Highsalt
The harsh, unforgiving realm of Thule breaks the weak. And yet, it is to here people from the south now flee, seeking safety and a better life. That a place of frozen wastes, storm-wracked coasts, endless boreal forests, and unwelcoming clans holds the last hope for thousands of refugees presents as concise a statement about the hellish state of affairs in the world as any.
Thule offers only false hope. The refugees pile up at Wahlham on the bare tip of Elklund in a vast, wretched camp, waiting for passage across the King’s Road to Highsalt. But the Sigil controls access and apportions out passage only to those who can tithe a fortune to the church or who accept a form of thralldom, sworn to serve the Sigil when it calls upon them.
Duke Aymeric Cicero II, ruler of Highsalt and greater Thule itself, lets the Sigil handle the refugee crisis in return for a cut of the wealth flowing up from the south in the hands of the desperate. For now, at least. Whenever it threatens to become a problem, he’ll seal the border and cut off all land access, so that only seafarers can continue to come and go freely. But that time yet abides. For now.
Dread rumors of horrific encounters had filtered down from the far north to the court of Highsalt for months: men and women—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters—going missing from their steadings then returned as things. Chitin-armored, chittering, scuttling soldiers serving some unknown lord. They crept forth from the forests’ edges and snatched families from their homes, stealing them to the north, to whatever lair they crawled from.
The truth came out soon enough, revealed in a torrent of tears by a Druid of the Elden Tree who stumbled, barely alive, to the gates of Highsalt. Yggdrasil the Mighty lies dead. However, its revenant soul, wounded and drained of Od, refuses to release its hold on the rotten stump of the once majestic ash tree. It calls now to the faithful, to all those who had once sacrificed to it and who had once reaped the bounty of its beneficence. The whispers came first in dreams, then nightmares, then nightmares made real: incessant commands to come, come, come to the north, come serve the ancient ash. And so they came.
They dropped their scythes and hammers and butcher knives and walked northward in a trance. Some fell on the journey, frozen and frostbitten, starving and weak, but many reached their goal and clambered up the dead roots to the shards of wood jutting from Yggdrasil’s upper stump. There, they impaled themselves, gave their souls over to the dead god, and began their metamorphosis.
It is told in legend that Yggdrasil made insects from its bark flesh, servants for spreading its seed. Now, its new servants—the barkborn, more insect than man—work to spread its diseased and blackened seed to all the world.
But more than men heed the call of the poisoned tree. Giants, the titans of old—long hidden in the dormant volcanic caves under Thule, where they hibernated a long winter of many years—now stir and climb to the surface, stumbling toward the remains of the dead god. There, they lay their bodies down like felled trees and wait for the roots to slowly engulf them, wrapping around them like chains, squeezing out their lives and Odic energies, and twisting their desiccated corpses into new, insectoid shapes of titanic proportions. Their transformation complete, these mammoth barkborn rise like mountains falling upward and storm away, seeking new thralls to gather up in their massive arms and deliver to the sharpened stakes of their master ash.
If the refugees knew what waits for them in Highsalt, and Thule beyond, they would flee back to the war-torn lands from whence they came.
History and Present Conditions
Songs spun the history of Highsalt long before the city-states of the south unified beneath the banner of Hyperion in antiquity. Sagas tell of tenacious clans who clung to their independence against all hardship and outlived all of the land’s attempts to kill them. Salters joke that hail and ice storms are but the kiss of a lover on the cheek and that acres of snow are the blankets they tuck themselves in with at night.
The War of Empty Thrones does not touch Thule directly, which gives Duke Cicero breathing room as well as an opportunity to shore up trade with other nations, without the need—yet—to muster armies for defense. While the gates of Highsalt stand open to refugees, their width grows slimmer each week, as the church and the duke conspire together to control the flow, picking and choosing the people they think would best suit their purposes.
Salters are renowned as legendary sea explorers and master shipbuilders, and the southern war feeds the shipwrights’ trade. Nobles, cut off from their ships in Corbel, contract with Highsalt’s shipbuilders for new craft to replace their lost fleets—or to provide escape vessels should they need to flee the continent.
Highsalt’s port connects to far-off lands as yet unaffected by the war in the middle kingdoms, such as the endless forests of Ruthenia, Florent’s ancient ruins, and the dunes of the Muraqibeen al-Nujum. While Corbel remains under Florent’s military occupation, Highsalt serves as Erebos’s largest trading port.
