. They will be dressed in layers of white lace, and will generally have an elaborate lace bonnet or hair piece to make their head look larger than it is. They carry the old weapons of office - the spiral swords and spiral spears - openly in public, and have the legal right to use them if offence is given. When they have committed themselves to some deed or course of action, or when they dance, they will strip away their many layers of lace until all that remains are simple cotton wraps around the genitals and waist, and then tie off their limbs with coloured streamers which float behind them as they move. 

Spiral swords and spiral spears are simply medium swords and heavy spears whose strange design means that class proficiencies do not apply to them. 

The Rantine Mob

The population of Rantine are famously politically involved, hot-tempered, proud, and dangerous. When the city was first subdued, the White City took almost as many casualties in the sacking of the city as it did in the field battles outside its walls. Many royal lines and noble houses have been cut short by armed bands breaking into their estates and putting them 'on display' - a Rantine term for public hanging, crucifixion, or disembowelment. The mob are capricious, but in general they are: patriotic, jealous of their privileges, and concerned with taxation and the cost of living. They will assassinate nobles who they perceive as being insufficiently traditionalist, or unfair or cruel to their workers.They will sometimes even kill Imperials, which always causes a minor diplomatic incident - they are very difficult to effectively police. 

Various institutions have formed around the mob and its vagaries. Semi-professional fighters and demagogues who cultivate factional sway are known as Juggers, and they can be hired to keep you safe, or to prosecute your enemies, if you know how to contact them. Many nobles keep a small staff of Juggers on retainer, to give advance warning of flash points that might erupt, and to keep the pulse of the streets. There are also complex local laws around the right to build and maintain walls, which can make a noble house difficult for the mob to storm - the legal right is generally extended and retracted by the queen and her advisors, and there are gradations of wall-right. Architects of complex crowd-dispersing traps and other anti-intruder contrivances make good money in Rantine, especially when the price of bread looks like it might increase. 

The Rantine mob have stats as commoners, and fight with crude wooden cudgels, garrottes and binding ropes, glass knives, and sometimes with paving stones, roofing tiles, and other improvised weapons of convenience. They wear wooden and paper masks when they organise their pogroms, and will often try to burn down buildings with their quarries inside. When there are least 100 of them fighting, they are fearless until fifty percent of them have been killed, after which they automatically break and flee. 

A glass knife is a light weapon that inflicts damage on both the target and the wielder on a critical miss. On a critical hit, the blade breaks off inside the target, and will deal d6 damage per turn it remains embedded if the target moves or takes an action. It takes one turn of fishing around in your guts to remove the shard, which also deals d6 damage.  

A Rantine Jugger is HD2, masked and armoured as leather, and armed with a sword or spear and a pistol. They will not engage in combat with the mob that they lead if they can avoid it. They all have an excellent sense of crowd psychology, rhetoric, when and who to bribe, and in what quanitites. A Jugger will generally keep a small retinue of experienced street fighters with them day-to-day, and all of them have connections in the nobility. 

The Protectors of the Polis

One of the sadder spectacles of the city - the Protectors of the Polis are what remains of the pre-Imperial army, once feared by all. They are seven men and women who dress in brightly coloured mail, tie their limbs off with streamers, and leap and dance with their ancient spiral-spears in the city squares. The old martial techniques are very visually impressive, although some historians will tell you that what was once a murderously effective martial art has been almost entirely supplanted by a series of stylish flourishes of no real use of the battlefield. 

Once a year, the protectors are fed the blood of Queen Sysophene, in a great public ceremony, and each is sworn anew to defend the ancient rampart - a defensive line that was never rebuilt after the first conquest. 

If it ever comes to it, the Protectors have stats as men-at-arms, and are armoured in chain and armed with heavy spiral spears. They are capable of great leaps and bounds - twice that of a normal man - and take half damage from falling. 

If all seven fight you at once (each has their own colour), something of their ancient dignity returns, and each receives an extra attack and an extra HD for the fight. 

The Great Bombard

The Great Bombard is an enormous iron siege cannon, a relic of the long Rantine supremacy in siegecraft. It was once a wonder and terror of the whole world, and the Rantines used its fearsome reputation to force the surrender of competitor cities without spending the lives of their soldiers. The cannon and rockets of the White City have long since outstripped those of the Rantine (indeed the Imperial models are based on the expertise of their ancient foes), but the Great Bombard is still fired once a year, in celebration of independence. 

The iron chasis is nearly three times the size of the buildings that surround it. They don't make shells for it any more, but if you could find something to load it with, and sufficient powder, you could fire iron shot to a range of three hexes distant, with good accuracy. 

The Beast of Rantine

During the so called 'highest summer', when the crimson sea smokes and boils, the citizens of Rantine find their dreams invaded by ancient lethargies, and by a terrible inhuman anger. In the highest summer the nobles hold their blood feasts to hold the weird blackness away, and the poorer neighbourhoods withdraw into shadowed interior rooms and black mirrors to wait the season out. 

During this period, something haunts the streets of the city - something that tears its victims to ribbons and screams, high and horrible. It sings too, it the same high and awful voice, the ancient battle songs of the old royalty. Those who have seen it describe a human beast, covered head to toe in wet and shining gore, wrapped in bloody, coloured rags, with long steel teeth and steel claws, and staring eyes, filled with fear and confusion. It is said by the populace to hunt those that are insufficiently loyal to the queen, but sober analysis of victim patterns shows little support for this idea. Many have hunted the beast, and many have claimed to have killed it, but none have ever been able to display the corpse, and the killings continue. 

The Beast of Rantine

HD6, armour as chain (blood slick, oddly tough hide, pain tolerance), 2x steel claws as heavy weapons + steel bite as vorpal heavy weapon, speed on all fours: as horse, speed on two feet: as human, disposition: screaming, vengeful spirit, will kill anyone it encounters. 

If the Beast of Rantine is killed, it comes apart in a fountain of blood and is reborn at the next highest summer. 

The Oubliette and the Iron Mask

The dungeons below the palace of Queen Sysophene and not often full - criminals are more usually drained or executed than held in detention. There is a single exception. A woman of about the queen's age, kept in a state of squalor in a lightless room, with an iron mask clamped over her face such that none might see her face. 

This miserable prisoner does not know why she is held, and has no memory of any other place. She eats when she is fed, and sleeps, and amuses herself as best she can. 

When she sleeps, and the air is heavy and foul with the reek of the sea, and the sunlight that she cannot see falls red and black over the ancient city, she dreams of city streets she will never see. She dreams of true nobility, of a terrible body, slick with the blood of her subjects and nobles, of steel claws and steel teeth, and of a dynasty birthed in creation of the world. 

If you were to somehow drink the blood of this prisoner - a litre or so would do it - you would be healed to full HP and cured of all disease. If you were to do this every day for a week, you would regrow missing limbs and organs. Additionally, if you give her your blood to drink, she will, with ancient words she does not understand, give you her royal blessing: a terrible, burning vitality that manifests in a brightness of the eye, growth of about a foot in height, and dreams of black, reeking smoke on the surface of the the sea, calm like a sheet of glass, of dark mirrors and coloured glass beads, of rockets tracing their arcs of fire across the skies of battlefields and charnel houses, of red, terrible sunlight: in game terms, you gain +d6 max HP.