From a private letter, written in an unknown language:
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Greetings, my master.
Located where the Rorshin River meets the Istland Sea, Ikraish is perhaps the wealthiest city seaward of the Redrock Mountains. One of the eldest cities in the area, having survived the fall of the Old Empire, it has managed to remain an independent city-state for nigh a millennia at this point, and it is only partially due to the lack of any appreciable threats. Their economic and cultural might is unmatched in the surrounding area, and there are at least three cities between it and any other locale which might contest it in grandeur. While many of its neighbors receive food, weapons, mages, or other vital parts of their well-being from Ikraish, they remain self-sufficient enough to not be wholly dependent on the city, yet. Given a few years and the incredible surge in prosperity the city has been undergoing over the last few decades, that is liable to change of its own accord, but as of now other than serving as the spiritual center of the Istland coast, exerts little of the direct control it might. With some prodding, it could well serve as a prime seat for the capital of a new Empire.
What holds them back right now is perhaps how, for all the appearances they put on as a wholly united state, are simply how fractious the power structure of the city is. If they were to cease fighting one another for but a year? They could do much, yet they never would.
While the majority of the city’s power is technically held by the Lord-Mayor, an office currently held by Ori Visthall, it is hardly worth the title. No, instead there are what I would identify as eight primary factions which dictate the city’s governance regardless of who sits at the head of the court.
The first is the church itself; it has less in the way of economic might as the other factions, but is incredibly integral for cultural legitimacy for the other factions, as it is through the church that not only is the office of Lord-Mayor appointed (and can be revoked at will), but each of the seven other major players which control the economic aspects of Ikraish claim a patron god from the pantheon which the church represents, and are thus the primary mediators for all power plays.
High Priest Elu is the one responsible for interpreting the will of the gods and nominating the Lord-Mayor. He also possesses a Bestowal, and while I have been unable to ascertain the exact nature of it, I do know that healing is within its purview and suspect it may pertain to water. Similarly unknown is if his second, High Priestess Erian, has a Bestowal of her own, though I suspect not. She has demonstrated no capacity for working miracles, and is strictly limited to the more traditional magics of the church, and in such magics may be more skilled than Elu. At minimum, he often defers to her for all ritual magics pertaining to light, sound, and fire. Whenever a ritual includes a water component, Elu will use that position, and if a ritual would not be disrupted by such, may pretend to utilize water in other rituals, potentially to disguise the fact that Erian is the primary classical mage within the church.
The church’s magics are primarily ritual in nature, and certainly the most sophisticated of all Ikraish. Two or three-element rituals are commonplace, with some of the most elaborate being seven-element and requiring the full host of priests and priestesses to perform. While I have been unable to precisely determine the actual effects of the spells, they are allegedly fairly standard blessings- favorable trade winds, good harvests for the surrounding area, and warding off malign spirits and disease. More common are the three social rituals- naming ceremonies, marriages, and funerals. These I have been able to ascertain for their effects, and are a minor disease and poison purging ritual in addition to the normal effects of a naming, a fertility aid, and a psychopomp caller respectively.
The newly most powerful of the seven houses is House Goldleaf, and serves as the primary cause of the city’s recent surge of prosperity. Originally an offshoot of the now-defunct House Greenleaf (which focused principally upon agriculture), Goldleaf specializes in material alchemy, particularly purification and the measurements thereof. About a century and a half ago, they developed a new method of purification unmatched elsewhere and became the principle issuer of coinage not only for Ikraish practically overnight, but as their reputation spreads so too does the cities which prefer Goldleaf coinage. Utilizing this wealth and power, they began to function as a bank, principal moneylender, and insurance seller for Ikraish. Essentially any money which goes through the city finds its way to Goldleaf, where it is re-minted into perfectly standardized coinage through their house magics.
Silver ‘Runes’ are worth approximately one day’s wages for an unskilled laborer or the average cost for a single rune upon a magical item, and are the primary coinage the city deals in, though it also utilizes gold ‘Arts,’ short for ‘Artifacts,’ and copper ‘Lines,’ more commonly nicknamed ‘Scratches’ as a larger and smaller denomination, respectively. They take their house-mark very seriously, and counterfeiting their coinage is considered the highest order of crime within the city.
