Drijem (Dree-zhem)

In the Northern Adira Mountains, white capped mountains pierce the sky higher than any other mountains on the planet. Between these huge peaks and cliffs, green mountain valleys provide pockets of abundance. These oases can be small, as freezing winds and fickle snowmelt can turn some areas into grey-rock barrens. Or, in the case of Drijem, they can be lush cradles of life that can support sizable cities. 
The city sprawls and crawls low to the ground; during winter, the winds pick up and the temperatures plummet, so people tend to prefer to live closer to the warm earth. The city weaves between surface and subterranean, with underground walkways, large apartment basements, and cavernous great halls. Apartments and houses huddle together in clusters, protecting their shared gardens and plazas from the wind and snow. It is a very wide city, a sprawl that covers much of the valley. In the North, a huge artificial lake and canal direct the snowmelt and waters Eastward, to eventually connect with the Calazan river. Terrace farms spring from the mountains like mushrooms, eager to feed off the canal's waters. In the South, the land grows hilly and arid, pockmarked with mines and slums. In the West, two massive mountains with a narrow pass between them. Everywhere in between, patchwork city.  This is the capital of the Kingdom of Sonisha and its largest city; a city of smiths, warriors, wizards, and merchants. Ideologically, it is where Jade Atharzen and Orchid of Blue meet; where feudal traditionalism and industrial modernism compete. Will it go the way of The Darzan University, of the Empire of Calazen, or its own way?

Demographics

250,000 humanoids live in Drijem. 73% are Prisms, 15% are Half Prisms, 5% are Humans, 5% are Dryads, 1% are Kobolds, and 1% are Other.
Of the Adiran mountain cities, Drijem is one of the largest - dwarfed only by the great city of Yadra in the Empire of Calazen.

Government

The Queen of Sonisha, Shomka I Ziriba, reigns from Drijem. But, like most large capital cities, the monarch has to delegate most of the important day-to-day work of governing the city to a local mayor. The mayor of Drijem is chosen by the monarch (and can be dismissed at their leisure), but they must be from one of five Blooded-caste noble clans. These five noble clans have special rights to political power here - they tend to get chosen from local bureaucratic posts, they carry trade and cultural privileges, and they get access to both mayoral and royal court positions. They also have a duty to upkeep the city, though, even if it means taking on personal debts. If a noble clan fails to uphold their duties, they can be punished severely by the crown, or by the Nediran court - commoners can even sue them through clerical courts!
Aside from the five noble clans, there is the bureaucracy (which obviously overlaps a great deal with them). There are four great Ministries here:

• The Ministry of Public Works, which manage the water supply, the sewers, the roads, and the tunnels
• The Ministry of Revenue, which manages taxation, food storage, loans, and trade regulations
• The Ministry of War, which manages the garrison and all things military
• The Ministry of Thought, which manages education, magical training and regulation, personnel, and censorship

There is also the Nediran clergy, which manages the courts and religious ritual. The clergy are kept distinct from the five noble clans by law, to keep their interests separate from those they would be judging - instead, the clerics are mostly imported from other regions. 

The Administrators

The current mayor is Lord Shen Menmia, a prism nobleman known as a gentle and trusting leader of middling competence. He is good at negotiation and de-escalating local rivalries, and he has devoted his effort to untangling the commercial mess of the city. Unfortunately, the generosity, patience, and trust that he gives his fellow nobles (that have greatly helped him persuade various factions) has also created an environment of elite nepotism that is very tolerant of elite abuse and corruption - there is so little fear of actual regulation or real consequences that those noble office-holders with great vices or abusive temperaments have openly flourished. 
The current Shofet, regional head of the Nediran clergy and supreme judge of Drijem, is Lord Aizel Hubzeb. Lord Hunzeb is from the distant Stildanian fringe of the far West, and has a deep appreciation of wizardry and academic study. He is diligent, disciplined, and generally quite competent in law, theology, and natural sciences; he is a personal favorite the Queen Shomka, has a great relationship with the wizards of the city, and seems a likely candidate for the uppermost clergy in the near future. While he is a keen judge and a principled leader, he is unfortunately completely unaccustomed to running a large bureaucracy. He often allows matters of principle (and his own personal traditions) to get in the way of basic administration. For example, he loves enacting petty justice by withholding part or all of the pay of clerks or judges he feels failed to do as well as they ought have - to Lord Hunzeb, full wages are a privilege earned by those who fulfill their duty, not a baseline. This was intended to shake the pre-existing corruption out of the office, but it has done the opposite. The ensuing instability has led to far more bribes and under-the-table dealings and very little else. 
The corruption of the Lord mayor has flooded in and merged with the emerging culture of bribery to create a kind of corruption nexus - the clergy and the bureaucracy are more interconnected than they are supposed to be, and not in a productive way. While this corruption hasn't led to any extreme examples yet, it is becoming a serious problem that more and more factions and individuals have begun to exploit for their own gain. It has so far been mostly invisible underneath the sheer prosperity that the city has seen in recent years, though, so no one is taking it as seriously as they should - but if they city's rising wealth should stagnate or plummet, the government might suddenly have some very visible and serious problems functioning. It has also contributed to much of the city's new wealth entering a very small and very arbitrary number of pockets.

