Sofia
Nestled in the longest settled section of Hellas, a vibrant valley north of Arcadia dominated by seven mesas, carved or built (no one is sure which) to uniform shape and height. The farms of Sofia lay atop the mesas, which are also covered in forests of olive trees. The plains are good herdland, filled with swift, small shaggy horses that are native to the area and roving bands of leucrotta who find the horses adequate repast.
The climate is mild, warmed by the rather gentle Mare Nostrum, though winters are cold and wet, more sodden than frigid, with snow soon going to slush. The vast central hill is known as the Areopagus, and here is the Agora, a vast theater scooped out of the center of the Areopagus covered by a vast dome lined with a reflective substance that ensures voices in the Agora can be heard clearly within the area defined by the Long Walls, an architectural masterwork extending over 200 miles around the bases of the six hills of Sofia and surrounding even the bustling port of Piraeus. The Long Walls accommodate eight lanes of traffic plus strategic depot stations on their top, and are the pride of the Empire, who alone can afford the maintenance of the system.
The great city has come to represent the pinnacle of not only satyr achievement but in many ways, the Empire itself, an achievement owing more to propaganda than truth but still maintained across the Empire and the lands of the Mare Nostrum.
Demographics
The Acropolis, the "high city" atop the six hills, holds some 40,000 males with voting rights, and a total of 140,000 citizens living there who cannot vote and are the wives and children of these voters. The valley below the Acropolis holds some 200,000 people, scattered into farms and ranches, dependent upon the legions of the Long Walls to hold off the depredations of the leucrotta that fill the valley. These are all satyrs with the dhampir template due to the archon council's regular draughting of alchemical potions of youth bestowed at the opening augur ceremonies.
The Long Walls require 250,000 men to man properly, and these men generally house their families in Piraeus, once the slave ghetto of Sofia. Piraeus houses 500,000 people total, but with the ports, may hold up to 750,000 at any given times as the ships come and go. These are 60% satyrs, 20% hobgoblins, 15% punics, and 5% minotaurs.
Government
Sofia is a direct democracy where all citizens vote to elect the archons, the officials who rule the city. These offices hold a great deal of power, so much that the aristocrats compete heavily to obtain these offices, twisting and manipulating public opinion to stay in power. Archons begin their days at the augiries cast for that day, then debate issues of ther city and pass legislation from the auguries until sundownwith breaks for meals and ablutions. At sundown, the archons retire to their homes where they try cases and conduct diplomatic relations while entertaining. Judges trying cases involving non-citizens are appointed by the Imperial Senate, the Imperial Governor. or the basileus but all cases involvin only citizens of Sofia and the slave-ghetto of Piraeus are decided by one of the archons. Regulations on citizenship restrict voting to about 8 1/2% of the resident population, while eligibility requirements to run for office include levels in aristocrat, so only NPCs will hold archon status.
The governor is appointed by the basileus to oversee the elections and makes sure the archons stay within the limits of Imperial Law. The governor also commands the fleets and legions stationed at Piraeus, technically including the merchants for whom this is a home port, easily the majority of ships in the port which once dominated the waters of Hellas. Sofian aristocrats vie for the governor's favor to gain access to the ports, humiliating for natives, but part of Imperial rule. The city government meets publicly at the Areopagus, where all may speak and business not decided by sundown is tabled until sunrise.The governor opens these sessions with auguries at the Palace of Sofia Artificer, but generally leaves a secretary to preside while the archons debate and leaves following the auguries to his offices in Piraeus, where international relations and diplomacy occur and standard judges under Imperial law serve the courts. As the central hill has been carved into a bowl and capped with a dome believed magicked beyond the expert acoustic material and crafting that allows debate here to be clearly heard anywhere within the Long Walls, the governor may keep appraised while overseeing other business.
Most of the city offices are filled by a vote from the archons, but the governor either affirms their vote or appoints his own selection. The archons must convene publicly, and anyone may speak at these meetings, so the governor (or anyone with enough friends) can delay the archons from even starting debate, much less making a decision, provided they can keep the floor active until sundown. A vote cannot be delayed long enough for those in opposition nor can it be called for those in favor soon enough.
The archons are called by the governor to witness auguries cast at the Palace of Sofia Artificer, the great temple of Sofia, which offers more options for the politico. The priesthood is constantly bribed, blackmailed, or bullied to produce divine support for whatever matters are that day’s issues. Three in four are arcane spellcasters with a specialty in enchantment or illusion-the remainder are divided into roughly ⅔ psionic classes and ⅓ divine casters. The few divine casters tend to be adepts with the odd mystic cropping up, but divine casters generally gravitate to other cities. The Palace of Sofia Artificer is magnificent, but despite it’s wealth cannot attract divine foresight. Those sensitive to sinkholes of evil will sense one at the Palace-it is the hidden tomb and prison of Orlok and has been for centuries. The eaves of the roof hold the nests of stirges, and have since shortly after Orlok was secretly entombed there.
