Jiku
"If the Imperial City, Tenyuanchéng, is the heart of the civilized empire, its moral and upright hun; then the great, trading city, Jiku, is the heart of its more base side, its po. Everything in the empire eventually makes its way to, and through, Jiku. Most anything you want can be found in the city, except for much of the law and order the rest of the world enjoys. Especially on the poor south side, Chuanxiong, where it's basically ruled by yakuza, mercenaries, and other criminal gangs. However, it does have the biggest, and best, hanamachi outside the imperial city itself. Even the Peach Pavilion Opera is headquartered there. If you can keep your head down and not attract the attention either the criminals or the police then it's a great place to visit. Living there would be something altogether different, though."
- Ito Haruki, traveling poet and taikomochi
- Ito Haruki, traveling poet and taikomochi
Demographics
The various classes of the city are represented thusly:
Approximately 60% tenant farmers
30% merchants or tradesmen
4% mercenary groups
3% criminal gangs
2% Imperial Bureaucrats
1% wealthy nobility
Being one of the more cosmopolitan areas of the Middle Empire, nearly every race/species is represented even in some small way in the great trading city. Humans, of course, are the more populous taking up about 90% of the population. Due to the proximity of two, major, Yang-aligned provinces, the alignment divide between the humans is about 65% Yang aligned humans to 25% Yin aligned. Further population breakdown follows:
The next most populous race are the elves, which make up around 3% of the total population with the divide between them heavily favoring the more widespread River, Fox, & Tanuki elves at a 46%/12%/32% split and the Wood elves making up the other 10% of the elven population.
The kotengu and the half-elves which each make up about 1% of the total population are the next most populous.
While the other 5% of the city would be classified as Other; being made up of sporadic groups of kobito, fengren, sunren, water buffalo-, yak-, and sun bear-folk, yuan-ti, and various types of hanshin.
Approximately 60% tenant farmers
30% merchants or tradesmen
4% mercenary groups
3% criminal gangs
2% Imperial Bureaucrats
1% wealthy nobility
Being one of the more cosmopolitan areas of the Middle Empire, nearly every race/species is represented even in some small way in the great trading city. Humans, of course, are the more populous taking up about 90% of the population. Due to the proximity of two, major, Yang-aligned provinces, the alignment divide between the humans is about 65% Yang aligned humans to 25% Yin aligned. Further population breakdown follows:
The next most populous race are the elves, which make up around 3% of the total population with the divide between them heavily favoring the more widespread River, Fox, & Tanuki elves at a 46%/12%/32% split and the Wood elves making up the other 10% of the elven population.
The kotengu and the half-elves which each make up about 1% of the total population are the next most populous.
While the other 5% of the city would be classified as Other; being made up of sporadic groups of kobito, fengren, sunren, water buffalo-, yak-, and sun bear-folk, yuan-ti, and various types of hanshin.
Government
Jiku is a mostly free-trade city governed and run in partnership between the Ministry of the Weighted Scales and the Ministry of the Unerring Blade. The trade bureaucrats conduct the day-to-day running of the city. From collecting taxes on goods and businesses to arbitrating civil disputes and enforcing trade laws to maintaining the government buildings, roadways, and walls. The military branch of the government, on the other hand, spends its time overseeing and training the city watch, the militia, and the city police forces. They also try capital crimes and assist the trade ministry in enforcing the various trade laws.
Defences
A large, square, crenelated wall of rammed earth and stone surrounds the entire city with watch towers at each corner and flanking both entry gates. Like any walled city in the empire, the entrances are constructed with blind corners to confound any enemies entering and to give the wall defenders that much more time to counter with crossbows, boiling oil, or other mass damage weaponry such as grenades or trip mines. As the Jade River bisects the city east-to-west, the inhabitants of the city devised a clever way of plugging this hole in their defenses. Each section of wall bordering the river is equipped with a crank wheel attached to a large, chrome-plated, jagged chain. When relaxed, the chain sits near the bottom of the river, but when pulled taut it sits just below the surface of the water ready to tear apart the bottoms of any attacking boats. Again, as in most walled cities, the walls of Jiku are built to allow the city's soldiers to be barracked within them, as well as to allow space for the requisite arms and supplies those soldiers would require when defending the city. Jiku has a unit of 1000 Imperial soldiers as a standing army; as well as, standing contracts with the various mercenary companies to provide defense in times of need.