Defences

Two main forts protect the valley of Drijem from attack: Fort Drikupa and Fort Olang. These are the main two fortifications that keep the city safe; the valley acts as natural walls for it. But, thanks to the sporadic feudal settlement of the valley, two more fortifications also protect parts of the city if the primary two ever fall. Fort Kediba houses the government within the city, and serves as the innermost bastion of Drijem if disaster ever strikes. And Fort Bilakej, the smallest of the castles, sits at the tallest nearby peak to watch for nearby threats and fight off any raiding parties from over the mountains. 
Fort Drikupa is the semi-subterranean bastion that protects the Driku mountain pass. It is also the personal hold of Clan Menmia, and a military area that is directly connected to the city. The Menmia's personal honor guard watch over the pass and maintain the fortress. This castle spends more time and energy focusing on regulating trade and traffic than actually fighting off raids, and the Ministry of Revenue has a large office here.
Fort Olang is the military nerve center of the valley, and guards the Eastern mountain pass out of the valley. This is the largest of the four castles, and the most up-to-date. Having been designed to fight off Calazan and Karaman armies alike, it is built to withstand basic cannon fire and exchange ranged attacks back (the regional culture is less squemish about ranged fighting than their West-Sonishan neighbors). This is also where the Sonishan grenadiers are trained and based out of - if you want to buy, design, sell, or train in grenades, this is where to go. 
Fort Kediba is an old prism-hold that was designed to resist all kinds of armed assault, miners, and catapults, and contains much of the Kediba district in it. It isn't really used for war much (if the enemy is at the Kediba, the battle is mostly over), but it is useful to deal with things like riots. Ancestral home of Clan Banzao, though the gates are controlled by the royal guard rather than the clan's warriors - this is where the royal government is, after all. 
Fort Bilakej is the ancestral home of Clan Bilreb, the prisms on the mountaintop who were always the strangest and most isolated of the Drijemi tribes. This prism-hold is mostly abandoned by its people now, who have moved into the comfort of the city below now that the mines here have run dry of iron. The Fort now protects the waterworks, houses aqueduct workers, and serves as a military installation. It is a cold place even during the summer, and some find it hard to breath in. Its harsher conditions and old traditional decorations make it popular with the Cult of Zethko, as well as for anyone who wants to have a very poignant duel.

Industry & Trade

You've got mining, you've got smelting, you've got smithing and carving. Crops are grown in abundance along the terrace farms, mostly rice and potatoes. Textiles are made, bricks and pots are kilned, and all your usual crafts are practiced. Nothing here is mass-produced; everything is managed by small local guilds. There are those who want to change this, though: the Queen has an interest in efficiency, and she has just opened a fancy new pottery foundry, and is interested in expanding it and others like it. Many people oppose this plan, especially those entrenched in the guild structures; others, often young people who are interested in escaping the Pits or the fringes of the old Smallhold mines, see these new industries as a chance to get better-paying jobs. 
As it currently stands, small mines and quarries that extract and process prism-food, building-stone, and veins of mineral wealth (mostly iron and gold) are the default job for prisms and half-prisms unable to claw their way into a guild; or construction work and agriculture for humans, dryads, and others like them. This is low-status, low-pay work that tends to lock people into dependent relationships with their employers - a good chunk of Drijem's people don't have much in the way of coin. This is rather ironic, since there is a mint here that produces coins. The completely destitute population is thankfully small: the Clans are legally obligated to produce basic food, housing, and access to a job to anyone who moves in, so there is a buffer from the whims of market demands. The fact that this buffer is basically feudalism is rather unpleasant, though.