The Golden Age of Sofia was during the rule of the Master Strategist Orlok, who held Lacedaemon and the whole of Hellas at bay until laid low by plague. Orlok had the misfortune to survive as a vrykolakas, and was imprisoned beneath the auspices altar and misused. The alchemist Hermas refined Orlok’s blood into elixirs to extend life and doled these out to the only people who knew of Orlok’s fate and circumstances-the archons.
Holding power in Sofia meant holding youth and immortality as well, so the aristocrats began to manipulate votes to ensure their continued control of the substance, never realizing how enthralled they were becoming to the creature who was the font of their power.
When Orlok regained enough of it’s mind wracked by the vrykolakas transformation, it was not the Orlok of it’s living days, but a cunning predator devoted to survival. It influences the archons as it can, including dominating them mentally, perpetually seeking freedom and greater power over Sofia to bring about the paradise envisioned in life and the hunting ground it anticipates in death.
Orlok is countered in this by the formidable Kritias, a death knight bound to the basileus who intends to continue using Orlok to control the archons and thus, the city. Kritias is aided in this by the spectral remnants of the alchemist Hermas, and these three conduct their machinations under the broader strokes of the archons, themselves jockeying for more power, both within the city and beyond it. That none of the players in this game has the slightest thought for anything save themselves makes the plays more chilling and ruthless. There is a cold-bloodedness to Sofia politics one does not find elsewhere.
Sofian equality is engineered to guarantee no one is more equal than a citizen of pure blood, with artificial structures like race and income dividing the population further and further, even the 8 1/2% of the population holding voting rights. As politicians learned how to incite the mob one way or the other, arbitrary and artificial ways of dividing them were concocted to ensure no one faction retained power more than a generation or so. The absolute power of the archons is checked only by the governor, who commands the military and the ports. Kritias interacts with the archons much as the emperors of old handled their senates.
The politicians are so busy fighting among themselves for power, they have bothered no one outside their walls. This suits the basileus, and the Empire, just fine.
Defences
The Long Walls are the most impressive feat of architecture in the world, as elaborate and magnificent as they are expensive to maintain. The ports at Piraeus are equally imposing, manned by an armada from Kreta itself. Kritias has a guard equal to any city in the Empire, almost 75% of it manning the Long Walls alone, with the rest protecting the ports or monitoring the mesas as patrolmen.
Industry & Trade
Olives are the major industry, and anything that can be made from olives. The city produces enough olive oil to meet the needs of the entire Empire, with adequate surplus for the rest of the Mare Nostrum as well. Olives are, in fact, the only allowed export since Solon the Lawgiver wrote the Sofian Constitution. Piraeus is the most important trading port on the Mare Nostrum, and imports salt fish, wheat, papyrus, wood, glass, and metals such as tin, copper and silver. Wood is used for furniture, but most is employed in shipbuilding. Piraeus has a brisk fishing trade, though trade with the nomadic merfolk interferes with local fisherman turning a profit.
Infrastructure
Great winding roads and staircases wrap about the hills, connecting the plateaus atop to the grounds below them. Rope and stone bridges stretch between landings on the stairs about the mesas, some broad as four lane streets and some permanent enough to hold shop space. On the central hill are two structures-the great auditorium when the archons debate and the Palace of Sofia Artificer, but the roads of this hill are lined with market stalls rented from the archons where any good or service may be obtained. The hills all have deep wells of fresh water and the level hilltops produce olives in such abundance it is the only export permitted by Sofia law.
Assets
When Sofia became a direct democracy and the first city to make it illegal to go into slavery from debt, it also banned trade exports save olive oil, olives being the gift to the city, and olive oil the one product it made in abundance. Sofia always had the farmland to support itself, thus never needed to colonize, but has always sought to manipulate others into its service. The entire Delos Legion was an apparatus of their policy that once formed made a treaty with Iranshar that invalidated the reason for the Legion’s existence then menaced all other members to remain on threat of war, not with Iranshar but the rest of the Legion, ultimately relocating the Legion Treasury to the Long Walls.
Sofia mainly supports itself not so much with trade as with public relations, declaring itself the center of equality and the most “Imperial” city in existence, the arbiters of good thought and good taste in all that is the Empire. With the Empire now ruled from Hellas and not the West, this propaganda coup makes the people feel better about being a backwater run by mob rule.
Sofia is not merely a safe port, it is a strategic one which has dominated it’s waters and those of the Mare Nostrum since the city was founded and is the fifth largest port of the Mare Nostrum. Technically, the ports were once the city of Piraeus, but Sofia captured and enslaved that city so long ago, Piraeus only remembers being the slave ghetto of
Guilds and Factions
The powerful aristocracy are largely factions unto themselves, but the largest are Kritias and his Imperial government forces, including the legion occupying the Long Walls, and Orlak and the diviners at the Temple Sofia Artificer. Orlak is imprisoned in the Temple and is constantly tapped for the elixer vitae the archons imbibe at the start of each day, but it has also subverted many of the Temple diviners into service, intending to eventually free itself. Aside these two titans lurk numerous lesser conspiracies, most cozening power from one (usually Kritias) or the other, intriguing to elevate itself in the microenvironment that is Sofia.