As the exceptional purity and consistency present in Runes and Arrays makes them exceptionally desirable in the surrounding, this is the primary benefit which Ikraish grants the grander area, and any disruption to their function would seriously impact the entire economy which is built around the city.
They claim patronage from Morae the Crow, god of death and wealth.
The second-strongest house is much more tightly contested, but it is my belief that the honor goes to House Errhol, which serves as the primary force behind the city’s military. Of all the factions, it has the strictest divides between the other houses and families which cling to their own identity even as House Errhol increasingly attempts to render them irrelevant. This includes House Redleaf, The Sclir Family, House Orrin, and House Ishrael. Of all the factions, it is perhaps unsurprising that the house focused upon training city guards, defending the city from attack, and providing mercenaries for hire would have the most combat-relevant magic.
Their local fireball is especially focused, and has very little in the way of explosive prowess. Instead, it manifests as approximately fist-sized and as hard as solid rock, yet as fast as an average mage-sling, capable of breaking bones or puncturing even orc-hide. It will not explode until it has come to a complete stop, and even then the detonation is very tightly controlled, hot enough to burn flesh but brief enough as to not start fires, and not hot enough to melt coins. Their cast time is on average ten seconds, but I have witnessed Senior Battlemage Tarik Redleaf perform a two-second version while losing no potency.
Their mage-sling is mostly specialized for small, approximately coin-shaped projectiles, sometimes even using actual coins. More commonly, they utilize iron spell-disks inscribed with companion runes meant to further enhance the spell. Their spell foci for these are quite interesting, oftentimes utilizing staves which have been hollowed out to accept a stack of their projectile-coins. Average cast time for their mage-sling is as low as five seconds for a single coin, but the preferred version is a ten or twelve-coin collection taking approximately fifteen seconds. The head of House Errhol, Oclir Errhol, is capable of chaining multiple mage-slings together into a single cohesive whole, requiring three seconds to begin but thereafter able to launch five disks every four seconds.
Other commonly used spells include a wind blast (either entirely in a burst or sustained, at seven and fifty-four seconds cast respectively), a directed torso-sized telekinetic shield attached to the focus (thirty second cast but can be maintained while using other spells), and a moderately flexible water whip (sixteen second cast) which the Sclir Family specializes in.
Most members of House Errhol are of course mundane, favoring a weapon approximately between a spear and a glaive, a large dagger-blade resting at the end of a six-foot haft, and a shield made of cloth stretched over a wooden frame.
Mundane and magical members alike favor cloth armor as made by the Salliar Family, with styles ranging from full scholarly robes to more typical combat garb, wrapped in many layers of cloth. This is usually kept pristine, but there is a single cord of cloth wound around the warrior’s right arm. On a novice, this is pure white, but is never once cleaned or repaired, and accordingly the more experienced the warrior the worse condition the band is in, until Senior Battlemages who possess no band whatsoever.
They claim patronage from Eirr, goddess of fire and war.
The Terrestria Family, led by Elder Shias are the second faction in contest for the second most-influential, as they are responsible for creating and maintaining much of the city’s infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on stone. While their magic is incapable of mending broken stone, they are capable of making exceptionally precise cuts and fairly advanced infrastructure-level terrakinesis. Sculptures crafted by them look all but wholly alive, and some of their most impressive buildings appear as though they were chiseled from a singular block of stone, such is the quality of interlocking stone that they have accomplished.
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The Terrestria are similarly responsible for maintaining the roads and walls of Ikraish, and thus have a fair number of reinforcement-type rituals which they utilize on any stone of real merit. This renders it almost immune to all magics which they have encountered, instead diverting extraneous thermal and kinetic energy into the ground it rests upon. Even terrakinesis is inhibited, and a particular ritual- the specifics of which are a closely guarded Family secret- is required to ‘unlock’ the stone before any change could be made. It does possess a fairly substantial weakness however- the additional wards prevent any further strengthening being used upon the walls, and must therefore rely entirely on their own strength against mundane attacks. That supposed weakness is still obviated in large part from their excellent craftsmanship, however.