Infrastructure

Drijem's infrastructure is quite well-made (as it has to, to sustain a population this large away from the river). Most impressive are the city's waterworks, which funnel in water from around the valley and neighboring mountain ranges into a series of massive cisterns with sand purification filters. Large mechanical pumps help move the water quickly throughout the city. Huge amounts of water are also siphoned into the Grand Eastern Canal, a huge waterway that artificially connects Drigem to the Eastern Calazan river. This is essential for moving bulk goods and people, as well as for feeding the many terrace farms across the Northern valley. Water flows throughout the city, to public water-pumps and to community bathhouses (of which there are many). 
The sewers are no less impressive. The core of the city is quite sanitary, and the large sewer system helps funnel storm runoff, sewage, and garbage out to the dumps by the Bija district (where it is composted into fertilizer). The sewers are large enough to fit people in them, and the job of sewer worker is an honorable one reserved for prisms (who face neither the stench nor the health risks of the job). The Menmia clan manages the sewers, and does a fine job of it.
The roads are well-kept but extremely difficult to navigate. Some are underground, many wind around in strange ways, and outsiders often need to pay local porters or guides to help them get around. The multi-level nature of the city makes maps of Drijem very hard to heard.
All of this excellent infrastructure fades when you reach the poor edges of the city. The Terraces and the Pits are basically semi-rural, and lack most of the water-and-sewer luxuries of the main city. The Asylum District is entirely cut off from the rest of the city's infrastructure, and must self-organize (which it does both violently and badly).

Districts

The Kediba: The heart of the old city of Drijem, the Kediba is the central prism-hold of the original nine Kedijan tribes. Now, it is an elite district. Its old, exhausted mines have been refashioned into underground residential halls; its old housing has been replaced by manors. The central hub of the Kediba is the seat of government for the Kingdom of Sonisha, a mass of offices and royal chambers. This is all semi-subterranean, which helps with heating and defense, and it pushed up against the Northern mountains. 
The Watermarket: To the East of the Kediba, the Watermarket is a mix between a commercial district and the waterworks district. A semi-artificial lake sits nearby, the beginning of the grand canal that leads Eastward to the rivers. The canal is large enough for barges to move along it, which makes it a natural avenue for merchants. The waterworks also provides jobs for a large number of poorer Drijemi citizens - they pay better than the mines and farms, but it is still rough low-caste work. Similarly, the new factories are being built here. This means that the Watermarket has both great riches and a large number of poorer subjects. 
The Furnace District: The Furnace District is the middle-class district, where the richest guilds and most established artisans live. It is named after the very many furnaces that run here day and night - this district is dominated by the Smithing Guild, the top of the guild pecking order. 
The Loom District: Once the lower-class reflection of the Furnace District, the Loom District has become a mix of middling artisan workers, clerks, printers, and elite scholars. The White and Gold Academy was built here, to access the local ink-mixers and paper-makers, and it has transformed parts of the district into the place of mages. The lower-middle-class artisans and workers are still there, only now with access to books and foreign cuisine, and subject to wildly fluctuating real estate prices. This is the new battleground of the Potter's Guild. 
The Drikupa: The other area for low-level artisans, peddlers, and clerks - the prism hold that holds the Western mountain pass. Basically only for prisms, and home to a lot of traditional rituals and cultural quirks that have become less popular in other districts.
The Small-holds: A smattering of small mines and villages that have become poor communities. There are some artisans, some miners, and some construction workers - it is a bit of a free-for-all. These are above the Pits and Terraces, but below the Loom or Drikupa districts. Lots of small food-mines operate here. 
The Terraces: The farming complex along the Northern rim of the valley, made up of terrace farms. All non-prisms, and unusually feudal for a city - people who live here typically are bound to farm wherever their landlord wants for the rest of their lives, as are their children. While food is also imported from outside the city, this is the primary supplier for non-prism food. Does it even count as the city? Only kinda.
The Pits: The mines and quarries across the hills of the South side of the valley, which produce great volumes of prism food, building stone, and ore. While mines within the city itself are subject to various regulations, the Pits are ruled by the laws of efficiency. Many peasants, bound to the noble clans, work here. So do many workers with nowhere else to go - try begging, and you'll probably be dragged to work here. The Pits are the worst part of Drijem to live... well, with one exception. 
The Asylum District: The Asylum District is a suburb, one could say, that is walled off from the rest of the city on the edge of city limits in the Southeastern valley. They occupy the least valuable part of the valley - the most barren, the driest, and the most vulnerable to winter winds and storms. This is where the sick, the "mad", and the unwanted are sent. Any prism who shows signs of contagious illness that cannot be cured may be sent here. Those with Gem Plague are sent here. Stildanian Starspawn who are considered frightening are sent here. Theoretically, the Asylum district is a self-governing community that is given food and water rations by the city - they can trade through middle-men, build as they please, and make rules for themselves. The Bija, or asylum, houses the high-caste exiles, who are treated as the rulers of the Asylum District. In recent years, a high-caste doctor tied to Orchid of Blue have basically taken over the Bija and seized power; conditions have not really improved. Parts of this district are fine to live in, but most is terrible to nightmarish.

