Tirikadessa

DESCRIPTION LINKING CITY TO VEILDARK HERE.

Small, but important note: the core cavern of Tirikadessa, where the city itself is located, is large enough to support it’s own weather systems. The city is roughly 16 square miles, with a population of around 70,000: 50,000 Drow, 20,000 Slaves. The cavern the city dwells in is about a mile high, and this size, paired with the Ebon Lake (a large body of water fed by an underground river that runs through the city) enables a weather cycle that can range from fog, to a light drizzle, to driving rain, to even a thunderstorm.

Much of the city looks like it has been for the last thousand years: buildings carved from the endless leagues of stone, glass and false wood and crystals for illumination in some small aspects. The technological revolution Amakiir precipitated expanded this.

Pipework underpins enormous sectors of the city, snaking over the established houses when not running underneath them. While illumination and heating used to be at a premium and the province of arcane magic, Liadon discovered a method to mix a particular form of fungus with the gasses welling up from Van’s Rift to produce a gaseous fuel that burns without consuming oxygen, generating the energy to run the mechanical aspects of the city.

Amakiir was initially more than happy to explore the idea of hybridizing Magic with Clockwork with Nailo, and their collaboration produced the Glasswork soldiers: a form of semi-sentient automaton used for combat. They were briefly explored for a form of impartial city police but abandoned due to threats to the public. After that, Nailo and Amakiir broke off their alliance.

The far more common choice for the nobility are the various piloted mecha that spread across the city. These are usually arachnoid in shape, with eight or six limbs, useful for transit (as I’ve said, the Liadon’s almost certainly have one for pleasure travels) and combat.

## Western Locations

* Cithreth Tower
* Garden Town
* Zan's Rift

#### Cithreth Tower

The main home of House Cithreth, this column of the city’s stonework has been artfully sculpted over the centuries and millennia to display strange bath reliefs of animals both natural and invented. The recent centuries of relative decline have left these carvings in little more than withered suggestion, but the muscular horrors that guard the tower base are a clear reminder that this fallen family still has a part to play.

#### Garden Town

The western-most borough of the city, Garden Town stands out for the intermingling of residential, commercial, and arboreal themes: open plazas, quaint shops, tall zurkhwoods and sleepy homes define this more sedate, peaceful borough. Don’t be fooled though: Cithreth likes to let her beasts roam widely here.

#### Zan's Rift

It’s the city slums, where the poor and undesirable go to suffer horrible lives. It is dangerous, unclean, and full of police brutality and crime. It belches toxic sulfur gasses into the air, so people who breathe down there get lung scarring. But: those sulfurous gasses can be made into Sulfuric Acid, a potent alchemical tool, and so House Liadon has been harvesting the gas from the rift, preventing it from building up inside and killing everyone.
## Central Locations

* Amakiir Tower
* Castle District
* Liadon Tower
* Merchant Quarter
* The Stryd
* Ebon Lake

#### Amakiir Tower

A tall and tunnel riddled column, Amakiir Tower is the advanced manufacturing hub of Tirikadessa, where the complex micro-clockwork that can’t be trusted to the Merchant’s Quarter and the Stryd are produced. Operating on steam and machinery, huge blocks of the tower are devoted to open mechanical designs to aid in the manufacture of finished materials, and the driving of the tower’s gargantuan blast furnaces.

#### Castle District

Sprawling from Zan’s Rift to the Ebon Lake and shut off from the Merchant Quarter by a stout wall, the Castle District of Tirikadessa supports the enormous functions of state: it is here that the Church of Lolth congregates most coherently, where sacrifices are made, and where the wealthiest members of Drow society (unaffiliated with a House of course) dwell. Supposedly the first section of the cavern to be settled, the Castle District’s ancient halls and towers for the cultural bedrock of the Drow’s dark city.

#### Liadon Tower

If Amakiir is covered in clockwork, then Liadon is punctured by pipework. Domain of House Liadon, this tower functions as their base of operations, with the lowest levels being a honeycomb of refineries, furnaces, chemical storage tanks, eldritch ritual sites, runic crucibles, and curious arcane condensers. Negotiation of the pipework is horrifically dangerous, and more than one Liadon heiress has perished during a “pipe-hopping” expedition.

