Rigus

Like a giant iron boil rising up upon the flesh of the Land is the gatetown to Acheron. Rigus, the Eight-Tiered City, exists as more of a permanent military encampment than a proper city in many ways. Unlike the vast majority of the other gatetowns, it lacks a true civilian population outside of its own regimented military orders, and it seems to largely exist as a marshalling point for the mortal and immortal mercenaries, swarming lawful bacteria, who feed and feed upon the perpetual war of Acheron, and to a lesser extent the lawful side of the Blood War.

Government

As a city, Rigus is as organized and structured in design as any military organization. Like any top-down hierarchy, the lowest tiers hold the least power but are also the largest, and Rigus is no different. The city is constructed in a series of seven tiered rings each stacked one on top of the other rising up the flanks of the hill, with the lowest ring the largest, and the highest ring situated at the summit, also known as the Crown, being the smallest. An octagonal iron wall separates each ring from one another, and access to the next highest ring is controlled by several gates on the level, guarded and regulated by one or more of the military orders that control the city

Defences

eight military groups with thier own motives and means of combat defend the city.
Brotherhood of the Toll of Doom Ruled by General Thad Direwrack, the Brotherhood of the Toll of Doom has held the reigns of power in Rigus for close to three centuries. Of more direct impact though is their transition from under the leadership of General Nagaro, who while tacitly retaining her power in Rigus has moved to Sigil as the Guildmaster of the Minders Guild.
Children of the Thunder Serving under the banner of a drum and lightning bolt, the order was formed two centuries earlier by a cleric of Kai Lung, Chinese power of justice and punishment. While the influence of the clergy on them currently is debatable, the ideology of the Thunderer has lingered within their ranks.
Brood of Choirosis With the Great Rust Wyrm of Marsallin emblazoned upon their standard, the Brood of Choirosis answers to and serves the interests of their rust dragon patron within Rigus, and in turn are influenced by the mercykillers due to the wyrm’s own loyalties to that faction.
Maglubiyet’s Children Populated almost entirely by goblins and hobgoblins, as befits their name, this particular order has been incredibly low key in their playing of Rigus’s politics in the past seventy years. Before that point they were engaged in merciless competition against the One-Eyed Horde, a former military legion loyal to Gruumsch, a competition that frequently erupted into all-out urban warfare as the racial and religious tensions flared. But then, in the space of a single night, with no warning given beforehand, the Horde was obliterated to the last man, and the next morning saw the spikes of Rigus’s walls decorated with the heads of each member of the city’s predominantly orcish order. Supposedly a message was sent to the general of Maglubiyet’s Children, penned upon the flayed and tanned skin of the Horde’s general, stating that ‘Such disturbances will not be tolerated within the walls of Rigus. The Dead have spoken, and it is your choice now if you will listen to our judgement or not. Know your place within this city.’
The Hellforged Legion Marked by their standard of reddish flames overset by a pair of yellow eyes and a purple tongue, the Hellforged Legion is marked by a number of overtly Baatefic practices and styles. With a propensity for taking names in Infernal after joining the order, and using hellhounds in their patrols, the Legion has oftentimes been linked to, and just as often denied the support and guidance of the exiled noble Baatezu Kochbiel. Be that as it may, the group has rapidly gained in power in the past decade.