Guilds and Factions

The Noble Clans: There are five clans of the Blooded caste - those who are born aristocrats who can trace their lineage back to the ancient heroes of old - that have legal authority here in Drijem. The clans have the legal rights to arm warriors, make requests of the bureaucracy, and bind people into peasant-lord relationships in the city; in exchange, they must maintain the city's infrastructure and remain loyal to the monarch. These clans are:

• Clan Banzao, the original leading clan of the Kedijan Confederacy and the arguable founders of this city. Clan Banzao is basically entirely part of the bureaucracy now; they maintain no warband and have no castle that belongs to them alone. They do have immense power in the Ministry of War, though, as well as within the royal court; they have special privileges in attending the Queen and maintaining her palace. The Sonishan grenadiers have deep ties to Clan Banzao as well. Loud, martial, paperwork oriented.
• Clan Menmia, the second fiddle to Clan Banzao that controlled the narrow Driku mountain pass back in the ancient days. They are the Gatekeepers, who watch over the mountain pass, regulate trade, and guard against bandits and spies. They have a whole district of the city - the Drikupa - to themselves. And they are in charge of maintaining, guarding, and expanding the sewer system. They are closest with the Ministry of Revenue. Commercial, building-oriented, and conservative.
• Clan Bilreb, the prisms of the mountaintops who came together to build their own prismhold. They were eccentric warrior-hermits then, who roamed with human shepherds and often fought as mercenaries. Now, they are the favorite children of the Ministry of Public Works, as they devote themselves to maintaining the Waterworks and canals. The Bilreb do keep a small warband in the mountain and in the city to protect their precious canals. Quiet, religious, and cautious.
• Clan Liri, the clan that united the Eastern prisms and helped save the city during the Singing Plague. They have always been fascinated with magic, and they invested eagerly in the White and Gold Academy during its founding. They are close with the Ministry of Thought, they own the Glowing Hall, and they have become the closest noble allies of The Darzan University. They keep a very small warband, and focus their efforts on accumulating raw coin. Magical, curious, and scholarly.
• Clan Alziba, the most controversial of the Five Clans that was demoted by the old Kingdom, only to be elevated again by Esam the Great after his conquest. Clan Alziba has a very old grudge with the Cult of Zethko and with Western Sonishan elites, but it has great connections across the region of Kedijah. Alziba runs the most frequent and reliable caravans East, to the river, and they get far better deals on the end product thanks to their marriage alliances with Calazan's noble houses. The most sorcerous family (mostly being Half Prisms). Clan Alziba runs the mint, and basically has a monopoly on lumber imports - without Alziba's caravans, many would freeze during the winters, and they know it. The Alziba warband are mostly caravan guards. Commercial, foreign, and mobile.