Highsalt’s merchants and explorers trade well with the Muraqibeen al-Nujum, a people with a deep understanding of early science that informs their interpretation of magic. Thulian traders established a colony in those far lands years ago, and the interrelations between the two peoples altered Thule’s contemporary language. A trade representative from Muraqibeen al-Nujum currently resides in Highsalt, overseeing a contract for new ships and advising Duke Cicero on the state of affairs in the world. A Muraqib “scientific” expedition has even set up camp in the northwest of Thule, in the fishing village of Frostrime.
The Heart of the Northern Republic
The clans of Thule know war and its ruin from long practice. For many centuries, they fought one another for land, honor, glory, or, most often, for personal vendettas among chieftains and champions. Eventually, from among this discord of thanes, a single ruler arose, and Thule had its first king, who ruled from Highsalt. The fortunes of the kings rose and fell over the years, with many dying in battle against rebel clans or kinsmen who claimed the throne, but a few managed to eke out long years, dying in bed, to their own great disappointment. A real Thulian deserves to die in battle.
The last great king of the north, Orm Sigbert, married his daughter to the royal lineage of Elklund. This preserved peace at a precarious time and cemented an alliance between his kingdom and the south. The peace and stability of Sigbert’s dowry lasted for generations, transforming Highsalt with its cosmopolitan trade—until treachery broke the line of kings.
The Red Chamber
King Gothric’s concubine, Belladonna Cicero, wrought the ruin of Sigbert’s bloodline.
The royal family loved Belladonna, daughter of Corbellian royalty and distant kin to King Gothric. She often tended to the king and queen’s young children, Pippin and Ethel, heirs to the throne. Queen Margit relied on Belladonna as a sympathetic ear, a wise advisor, and a balm for her husband. Her daughter’s birth had proven difficult, and the queen could no longer give Gothric the attention he needed, although the stoic king refused to admit any such need. The queen turned to her cousin and good friend, Belladonna, and the royal couple admitted her into their court as concubine and confidant.
On the night that the middle kingdoms of the south drew swords against each other, Belladonna visited the children, asleep in their bed. The night watchman, placed down the hall, remembered seeing her come out a little while later. He could not see her clearly in the dim hall from his distance, but he described that she wore a dark cloak over her white evening gown. She entered the royal bedchamber and closed the door behind her.
Then came the screams.
The guard burst into the chamber—and doubled over, retching at the sight that met him. Rumors abound about what exactly happened in that room, gossiped quietly throughout Highsalt, from the grand apartments above Highstreet to the foul gutter spouts along the wharfs. Most tales of that night say that the guard saw Belladonna crouched in the vast, silk-sheeted bed, covered head to toe in red blood—the blood of the royal children. She gurgled as she hungrily choked down the steaming intestines of the queen, torn from her twisted body by Belladonna’s own sharp fingernails. (Though some versions speak of a curved silver knife.) The king’s organs painted the walls, sliding slowly down the flower-engraved wood paneling to plop to the floor. The bloodstain spread from the royal headboard in the shape of a single red wing.
Before the guard could recover from his nausea, Belladonna rose from the bed and slipped through one of the secret passages known only to the royal family and their retainers. The house guard searched for her but found no sign. Even her bloody footprints stopped, replaced by a large hound’s pawprints.
The line of Highsalt kings ended, and the Northern Republic died with it.
A Precarious Peace
The hierarchy of liege lords survived the direct royal line’s severing. Into the gap left by the death of Gothric and his heirs stepped Duke Aymeric Cicero II. Although next in line by right of feudal pledge, he is more closely related to Gothric’s killer than to the dead king, and guilt weighs heavily upon him. Appalled at his cousin’s horrifying deeds, he knows that the people grow restless under his rule. Whispers of rebellion waft from all corners. Why should the proud and independent people of Thule bow knee to the king killer’s kinsman? Never mind that Belladonna was also the king’s kin.
For now, Duke Cicero heads off open revolt amongst the nobles of Highsalt by inflaming the refugee crisis that looms at their doorstep. The Duke, in a deplorable act of selfishness, uses it as a distraction to occupy the imaginations of the elite. At the same time, he looks for a means out of his dubious position, wielding the refugee crisis as if it were a cudgel. With the close advice of Remala Stavlich, the Sigil’s envoy, Cicero controls how many and which souls may enter into Highsalt. A mere hundred people a day gain sanctuary, a minor percentage of the teeming masses gathering in the camps around Wahlham in Elklund, pleading for passage across the bridge into the capital.