Industry & Trade
Jiku does not have any sort of industry in and of itself. Most of the mines in the foothills of the Spire were exhausted centuries before and it does not provide any exports. Jiku is a trade city, and it is no exaggeration to say that every trade good within the Middle Empire eventually finds its way to, and through, its gates. Therefore, the city's main areas of income are taxation and tariffs. Every good sold at the twice-weekly markets, every stall, shop, and cart, every bail of cotton, wool, or silk unloaded from the wheeled river barges, every service performed within its walls from spell-work to acupuncture to mercenary work to prostitution is levied a tax by the Bureau of Trade that runs the city.
Infrastructure
Some of the very first infrastructures of Jiku were the great trading and counting houses for the merchants to gather together and hawk their wares or exchange them for the gold scrip that was used as currency in ancient times. These were eventually taken over as part of the yamen governmental complex at the center of the city. A paved system of roadways were eventually planned and mapped out by the Imperial Bureaucracy which connected to the Imperial Highways along the city's main thoroughfare of Dosojin's Way. Underground sewage systems to flush waste, and irrigation to water crops in the outlying fields were implemented, along with clever flood prevention locks to keep the canals from overflowing during the annual flood. There exists a massive public works system for the comforts of all including public toilets along every main road, cheap hostels for travelers, tenement houses and alms houses for the poor, public clinics, bathhouses, public schools to teach children the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, a police force with manned booths at all major intersections, fire fighters with manned fire-watch pagodas in every district, a large network of temples and shrines to nearly every major god, as well as a well-maintained paupers' graveyard for those with no family or who were too poor to afford burial rites. All maintained at the Imperial Bureaucracy's expense.
Guilds and Factions
The bureaucrats of the Bureau of Trade, under the Ministry of Balanced Scales, are the prime movers and shakers of the city. Ostensibly, these august officials can be neither bought, bribed, nor blackmailed due to the transitory nature of their positions. However, in Jiku, if there exists an uncorrupted official, all that means is that someone hasn't found the right leverage. Then there is the Unerring Blade Ministry's presence. For the military, this is not a transitory posting, every officer and soldier stationed in the city is there either until his service or his life ends. The military provides the 500 men and women of the city's police force, which is in excess of the 1000 standing soldiers ready to defend the walls of the city. These are much more easily purchased than those government officials operating out of the central yamen.
The Jade River Tea Society is a federation of merchant-princes and takaixue nobles officially gathered together for the innocuous purpose of appreciating the various blends and qualities of the teas which find their way from the Lands of Blossom Rain and other places around the empire to the gates of Jiku. They also carry out many charitable acts throughout the city such as donating to alms houses, public schools and clinics, and for the proper burial of the destitute. Scratch beneath that shiny, lacquer surface, however, and you will find the rotten wood beneath. The Society's crimes range from the relatively banal bribery and extortion to the truly vile sex slavery and humanoid trafficking.
The Mujina-no-tsume are, perhaps, the largest, and certainly most organized, of Jiku's yakuza gangs. While certainly not the most vicious, several of the smaller gangs, or tongs, have that dubious honor, the Badger Claws are without a doubt the most infamous of all the city's various criminal organizations. This is due, in large part, to the gang's size and its working relatively out in the open in sheer tenacious defiance of all imperial law and edict. The boss, Mujina, is a cunning, patient, and methodical man who demands unswerving obedience and loyalty from those beneath him. Under his leadership the gang controls much of the territory of the southern half of the city and all-but runs all trade within the hanamachi itself. There is not a single sing-song girl, river dumpling, or courtesan that does not work for Mujina in one way or another; and not a single teahouse, gambling parlor, or bordello that doesn't owe him protection. it is said that nothing happens in the city that the Badger doesn't immediately know and certainly nothing happens in the Chuanxiong without his express knowledge and say-so.