History
Kékrops was an Arcadian noble driven from Arcadia for opposing the Temple of Zeus Lycaeus on Mount Lycaeum, where sentient sacrifice was performed. While opposing sacrifice of any living thing to the gods, Kékrops upheld Zeus as Supreme Deity and instituted state functions of marriage, reading and writing, and ceremonial burial. For all this, he and his followers were driven from Arcadia where they fled north, across the sea to the kingdom of Ἀktaῖos, who harbored them and even wed his daughter to Kékrops, who became king after Ἀktaῖos's death.
Kékrops was drawn inland by a conflict of the Titanomachy, when the Titan Oceanus and the goddess Sofia debated over a city they had built together over which of the two should become patron. Kékrops agreed to hear their case if they would bless his rule over it, and heard their case. As was typical in those times, both parties bribed the judge-Oceanus with deep wells of pure water that would forever sustain the city, and Sofia with the olive that would feed it. Sofia, the personification of Wisdom, won the contest, and the city was named for her.
Although Kékrops ruled wisely and well for fifty years, he failed to produce an heir, so Sofia created the child Erichthonius and left him with Kékrops's daughters, who disobeyed her and were driven to madness and suicide, incidentally clearing the path to the throne for Erichthonius whose bloodline formed the first dynasty of Sofia. The kings of Sofia were clever and cunning, but greedy as well, and the kings began to center the wealth of the city into the hands of the aristocracy to buy their loyalty, effectively enslaving those not of the well-born aristocrats.
This condition was not endured long, and the people rose up in 159 AU, destroying much of the former government and turning to the brilliant Solon, called the Law-Giver, to give their new regime legitimacy in the eyes of the other powers.He wrote a constitution, creating a direct democracy where any could vote but only the aristocrats could hold office. He broke up the great estates of the dead houses and reseeded the economy by dividing this land among them.
This resulted in the Tyranny of Pisistratus, a golden age of sorts where the Constitution of Solon was modified and codified further to create multiple rankings of citizenry, aided by the conquest and enslaving of their nearest neighbor, which became the ports of Piraeus. Though public office was limited by Solon to only the aristocrats of Sofia, voting rights were initially universal. This changed, creating nuanced strata of citizenship and limiting the vote to a smaller and smaller group of people within Sofia, limiting the government to interest in the needs of a select few. These changes were retained when the Pisistratus regime was overthrown in 243 AU, and expanded upon by the revolutionary leader Kleisthénēs, who further expanded on the Pisistratian system and divided the city into ten electorates, further stratifying the population.
This system continued until 275 AU, when Sofia found itself menaced by the expanses of the Iranshar Regime, and Sofian pride was injured when the Iranshar princes launched an investigation to discover exactly who the new petitioners were. The downcast diplomats then vowed to never bow to Iranshar and convinced many of the city-states of Hellas to join them in a mutual defense alliance at the remote and easily defended island of Delos. Here, they formed a pact which then Sofia dominated, forcing a treaty with Iranshar then using the threat of war with the rest of the alliance to keep the other city-states members, going so far as to move the treasury (for mutual defense) to Sofia in 299 , where it built the Long Walls. The election of Orlak to the office of Grand Strategist kept the city very much in control of the Legion it formed for defense as well as a power on the Mare Nostrum through it's massive navies and it's subordinate states also in the Legion.
This precarious alliance was wracked with chafing by the other members at Sofian hegemony, with sporadic revolts breaking out while Sofia disastrously launched a war against Lacedaemon, ultimately collapsing with Lacedaemon supremacy in 349 AU. Domination by Lacedaemon continued until 419 AU, when the Twin Crowns fell to Alexander and were absorbed into his army. With Alexander's death in 430, the Diodachi turned on each other, squandering resources in bloodshed after bloodshed until 607 AU, when the Eternal Republic pacified the area en route to it's conquest of Khemet. The tyrant Kritias, who headed the government Lacedaemon placed in charge of Sofia, was able to preserve much of Sofia's traditional government, albeit as a client state of Lacedaemon then the Empire, but Sofia was ever after a part of the Empire without it's own direction or influence. When the Eternal Secession collapsed the Western Empire, Sofia was able to promote itself as the center of Imperial culture and claim it's influence so much greater than it ever was, but this is mere propaganda and the city has not held power of any sort since it's defeat by Lacedaemon.
Founding Date
153 AU
Type
Metropolis
Population
140,000
Inhabitant Demonym
Sofians
Location under
Owner/Ruler
Additional Rulers/Owners
Owning Organization
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