U'Duasha
U’Duasha was established before the cataclysm, originally as the site of a great temple within a caldera in the desert mountains of central Iruvia. Over centuries, the temple attracted more and more followers, first as a makeshift settlement of tents and mud-brick houses, and eventually growing into a large metropolis—climbing the walls of the great crater in rings of stair-stepped streets and tiered terraces. The city is arranged around the central crater, called U’du (“the Well”). The ringstreets are broad and flat, spiraling gently downward from the outer walls to accommodate the passage of heavy wagons laden with rock and minerals from the mines, to be processed by city laborers. Narrow, twisting staircases link the ring streets up and down the terraced construction of the city, for quick travel on foot from one level to another. Within U’du, a massive arcane fire burns—created when four falling stars crashed into the caldera over 1,000 years ago. The impact of the stars left behind towering pillars of black crystal, said to contain the four great Demon Princes of ancient mythology: Ixis, Khayat, Khuset, and Serekh. The elite noble houses of U’Duasha take their names (and implied celestial authority) from the Demon Princes, dividing the city and its resources among themselves. The lower classes have no choice but to serve one of the great houses, or risk courting the ire of the legendary demons—expressed by their chosen earthly agents, the mysterious and ruthless
city guardians, known as Gualim. Those who resist are disappeared or publicly punished as an example for others.
In U’Duasha, the eternal night of the world is held back by the light of fires: torches affixed outside buildings, oil lanterns carried
by citizens, huge bonfires in public squares, and the otherworldly flames of the arcane fire in the great Well at the center of the city. Massive metal plates protrude from the Tower of Stars, covering the conflagration of the Well for 12 hours of the day, harnessing its heat to generate power via steam engines. With the colossal fire thus dimmed, “nighttime” falls on the city. When the plates eventually
glow red-hot, they must be raised again to cool, uncovering the fire and yielding a flame-lit “daytime.” The citizens use these cycles of relative darkness and brightness to measure the days, along with chimes that are rung in public places to mark the hours. In U’Duasha, the nighttime hours are named for star constellations, while the daytime hours are numbered.
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