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Chapter 4: THE CITIES
been coated in such a mixture, giving the architecture
a polished look and protecting the city from the torches
and flames of raiders seeking to sack the city.
Rhojess
Only the masts of ancient Makadan ships poke through
the shrouded dust like grasping fingers where a bountiful body of swirling water once lay. Where the merchant
princes held a powerful domain, the once-great city of
Rhojess is a wasted shadow of its former self. Layers of silt
and dust cake the walls of most buildings, slowly burying all that remains. Many city wards are accessible by
only the bravest souls, the shifting sands making many
death traps. In the central city, four still-proud families rule amid the nigh-ruined buildings, with more
efforts put to keeping the desert at bay than any other
tasks. Raiders and hunters of all kinds pass around and
through Rhojess, doing as they please while remnants
of the merchant princes keep tenuous holds on power.
Life is hard here for the remaining humans who call
the city their home. Crime and poverty are amicable
bedfellows and the spiral of decay causes more suffering
daily. Rhojess has endured the countless wars waged by
the merchant princes in the past. The city reflects this
in its crumbled and cracked architecture, many ancient
buildings broken and open to the harshness of Khitus’s
magnificent sky. Price wars are also common in the city
and the prices for goods change almost daily, as the remaining merchant houses vie for customers among an
increasingly disgruntled populace.
Rhojess is the site of the Raetann’s oldest guildhall, a wellmaintained building in a crumbling city. Much of the Water Guild’s activity is coordinated from here. Ironically, hesheyel peddlers, dealers in the thirst-avoiding water spice,
are common in the city’s remaining market places.
Shomik
Folk in Khitus’s dark underbelly call the old Attite city of
Shomik the City of Knives or the City of Death. Most venture among its wooden buildings and tight alleyways only
to exchange coins for hiring those skilled in assassination
and espionage. It is possible to walk into the city, talk to a
man, and see him dead in the same night. There are dozens of powerful crime lords that treat each ward as a selfcontained enclave, where rules change as quickly as allegiances. Most tribal authority has given over to these.
At the top of Shomik’s power structures sit a number of
major crime lords—all in Shomik are wary of these figures:
• Jorvik: The Master Assassin himself, is a fabled figure, rarely glimpsed and spoken of only in whispers.
Some doubt that Jorvik even exists, save as a screen
to hide the “game of knives’ true players.” Those
skeptical tattlers die quickly and mysteriously in the
spiral streets and vast towers of Shomik.
• Branik Kel: This former slave was freed when Tukka
Falk fell and became the ruthless and most ambitious
crime lord in Shomik by murdering and stealing his
way to the top. Branik Kel has a strong grip on the
city’s trade fees collection apparatus, and his guild
controls all smuggling and much of the thievery that
happens in Shomik. Kel takes generous percentages
of gold or goods from most caravan operators and
traders, living in the lap of luxury in the opulent
Ward of Gems.
• Shona and Rusik Vak: These twins rule the Ward
of Smoke with almost invisible, benevolent grace,
their disfavor displayed by the corpses of hanged
or garroted transgressors left in public places. The
Vak sisters influence or partly control the adjacent
Wards of Wheel and Whip through paramours and
other agents. With a spy network including at least
two Chroniclers and, some whisper, more than a few
sarhaks (psychic practitioners), they have a better
grasp of news within the city than any other group
or persons. The two women plot to either steal Branik Kel’s wealth or his position atop the crime lords.
Syradar
The Kneeding Hills and the Karch Desert are the home
territories the city of Syradar. The Syradari comprise
six once-nomadic Attite warrior sub-tribes that settled
the simple desert fort that once housed the Legion of
the Dunes, expanding it into a great city. The people of
Syradar understand and accept the harsh, unforgiving
desert life. They expect and plan against the constant
threats of desert marauders, slavers, or monsters. They
know their homelands in the Old Countries like their
weathered hands and can vanish amid the sand dunes,
remaining hidden from all but the most expert trackers. The Syradari are not only consummate warriors,
well trained in the hyatchal and grotto, but shrewd
traders too, so they have created an open market in
their fortress city.
Syradar is a massive stone sprawl of long walls and
square towers with a surrounding wall that protects
those inside it from the worst that Khitus dares to throw
at them. The elder Attite tribe among Syradar’s six
founding sub-tribes rules the city, and their Trung, or
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