The Jade River Tea Society is a federation of merchant-princes and takaixue nobles officially gathered together for the innocuous purpose of appreciating the various blends and qualities of the teas which find their way from the Lands of Blossom Rain and other places around the empire to the gates of Jiku. They also carry out many charitable acts throughout the city such as donating to alms houses, public schools and clinics, and for the proper burial of the destitute. Scratch beneath that shiny, lacquer surface, however, and you will find the rotten wood beneath. The Society's crimes range from the relatively banal bribery and extortion to the truly vile sex slavery and humanoid trafficking.
The Mujina-no-tsume are, perhaps, the largest, and certainly most organized, of Jiku's yakuza gangs. While certainly not the most vicious, several of the smaller gangs, or tongs, have that dubious honor, the Badger Claws are without a doubt the most infamous of all the city's various criminal organizations. This is due, in large part, to the gang's size and its working relatively out in the open in sheer tenacious defiance of all imperial law and edict. The boss, Mujina, is a cunning, patient, and methodical man who demands unswerving obedience and loyalty from those beneath him. Under his leadership the gang controls much of the territory of the southern half of the city and all-but runs all trade within the hanamachi itself. There is not a single sing-song girl, river dumpling, or courtesan that does not work for Mujina in one way or another; and not a single teahouse, gambling parlor, or bordello that doesn't owe him protection. it is said that nothing happens in the city that the Badger doesn't immediately know and certainly nothing happens in the Chuanxiong without his express knowledge and say-so.
History
Though not always known by its current name, the trading city has a history more ancient than even the empire itself. It began its life as a sporadic encampment nestled in the small, river valley in the foothills surrounding the great plateau of the Creator's Spire. This original encampment mainly consisted of gem and jade merchants, wool and fur traders, and drovers looking to trade goats, mountain sheep, yaks, and camels from out of the Spire with the lowlands folk in the surrounding lands and further downriver. After a time, it began to attract more and more people from the nearby villages and towns and became a large, annual fair. Eventually the encampment gained permanence as a small outpost for lowlands miners going into the foothills to seek their fortunes in precious ore, gems, and the jade which runs through the Spire and surrounding hills like great arteries in the earth. During the feudal Age of the Bushi, the small city it had become was forced to build a wall in order to repel bandit raiders and unscrupulous daimyo and ronin samurai who would attempt to claim it, and its wealth, as their own. By the time of the War of the Gods, the city was being run by an elected council of merchant-princes and weathered the Storm God's assaults behind thick walls, a small, standing army, and several, large, mercenary armies. After the long war and the installment, and actual enforcement, of the Divine Mandate, their Imperial Majesties realized there was a small problem with this now-large city. Once the boundaries for the new provinces had been set, it was realized that the city didn't sit within any of those boundary lines and could not be easily relegated to any one province's oversight, and to arbitrarily relegate it to one could cause internal strife. Therefore, the city was placed under the Imperial aegis, the council was inducted into the fledgling ministries of trade and war and became a city of free trade where no one province could set the laws. The city gained its name during these times, when the high ranking official, originally from the Yin province of the Endless Fields of Reeds, sent to survey the city called it the "hub (jiku) of the Empire's trade" and the name stuck.
Architecture
The architecture of the city is predominantly of wood gathered from the forested foothills of the Spire, with stone being used primarily for defensive constructions, some public works such as the arching rainbow bridge that connects the city north-to-south, and household accents like stone lanterns in the richer quarters. The style of architecture generally leans to the courtyard style of housing favored by the Yang peoples that make up the majority of the population. Though, here and there can be spotted the more compact buildings in the style of the Yin peoples. This style is much more common on the southern side of the river, in the hanamachi, where the more easily rearranged interior, paper walls is more often a boon. Teahouses, restaurants, bathhouses, and brothels, in particular, often use this style. Among the courtyard style dwellings, not just the size of the dwelling, but the opulence of its gate is often an indicator of the status and wealth of its occupant. The more elaborate the gate and its decorations, the more wealth and higher-standing the owner possesses. Wealthier buildings like this are invariably roofed in expensive, terracotta tiles.