The powder keg readies to blow, but so far, Cicero and Stavlich have managed to allow in just enough people to display that they aren’t closing the gates, and those who are allowed in must first pledge to convert to the Prophets of the Sigil, demonstrating to Highsalt’s lords that they aren’t “bandits and lowlifes” who threaten to degrade the northern towns.
Duke Cicero’s fate depends on the Sigil. The Highsalt lords still pay heed to the church, an institution that transcends mere political ties. And the church needs a secure capital in which to reestablish its power. Until a victor arises in the War of Empty Thrones and the dust settles, the church looks to Highsalt for its anchor, and Cicero looks to the Sigil for his political salvation.
The situation cannot endure forever. Once the pressure of too many foreigners begins to anger Highsalt’s elites, they will cry to close the gates. The Sigil does not want this, as it prefers to be the fulcrum that controls access—and the many conversions that result from it. The duke must eventually choose between the church and his own lords, and none know whose side he’ll favor.
The City Proper
Highsalt, the basalt-walled fortress-capital of Thule, rests upon the rocky cliffs of Bowman’s Perch, brooding over the sea and the lands around it. Its residents call it the Unassailable City for the ease with which they can cut off travel across the Shallow Bay to the south, as well for the massive walls that protect the city from any enemies who might mass near its northern ramparts.
Across the Shallow Bay lies Wahlham, the northernmost town of Elklund. The Brittle Edge, the portion of the King’s Road that crosses the bay and provides the only land entry into Thule, suffers from disrepair and long neglect. Only a small number of people and carts can risk the wide way at the same time, lest the weight prove too much for its rickety struts. This state of affairs is all due to a long disagreement about which kingdom is responsible for the upkeep of this tail end of the King’s Road: Elklund or Thule. Elklund, embroiled in the war, lacks the resources for it, and Duke Cicero has no incentive to repair it.
Inside Highsalt’s walls, the crowded streets wind like snakes. The rocky promontory’s natural depression limits the ability to build outward, so buildings rise in multiple levels, with many stretching as high as five stories—even higher for the King’s Tower, the fortress within the fortress that is the capital.
The Laughing River splits the city’s interior. More of a brook or stream in width than a river, it can be forded by a simple leap, but it is as deep as the top of a man’s head. Originating from an underground spring just within the northern walls, it descends through the city and out over Bowman’s Perch, onto the beaches below. There, it pools and forms multiple brooks, mixing with the seawater from the incoming tides.
Anyone who knows the legend of the city’s founding knows of this stream and how it got its name. None have dared to alter or divert its flow, for these sacred waters quenched the elder clan’s thirst and still echo, in their gurgling flow, with the laughter of the clan’s children. Building too close to the Laughing River is considered sacrilege, and anyone caught throwing refuse into the stream meets a grisly fate in the Children of the Shallows’ ceremonies in the Ivory Labyrinth, the salt caves under the city.
The city hosts numerous districts that undulate around one another, with few walls or straight lines demarking them.
- Shopkeepers and tradespeople maintain their stores and workshops in the market district of Maker’s Way. The lower levels of the buildings host the district’s many shops, while the upper levels hold apartments into which families squeeze as many of their kin as possible.
- The rich live near Druuna’s Wall. The homes built up against the outer walls house the wealthiest residents, and some of their rear rooms actually reach into the basalt. The townhomes of the moderately wealthy butt up against one another. Their rear garden yards distinguish them from those in Maker’s Way, as the wealthy families’ cooks grow herbs and fruit in them—rare delicacies in the north.
- Duke Cicero lives in the Royal Demesne, where the king and queen once resided. Crescents of guard houses and servants’ quarters circle the outer bailey of the White Tower. The tower, festooned with flags and banners displaying the ruling family’s blue crab emblem, reaches up within a naturally occurring basalt peak. Hollowed out with many levels and rooms, its windows open over the Shallow Bay and provide cool breezes in summer. Thick wooden shutters insulated with exotic rubber from the far south seal out the chill in winter and can withstand siege weaponry in case of war.
