Here are some brief descriptions of some notable cities.
Dorad
Dorad is a great center for the production of adamant, the light,
hard metal which is preferred for armor, weapons, and ship fittings.
Adamant has an elaborate production process which involves access
to volcanic heat, and Dorad is home to both a caldera and a somewhat
active volcanic vent. Perhaps because of the influence of the
vents, the people of Dorad are known for heat: hot foods, hot
passions, and hot tempers.
One curious legal aspect of Dorad (and the region around it) is
that unlike most places, descent is reckoned through the female
line. Men are, as in most cities, the chief holders of property,
legislators, and merchants, but rights, lineage, and inheritance
are carried through a lines of mothers and daughters, not fathers
and sons. That is, husbands of daughters are prefered heirs, not
one's own sons or daughters. Likewise, when a man of Dorad recites
his lineage, he will list his mother, grandmother, and so on.
Sernissa
Sernissa, sometimes called the Citadel, is perhaps the largest
city in the world, boasting better than 10,000 households. It
is built around a large and unusual caldera. Many calderas have
small islands around their rims, but Sernissa has a sizable island
rising in the center, large enough for the ducal palace, its formidable
defenses, and its picturesque market. The citadel island is joined
to the rim of the caldera by three lovely arching bridges.
Sernissa is also known as the city of canals. Its caldera is unusually
capacious, and its seemingly inexhaustible water supply has been
used to fill a network of small, open aqueducts covering the city.
Sernissa is under the nominal rule of a duke, who presides over
civic functions and looks very good in robes of state, but actual
control of the city is usually attributed to the Ducal Council,
a body of some seven to ten men who descend from the city's leading
families. They have expanded Sernissa's hegemony over not only
its sizable archipelago, but beyond. Sernissa's growth has caused
considerable concern among other powers, and there are several
tentative alliances directed at stopping it.
Feiraz
Feiraz is a republic in perpetual turmoil. Theoretically, it is
governed by a council of seven selected by lot from a body of
approximately 200 members of the aristocracy for six-month terms.
Unfortunately, the city is dominated by four major houses of spice-lichen
barons (the Ubuzzi, the Faishtal, the Voder, and the Kallachi)
who are in an apparently constant struggle against one another.
Partisans of each side are usually fairly evenly matched in the
Supreme Council, so the conflict most often takes the form of
constant intrigue and unrest in the streets with the occasional
assassination. From time to time, however, one faction or another
will, through trickery or chance, gain a clear majority on the
council and, for the next six months, carry out a reign of terror
against its opponents punctuated by the occasional riot.
Ignoring the constant unrest and chance of random violence, Feiraz
is actually quite a pleasant city. Each major house happens to
be immensely wealthy, with ties to branches in other cities, and
some of their competition takes the form of increasingly elaborate
civic improvements, each in distinct architectural style. The
Ubuzzi tend towards rounded, organic styles, while the Faishtal
build for height. The Voder go in for elaborate ornamentation,
and the Kallachi concentrate on temples and shrines.
Peron
Once the capital of a large empire (at least, as big as empires
get over the dust, which isn't saying much), Peron has declined
considerably. While still reasonably wealthy, it can't match its
bygone power. The imperial throne has passed away, and the city
is ostensibly governed by the office of the Imperial Proctor,
which has its elaborate protocols and bureaucracy.
Modern Peron is notable for two things. The first is its many
imperial relics. The streets are paved with a pleasant, slightly
rosy, whitish stone, and the largest buildings are faced with
a similar substance, giving the city the look of having risen
from the ground in one piece. This considerable achievement is
the result of several generations of building projects by long-gone
emperors, but their images can still be seen on every street corner
and public building. It is also packed with valuable antiquities
and craftsmen who follow old practices.
The second thing is the Ecclecia of Sages. At its height, the
imperial government assembled a body of powerful God-Touched individuals
to facilitate imperial communications with greater powers and
to regulate the practice of divination. The empire has crumbled,
but the Ecclecia remains, and something between 50 to 100 powerful
God-Touched, along with their retainers, are in residence at any
time. Enigmatic and often withdrawn from normal politics, the
Ecclecia is nevertheless a powerful body when it chooses to make
its wishes known.
Tueshi
The City of Iron, Tueshi is inhabited mostly by a warrior aristocracy
and related trades. The city is supplied by surrounding villages
who are completely dominated by the regimented soldier-elite.
