82 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
No EOL
14 KiB
Markdown
![[drestal-banner.jpg|banner]]
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> [!infobox|right]
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> # Drestal
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> 
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> **Crest**: Sable, a hammer crossed with a flame, above a mountain argent
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> <table>
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> <tr><th colspan="2" align="center" style="background:#444;color:white;">General Information</th></tr>
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> <tr><td>Realm</td><td>The Reaches</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Population</td><td>ca. 140,000</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Dominant Culture</td><td>Craftsmen, forgemasters, ex-military</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Local Demonym</td><td>Drestali</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Ruling Authority</td><td>Lord-Mayor Merkan Toll</td></tr>
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> <tr><th colspan="2" align="center" style="background:#444;color:white;">Key Features</th></tr>
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> <tr><td>Founded</td><td>During the Dark Times (~450 years ago)</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Known For</td><td>Forged goods, mercenary contracts, iron trade</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Landmarks</td><td>Furnace Court, The Red Vault, Hall of Iron Scales</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Military Presence</td><td>Permanent garrison, Iron Contract Corps</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Temples</td><td>Forge-Shrines, Silent Anvils, minor Veil chapels</td></tr>
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> <tr><td>Trade Goods</td><td>Weapons, steel, black salt, mercenaries</td></tr>
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> </table>
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## Overview
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Drestal rises from the iron hills of the south-central Reaches like a fortress born of ash and ambition. The clang of hammer on steel echoes through its broad boulevards and narrow alleys alike, while the smell of coal smoke lingers even in its council halls. Built on labor, grit, and the idea that nothing is earned without fire, Drestal is a city where the forge is sacred, and contracts are sealed in iron, not ink. Its people speak little and work much, and every brick seems weighed down by generations of sweat.
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Despite its grim exterior, Drestal is not without pride. Its armorers and weaponsmiths are famed across the Reaches, and its mercenary companies are considered some of the most disciplined and dangerous in the known world. The city's culture centers on order, loyalty, and craft - values honed through necessity and tradition. Drestal does not invite affection, but it commands respect.
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## History
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Drestal was founded during the chaos of the early Shattering, when scattered warbands and refugees converged in the hills in search of shelter and ore. Originally a mining camp, it quickly grew into a fortified town as the surrounding peaks revealed rich veins of iron, silver, and black salt. Early rulers, known only by their house marks, instituted a harsh but efficient order: food for labor, weapons for loyalty. This ethos still defines Drestal’s governance today.
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The city played a central role in the War of Ash Banners, supplying steel to nearly every faction while remaining officially neutral. Its greatest moment of crisis came during the Siege of Blue Tides, when its fleet failed to conquer Lysmar’s harbor - an event still remembered with bitterness by older Drestali. Since then, Drestal has turned inward, refining its craft, tightening its contracts, and building wealth not through conquest, but through supply and demand. Lord-Mayor Merkan Toll rose from the Iron Scales guild, and under his stern rule, the city’s output has nearly doubled.
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## Geography & Layout
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Drestal is built into a deep basin carved between iron-rich hills, with natural escarpments forming the backbone of its defensive walls. The city is divided into functional tiers: the **Furnace Quarter** occupies the basin floor, dominated by forges, smelteries, and foundries. Above it lies the **Contract Ring**, where merchants, guilds, and administrators operate behind thick stone facades and windowless counting-houses. At the city’s highest point, overlooking all, stands the **Hall of Iron Scales** - part courtroom, part fortress, and seat of civic power.
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To the west, a series of raised roads and aqueducts connect Drestal to outlying mining camps and the fortified granaries that support its long winters. The city’s air is always tinged with soot, and most buildings are constructed from dark stone or blackened timber. Alleyways are narrow and steep, descending like veins into the industrial heart. A heavily fortified gatehouse, known as the **Red Teeth**, controls all major road traffic and doubles as a barracks and war-foundry in times of siege.
