Cairnsgate

The city of Cairnsgate, as Ibleheim has become known, is often cited by Imperial Scholars as a studious lesson in arrogance according to the prideful narratives that they so enjoy. It's essential tragedy in the response of the Anointed to the first Scions of the Blessed Throne and their offer of subjugation to spare themselves the wrathful hand of the Godhead and it's Anointed Emperor. The details may vary on the nature of their refutation but all agree that it was a slight that the Imperial Court could not ignore and so an edict was drafted by the hand of the Emperor themselves. A hand that was divinely accustomed to the sword but who had proven, time and again, that the pen was no less mighty a weapon.

It was for this act and the terrible war that followed that the city took it's name. The estates that formed the district of Skyward Reach along side the mythic nine gates were sunk deep into the revered Sea and left as nothing more than stunted fingers grasping at the air beyond their graves in grim reminder of the cost of refusal and insult both. Now popularly referred to as the Cairns, they are one of the first things a prospective traveler will see on their approach to the harbour. These are not the last scars left upon the city but only the most prominent as one arrives and sets foot in the ports. Each heavily policed and watched by Imperial officials of both martial and clerical inclination. The advent of firearms in recent memory having changed the armaments of the former to eschew the bulk of armor in favor of sleek, rapier like pistols, slim truncheons, and long knives to attend to any matters of enforcement and example making. The colour of their uniforms changing little for the absence of armour with padded jackets of black, green, and gold accompanied by fitted trousers and polished boots of white and black respectively. Their faces, often as not, hidden behind ceremonial helmets inscribed with the commandments of their station and trust in fine gold.

The assertion of Imperial culture and nomenclature can be witnessed in kind in the destruction of the local language upon street and shop signage and the careful rearrangement of the significance given over to each district in relation to it's proximity to the Sea. While the maligned regard as unskilled labour for those in the Shadow of the Beggar's Wall has not changed, the middling districts from the shore now form the back bone of the judiciary, the priesthood, and the nobility with the seaward properties given over to warehouses, merchant estates, and those other adjacent industries that support the needs of any traveler. Perhaps the greatest change is the growing populace of the Cairns, as endless haphazard bridges spread out between what still rises above the Sea's cold grasp and endless efforts are made to claim what lurks beneath and to get ever further way from the Imperial Presence and all it's scrutiny might entail. The disaffected and disenfranchised finding a comfortable home there in contrast to those who have made their lot in the darkness of the forests beyond.

Finally, perhaps the second most drastic of changes is what now dwells at each of the 18 gates that control egress to the city. Nicknamed the Stone Watch by the locals, the Empire spared no expense at the direction of the Blessed Throne in the erecting of 18 great monuments carved in the patrician likeness of the greatest figures of both the initial conquest and of the Imperial Court. Each housing a great anchoring ward to protect the city against the rot and malfunction that has set into the engines of Creation beneath the strain of the God Emperor's ever growing ambition as whispers of forays into dark science and ways between drift ever farther outward from the Imperial Heartlands.

Of particular note, and immense satisfaction to the natives of the City, is the destruction of one of the 18 that was carved in the likeness of Admiral Gaius Avitus. It's very edifice seeming eroded from the base and... consumed to the immense displeasure of the Governor and her inner council.

## Shrouded History

Once one of the jewels in the crown of the world, it could be argued without due thought that no small sum of all the world's wealth flowed from and into Iblheim beneath the watchful eyes of the Divinely Anointed in their towering spires of marble, black wood, and gold. The breadth of their estates crawling ever outward into the depths of the seas to form the bulwark against the jealous eyes of lesser cities and states. The nine great gates further proof against the unwanted and uninvited into the depths of the harbor and it's seemingly endless lattice of docks and piers. Each of those great gates anchored and supported by inward curving walls of granite and steel that seemed to stretch endlessly towards the bed of the Blessed Sea that was both giver and taker of life in the eyes of the people of Iblheim.

That notion was so pervasive in their hearts that one's station in life was almost dictated by their proximity to the Sea. The wealthiest, most sought after living upon the shore or even upon the Sea itself whilst others of less esteemed lines and means... finding themselves ever further inland until they lived in the shadow of the Beggar's Wall, the outermost boundary of the Fjords that Iblheim spanned where the flow of sea gave way to river and finally the unrelenting depths of primeval forest. From those same forests flowed lumber, meat, and other bountiful harvests to satisfy the appetites of the City and the world beyond it's gates. As there were nine gates to the Sea, so to were their nine gates to the depths of the inland. Beyond the depths of the wood, in kind, were the great valleys and mountains from which were wounded greedily and often for iron, gold, and all that was precious to man and immortal alike... and in those places where the sounds of pick and axe could not be heard... the quiet toil of the farmer shaping the land could be found in terraced plantations to apply anything that could not be torn from the iron grasp of the woodlands.