The Holies of Zethko: The Sonishan Nediran Temple follows the teachings of the Zethko-Nedira, a fatalistic variant of the religion that worships the Zethko as enlightened demigods. While all of the Temple is the Cult of Zethko, the Holies are elite monks who can trace their lineage to the original Zethko and devote their lives to existing as Onyx did. Should the Zethko title ever fall from the royal dynasty, the Holies would do their best to step up and recapture it. In the meantime, they remain obedient servants of the current Zethko, as well as sacred knights of the realm. Drijem is not the headquarters of the Holies, but it does host a large cell of them. The local leader is Sir Madri Bilreb, a skilled knight and well-learned scholar of the classics that is painfully rigid in his worldview and scandalously honest. Given that Sir Bilreb openly supports the Queen's sister (the current Zethko) for monarch on theological grounds, he is a bit politically radioactive and is disliked by his own clan.
The White and Gold Wizards: Wizards of the White and Gold Academy, the greatest wizarding academy in Inahng. The wizards are thriving, and have brought many new technologies and magical goods to the city - now the elites can cleanly light their homes with crystal lights, elite institutions can be magically warded, and foreign tongues can be magically translated. Printing presses have been set up in great numbers in the Academy, and the wizards have helped guide the city in building its new factory-kilns. The White and Gold Wizards are incredibly influential and have helped Drijem rise as a truly dominant city in the Adiras. But it isn't just being able to train large numbers of casters reliably that makes them special - it is also their intimate partnership with The Darzan University, which gives access to elite specialists and goods from around the world. The current provost of the White and Gold is a brilliant wizard named Lady Zikifa Liri, a wizard known for their skill at education.
The Guilds: Most of Drijem's guilds are too small to be worthy of note. Multiple weaver's guild operate here, divided by district - none are potent political powers. Most of these small guilds still play critical roles in community organization, but only a few have risen to become real political forces:

• The Smith's Guild, the most prestigious of the old guilds and the most organized. Martial in theme, very hierarchical, and full of in-group identity, the Smith's Guild runs the Furnace District like oligarchs. They care a lot about caste, honor, and traditionalism, and they hold a lot of prestige. They also tend to be rather resented by the other guilds, and by those that they prevent from metalworking.
• The Potter's Guild, which has only recently formed into a single unified entity from four smaller guilds in reaction to the large industrial pottery kiln opening. The new unified guild has opened its doors to anyone who will join, particularly those willing to support their cause; and, having found little relief in the legal system, they have turned towards vandalism, intimidation, and petty theft to protect their trade. Their success in evading consequences for doing this has emboldened them, and they have started trying to pick fights with any low-tier spellcasters or foreigners they can - anyone who can be blamed for things changing, but is vulnerable enough to be an easy target.
• The Porter's Guild, which handles transport of goods across the city. The Porter's Guild is highly political and is basically an arm of Clan Alziba. They upcharge for firewood, which makes them widely disliked, but they do look after their own. Given their stranglehold over the wood market, carpenters are reliant on them and tend to be vassal guilds of sorts.

The Empire of Calazen: The Empire has great power here; this is where their embassy to Sonisha is, where their influence is the strongest. The Queen is one of their own, and they directly control the mint in Drijem to make sure that it doesn't deviate from imperial mineral-ratio guidelines (by, say, adding lead to the coin to debase the currency).

History

Drijem's Foundations 

Drijem was first settled by prisms and human herders during the early Divine era. Prisms thrived here, and built many small prismholds and villages throughout the valley. The population steadily grew, until two major prismholds came to rule over the valley: Kediba and Drikupa. These and other prism groups warred and traded periodically. In the 100s and 200s ME, the rising Empire of Sonisha dragged these early polities into its orbit and they became de-facto vassals. Mercenaries from the valley became favored by the Zethkos, who were unable to trust their own rebellious warriors; these mercenaries formed their own tribe, known as the Driji Clan, which ended up uniting the valley in 290 ME. The militaristic Driji conquered outwards, bringing other Sonisha-adjacent valleys and tribes to heel. In the early 500s, a Driji warrior named Chenji rose as an adventurer. Chenji eventually earned the attention of the Immortal Mavara, who gave him many blessings. With his band of six companions, all heroes of the major tribes of the Northern Adiras, Chenji prevented a major war and ended up taking over the Driji Clan in 529 ME. Driji and his six companions formed the Kedijan Confederacy, a union of their seven tribes that would bring stability and peace to the Adiran fringe. These seven companions and their Sonishan friend became the Sacred Mummies of Kedijah - magical artifacts that are used as a telecommunication network to this day. The mummies allowed for the Confederacy to draw together and become something more centralized. 
From 550 to 660, Kedijah and Sonisha fought viciously for power, and Kedijah won. While the mummies allowed the tribes to each have their own capitals in communion with one another, Drijem became the de-facto capital of their new state. Part of this was its mineral wealth and strategic location, another part was the fate of Chenji: his blessing was especially strong and he resonated with it well, and he had the honor of being turned into the Obelisk of Heroes, the strongest central conductor for the other seven mummies. With Drijem absorbing the greatest loot of the Kedijah, and Kedijah on the rise, the city skyrocketed in population and wealth. 

