IM 1009

[Sire Halfblack]

Events in Deci ~ Martius IM 1009

This month the city was met with a strangely productive and calm. The events of the last year seemingly distant memories. The people free of the madness of King Blackjack and the fear of The Murder found themselves, for the first time, in a long time, able to just get on with their lives and this they did.

Following last years floods Cheapside still remained under water but the adaptive people of Cheapside simply took to living a storey higher in the buildings and using the terraces as make shift roads.

This, being the first month of the thaw after the deathly would see the start of the Plague season and the bodies of those who died during the Battle of Cheapside were once more exposed to the elements. In order to avert a pestilential disaster the people came together under the leadership of Governor Drake to clear the bodies from the city. This they did without comment, without anger or a belief that it was bneath them. The hard working Wastrel of the city just got on with it and Governor Drake mucked in, quite literally, alongside of them. By the end of the month the dead had been cleared and great piles of them lay outside the gate of the Northern Quarter.

The Sleek, answered the Governor’s challenge to bring law to the city and he did such in the only way that the wilful denizens of the city seem to understand, brutally. He made the punishments fit the crime with terrible irony, so extreme were his acts that he wiped out an entire guild, The Tarboilers, leaving the Guild Sires of the city to take Master Halfblack aside and ask if perhaps The Sleek could not be tempered somewhat and if the destruction of an entire guild might not be considered a little extreme, even for Deci.

The city was once more visited by Berek Fletcher, who burning with vengeance sought to stir up the people against its leaders for the death of the Were-King. He railed against The Sleek, Baron Throttle, The Beaters and the Deci Hunt but lacking the sly tongue of the practiced Orator or Preacher few listened and even fewer were swayed by his words. The people had had enough of rebellion and war, they just wanted to get on with their lives and so what if one King had killed another, that’s what Kings did. They simply got on with the tasks of moving bodies out the city, those reminders of who really paid the price when their leaders went to war.

It was said that this month the Kallah had met in secret counsel, and not wishing the interference of the ever meddlesome Vizier, they declined to admit him to their gathering. Since the end of Blackjack the Kallah that had previously been split between the Two Kings of Deci had now fragmented into five. Deci had become a city with five Kallah Lords, one for each of the quarters of the city, quarters that have become almost distinct cities in themselves due to the diversification of their local cultures.

The Vizier spent most of the month attending to a great many tasks, busy as ever, his fingers reaching across the inner workings of the city he most keenly involved himself in arranging for the collection of some of the mounds of silver ore that Jander had discovered at Geld’s Claim the previous month, ore that the city’s industry much needed.

In the North of the city Master Moregil continued to stamp his mark, this month his attentions turned to the issue of Smuggling and with some success he was able to make headway into ensuring that city produce, at least in the northern quarter, was beginning to once more start making its way to the official city markets.

[Sire Halfblack]

Events in Deci ~ Maii IM 1009

And so it began, the Second War of the Wolf. Dirk Drakken, Mennihaft of Deci, rode across the city with purpose, accompanied by his finely liveried men, all Deci Killers true, although such was lost on the Noble Knight who’s blinkered vision saw them as fine serfs and peons... He worked across the city killing the Wolves in vengeance for their attack against the Nobility, that had seen the Heads of four Nobles Houses slain in the assault on Deci during the short tenure of Governor Stoneheart. This had been the reason Dirk had come to Deci, to ensure the safety of the Nobles and the punishment of the scallywags who had thought to attack their betters, admittedly this perhaps had not been quite what those who had sent him to Deci had expected but such is the way of The Drakken.

