Zadash

Zadash is a large city south of Rexxentrum in the Dwendalian Empire. It is built around a trio of towers known collectively as the Tri-Spires. It was formerly the capital city of the Julous Dominion before being conquered and brought under the rule of the Dwendalian Empire.

Demographics
Size-wise, Zadash is comparable to the metropolis of Port Damali, though where Zadash is tall, Port Damali is more spread out.

Most of the populace around Zadash consists of humans, with the occasional halfling, tiefling and dwarf. At least one firbolg, Pumat Sol, resides in the city.

Factions

 * The Knights of Requital: A group of around twenty civilians that conducts their meetings in one of the cellars of the Leaky Tap tavern.
 * The Gentleman's Troupe: A sect of The Myriad run by a crime boss known as The Gentleman.

City Description
The outer walls of Zadash are 15 feet high and form a somewhat triangular perimeter outline around the city. They are made of thick basic stonework and masonry. The southern gate has a 15-foot-wide portcullis that is being held aloft by large chains. Two pairs of Crownsguards flank each side of the entry gate, keeping a silent watch. Outside the southern walls are fields where crop workers harvest various vegetables and crops. Closer to the walls the fields give way to ramshackle communities of tent cities and hovel towns.

Beyond the walls, the city has a number of perimeter walls that have arches between them. The gaps formed by these arches are 15-20 feet in length and 40 foot wide,creating small tunnels through them.

The architecture and buildings are designed to rise and seems to curve towards the streets. The buildings flanking the street nearest to the gate are quite destitute, though the buildings began to graduate into a standard village feel further along the street.

Points of Interest

 * King's Hall: Acts as the central courthouse of Zadash. Located in the southeastern quadrant of the city, which is devoted to the Crownsguard Garrison.
 * Basic Clothing Wears Company: A basic clothing shop that sells clothing made for utility. The shop has pants, work shirts, gloves, and cloaks in the colors of either brown, black or grey. This shop does custom modification work to an existing article of clothing, though such work takes about a day's time to finish and costs around 2sp.
 * The Ossuary Gates: A vast multi-layered catacomb graveyard that is used by most of the higher-ranked families of the city.
 * The Raven's Den: This shrine is located in the center of the graveyard and dedicated to the The Matron of Ravens. The outside of the shrine consists of an iron and obsidian archway that stretches up to a height of about 20 feet to frame the small shrine. Topping this shrine is a large statue of the Raven Queen wreathed by carved ravens in flight. This statue is made in its entirety of black obsidian except for a large white porcelain mask that makes up its face. At the base of the statue are a number of bowls where offerings can be left. There is a door on the back of the shrine which is around 20 by 10 feet.
 * Packwearer's Provisions: A smaller scale blacksmithy that deals mainly in smaller smithing wares, such as the forging of tools.
 * Wares & Ends:
 * Umber Dungeon: The jail of Zadash.

Pentamarket
The Pentamarket is located in the central western portion of Zadash, with a number of streets bisecting it. These streets naturally carve a pentagonal shape and the interior between them has since become the center of most merchant business. There is kind of a bazaar set up in the center of the district, where carts, tents, and buildings are set up all day, every day, as an open market where barkers peddles their wares to passersby.

The Pentamarket contains a variety of shops that don’t have high value goods. Some of the businesses that can be found in the market include small dumpling establishments, simple glassware shops, and a blacksmith shop that makes simple repairs. Coming into fall, carts filled with mulled wine and confections could be found in the market.


 * Hearth of the Allhammer: Located on the northern side of the Pentamarket, this shrine to the Allhammer is a domed iron structure that is slightly rusty due to lack of upkeep. Its interior has a large central forge and a beautiful heavy anvil with the symbol of the Allhammer on each of its sides. This anvil is used for both ceremonial worship and the crafting of religious artifacts. Three individuals man the temple at any one time, two of which are keepers who watch outside of the entry arches leading into the temple. The third is the appointed herald of this temple, a female dwarf with dark brown hair that trails off in three long braids past her midsection.
 * The Invulnerable Vagrant: A magical shop in that is run by Pumat Sol and his simulacra.
 * Lodge of the Eclipse: A tavern where night time shows are performed on stage.
 * Sparkhammer Smithing: Operated by Yannick Dumel and Jan, this smithy forges intricate items and has rows and racks of various pieces of armor and weapons on display on the inside.
 * Victory Pit: This Colosseum-like structure serves as the staging ground for a fighting tournament during the Harvest Close Festival.
 * Candy Shop
 * Grace of the Wilds: Manned by Jesna Bree, a female human in her 50s with wild big black curly hair. It has a small tent attached to the rest of the shop. She sells materials for making two health potions for 50 gp, and she gives training in herbalism for 200 gp.
 * Suvo's Secrets: Sells items in an ominous large, very drab gray shop tent.