The Driji Ascendant (660 - 1200)

While Kedijah's 660 victory over Sonisha put Drijem on the map, the Confederacy was still to fragmented and underdeveloped for the city to retain large populations for long. In 840, a terrible civil war struck the Confederacy, and Kedijah's centuries of dominance came to an end. The Driji were able to seize total control over the Kedijan territories in the 860s, but the war allowed for Sonisha and other Adiran powers to start to rise back into ascendance. The new regime in Drijem had to deal with constant revolts, and it kept itself largely decentralized. The early to mid 900s were a time of relative prosperity, though, as the monarchs acquired Bardic magic from the Empire of Calazen and strengthened its trading relationships abroad. 
And then, in 970, Mount Tusuan - home of Mavara, capital of Sonisha, and largest city in the Adira Mountains - collapsed. Waves of refugees poured out of Sonisha as the kingdom disintegrated. Many thought it was the end of days. Terrible wars ensued, and the Drijem regime struggled to survive. The city swelled in population, but its wealth was sapped by wars, revolts, and trade disruptions. The kings turned to a new religious movement to bolster their legitimacy: the Zethko-Nedira movement, which adapted Nediran religion for the Northern Adira mountains. 

The Plague and Divine Bian (1200 - 1311)

Just as the city of Drijem seemed to be catching up to its new population numbers, another crisis began: the Singing Plague (also known as the Cicada Curse). This version of Mageplague burst out of Stildane in the late 1100s and early 1200s, and was the first mainstream disease able to infect Prisms. It was lethal, horrific, and prisms had no idea what to do about it. It was like the world was ending all over again. When the Singing Plague finally broke quarantine in 1201 in Drijem, the panic nearly toppled the government. The rulers fled, only to die in travel. All social order seemed to collapse, as various parts of prism society struggled to cope with the very idea of a disease - might as well a disease this horrific. It took a lesser clan of a nearby rural prismhold, the Liri, to march in and institute a new set of quarantines and medical procedures. Using human and dryad advisors, the Liri were able to innovate in prism medicine; and their methods were imperfect (sometimes pointless and cruel), but did bring stability back and allowed people to get treatment. The warlord who led this effort, Lady Donba Liri, was buried a hero by the Nediran temple. 
The end of the Singing Plague outbreak saw a sharp increase in both centralized bureaucracy and popular religion. The plague did not vanish, but simply mutated into a whole host of diverse prism contagions - society needed to change, and centralized bureaus in the model of Calazen seemed like a fine way of doing it. The Nediran temple's central role in saving the city also made it extremely popular, and this fundamental change in the way the world worked pushed many towards religion. This religious tradition brought a lot of Sonishan culture with it, as well as some Calazan culture. And then, in 1250, the Temple of Nedira was taken over by a rising star: Divine Bian Shaki-Zethko, a charismatic paladin-Zethko who ignited the Adiras with promises that he would finally free Mavara from her living tomb. After a brief power struggle with the Driji monarch, Bian took control of Drijem and made it his base of operations. Bian harnessed the wild hopeful energy of a post-plague city for war, and he ultimately conquered Sonisha in 1288. Bian died in 1311 due to divine politics, but Kedija was left in control - and with the Immortal Mavara in their hands. 

The Tyranny (1311 - 1420)

The period from 1311 to 1420 isn't remembered fondly. Much of it was spent under the tyrannical reign of Empress-Zethko Lia Driji, a lesser member of the Driji clan that rose to power after becoming Zethko. Empress Lia was not initially a tyrant; it was her two predecessors that began extorting magic out of Mavara using threats of re-entombment. Lia was the most ambitious and capable of the post-Bian monarchs, though. She pushed and pushed for Mavara to give her more power; with it she became something akin to a demigod. Already an accomplished warrior, she gained the ability to enchant and absorb the minds and strength of others; she soon became a wrecking ball. She absorbed the bards of the city as well; the bardic college in Drijem was destroyed, and bards soon fled en masse to Calazen. Lia became unstable, physically and mentally. She led her armies to conquer across the Northern Adiras, terrified that if she ever stayed too long near Calazen she would be drawn to fight the Empire (which would easily smite with the Saltspear). 
As the seat of the Empire, Drijem prospered even as it lost its magic academy. And then, when Empress Lia tried to bury Mavara back underground in 1420, the city rose against her and her Mavara-blessed nobility. The people had been slowly growing more rebellious as the empire had grown more unequal, militaristic, and arbitrary. The nobility had begun to even violate the holy laws in the open. The burial of Mavara was an intense blasphemy; an anvil when the camel only needed a straw to break. The Nediran Temple rang their bells, and the commonfolk marched fatalistically to face the unstoppable. Against all odds, they won - the Driji Clan was slain to the last child, and the strongest of the Kedijan tyrants were killed. The least important dregs fled West, to further terrorize Mavara; the kingdom was now in terrible civil war; but tyranny was over! Drijem elevated several heroic clans to the position that the Driji once held, the five tribes that now run much of the city today, in fact.