The Spice Docks
Highsalt hosts the largest seaport in the north, a series of stone piers and jetties that line the coast along the Shallow Bay. Multilevel apartments and shops selling all manner of exotic goods that come and go from the port cling to the cliffs above the piers like barnacles. Many merchant concerns also operate out of storehouses dug directly into the cliff rock, guarded by iron doors and well-paid thugs.
The port master coordinates the docking of ships here. Each is allowed a short time to unload its cargo and take up new load before it must make way for the next ship in the queue, which waits out in the Shallow Bay at anchor.
The Crab Nursery
Cave entrances stud the cliff faces along the southern coast on either side of the Spice Docks, leading to a vast network of salt caves. The city strictly controls the mining of these caves, for they are the homes of the Rider’s children, the blue crabs. No regular crabs, these pony-sized creatures can sever a man’s hand from his arm with their pincers.
The entryways at sea level create a series of tidal pools stretching deep within the cliffs. The crabs reside in the inmost caverns, where all but the Druids of the Shallows and the royal family are forbidden to enter.
The crabs descend from the clans of Thule’s ancestors. The Rider transformed the clan’s children into crabs to repay the first clan’s eating of the true crabs, a desperate act of innocence that broke a terrible taboo.
At the beginning of summer, the blue crabs begin their mating season, marching out from the sea and into the caves, where the females lay their eggs and attach them to their bodies, guarding them until they hatch. The children fend for themselves in the nursery caves, growing into adulthood on the feasts of seafood brought in by the tidal waters. At the end of the summer, the young adults march from the caves and into the sea.
During the initial mating march, many crabs make their way up the cliffs and into the city, where the law forbids anyone to kill them. Locals do their best to coax the crabs to return down the cliffs, but this is easier said than done. For a whole month, the residents of Highsalt must put up with the huge crabs scuttling down the streets and mating outside their windows.
The Tombs of Salt
Chambers delve deeper into the cliff than even the Crab Nursery, secret tunnels leading to the Tombs of Salt, where generations of the royal dead, dressed in finery, lie in eternal rest in wall niches. Despite being truly dead, their perfectly preserved bodies look like they could open their eyes at any moment and awaken from their slumber. The alchemical process that keeps them immaculate draws upon salt mined from the nearby tunnels.
Only the royal family, the royal alchemists, and the Druids of the Shallows may enter this place. The law condemns all trespassers as thieves bound for execution, even if they simply got lost and found their way there in the dark.
The walls display elaborate carvings depicting the history of the rulers of Thule. Ornate candelabra hang from the ceiling, and one chamber even hosts a massive dining table carved from rock. Here, once per year during the March of the Blue Crabs, the royal family feasts with its departed ancestors, offering them portions of food and wine that they never accept.
The Temple of Druuna
Deeper still, beyond the tombs, lies the Temple of Druuna. Only in times of direst need do the leaders of Highsalt enter this dread place, for it is sometimes home to Druuna, the clan warrior who long ago pledged the people to the Rider’s service, saving them from her wrath at the cost of their first generation of children.
The Rider is dead, but her adopted daughter still lives. Druuna appears as a blue crab the size of a pony. Horrifyingly, her flayed flesh drapes over her shell, preserved as it was on the day she originally shed it, when the Rider transformed her. Her eye stalks poke from her flesh-cloak’s eye sockets, giving those who encounter her a gruesome once-human face with which to interact.
The Children of the Shallows still make sacrifices to the Rider in this temple. They bleed their victims of their fluids—blood, saliva, tears— and return them to the sea through carved drains. The Rider cannot answer these calls, but sometimes, Druuna does. Without her mother goddess, she is bereft of Od and must claim it from other sources. The Children’s sacrifices are often her only option.
She feels little to no obligation to the descendants of her clan but can sometimes be reminded. If the petitioner is the queen of Thule and holds Druuna’s sword, the one given to her by her sister and which normally hangs above the throne in the King’s Tower, then Druuna will appear. But there is no queen of Thule, and the line is broken.
If a supernatural threat endangers the clans of Thule, especially one that might yield Od, Druuna might consider taking action. While she is not a goddess like the Rider, she swam with the sea mare long enough to have gained some degree of power.
The dwellings of the capital city of Highsalt leave their doors open for their honored crustacean guests when they return from the sea in the autumn, hoping to be blessed with a visit from a scuttling ancient looking in on her descendants.