Vesper
Vesper is one of the seven Foundation Cities which were established at the beginning of the age of Foundation. It had the shortest history of them all, lasting for only a little more than six hundred years before it was sacked and destroyed even before that age had drawn to a close.
The image at the head of the article shows the Temple of Hesperos, dedicated to the veneration of the evening star.
Government
Vesper was governed by a religious order known as the Orthodox Monks. They presided over an uneasy coallition of the True Faithful and a number of competing organisations that called themselves the Cults of the Evening.
Industry & Trade
Vesper grew from simple beginnings as a small logging camp. It exported a valuable hardwood from innobol trees, one of the fruits of the gene sea which favoured the local climate and which was highly prized for building during the early Foundation years. Later it became a place of pilgrimage. Difficult and dangerous to reach and with an unforgiving climate, pious pilgrims saw this as a test of faith and a proof of the worth of the journey. They brought wealth with them and the Orthodox Monks quickly found ways for them to spend it, some spiritual and others much less so. The brothels of Vesper were simultaneously notorious and darkly seductive, their attractions spread by rumour and popular inuendo in all the Foundation cities.
Shown below is the Temple of Pleasure, the most famous of the Cults dedicated to providing pilgrims with their exotic personal services, whilst relieving them of their coins.
Vesper : The Temple of Pleasure by DMFW with Disco Diffusion
History
Vesper had an aura of strangeness about it even from the beginning. The city arose close to one of the ruined Enclaves which had been destroyed in the conflict that ended The Season Of Innocence. Some muttered that its rapid advance owed something to a forbidden pact with remnants of the old Conclave. It was even rumoured that there were worshipers of a surviving manifestation of the old artilects. Or more than one. Or none. The Cults of the Evening never openly denied these rumours and they kept such secrets from one another that no one could say for certain whether the claims were true or false.
Rivalry between different factions, gave rise to the notorious events described as the Whispers in the Evening in 626 AF.
Ultimately, the ambiguity on which Vesper had thrived led to its downfall, the victim of a holy war prosecuted by the Warriors of Keldramys (and covertly supported by Aberstone) which raised it to the ground in 677 AF.
Tourism
Vesper was a bleak city but it had begun to attract pilgrim tourists before the end of the first century and by the beginning of the third century, this business accounted for more of the city's wealth than the lumber trade.
Architecture
The Whispering Temples of Vesper were impressive stone structures, heavy and crude perhaps when seen from the outside but massive and intimidating. Their interiors were a maze of intricately carved passages, stair wells, chapels and altars and were the home of the various mysterious and mutually antagonistic Cults of the Evening.
Geography
Vesper sat on the low hills of Vallot, overlooking the marshy plains of Edmere to the north and the forest of Vallot to the south. It was far to the north of the other Foundation cities. The Edmere plains give rise to strange mists which can be suprisingly thick even in summer and bitterly cold in winter and these drifted into the city on many dank days and nights. The marshes usually freeze over completely in winter when they are navigable on foot or horseback with care, allowing travellers to reach the sea.
The countryside outside the city was notoriously dangerous. Forest mystish were common in the Vallot woods and black spider wolves hunted in the woods and plains alike.
RUINED SETTLEMENT
677 AF
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