On the broad Campa, randomly selected citizens are tested daily
against animals, strange devices, and one another, under the eyes
of the Triple King, the triumvirate rulers of the city. The Tueshi
are essentially trained from birth as warriors, raised in a regimented
society and kept busy with weapons and tests of endurance. They
are a formidable force, but tend to isolate themselves from the
world except when other rulers manage to coax a body of mercenaries
out of them. The Tueshi affect contempt for "civilians," but appear
as willing as any other people to trade, albeit through middlemen.
And true to its name, many buildings are faced with thin-pounded
sheets of iron, or at least adorned with iron decorations.
Piyam
A rising mercantile power, Piyam is the center in the trade of
peria, a soft but durable fiber taken from a spice-lichen indigenous
to the area. However, it is working at the disadvantage of having
signed a number of disadvantageous treaties in years past. Piyam's
chief claim to fame is its singers and musicians. The city has
been home to a series of remarkably skilled musicians in recent
years. This seems a bit odd to the Piyamese, since the city seems
to produce no more than its share of performers. Nevertheless,
a bi-annual competition is held at the end of each season to grant
recognition (in the form of a beaten-gold cap and a flask of fine
wine) to the best musician in the city, and several civic monuments
have musical themes. Complex criteria are used to select the judges.
Piyam is by and large a quiet city, perhaps because the Assembly
of Legislators is composed largely of elderly, unambitious men
with an interest in the status quo, as it has been for some decades.
Mandalo
Mandalo is a city of dubious reputation. Haim Totana is the third
"High Constable" to rule the city, an office created by his grandfather
as he and his cronies deposed the old Citizen's Chamber on grounds
of corruption. The Totana dynasty seems to revel in intrigue and
caprice. The people of the city live in constant fear of the constable's
secret police, the raptor-hawks, so-called because they descend
on their targets unseen and strike with lethal intent and accuracy.
Some suspect that the raptor-hawks are, in fact, a fable concocted
by the constables, since they are never seen and have no emblems
or offices. Others, knowing something of the subtlety of the contable's
plots, suspect that this secret order does not exist, but imagine
that Haim has sufficiently obscure means to secure his ends. At
any rate, it is generally observed that a criminal in Mandano
lives a precarious existence. Pickpockets and the like seem rampant,
taking refuge from pursuers in the city's warren of twisting alleys,
but there is a steady stream of believed micreants nailed to the
Board of Wrongdoers in the large plaza between the constable's
palace and the Castle of Chains, the central slave warehouse.
Mandano is little trusted in anything, Mandano has few allies,
but because it is in a well-protected region surrounded by shallow
depths of dust and many rocky shoals, few seriously consider attacking
it.
Lurulu
Lurulu, the city of caves, is one of the few large settlements
which is not associated with a caldera. Instead, it is built into
an extensive network of natural and artificial caverns around
an underground reservoir. The areas of the city closest to the
surface hold open-air plazas as many as four stories deep into
the ground, and there are a number of chimneys, light wells, and
entryways covering ramps and stairways. However, the bulk of the
city is subterranean, lit by glowstone and crystalroot. The justicar's
bench (the seat of the city's chief magistrate and center of justice)
is set before a broad pool, glimmering with the reflections of
hundreds of points of cool lighting.
Tsen-tai
Tsen-tai is a city of few remarkable resources, but it does host
the Collegium of Artificers, a powerful guild of builders and
mechanics who weild considerable influence in the Birgassemble,
the city's governing body. The chance for advancement has attracted
many cunning men with skill in mechanical work, making Tsen-tai
a source for many elaborate, if delicate, devices such as gun
locks, clocks, and spring-driven amusements.
It is also home to a remarkable individual, the Giant of Tsen-tai.
As far as can be reliably reported, the giant was born into a
nomad tribe in the region, where his rapid growth caused considerable
comment from all who met him. By his fifteenth year or so (timekeeping
on the dust is approximate at best) he had already topped seven
feet, and he showed no signs of slowing his growth. At about this
point in his life, he was brought to the city to serve in the
guard. Now nearing fifty, the giant is still growing, although
he has slowed somewhat. A bit over twelve feet tall and well-proportioned,
the giant has a place of honor at civic festivities and is supported
at public expense in some luxury. He patrols the city in distinctive
garb and armor, armed with a thick club made of stone and hard
wood. By all accounts, he is actually a pleasant sort of person
despite his ferocious appearance.