The Family also has a few sub-families which focus more on earthenware, and it is therein where most mages of the family are trained in their craft, mastering fine-detail use of terrakinesis. They do not lack for strength, as utilizing a ten-mage ritual they are capable of levitating a three-ton solid block of stone nigh eighty feet into the air over the course of twenty minutes.
They claim patronage from Jorun, god of the earth, order, and civilization.
In the next ‘tier’ of influence lies first the Salliar Family. While less strictly essential to the function of the city as the prior four factions, their product- enchanted cloths- are nonetheless present in every corner of the city. Originally a fairly minor branch of sail-makers for ships in the port, Salliar developed a special blend of alchemical treatments and enchanted embroidery to render their sails all but impossible to burn, nigh-impossible to tear, and wholly impervious to rot. After establishing complete dominance within the sail-making trade, for what could compete with such perfect sails, they began to extend their reach into other textiles.
Accordingly, Salliar Cloth is the material of first choice for armor, protection of fragile goods, and even protection of wood. Though highly enchanted weapons, or a sufficiently powerful spell, is capable of piercing even the finest cloth they make, mundane weapons and even neophyte mages stand little chance against normal high-quality Salliar Cloth, uncuttable and capable of lessening all but the fiercest blows. The lower grades, utilizing only alchemical treatment and no threaded spellwork, are still capable of turning aside a blade if caught on the right angle, while retaining full flexibility for the wearer and scarcely heavier than normal cloths.
There exist rumors that they are working on or even have completed other forms of enchantments. Cloth which can be activated with a minor ritual to be as stiff as wood, or to stay hovering in the air, or to catch even nonexistent breezes as though they were a mighty gale. They are, however, unsubstantiated.
Recently, leadership of the family passed to a relatively controversial choice, one twenty-year-old Herras Salliar, and he has been quite occupied attempting to secure his power base. House Greenwood seems to be sponsoring the rival claimant Hora Salliar, a substantially older and more accomplished weaver-enchanter, apparently with the hopes that a schism might result in Salliar being subsumed by them.
The Salliar Family claims patronage from Oye, goddess of storms, the sky, and light.
House Greenwood are the principle woodworkers of the city, and the most direct successors to the former House Greenleaf, which lead Ikraish for many years. While primarily focused in the docks, and House Greenwood does exercise a fair amount of control over the ships coming in and departing besides, they also are the foremost general woodcrafters in the city. One side branch of their faction- the Carver’s Society- is proving surprisingly resistant to full integration, and counts within its ranks perhaps the single most talented carver-enchanter in the city, one Silia Vertur, but other than the singular exception, House Greenwod provides the highest-quality bases for enchanted tools in the city (though are still not that high a quality, their alchemical treatments decidedly lacking in comparison to home, and their runic templates highly inefficient), working closely with the Orestrian Family to equip any and all who require tools.
Lead by Desmir Greenwood, House Greenwood has been attempting to expand to performing full enchanting work themselves, and some new prototypes of frictionless axles for wagons have been circulating throughout the city. Simultaneously, a substantial number of their number have been entering the church as new priests and priestesses, possibly representing a potential goal to pull themselves to additional relevance via church intervention, but there has been no evidence of this paying off for them thus far.
They claim patronage from Desmes, goddess of agriculture, harvest, and bounty.
The Orestrian Family are the primary metalworkers of Ikraish, and have the most extensive library on ritual arrays. It is, after all, them who Terrestria utilizes to create the tools for their stone-raising ritual, who creates the fireball foci and mage-sling staves and spell-disks for House Errhol, even the levitating platforms for House Firlan. Granted, they are less skilled with their actual use than the actual factions which commissioned their use, but it is best to not underestimate the polymage nature of Orestrian mages. Even their mundane members are capable of incredible work in the forge and at an anvil; though not the absolute specialist in most smithing professions (the Farrier Guild being an obvious example), they are nonetheless competent enough that many would sooner utilize their services than attempt to locate a superior alternative.