#### Merchant Quarter

The Merchant Quarter saw the most heavy industrialization, with the region hosting the enormous and multi-tied building of brass and glass that is Tirikadessa’s Central station. Broad rail-lines leading both through the city and to it’s suburbs bustle with activity constantly, consists of goods and Drow being dragged by powerful engines from one end of the dominion to the other.

The Merchant Quarter is the most heavily industrialized, and this is exemplified in the Stryd. A narrow crevasse that opened in the ward centuries ago, chemical refineries and factories were built up into the walls and along the floor. This district functions as the manufacturing heart of Tirikadessa, where the alchemical reagents and clockwork devices necessary for life in the city are produced. Sitting almost five hundred feet below the main floor of the cavern, any chemical incidents in the Stryd are usually contained… usually. On more than one occasion, shimmering clouds of magically reactive chemicals have emerged from the Stryd to blanket the city, much to everyone’s annoyance.

#### The Stryd

A low chasm running partially through the Merchant’s Quarter and terminating at Zan’s Rift, the Stryd is a nearly unregulated industrial park. Here, the easily manufactured chemicals, reagents, and machinery of the city is produced among choking smokestacks and hazy ash-falls, all while prismatic steams waft between the buildings. Marginally independent of any House, the Stryd supports the city underworld financially, when Zan’s Rift fails to meet expectations. It is here that the Arzakka’s airship, the “Paradigm” is currently docked for repairs.

#### Ebon Lake

When the first Drow came to the cavern that would become Tirikadessa, one of the great family’s drank deeply of the waters of the Ebon Lake. They spoke of horrors and sights beyond comprehension before attacking their fellows, events that cemented the lake’s reputation as a curse upon the city. Unfortunately, no House has ever succeeded in damming the lake’s inlet, and so the dark and tainted waters continue to swirl in Tirikadessa, daring any to taste their secrets. It is only fortune that no beast dwells within…
## Eastern Locations

* Dalanthan Tower
* Nailo Tower
* Lakeside
* Azure Ward

#### Dalanthan Tower

The smooth sides of Dalanthan Tower forces many to pause and consider its nature. In truth, Dalanthan had never stood out among the peer houses, content to defend what it had and remain neutral, slowly building itself up as level-headed and pragmatic. It was that natural pragmatism that pushed the House both towards the financial aspects of the city’s operation, and towards intermarriage with the various beings under their employ. This policy of blood mixing and tolerance for less than pure Drow led to consternation and even fury among the other Houses, but once Elizabeth Dalanthan, the half blooded heiress to a full blooded Matron, rose to take her mother’s throne, the traditionalists of Tirikadessa have come to accept that, for now, they will need to bide their time…

#### Nailo Tower

The stout and crystal infected tower of House Nailo has never been more impressive than it is now. Carved with deep and mystic runes from base to crown, the tower boasts endless magical embellishments, from balconies of woven starlight to endless golems composed of stone, metal, and glass. In flaunting their power and their wealth, House Nailo spared no expense.

#### Lakeside

The upscale neighborhood of Lakeside, situated between Dalanthan Tower and Nailo Tower, has always housed much of the city’s middle and lower class. Never strictly poor, this area has always been more unstable than the more well off territories of the Castle District and Garden Town, leaving it best handled by the wealthy and powerful Houses to control. Packed tightly with Drow, this borough seethes with envy to the powerful and wealthy who literally look down upon them.

#### Azure Ward

Guarded by stout walls and separate from Lakeside, the Azure Ward was originally the city’s primary breadbasket. As nearby caverns were settled and cultivated, the necessity for this area to be used for agriculture diminished, eventually becoming a horticultural oddity, and finally a vast park set out for the city. Here, the exotic fungi have become rampant in barely contained chaos, forming a beautiful piece of semi-wilderness inside of the urban sprawl of the city of the Drow.
## The Dark Dominion

The territory around Tirikadessa is known as the Dark Dominion. This honeycomb of tunnels, crevasses, and small caverns stretches for approximately ten miles from the outermost walls of the city. These function as the Rural and Suburban region of Tirikadessa, supplying living space for Drow of various stations, along with the food, minerals, and alchemical materials the city requires to function. All of these caverns are linked to each other and to the city through tunnels, aqueducts, and a rail system to ferry goods, workers, slaves, and sightseers as needed.

### Major Caverns

* Sunrise Vale
* Lake Vhaerun
* The Cornucopia
* Liadon Fields
* The Testing Grounds

#### Sunrise Vale

The Sunrise Vale wherein an artificial sun created with a mixture of Arcane and Divine Magic hangs permanently. The cavern is comfortably warm, but painful for all Drow to live in due to the light. It’s the city’s only self-contained supply of fruit and vegetables though, making it’s maintenance essential for the comfort minded Drow.