East Outersteads
The East and West Outersteads are found on the outer cusps of the city, and extend through the city's slums and beyond to border the outside of the main wall.
 * The Leaky Tap: Moderately-sized tavern in Zadash. It is owned by Claudia Sheed.

Tri-Spire
The Tri-Spire is the wealthiest district in Zadash. It is located on the north side of the city. The area gets its name from the three massive towers that loom high over the rest of the city: the Triumph Chime, the Zauber Spire, and The Constellation Bridge. All different in design, these towers can be seen from some distance.

A round wall encases the interior of this elite portion of the city. These walls are made of solid marble and are more decorative than functional. Two portcullis entrances allow access to this district, one of which opens in the direction of the Pentamarket. These entryways seems to be magically enchanted, dispelling illusions within a certain distance. Two Crownsguard with spears and shields stand guarding each of these entrances.

Silken Terrace
The Silken Terrace is a district within the Tri-Spire where the elite of Zadash live and work. As a result, most of the city's money ends up in there. Only those of a very specific visual presentation and purpose are allowed entry into this area. Seemingly magically engineered to be picture perfect, beautiful courtyard parks of grasses, trees and butterfly-filled bushes grace the interior of this district. Statuesque structures decorate a beautifully laid cobblestone road that is broken up by small patches of small fenced-in shrubbery and flower bushes. On the corners of the roads stand tall lanterns containing very faint ever-burning flames, between which are long, white, silken banners. The homesteads are of different styles of construction from all across this continent and beyond.

Points of Interest

 * Meal Hearth: A large bakery located directly to the right of Chastity's Nook. A spry, smiling young man, in his late teens with a prickly chinstrap beard, and very short, tattered brown hair waits on customers.. The bakery sells:
 * Bear Claws
 * Fresh Baked Bread
 * Chastity's Nook: A book store containing an extensive collection of pulp fiction and trashy smut. It is located in the southern quarter of the Silken Terrace, and is run by Iva Deshin.
 * Pillow Trove: The biggest inn in Zadash. It serves an expensive clientele, along with diplomats and ambassadors that come to the city.
 * Halls of Erudition: An archive and school of magic headed by Oremid Hass. Its centerpiece is the Zauber Spire, a towering structure with a glass cylindrical top floor that overlooks the entirety of the city.
 * Triumph Chime: One of the towers that give the Tri-Spire its name. The Triumph Chime is a building that at one point was an old seven-story temple and belfry that has been completely hollowed out. It is repurposed and now looks like a glitzy casino filled with all sorts of bars, gambling halls, inn rooms, a brothel, and other similar forms of entertainment. Simultaneously historically awe-inspiring and gaudy, each floor of this structure seems to be of slightly altered stone of different colors, which are covered on the outside in braided brightly-colored banners of silk.

Ahead of the Harvest Close Festival, the area was decorated to reflect the autumn and coming festivities of the Pre-Harvest Close Gala. Bunches of flowers were affixed to the tops of lampposts, and additional streamers of bright reds, browns, and yellow-golds were placed around a central courtyard to replace the usual white silk banners.

Gilded Willows
The tree-dappled residential area of the city, it is broken up into several parts. It has a very natural, almost picturesque beauty to it.
 * The Constellation Bridge
 * High-Richter Dayana Prucine's Estate
 * Sutan Residence

Signet Wall
The Signet Wall is located on the outskirts of the northern end of Zadash. Those seeking good pay and adventurous living as soldiers of the Righteous Brand can join up at the Marrow Keep, after speaking with Leopold Wanstiker.
 * Marrow Keep: The primary base of the Righteous Brand.
 * The Shrine of the Dawn: A shrine to the Dawnfather.