They work in relatively close cooperation with House Goldleaf, the exceptional purity which the banking faction can command in their metals proving absolutely vital to the runework which Orestrians most commonly need.
Alone among the major factions, Orestrian does not rely solely upon Salliar cloth for their armor, family heads instead preferring proper (though far from fully enchanted) scale mail for protection. Likewise, their spell-staves are almost pure metal and entirely self-made, though predictably their fireball and mage-sling are barely above the average proficiency of an Errhol mage.
They also claim patronage from Jorun, but more in his capacity as a god of metal and craftsmen than the order and law which Terrestria favors.
House Firlan is among the oldest houses within Ikraish yet is paradoxically the least powerful faction of the eight main players, despite being historically among the mightiest. This is due to, despite being the house primarily focused on external trade, being wholly dependent upon the others to adequately perform their function. And, with Goldleaf having commandeered such desire from the outside world, have struggled to retain their grip upon power. Now yes, all the other houses rely on the goods which House Firlan brings into the city, but House Goldleaf and the church control internal trade, it is the creations of Greenwood and Orestrian which enable them to venture beyond the walls, and House Errhol which keeps them safe. Thus, there is relatively little pressure which they are able to apply to the others in their negotiations, and house leader Mallie Firlan appears to be decidedly agitated at the situation.
The house’s speciality magic is their transport disks, platforms made of metal, wood, and cloth that are capable of floating slightly above the ground and follow their mage around diligently. The magic seems to be exhausting over long periods of time, as it is rarely in use for more than an hour, during the loading or unloading of a caravan or ship. A few especially talented members of the House are capable of having theirs active nearly constantly, and use the inherent awe of obvious magic as a marketing ploy.
Ultimately, House Firlan has little in the way of focus on a particular type of goods they prefer to move; simply whatever is profitable and available.
They are the oldest still-powerful faction (not counting the church itself) within the city, having been founded prior to the latest round of record loss. It is known that they were a major player in both the Salliar family and House Errhol coming to power, albeit unintentionally, though that may yet still be apocryphal.
Regardless, their physical House is the most physically imposing beyond Terrestria itself, and is the most amenable to hosting travelers (though they consider it quite rude if a stranger leaves while buying nothing from them).
At any given time, about a third to half of the house is beyond the walls, seeking their fortune one way or the other, and they command the largest fleet stationed within the city.
They claim patronage from Iqis, god of the sea and trade.
For the purposes of quick and silent domination, I would advise first an assassination of High Priest Elu and Priestess Erian. Both of them are true fanatics of the local gods, and will refuse to appoint a ruler they are not informed of by the gods. However, the next in line for succession, Priestess Illis (formerly Talia Greenwood) is susceptible to bribery and can be accordingly threatened or bribed to appointing you Lord-Mayor. Disposing of Lord-Mayor Visthall is optional, but not advised. The simple deposition of him and appointment of a new Lord-Mayor would go largely unnoticed.
For a more complete takeover, allowing for a stricter seizing of the reigns of power, not only would Lord-Mayor Visthall, High Priest Elu and Priestess Erian need to be assassinated, so too would Senior Battlemage Oclir Errhol, House Head Volin Goldleaf, and their direct underlings need to be slain. Leave Vale Goldleaf alive however, as he is the highest-ranking member of that house liable to cede any power to an outsider in the balance of strength. House Firlan would likely back any coup presented to them which would flip the balance of power to their favor, and are one of the most important factions to leave relatively untouched besides; their external trade networks are far less replaceable than the artisans of their rivals.
For maximum chaos or destabilization, assassinate the heads of all eight factions, then the replacement heads for Errhol, Goldleaf, and Firlan. Eliminate the entire church hierarchy, the Lord-Mayor’s entire office, and burn Firlan’s ships. Doing so will cripple the city for several years at a minimum and seriously weaken all the surrounding city-states while they adjust to losing their primary trade network, leaving a prime power vacuum to fill.
Sincerely,
Your loyal servant.