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## Governance & Law
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Drestal is ruled by a **Lord-Mayor**, elected from among the guilds every fifteen years, though in practice the office often remains within the same few powerful houses. The current Lord-Mayor, Merkan Toll, is known for his austere leadership and obsession with contractual discipline. The city’s true balance of power lies in the **Council of Weights**, made up of guildmasters and trade syndicates who control production, military hiring, and tax levies.
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Law in Drestal is rigid and brutally enforced. Contracts are sacred; to break one is to become “unbound,” a status worse than criminality, often punishable by labor branding or exile. Disputes are settled in the Hall of Iron Scales, where arbitration may take the form of ledgers, sworn oaths, or trial-by-craft. Crimes of passion receive less sympathy than failures of duty, and few ever escape punishment unless protected by guild privilege. Public floggings are rare - but when done, are performed in silence.
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## Society & Culture
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Drestal is a city shaped by discipline, hierarchy, and the doctrine of earned worth. Its people do not speak of honor in grand flourishes - they show it in the quality of their work, the steadiness of their word, and the exactness of their contracts. In Drestal, **duty is identity**, and to be seen idle without cause is considered a public shame. Even children are apprenticed early, their paths marked by the guilds they serve. Status is visible in calloused hands, soot-stained sleeves, and the weight of the tools one bears. A smith’s hammer, a ledgerman’s tally-stick, a mercenary’s gauntlet - these are badges of class more trusted than any surname.
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Cultural life in Drestal is measured and modest. Festivals exist, but they are pragmatic: honoring the founding of guild halls, the forging of legendary weapons, or the conclusion of major contracts. The **Forgefire Vigil**, held on the longest night of the year, is the closest thing to a citywide celebration. For one night, the great furnaces burn low, and the people gather in silence with black candles to honor the dead whose names are engraved on the Iron Wall. Music is rare, but not absent; work chants and forge-rhythms are passed down through generations, often used to keep pace in the smithies or to drown out pain on long marches.
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The class structure is rigid but permeable. Guild laborers form the backbone of society, with senior craftsmen and contract-holders rising to middle ranks. Guildmasters, quarter-commanders, and coin-brokers form the city’s elite, often living in stone complexes above the Contract Ring. At the bottom are the **unbound** - those who have violated contracts or come to the city without one. They live in the **Ash Warrens**, a soot-choked fringe of collapsed furnaces and slum dwellings where warmth is scavenged, and protection comes at a cost.
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Foreigners are not unwelcome in Drestal, but they are scrutinized. To gain respect, one must either sign a contract or sponsor a craft. Travelers without purpose are viewed as unreliable; those with forged credentials are often dragged before the Red Judges to prove their worth under flame. In Drestal, to be known is to be weighed - and everyone is weighed.
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## Trade, Craft, and Industry
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Drestal is the forge-heart of the Reaches. Its forges never cool, and its economy is built on the anvil. Every street bears the sound of hammer and bellows; even the children of merchants can recite the grades of iron by touch. **Craft is not just a vocation in Drestal - it is the soul of the city.** Artisanship is sacred, not because of beauty, but because of precision and permanence. A tool well-made, a sword balanced to the gram, a clasp that holds through rain and war - these are the city’s offerings to the world.
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The city’s key exports include **forged arms and armor**, **reinforced wagon frames**, **precision tools**, and the coveted **Drestali chainmail**, said to flex like cloth and deflect like stone. Black salt, mined from the deep seams west of the basin, is used in both preservation and alchemical treatments. Drestal's **coldsteel blades**, quenched in brine and ash, are prized by mercenaries and assassins alike for their durability and edge retention. Bulk shipments of pig iron, wagon axles, and smelted ingots are sent to every major city in the Reaches - often under the protection of the very mercenary companies the city equips.
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Craft production is governed by the powerful **Guild Compact**, a binding charter of competing craft-houses who regulate standards, production quotas, and labor rights. Entry into a guild is a formal process involving apprenticeship, trial work, and an oath signed in iron. The most prestigious is the **Forgewright’s Circle**, whose members are permitted to sign their works and whose master smiths compete only in silence - crafting rival masterpieces to be weighed rather than praised.