Interstead Sprawl
The Interstead Sprawl forms a central connecting ring around and through all the other areas of the city. It is where the more middle-class individuals reside and generally helps to hold the city together.
 * Apple Tree Tutor Village: Owned and provided by the Soltryce Academy, these three long buildings are where, for a moderate price, children and adults of a less affluent lifestyle could come and learn basic teachings.
 * The Guided Hand Infirmary: A medical practice located in the Interstead Sprawl of Zadash.
 * The Valley Archive of the Cobalt Soul: Built off of the western edge of the Pentamarket, it is both an archive, and a temple to the Knowing Mistress. This library is known to contain the rarer tomes and elaborate writing within the city. It is maintained by the Cobalt Soul. Although it is open to the public, it is heavily watched, and has areas that are off limits to the general public, requiring special approval for access. After signing in, a monk is assigned as a watchful escort for visitors in the public areas where they can read and take notes of the materials within, though removing items from the library is strictly forbidden. The archive has a tall, tapering tower that curves off at the top into a dome-like pinnacle. Flanking the sides of this tower are three smaller spires. The stonework of the main tower has a smooth, concrete-looking texture. In the morning sunlight, the tower shines brightly and reveals intricate carvings on the various tiers that spiral down the tower. The interior of this library consisted of:
 * Several curved staircases that are carved through the bookshelves. Rising to different heights these staircases connect the library to its higher levels in various points.
 * Rooms that can be used for meetings, or for quiet research and study of the materials found within.
 * Subterranean training areas that include sand pits for sparring, as well as urban and wilderness obstacle courses.
 * Evening Nip: A bar, and the secret headquarters of the criminal empire controlled by The Gentleman.
 * Platinum House: The shrine to the Platinum Dragon.
 * Song and Supper Inn: Located on the west side of the Interstead Sprawl, this inn is used as an alternate meeting place for The Knights of Requital ahead of their mission against Lord Sutan and High Richter Dayana Prucine . The interior of this inn is very lively, filled with loud conversation, singing, and music. Three different bands cycle through on the main raised performance dais. A poor tavern, compared to the Leaky Tap, this inn has chipped and crinkled paint, and a bit of a smell to it. Basic food and drink is found here. Clay Owens is the balding, portly, middle aged barkeep.
 * Steam's Respite: A reasonably priced bathhouse.

Sewers
All the sewer covers in the city are latched and locked by a small metal pole, requiring a key kept by the Crownsguard. This measure is taken to prevent folks from wandering down into the sewers.

Below each manhole is a series of metallic bars that act as ladder rungs down 15 feet to the sewer floor. The sewer tunnels themselves are about 10 feet in height and around 15 feet across from side to side. The walls of these tunnels are made of slick stones which curve slightly down towards the floor and continue to round off the top of the tunnels. The middle of the floor has a small ditch basin that, with the mild decline of the sewers, serves to move water and waste through the city and away from the Tri-Spire.

Near the base of each of the ladders are arrows pointing towards each of the directions where a tunnel continues on. Additionally, mirroring the tunnels, these arrows fork and branch out in accordance with the directions they lead on into the sewers.

One of the entrances to the sewer is at the corner of Ruen Road and Dewmist. This intersection, largely still cobblestone, is maybe two blocks from the outer wall of the Tri-Spire. The cover is off to the eastern side of the intersection behind one of the poles that contain the lanterns.

Another entrance (Money Pot) is in the Tri-Spires district in a dark alleyway 25 feet off a cobblestone road with fine buildings across the way.

Background
Zadash was once the capital of the Julous Dominion, the last empire to be conquered by the Dwendalian Empire. It was brought under Dwendalian rule nearly two centuries before 826 P.D. As opposed to erasing Dominion society, the Dwendalian Empire instead merged their own way of life, laws, and rules with those of the people of Zadash and adjusted as they saw fit.

The Mighty Nein were directed to The Invulnerable Vagrant by a local guide named Ulysses Stanneras to acquire magical items. Upon arrival, Caleb, Nott, Fjord, and Jester met Enchanter Pumat Sol, who ran the shop with three magically-manifested duplicates. The Pumat Sol staffing the counter told Caleb that his establishment required a certain level of cleanliness and, with a wave of his hand, removed all the filth that covered Caleb and his clothes.

When Caleb and Jester first attempted to enter the Tri-Spires through the gate at the Pentamarket, one of these guards named Reeve escorted Jester into the Tri-Spire. After another guard came to replace the one that left, Caleb attempted to have Frumpkin enter the district as well. One of these guards, trying to keep what seemed like a stray cat out of this elite district, kicked Frumpkin to death. Caleb, frustrated in his attempt to enter the first gate in disguise, tried a secondary gate with no luck.

While the party admired the Archive of the Cobalt Soul, Nott noticed a stoic, well-dressed human patron leaving the Archive. Taking Mollymauk's advice to only rob people who look "grumpy," Nott followed this woman as she made her way through the city and attempted to rob her using Mage Hand.

The Mighty Nein delved into the sewers of Zadash in search of a mysterious beast that had been terrorizing the Crownsguard at its lair. According to a job posting on the Taskboard, a creature was holed up in a sewer nexus right on where the Interstead Sprawl meets with the outer wall of the Tri-Spires. The flow of sewage had been backing up and strange noises from cleaners had been heard. A few Crownsguard had gone to investigate the disturbance and found a masses of small congealed nests of sewage slime and webbing.

Individuals had been going missing, including two of the three parties that had previously attempted this task. Of the parties of Crownsguard that went down to investigate, only a guard named Cloen had returned. The job specifics were to find what was creating the disturbances, kill it, and to back with proof of the kill it. The reward for doing so was 700 gold pieces.

During a heist, Ulog killed himself and High-Richter Dayana Prucine with a fireball.

Shortly afterwards, two drow spies from Xhorhas blew up part of the Zauber Spire. Though one of them was swiftly killed, the other escaped into the sewers with a strange dodecahedron.

