Elyndar
Where Words Weigh More Than Steel
Atop the amber ridges of the southern Principalities lies Elyndar, the city of accords, where oaths are bound not by force, but by flame, ink, and the weight of ancestral memory. Though it commands no armies and claims no throne, Elyndar is the most revered city in the Free Worlds League, and none may rule its lands without first kneeling beneath its banners.
Ancient even before the rise of House Marik, Elyndar began as a hilltop monastery, where scholars and holy judges mediated between warring river lords. Over time, the city grew outward in seven concentric terraces, each ring home to different castes of the League’s complex society: mystics, scribes, artisans, guilders, envoys, and nobility. Each terrace bears its own character, customs, and dialect, but all look inward toward the city’s sacred flame. At the summit of Elyndar burns the Hall of Accord, a domed marble sanctuary flanked by slender towers. Within lies the Pactfire, an ever-burning magical flame said to be kindled from the last embers of Lumina’s Hearth. Here, under frescoes of phoenixes and rising stars, representatives of the League’s Spiral Principalities gather once each generation for the Grand Assembly of Pactlords. Oaths are sworn aloud before the Pactfire—vows of allegiance, peace, and shared destiny. To break such an oath is considered not only treason, but sacrilege.
But Elyndar is no museum of rituals. The city pulses with intellectual and mystical life. Its academies teach both arcane theory and the philosophy of governance; its markets hum with the clink of bronze and the perfume of foreign herbs; and its gardens, cultivated with ancient elemental magic, draw pilgrims from across the Sphere seeking peace, guidance, or revelation. Elyndar is guarded not by battalions, but by the Saffron Cloaks, ceremonial peacekeepers who wield binding magics, truth-spells, and ancient authority rather than brute force. In times of great peril, these cloaked wardens may rouse the Bronze Compact—a secretive band of oath-sworn warriors, called only when the Pactfire itself is threatened.
To walk Elyndar’s terraces is to walk history. Every flagstone whispers with footsteps of past pactlords, every temple stone bears marks of old banners now lost to time. Here, amid saffron light and solemn chants, the soul of the Free Worlds League is not merely remembered—it is reaffirmed, one oath at a time.
“Other cities build empires. Elyndar builds accord.” — Archivist Vishan Re, Scribe of the Sixth Circle