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Beyond metalwork, Drestal also produces **ash-fired ceramics**, **bone-reinforced rivets**, and **mechanical fittings** for siege engines and watermills. The **Contract Market**, held weekly in the central plaza, is less a bazaar and more a public auction of labor terms and supply rights. Entire foundries may change hands in a single afternoon if a guild loses its bid. Coin is used, but **iron-chits** - small ingots stamped with guild seals - serve as trusted tender within the city itself.
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Outsiders often find Drestal cold and transactional, but to its citizens, every clink of the hammer and hiss of quenching steel is a hymn. They do not build for beauty. They build for history.
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## Military & Defense
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Drestal maintains a professional but restrained military presence. The city once fielded a sizable standing force and even a modest naval fleet, but its ambitions were significantly curtailed after the **Blue Sails War**, when its failed siege against Lysmar cost it dearly in ships, coin, and public confidence. Since then, the military has shifted inward, focused on urban control, caravan protection, and strategic readiness rather than expansion.
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The city’s permanent force, the **Ash Guard**, serves as both constabulary and garrison. They are well-trained, disciplined, and known for their rigid uniformity - iron-studded leather, soot-grey cloaks, and steel helms. Their loyalty lies not with any one house, but with the office of the Lord-Mayor, though they are often seconded to enforce guild decisions or escort high-value shipments.
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True military muscle, however, comes from **contracted companies**. Drestal is home to several notable mercenary guilds, including the **Iron Contract Corps** and the **Chainbound**, whose members are regularly hired across the Reaches. These forces are not city-paid but guild-employed, giving Drestal a flexible military model built on reputation and contractual discipline. When war looms, Drestal does not raise banners - it signs papers.
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Defensive fortifications remain intact and imposing: thick stone walls, elevated gatehouses, and a kill-tiered inner ring make direct assault a costly gamble. The **Red Vault**, a semi-legendary arms cache beneath the city, is said to hold enough siege gear and blade stock to arm five legions - though its sealed gates haven’t been opened in over a generation.
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## Points of Interest
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At the core of Drestal lies the **Furnace Court**, a wide, blackstone plaza ringed by the oldest still-burning forges in the city. Here, contracts are signed in molten iron, and apprentices present their first crafted works for public judging beneath the watchful eyes of the Forgewright Circle. Statues of legendary artisans line the edges, their hands blackened from centuries of ash exposure, and it's said the smoke here never clears entirely - even in spring.
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The **Hall of Iron Scales** rises like a fortress at the city’s crown. Part courthouse, part command center, part ceremonial hall, it serves as the seat of Drestal’s governance. Inside, public disputes are arbitrated in front of the great weighing altar - a literal iron scale on which ledgers, tokens, or offerings are placed to “balance the wrong.” The hall also houses vaults filled with generations of guild charters, blueprints, and sealed verdicts, some of which are considered so politically volatile they are stored under armed guard.
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Beneath the city, accessible only to those with clearance from the Council of Weights, lies the infamous **Red Vault**. Carved deep into the bedrock, it was built to house emergency stores of weapons, siege gear, and steel ingots during the early days of the city’s formation. Rumors claim it holds relics from the Blue Sails War - experimental war-machines, cursed blades, and even bound spirits trapped in iron casings. Whether truth or myth, none deny the massive sealed doors, etched with warning runes and left unopened for decades.
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The **Ash Warrens**, an unofficial district clinging to the industrial outskirts, house the unbound, the destitute, and those who live outside contract law. Crumbling chimneys, collapsed furnaces, and black-cloaked gang cells dominate the landscape. It is dangerous, unregulated, and bleak - but also home to an underground economy of scrap trades, salvaged invention, and outlawed crafts. It is said some of Drestal’s finest designs were first dreamed in the Warrens, then stolen by guildmasters who had the coin to legitimize them.
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Finally, the **Vaulted Step**, a massive stone stair that climbs the western wall of the city, connects the lower smithing districts to the upper Contract Ring. Each step is engraved with the name of a different guild founder, and each has been worn smooth by generations of ascending laborers. It is both a literal and symbolic path from heat to power - a reminder to every child of the forge that the city offers elevation, but only through toil. |