#### Lake Vhaerun

Lake Vhaerun is named for Lolth’s personal consort. Unlike the Ebon Lake, Lake Vhaerun is perfectly safe to drink and even to swim within, making it the primary cistern of the city for agricultural purposes. It’s also a lovely tourist destination, and due to geothermal heat from below, it retains a comfortable and balmy temperature despite the insane depths. It’s the closest the city gets to a riviera.

#### The Cornucopia

The Cornucopia is the largest and most essential of all of the greater caverns. Fed with water from Lake Vhaerun, the Cornucopia is a large cavern devoted to the growth of fungi, molds, and cattle for the main city.

#### Liadon Fields

The Liadon Fields are much less impressive than its sibling caverns but much more dangerous. A confluence of several fissures feeding up from below the earth suffuses this cavern with gasses of strange and eldritch potency, which in turn leads to a very alchemically  productive cavern. Mushrooms of numerous strains are grown in this rift, before being exported back to the city to be turned into the endless supply of potions, tinctures, and elixirs used by the Drow every day.

#### The Testing Grounds

The Testing Grounds is really just a large cavern with an abnormally flat floor. Nearly a mile wide and utterly bare stone, this cavern was originally used by the Drow to experiment with arcane magics when the city was established, and millennia of this practice has allowed the use of the room to expand. Nailo spells, Amakiir contraptions, Cithreth Monstrosities, and weapons of every type are tested in this cavern.
## Factions

*Main articles: Tirikadessa Houses, The Church of Lolth*

Several major factions in Tirikadessa (the Five Houses, Coldrock, the Church, and the Guild Association) have representation on the city council that decides the policies and directions the city moves in. They, along with the city’s Arbitratrix, form the Council of Nine, which largely breaks down into three bigger factions.

### The Great Houses

 Cithreth
 Dalanthan
 Nailo
 Liadon

### The Church of Lolth

Representing the voice of the Goddess of the Drow, the Church remains a massive cultural and political powerhouse in the city, with their edicts (which range from the announcement of holidays, the marking of auspicious births, and the occasional assassination order from Lolth herself) being treated as unwritten law. High Priestess Vadalma is feared throughout the city, for her airy and disconnected demeanor hide a mind deeply concerned with ensuring that all souls within the city live up to Lolth’s terrible expectations.

### The Guild Association

A collection of merchant families and small businesses work to maintain the economic operation of the city. Coordinating with House Dalanthan, the Guild Association employs almost half of all Warded Drow in the city.

### Coldrock Academy

Drow society offers very few safe routes to power and prestige, but Coldrock Academy is one of them. Specializing in Arcane magic and combat training, Coldrock is a direct rival and quiet benefactor of House Nailo, and Headmaster Quietus Liadon is well respected in the halls… at least, as well respected as any Male can be.

### The Arzakka

A band of mercenaries brought into Tirikadessa over a century ago, this mixed race group of brigands has established itself as a potent army, police force, assassins league, and supply of henchmen. Humans, Orcs, Goblinoids, Drow, all find a place behind the blade of Arzakka… making it a wildcard and thorn in the side of the Great Houses. Commander General Deryn Glass has held discipline in the Arzakka for fifty years now, owing to their nature as a Fallen Aasimar… and their very big sword.

A specific project of the Arzakka, the Golden Road is as much a way to plausibly deny any attacks you launch against your rival’s workforce as it is to free slaves. It’s acceptable levels of chaos and disruption. Everyone funds the Golden Road: slave labor is used by every House, and disrupting it disrupts a House.

### The Sable Hand

Probably named for dramatic effect and not any reasoned observation regarding the skin tones of those involved, the Sable Hand is a high class and powerful alliance of thieves, assassins, spies, and information brokers suffusing the lower and middle rungs of Tirikadessa society. With mysterious connections and very quick knives, the Sable Hand has been haunting the backstreets of the Low Kingdom for centuries.

## Religion

Meet Vadalma. She’s the High Priestess of Tirikadessa, and she’s not *entirely* there. She’s more concerned about the immortal souls of Drow than with them day to day operation of the city, and wants all Drow to live up to the expectations of their Goddess. This should be utterly horrifying.