Infrastructure

Broken Slate The vast majority of the alehouses, hostels, and brothels within Rigus are owned and operated by the military orders, less independent places of business than they are gathering points for their members and tools of persuasion for potential recruits. As such, outsiders to Rigus are greeted coldly and with suspicion, or find themselves subject to the attention of overly friendly recruiters, and occasionally the risk of being pressganged into service.
Alone among the city’s taverns however, the Broken Slate is independently owned and operated by Zelric Kaarizol, a former mercenary with a career that stretched from Acheron to the prime material to darkest depths of the Blood War. His last contract in the War Eternal left him on the wrong end of a betrayal by yugoloths loyal to the archfiend Typhus, and also left him blind in one eye and the sole survivor of his company. The experience turned him off from the risk of such work, and with a desire to provide at least a slight bit of shelter, however momentary, for those seeking fortune and glory where he found the same, albeit it bittersweet.
Tylissa’s Tower The tower, both the residence and place of business, of the wizardress Tylissa rises high above the 6th ring of the city, nearly reaching above the height of many of the buildings within the next ring itself. Though the tower is generally plain in style, remarkable only for the greenish glass cupola at its top, its primary resident is anything but mundane.
Tylissa is certainly a striking figure: a slim woman of indeterminate years with eyes like liquid, lavender tinged mercury, and hair that resembles nothing so much as verdigris stained copper. The woman's past is a mixture of speculation and rumor, and she does little to clarify the matter, seeming to revel in the swirl of speculation that surrounds her, her past, and even the question of just what race or mixture of races she actually is, given her appearance.
Adding to the speculation, there is also the fact that the tower itself is several thousand years old. While Tylissa has only occupied it for a quarter century, the tower was vacant and magically sealed for two centuries previous to that after the departure of its owner, curiously enough a female wizard named Tylissa. To all appearances it seemed that she'd simply walked back into Rigus and reclaimed her former abode after two centuries of preoccupation elsewhere, and because of this history, many suspect her to be a shapechanged fiend, a disguised lich, a half-breed of human and hassitor, or even a surviving member of the Incantifers.
Whether the truth is anything that exotic is an open question, but beyond that mystery, Tylissa has tended to stay wholly clear of the politics of the city, openly offering her services as a spellcaster to any who can afford her prices, which tend to be steep, and oftentimes unconventional.
Belltower of the Toll of Doom The headquarters of Rigus's most powerful military order sprawls around the city’s tallest structure, the Belltower of the Toll of Doom. In line with its name, a massive bronze bell hangs within the tower, but close examination reveals that it lack any pull, a clapper, or any other mechanism to ring. Despite this however, the bell, or something within the tower, does in fact ring on specific days of importance to the Toll of Doom. The bell is felt before it is heard, a low and building reverberation that rattles the bones of the chest before reaching the ears with a rolling concussion audible for miles around the gatetown.
Branching out from the tower are a series of barracks, meeting halls, training grounds and administrative buildings belonging to the Brotherhood of the Toll of Doom. A solid third of the brotherhood are typically in residence, another third on patrol, and the final fraction away from the city in Acheron or elsewhere. But the machinations of the Brotherhood itself are not the distinctive feature of the location, and most of the true moving and shaking among the city’s political intrigue occurs on the streets, or within the so-called Crypt. No. The most extensive whispers about the belltower center around the bell itself.
Some claim that the bell was plundered from an ancient incarnation of Plague-Mort, at the time heavily influenced by the Abyssal Lord Baphomet. If so, the bell may be kindred to the artifacts known as the Bells of Baphomet that currently hang within the steeple of Sigil’s Temple of the Abyss. This of course raises the possibility that the Toll of Doom has control over a similar magic possessed by those other bells, though there are no legends surrounding them, so the order may either be unwilling or unaware of such power, assuming it exists.
Temple of the Half-Brothers One of the largest buildings in Rigus, situated over and astride the primary gate between the 4th and 5th rings, the temple shares a common plaza (with security strictly enforced) with twin cathedrals branching off to either side, each catering to the worship of Hextor, god of tyranny, and Heironious, god of valor. The temple is unique in its split structure, and a careful examination of the architecture reveals the truth about its origins as a single larger cathedral later divided and split in two.
The original temple was consecrated to Stratis, the LN deity of war, brother of both Hextor and Heironeous. But following his death, supposedly at the hands of mortals, and the collapse of his priesthood, the location was defiled, and occupied by squatters for several decades before the competing clergies of his brothers seized it in an attempt to keep it out of the hands of the other. Several years later, and after a significant level of bloodshed, the current peace and division between the temples was set down by the edict of Brannus Dirishek, then Factol of the Mercykillers, and has remained so till the present day.
The so-called ‘Iron Patriarch of Rigus’, Cierith Bloodwyn, controls his clergy and followers with rigid authority, though the man seems hesitant about seeking to influence the orders, given that of his two predecessors, one was assassinated and the other was executed after seeking to do just that. With that ample warning from the pages of history, rather than risk his own neck before having the power to do so, he seems content for the moment to stymie the influence of his clerical rivals.
Standing opposite in both position and ideology to the temple of Hextor, Elonorus the Honored leads the clergy of Heironeous in spreading a gospel of glory and justice by personal action and the upholding of societal order. Blunting her opposite’s interests in Rigus are perhaps less an interest to Heironeous’s high priest within the divided temple, as her activities have been more to funnel information and bits of intrigue out of Rigus and into Sigil to the waiting ears of Arwyl Swanson. Publicly known or not, Elonorus holds the position and title of Factor within the Sons of Mercy, and her sights are set not on Rigus but on the planes at large.
The Crypt While the highest ring and the summit of the hill that Rigus is built upon is termed 'the crown', the grandiose mausoleum that resides there, known as 'The Crypt', is oftentimes synonymous with 'the Crown', depending on context. Situated within an open paved plaza, the crypt is carved from the raw bedrock of the mountain itself, though the original stonemasons gave it the cosmetic appearance of having been fashioned through more conventional construction techniques.
Officially the Crypt is nothing more than a memorial and resting place to the most honored dead of Rigus: past generals of the military orders, factols of the Mercykillers and Sodkillers, and other great heroes whose remains are forever interred within to remain in an elevated position of glorified remembrance by the living who choose to honor them so.
In reality however, the military orders don't select the occupants of the crypt, they answer to them. By some unique process, or perhaps as some trait of Rigus or the Crypt itself, the dead entombed within the Crypt are isolated from the normal processes of death and the subsequent formation of a petitioner. The souls of the dead linger on in a lich-like state of undead quasi-life, ruling from beyond the grave as a spectral council that orchestrates the highest level decisions that occur in Rigus and even beyond, given the number of highups in Rigus who populate the ranks of the Sodkillers.
The Soldier’s Gate The first impression most cutters have of Rigus is the main gate into the city, known traditionally as ‘The Soldier’s Gate’, given that most entrants to the city are ultimately bound for the eternal battlefield of Acheron.
Wide enough to admit fifteen men marching abreast, the gate is the most heavily guarded location in Rigus, and the admissions process is invasive and severe enough to discourage any thoughts of unlawful behavior once admitted into the gatetown proper. The gate is manned by soldiers from no fewer than four of the city's military orders, a measure intended to prevent smuggling or other forms of corruption if only one order provided security without being observed and counterbalanced.
The gate, nine inches think and hard as adamantite, was fashioned from a single piece of magic-dead metal, said to have been the result of some ancient and heretical forgemaster loyal to Diinkarizan the mad derro creator-deity, or alternately carved from the petrified bones of some ancient denizen of Thuldanin. Whatever the origin though, the gate soaks up magic with a gusto to put a hunger frenzied Nishruu to shame, giving its guardians no fear from the battle magic of any potential invaders seeking to breach the only entrance to the city.