The buildings tend to be more sprawling, single-story affairs, especially among the wealthy elite, who can often afford houses with multiple courtyards. The exceptions to this are, again, more often the entertainment buildings such as the Peach Pavilion Opera house and multi-story restaurants and teahouses. Many of the military compounds of the mercenary bands also have multi-story buildings. The fire-watch pagodas tend to dominate the skyline, however, standing upwards of eight stories and towering over even the wall towers surrounding the city. Temples, as well, tend to be sprawling complexes of wood and flagstone taking up at least an acre of land all on their own. Sometimes two or three for the more popular gods like Amaterasu and Tsuki-yomi. These are often surrounding by meticulously planned out "woodland groves."
With the exception of the hanamachi, on the less wealthy, southern side of the Jade River, the houses are more often constructed of mud-brick and roofed with wood shingles. A single courtyard-style house will often hold upwards of three extended families, and the "streets" become hutong. Little more than alleyways between dwellings. The far, southern edge of the city holds several tenement-style dwellings. These are long-houses separated into single apartments for travelers or extremely poor families forced into corvee labor to pay off their debts.
The buildings tend to be more sprawling, single-story affairs, especially among the wealthy elite, who can often afford houses with multiple courtyards. The exceptions to this are, again, more often the entertainment buildings such as the Peach Pavilion Opera house and multi-story restaurants and teahouses. Many of the military compounds of the mercenary bands also have multi-story buildings. The fire-watch pagodas tend to dominate the skyline, however, standing upwards of eight stories and towering over even the wall towers surrounding the city. Temples, as well, tend to be sprawling complexes of wood and flagstone taking up at least an acre of land all on their own. Sometimes two or three for the more popular gods like Amaterasu and Tsuki-yomi. These are often surrounding by meticulously planned out "woodland groves."
With the exception of the hanamachi, on the less wealthy, southern side of the Jade River, the houses are more often constructed of mud-brick and roofed with wood shingles. A single courtyard-style house will often hold upwards of three extended families, and the "streets" become hutong. Little more than alleyways between dwellings. The far, southern edge of the city holds several tenement-style dwellings. These are long-houses separated into single apartments for travelers or extremely poor families forced into corvee labor to pay off their debts.
Geography
The terrain surrounding Jiku is mostly flat plain interspersed with some gently rolling countryside. The Jade River bisects the city west-to-east and continues eastward, forming the boundary between the Imperial Lands proper and the Plains of the Rising Tiger where the land further flattens the further south and east one goes. To the west of the city, the land begins to roll less gently and becomes more and more rough until you reach the foot of the massive, rugged plateau that is the Creator's Spire. Many ancient mines, and even temples dedicated to the creator-god, Izanagi, dot these foothills. Indeed, there is even a larger temple complex still in use by adherents of the Eightfold Path of Creation's Dawn, perched atop some of the taller hills in the area. As well, over the ages, many sages have made pilgrimages to the Spire in order to become closer to the Creator and the wisdom it is believed is inspired. It is said that many of these learned men left their wisdom written on rock walls or stored in secret caches throughout the hills. Writings that may contain secret knowledge, magics lost to the ages, even the secret to eternal life.
Natural Resources
The city boasts numerous, large tenant farms for several miles around it to the north, south, and east. As well, many independent farmers farm the land beyond this. These are mostly grain crops in the form of millet and buckwheat and barley with some fruits and vegetables to break up the monotony. There is plenty of arable pasturage for hardy livestock such as sheep and goats. As well, those farm families which don't have access to the city's sewage systems have a small pig-sty situated below their outhouses to handle household waste. These animals are also slaughtered and eaten during special occasions. Short-grain rice also makes its way up the Imperial Highway from the far south in the Endless Fields of Reed and Water with long-grain, Imperial rice making its way south. Timber and stone are harvested in the foothills to the west and fishing boats ply their trade in the Jade River daily. Charcoal burners dot the forests, as well. More wild game can be harvested from the forests and fields surrounding such as pheasant, quail, duck and other fowl, as well as deer and boar. These hunting trips are most often taken by the more sedentary, wealthy individuals, however.
Alternative Name(s)
Trade City, The Hub
Type
Large city
Population
100,000
Location under
Owner/Ruler
Owning Organization
Characters in Location
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