Post-Revolution Drijem (1420 - Present)

The lands that Empress Lia conquered to the Northeast happily joined the revolt; many thousands of them had been enslaved to build roads, canals, aqueducts, and forts for the empire to better oppress them with, and they wanted revenge. From that particular ball of vengeance and post-conquest reorganization, the Kingdom of Karama was born - and it did its best to conquer Kedijah as well. In 1473, Karaman warriors tried to conquer Drijem - and were barely repulsed by a coalition of local factions. The Drijemi tribes rallied their neighboring warlords and helped push the invaders out. By 1485, Drijem had reunited the Kingdom of Kedijah - and was back to being prosperous once again.
From 1438 to 1738, Sonisha and Kedijah worked together closely as allies; Kedijah was the dominant half, for the most part. Bit by bit, Drijem pulled itself upward - constant Karaman and Calazan threats made it the safest city from war in all of Kedijah. A big part of this was the creation of the Grand Canal in the late 1500s; the river had become a contested borderland, but the canal allowed for artisans and merchants to ship along it without risking Karaman raids. Even after Sonisha and Kedijah formally combined in 1738, Drijem remained the capital. The royal family shifted over to Athona in 1750, but left a substantial bureaucracy in Drijem as well as a peace offering to local elites: the creation of a new wizard school, to replace the lost bard academy of old Drijem. In 1840, Calazen conquered the kingdom, and Drijem was built back up as capital once again - Athona was too chaotic and too anti-Calazen to be the center of administration. When Sonisha was given back political autonomy in 1955, Drijem was made the political capital once more. It has really boomed since its partnership with The Darzan University in the 1990s.

Points of interest

The Palace and Obelisk of Heroes: The palace of heroes is the heart of royal government and the historical center of power for the realm of Kedijah. At its heart is the Obelisk of Heroes, a magical monument built around/out of a Sacred Mummy, which allows communication with the other Sacred Mummies. This is off-limits at all but the innermost circle of the royal family and priesthood. In the Kediba. 
The Temple-Court of Kedijah: Whether you seek a court case, or you seek to worship, this is your place. This is where cases are heard, lawsuits are filed, investigations are reviewed, and sermons are given. On the edge of the Kediba.
The White and Gold University: The greatest wizarding university in Inahng. Favored by the royal court, with ties to the Darzan University - a fine place for any noble scion with magical aspirations. In the Looms District.
The Kua Halls: The Kua Halls are the largest sporting venue in Drijem, and contain both indoor and outdoor sporting courts divided along caste lines. Their main two sports are tennis and Kua (what we would call bocci ball). A big social center in the city. In the Watermarket.
The Glowing Hall: The place to go if you are a non-prism and you want a nice meal and a place to drink, read, or meet late at night - the Glowing Hall is where Halpara Mushrooms are farmed. Many small leisure wings dot the outside of the hall, using their light but thankfully not too close to the stinkier core of it. While prisms can see at night easily and have no problems keeping their shops open late, fuel restrictions make it so must places aren't lit - the dryads and humans must go here. In the Looms District.
The Bija: The Asylum District's ruling hub, a castle-like sanitorium for high-caste people who were cast from greater society due to an incurable ailment. Since most of the magic-resistant strains of prism Mageplague have faded in severity or magic-immunity, most residents in the Bija are people that noble families wanted to hide away for more personal or political reasons. A few years ago, a noble doctor named Diel Kethba took over the Bija with a few devoted followers and paladins. Diel's goal has been to rule over the Asylum District as a benevolent leader, studying the diseases there while putting the residents to work. No one knows what has happened since; most people assume he died of disease or was killed by "madmen".

Founding Date

290 ME

Type

Capital

Population

250,000 humanoids

Inhabitant Demonym

Drijemi

Location under

Adira Mountains

Owning Organization

Kingdom of Sonisha