Baronial Cities

 

This post dedicated to the lovely Loch, who asked for information on a Baronial city that wasn't the capital. Here are four!

Santephene

The Barony's second city, about half the size of the capital, and situated further south, on the coast. Santephene is famous for producing excellent painters and architects. Its town centre is very old (pre Old Capital conquest), and built almost entirely from a white pearlescent stone, quarried locally, and built into long, thin towers that rise ten or fifteen stories above the surrounding buildings - the 'Sainted Needles'. The Needles were originally built as private or familial fortifications (Santephene of old was a city ruled by warring family gangs), but are now mostly owned by wealthy merchants and minor nobility, who purchase and maintain them as status symbols. They are still very beautiful, but also infamous for being extremely annoying to actually live or work in.

The painters of Santephene are a school or movement of their own, which, in the eyes of capital artists, is evidence by itself of deplorable provincialism. The Santephene style is significantly concerned with portraiture, but of a particular sort: when you sit for one, you give the artist implicit license to 'work out' your features. In practice you sit for a portrait, and then the artist decides if they have fully captured you. If they have not, you sit for another portrait, and the process continues. You only pay once, no matter how many layers 'deep' this goes; a point of pride in the scene. Portrait series like this usually start off as good technical likenesses (the Santephene style tends towards a flat naturalism), but after a few passes of 'working out', can become very abstract indeed. 

The architects of the city are in demand across the whole Barony - the practical school of Santephene is invite-only, and difficult to gain access to. Its graduates build 'mock needles' as graduation pieces - small, thin, fortified towers - and vie to outfit them with the most cunning defensive contrivances. The outer city houses thousands of these 'mock needles', built over the centuries from every imaginable material, and each a useable (and indeed, if well maintained, murderously efficient) bolthole for a family or individual.

Politically, Santephene is governed by the so-called Grand Old Family: the Prenox clan. The current Petty King is Prenox Prenox 4, known as a shrewd, laughing, dangerous old man. The Prenox emerged preeminent out of the seething inter-family gang politics of Old Santephene, roughly 150 years ago. Since then they have kept the various great families united through good business sense more than overt force - the streets themselves are famously impossible to police without siege equipment, owing to the unique distribution of needle fortifications. 

Prenox house troops wear bright yellow livery, and uniquely in the Barony do not rely at all on mercenary forces - they call on honour and financial debts from the family gangs in times of upheaval, and can put large armies into the field very quickly.

The white harbours and three great churches of Old Santephene (all built up in the regional style, with many tall, thin, fortified white stone parapets) are popularly held to be the most beautiful in the Barony. 

The Eastern City

Not so much a city as a territory, centrally governed and administered, dotted with fortified villages, staging posts, walls, ditches, and other military fortifications. It is called a city because its distributed population is technically higher than even the capital, and because it provides huge economic opportunity - the various nodes and strong points of the Eastern City are in constant need of fixers, professionals, supplies, etc., and many adventurers make their entire living providing services there. 

The Eastern City is, of course, a defensive position that manages the threat of the Forest of Worms. The Baronials have developed a policy of defence in depth (worms are very good at overcoming fixed defensive positions), constant vigilance, and mobile response to threats. It incorporates the fortified towns and villages and the earthworks and walls that sometimes link them, but also the logistical and farming infrastructure needed to support these. 

In the fort-towns themselves (which can vary in size from a single heavily fortified inn, to settlements of several thousand people) you will find mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, criminals, and adventurers from all across the Barony and beyond. The whole territory is administered by two separate branches of the nobility, the Greysins, who were merchants until recently, and whose ideals are mostly modern, and the Brent-Synon, who are very old, very respected, and very keen to modernise their military. The two clans of petty-royalty have a good working relationship, and their troops keep a tight handle on taxation and criminality throughout their territories. Theirs is the only place in the Barony that is legally out of jurisdiction for the Baronial Agents - an exemption bought from the Baroness with enormous quantities of silver and promises of loyalty and non-specific favours down the line. 