Across the city the wolves hid or fled but barely fought, simply hunted down as beasts, caught and killed, even their peaceful wise elders who had wanted nothing of the war and had helped broker the weregild that had ended the First War of the Wolf. No distinction was made between those who had lived peacefully in the city and those who had raised their claw against its rulers. In fact, something that had not occurred t any of those that ruled was that the blood of wolves wasn’t pure. The lineage of wolf and human had mixed for centuries in the melting pot of Deci as families intermarried and intermingled. Trueblood wolves and trueblood humans, even amongst the Nobility, was rare, and a good proportion, perhaps one in ten, of the city could easily count the blood of lycanthropes in their veins…

It was said that Master Halfblack was furious, even daring to raise his voice to the King whom he blamed for this folly of renewed war just as the city had settled itself. Just after he had spent months getting the city back on its feet. And this month had seen him be extraordinarily busy. Getting ever closer to his aims for the city and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel suddenly blocked off with the prospect of war, the primal anathema to trade. And he did not wish to know what the Mocker King would think of the mockery of the peace that had been wrought in his name. He all too well remembered Tamary’s words when Argoth had sought to end the First War of the Wolf and remembered how Argoth had brushed aside the advice of the City Spirit.

Just outside the city’s northern gate Governor Drake dirtied his hands with the worst of jobs. He helped to build the cremation pyres to finally remove the bodies that. Following certain enquiries from Bildteve as to what would be done with the rather large number of bodies the Vizier’s requested that, Master Moregil had sent his men to watch over he pyres and ensure no one interfered with the deceased. Even The Vizier has his limits and balked at the idea selling the dead as so much commodity, that sounded suspiciously like something the fiends of the Sunless might engage in with their flesh pits, the Liches of Felldrakken Isle or even the Necromancers of Thimon. Such violation of the city’s own dead was distasteful to him.

The Preacher of Forgetown made his way to Deci this month, to see to the Cheapside monument to the fall of King Blackjack and to say words of prayer for the souls of those to be burnt in the great pyres. The cold chill of Deci though brought home starkly to he and his followers the difference between Deci and their home of Forgetown.

The Vizier was busy this month, with scheme after scheme after scheme, all disparate, all different but each a piece of a puzzle that would fit together only at the end, a single destination travelled by many paths. Few knew what it was he sought and even fewer understood how his manipulations would allow him to reach his aim. He handed out tasks to each and every man of note in the city, whether ruler, Guild Sire, Guild Master, Trader or Gatherer and without question they simply performed as requested, as each player in an orchestra would follow the music given to complete the piece that Master Halfblack had scribed. The end of the month saw the completion of a great market that sprawled across the entirety of The Invisible Quarter but even then it did not seem that the Vizier was quite complete in his work or plans, whatever they might be.

At the end of the month Earl Majius took on the mantle of King of Deci. For some time it had been inevitable that such would happen, and for sometime he had borne the title of “king” but had never formally accepted it. For years now the signs and portents throughout the city had made it clear that such was needed. There was something about the primal nature of Deci that both desired and required a King and despite both Troy and Anath’s wariness at such and the Vizier’s caution against assumption of such it seemed the path no longer lead elsewhere and even the Vizier had to admit that the city would be better off with a proper King to rule it.

It was during the King’s formal assumption of the title that he chose to present his progeny, twins, his son Ulis Majius and his daughter, Terabella Vantenya Arastel Dathdenaragel Anathella Of The Third Broken Promise Darkness Pool About Me Majius. He had named his son whilst his wife had named their daughter. With the pomp and circumstance so beloved by the common folk of Deci he named his courtiers, granting those councillors who served him titles in accordance with the old ways of the city. Somewhat unwisely though he seemed to have forgotten to include the city’s nobility in his court but never the less the people cheered and the ill feeling that had been building in the city due to the deaths caused by the hunting of the wolves was banished by the people’s delight at once more having a proper King to lead them.

[Sire Halfblack]

Events in Deci ~ Juon IM 1009

With Earl Majius and Governor Drake away in Halgar, along with Baron Throttle and Dirk, on matters of politics the city was depleted of its leadership and somewhat quieter than usual, especially given that it was the Hundred’s Festival.

The Deci Dead Lands
For some time the issue of losing production from the city's mines had troubled the Vizier and, in a moment of inspiration, duplicated by Governor Drake, a solution had been proposed, planned and implemented. The Forge travelled the territories of Deci, marking those mines that were worked by the city and forging trails between them and the city, trails which became known as the Deci Tin Roads. Cuts were made in hills, old markers were unearthed, woods hacked through and marshland drained. Dust was packed down and fords raised. Markers constructed and great metal poles with an arrow pointing to the city marking out the way from mine to market to ensure undisturbed delivery.