Assets

descends deep under the city, leading into a massive natural cavern that echoes with the ringing, discordant sound of metal on metal. Standing in the echoing darkness in the center of the chamber stands the Lion's Gate, the source of the noise, and the permanent portal from Rigus to Acheron's first layer of Avalas.
The gate takes the form of a freestanding arch of bariaur bones that encloses a swirling mass of sickly, greenish-yellow light, striped down the center with a pitch black band making the portal seem nothing-so-much as a the giant eye of some massive beast. Access to the gate itself is unrestricted, but records are kept regarding who or what passes into or out of Acheron.
Outside of the flickering light given off by the gate, the cavern rapidly slips away into shadow, and a number of various other passages lead away into the depths. While some of these other tunnels are natural, others appear to have been intentionally cut from the rock, both into and out of the cavern from various directions. The expansive tunnel network is largely unmapped, but rumors claim that they lead to other portals, to various deific domains including those of Illsensine and Gzemnid, or a planar underdark beneath portions of the Land. Additionally, due to semi-frequent incursions of hostile creatures from the depths, including gauth and giant, blind insects, a number of the passages have in recent years been walled up or gated to prevent easy entrance or egress.

Architecture

From a distance, Rigus looks like a series of stacked metal boxes, or a giant monochrome ziggurat rising above the surrounding landscape in all of its unwelcoming glory. Approaching travels will note that in following that “unwelcoming” aura, the lowest, outermost defensive wall of Rigus is constructed of black avalan iron, splotched and mottled with rust, verdigris, and a sticky, almost sap-like coating of contact poison to ward off rust-monsters and potential invaders.

Type

Town

Population

20,000