When Jester scrys on Yasha, she sees her crying amid signs of a slaughter and multiple bloody blue-and-grey-clad bodies in what appears to be the Cobalt Soul in Zadash, along with the Laughing Hand and Obann in disguise.

Upon witnessing Obann, Yasha and the Laughing Hand attack on the Cobalt Soul through Scrying, the Might Nein spend the next two week traveling out from Nicodranas all the way to Zadash, in the attempt to see what became of the monks attacked by Obann crew, along with learning what information Obann took. Upon walking through the gate, the city continues to have the increased military presence the party observed when they left as war was declared. They head immediately to the Valley Archive of the Cobalt Soul, hitching the horses outside, and learn that Archivist Zeenoth was among the wounded in the attack, which killed nine. He escorts them to the room Jester Scryed on, and the archivists identify the missing book as one on entities involved in deific conflicts of the past both for the Betrayer Gods and the Prime Deities. The group begins a mass research effort, looking into:


 * Torog, the Crawling King: Patron of torturers, slavers, and jailers, banished to the Far Realm.
 * Baphomet: Demon Prince of Beasts.
 * Origins of the Kryn Dynasty: At the end of the Age of Arcanum, the Kryn broke away from the worship of Lolth and built a religion around The Luxon.
 * The Angel of Irons: A relatively new, sparse cult not more than 40 years old. It mingles celestial iconography with twisted chains. The Angel speaks of being bound in shadow and tells followers to "release the fanes that hold its shackles."
 * Tharizdun: The Chained Oblivion, one of the Betrayer Gods. Described as darkness unending, a malevolent entity unlike any of the others, whose dreams bring the Abyss into being.
 * The Lotusden Greenwood: A cursed forest south of Xhorhas.
 * Veluthil: The historical name of the Savalirwood before the corruption of Molaesmyr.
 * Jourrael: The Caedogeist, a chosen assassin of Lolth. A nightmarish specter who walked through wall and mountain like water. Since he could not be killed, at the end of the Calamity his body was bisected, his heart sealed in the Lotusden and his head in Veluthil.
 * Obann: Once the Master of Wills of Graz'zt, the dark prince of the Argent Palace, shamed and destroyed after a terrible failure to his lord.
 * The Laughing Hand: Once a warrior named Ganix who sought to strike down Torog with his army, his soldiers were slaughtered and himself captured and tortured into an endless cycle of servitude, his ever-living heart locked in extra-planar space to ensure an eternal pact.

Caleb secretly looks into books on the manipulation of time, learning that one of the top archmages of one of the floating cities during the war between the mages and the gods had performed a ritual in which he hoped to go back and change the past, but was never seen again. The city was destroyed and its remnants became the Zemnians. He also asks about the Traveler and in the same book on cults that spoke of the Angel of Irons, there is a short note describing the Traveler as seemingly benevolent at the moment, but his cult is sparse and strange. At first it was thought to be a mass hallucination, but now there is enough evidence over distances for worry.

Jester casts Scry again on Yasha, seeing her pushing through a dense forest with Obann and the Laughing Hand, searching. She notices a very faint orange glow at the base of Yasha's skull. Obann has a bag containing something roughly spherical.

Zeenoth is convinced to allow the party to use the Cobalt Soul's teleportation circles, being told they are in pursuit of the creatures that attacked the Soul a few weeks earlier. The Valley Archive has circles leading to Rexxentrum, Port Damali, the Cobalt Reserve in Tal'Dorei, and Vasselheim. They decide to bring their horses, and teleport to Rexxentrum, but the noise alerts the guards who accost them and Jester takes a crossbow bolt when she attempts to cast Enhance Ability. The very suspicious Archivist Kathedoc takes their names and checks with Zeenoth, who confirms they have been given temporary right of passage. However, they are until further notice banned from the Rexxentrum Archive.

The party tells Kathedoc they actually meant to go to Port Damali and he unlocks that circle and allows them to leave. When they appear there, they are again met with guards and a Cobalt Soul member, and Jester is again shot for trying to cast Enhance Ability. Zeenoth is again contacted and told to allow them passage this one time, but they are banned from the Port Damali archive until further notice. They return to Zadash and to Zeenoth's relief, leave the Archive.

They decide that the need to try to stop Yasha's party from reuniting the severed portions of Jourrael is urgent and Jester Sends to Essek Thelyss, who agrees to discuss transporting them directly to the Lotusden. They find a deserted alley where Caleb inscribes a Teleportation Circle to Rosohna and they leave, with horses, as Nott flips off two suspicious and investigating crownsguard.

Trivia

 * The carrying of open alcoholic beverages was legal in the streets of Zadash.
 * After the escapades in the Platinum House there were town criers talking about Terrible vandalism! Platinum Dragon nearly ruined by upstarts and secret cabal of anti-religious hate!