Brent-Synon house troops, as with many of the older houses, are superlative heavy infantry. Greysin's most dangerous forces are skirmishers, medium infantry, and sharpshooters, these latter who carry distinctive jezzail-muskets with extremely long barrels.  

Bryn

Bryn is also called the City of Angels and the City of Iron. It was built atop the largest iron deposits in the Barony, and produces and exports raw ingots throughout its territories. It is wealthy, dirty, and populous. The central city is mostly import/export offices and large and very grand municipal buildings - the smelters, blacksmiths, work houses, suppliers, and other trade buildings are further out, built in concentric rings. The entrances to the mines themselves are in the northern quarter, and the city has grown over the years to incorporate them into its limits.

Bryn is hot, smoky, and loud. Its people consume huge quantities of spirits and working drugs, and are famous for their high tolerance. The wealthy of the city take great pride in expensive public works, and throw parties and galas in the grand buildings of the centre. These are often (though not always) 'open', which means that no one can be barred entrance as long, as they are dressed appropriately. There is a tradition with the working poor of the city to pool money and collectively purchase a single suit of finery, such that one of their number (usually on rotation, or chosen by lot) can attend the 'opens'. There is a whole shadow industry of cheap-but-presentable formal wear here, including designs that can be fitted (using ties and straps) to any body without tailoring. These design innovations hold a strange allure to youths back in the capital - they are considered highly 'authentic' and practical. 

The galas themselves are riotous and violent things. They are policed by soldiers in armour, and people are sometimes killed in the revelries. There are many tales of jacked and roguish workers seducing the scions of the local nobility, of bosses beaten bloody by their employees, of employees whipped to death by gangs of drunk merchants, and of lynchings and shootings by the soldiers when order needs to be asserted. Nonetheless, the galas of Bryn are an ancient and beloved tradition by all who live there, rich and poor. An outsider suggesting that they might be dangerous or volatile will be loudly booed, sworn at, and admonished by any local who hears them. 

Bryn is also the home of the largest single church in the Barony - it is spread across multiple buildings, and the huge central cathedral is built entirely from iron. The miners and the merchants pray there in common, and the clergy are typically raised from their teeming ranks - very unlike most church posting, which are centrally organised in the capital. 

For reasons no one really understands, when angels arrive from the future, they nearly always do so in Bryn - large portions of the church complex are given over to their orientation, care, and recovery from the traumas of travelling. This is also true of demons, but this knowledge is very top secret and talking about it will get you on the Baroness' shit list. 

Vertida

City of glass, city of the setting sun. Vertida was built atop a large hill as a fortress by a forgotten petty kingdom in the southern Barony - most likely as protection against marauding steppe riders. It is now famous for glass blowing and lens grinding, and produces the best optical instruments in the polity. 

Vertida is built in a tiered structure of stone walls, each with its own defensive gate. Stretched out around this central stone superstructure are the workshops and towers and glaziers and gunsmiths. It is called the city of the setting sun because the tops of the houses in the centre looks out over the Forest of Worms, and the steppe in the South, and from their rooftop gardens one can watch the sun drop down into them and stain the world red. The traditions of the city put great attention on eating together on the roof while the sun is dropping. There is a story that says that the first telescopes were built in Vertida to watch the sunset, but the locals will laugh at you if you mention this. 

The city is actually governed by a mercenary company - they were under contract by a Petty Kingdom who vanished form the records about 100 years ago in mysterious circumstances. The official line is that they were wiped out by rivals in a war of assassins, but most locals will say (with  touch of pride) that the mercenaries, sick of mismanagement and lack of pay, killed their employers and bricked the bodies into the walls of the city.

The mercenaries are called The Paragons, and they are wealthy and dangerous fighters. They have constructed fearsome magnifying lenses into the city towers, which can burn buildings and even people and horses at a great distance on a sunny day. Their arms and armour are the red-orange-yellow of the sunset. They are keen students of the methods of total war practised in the North, and reportedly great favourites of the Baroness. They watch the stars at night, and the arcing of the planets, and their temperaments are luminous and calm and fey. 

Gustave Moreau, The Triumph of Alexander, oil on canvas, 1873-1890