The Invisible Quarter
The lack of civic leadership beyond The Vizier and The Forge meant that the celebration was somewhat lower key than normal but the guilds attended to their business of yearly deliberation in The Halls of the Grand Hundred within the Invisible Quarter and as ever many deals were struck, bargains made and alliances forged within the multitude of guilds whose love of intrigue and internal politics at times rivals that of the Nobility, even those ensconced in Halgar. As Head of the Warsmiths a certain amount of such might have been expected of Jander but with his nature not given to such the Warsmiths, though influential.

Much to the delight of the Vizier, who had worked somewhat tirelessly for months with a cunning beyond even his usual repertoire, he had managed to persuade the Traders of the King’s Bazaar to relocate within the Invisible Quarter given their ousting from the city of Alguz. A city who’s greatly reduced simplicity, a result of rejecting the rites of the Imperial Foundation Guilds, meant it could not contain the complexity of the Bazaar.

Cheapside
Power seems to rarely remain in a vacuum and across the quarter in less than a year since the downfall of King Blackjack the Black Hat, mark of the esteemed Sire ‘Berry seems to be appearing across the quarter and gangs start to fall under dominion of Stab Street as this month the Scribblers met a swift end at the forces of Sire ‘Berry.

And, as if by some shadow of a memory of the passing of the King it rained in across Cheapside, across Cheapside and nowhere else within the city. Perhaps mere coincidence, or perhaps a scar on the nature of Primus left by the powerful rites that helped to cast down the King. A warning maybe to those who might seek to use ritual to solve their problems that such powerful rites are not with problems of their own. A lesson seemingly fading from the minds of rulers, a forgetfulness of the devastation wrought by the historically cyclic ritual wars, the most recent being the Choas War.

The North Quarter
Was quiet, even by the standards set by Master Moregil, who was nowhere to be seen in the city, rumour said that he had travelled southwards to join those forces that fought in the Sunless. Something that was, quite frankly, not the done thing in Deci. Signing up for either a fair fight and certain doom. Still, Master Moregil never was quite of the Deci mindset.

And so the city, was quiet, a quiet that none knew would last, the city seemed to lack the capacity to just get on with it. All knew it would be just a matter of time before those wolfkin who’s weregild with the Nobility had been betrayed would return to remind the rulers of the city that its people can only be pushed so far…

[Sire Halfblack]

Events in Deci ~ Septus IM 1009

In response to the growing myronese threat the Vizier ordered that the ancient Walls of Deci were finally repaired somewhat, although the work was in severe danger of being hindered due to the constant attempts of thievery of the materials put aside to build the walls. Fortunately the Black Knight stood watch over the work chasing off those who would steal from the city. Until, something akin to a very strange pantomime the Black Knight was challenged to a somewhat improbably duel by a somewhat improbable Dirk…

Hightown
In Hightown, deep in the Spire the King Troy The Faceless had summoned all the Nobility of Deci to him, formally holding Court. What happened within the Spire is unknown and it would be only a fool who would try and pry into the affairs of Earl Majius within his own city.

Forgetown
The busiest time of the year in Forgetown, the Joining Ceremony. Master Halfblack held a court of his own in The Cart and Hammer with a number of the Heads of the Hundreds Guilds, proving himself an adept gambler, which given the involvement of money was perhaps no real surprise.

Unlike last’s year’s relatively high profile marriage of local Alchemist, Mayor Gideon Borealis, was no high profile marriage but another mass ceremony that ended with many of the luminaries of Forgetown engaging in a slightly tuneless musical celebration. Still, despite the huge amounts of money sunk into the celebration, it’s rumoured that Master Halfblack still managed to profit from the yearly event, especially after the run on sales of shovels...

The Rural Lands
There was rumour that Governor Drake was to finally retire and had informally stepped down from office but his last act before doing so was to seek out Charmin’ Billy and see if he could not arrange some sort of peace between he and the city. Drake’s reputation for fairness and justice served him well as he was able to speak with Billy but the news was not good. The Wolves would neither forgive nor forget what the Nobles had done to them and even now as the King held court in Deci they were sacking the Majius Lands… The old feud had erupted with new venom and fervour, the Lords of the city were once more at war with the Wolves and it was in danger of breaking up into factions.

[Sire Halfblack]

Events in Deci ~ Noveas IM 1009

Despite warnings from Earl Majius and Master Halfblack against such Mayor Borealis, long determined to enter the infamous Cheapside Shop of the City Spirit, Ulis Tamary, the foremost Alchemist in the Empire, to find out his secrets, was finally able to secure the method to enter, by having Sire ‘Berry requisition the Key from the Kallah Lord of Cheapside.

Master Tirack, took a trip to the town of “Don’t Go There”, aptly named as a place full of the unclean. They had once been dwellers in the city until some time ago the city, suffering from a terrible pestilence, had such focussed on them and they were banished from the city, taking the plague with them and saving the city from worse but afflicted as they were they, or maybe even their descendants, still suffer from this terrible plague and they are out casts, something that obviously played on the Shaehan Priest’s mind as he began to consider the means to relieve them of their ills.

With the biggest Society event of the year taking place in Thimon, the wedding of Countess Claugh, formally of Deci and now of Sellaville and the Duke Bartholomaw along with the formal creation of the new House Claugh-Bartholomaw, approved by the Convention of Nobility in the previous month’s tithe, the city was devoid of its leading Nobility with both the King and the city’s Mennihaft, Dirk, in Thimon.

Jander was ensconced deep in his mine, the First Mine, said to be the first place that Primus yielded metal from the ground to the tribes after they had stolen knowledge of metal working from the Gathen. Tale, truth, history or legend it matters not, the fact remains that this mine has unusual properties and Jander was busy investigating its mysteries and restoring it to its former glory, leaving him far away from the city.

The Stadtus, the Pariah Twirl, for his own reasons, broke into the old Amoran mansion that had long been sealed up. The city guilds had been instructed a long time ago to seal the place up and have it forgotten, which it had been until Twirl put the fear of Dark Twilight into the Guilds, who’s leaders were strangely absent, into re-opening the old mansion allowing him to delve into its secrets.

The Sleek was out of the city, having to, as ever, do his brother’s dirty work, visiting the family lands to see what damage had been wrought by the previous month’s attack by the wolves and to see how the land could be retaken.

Moregil’s absence from the North Quarter and Star Set Square continued, no doubt resultant of his campaign in the Sunless.

Even Sire Berry was not just out of Cheapside but out of Deci itself, having travelled to Forgetown to ensure the Crossbow Wedding of his (Step)Daughter to local loveable Rogue Rex.

This left the only council member, or person of note, in the city Master Halfblack, a fact that was to later prove somewhat, unfortunate given the attack that month by the the wolves on the city. Charmin’ Billy and the Wolves however were somewhat put out by the absence of anyone of note from the city and, failing to locate Master Halfblack, who seemed always one step ahead of them, evading them or melding into the ever morphing and ever changing invisible Quarter, had to settle with this month rounding up the Heads of The Hundred’s Guilds and having them dance the hangman’s jig.

True to his cowardly Mercantile nature Master Halfblack continued to decline to get involved in this new war that had descended against Deci, all against his advice, and thus continued with his daily work, having ascertained that he would return from the Gressenfest far too late to be able to intervene…

[Sire Halfblack]

Final Dawn IM 1009

The Final Dawn passed with no great incident in Deci, the most interesting event being the appointment of Selgard, The Baron of Drewin’s Vale, as the new Imperial Governor. The more suspicious of affairs in Deci might have wondered if the ever manipulative Vizier had somehow managed to influence matters to his own choice for the new Governor but he could hardly influence the Senate in their choice of such, could he?

Selgard, most wisely, took time to wander around the city and familiarise himself with its hierarchy of power. It became obvious very quickly that the ruler of the city, if not in name but in actuality, was none other than its King, Earl Majius. The new Governor observed that oddly however, the sovereignty of the King makes the city far more stable with the ever rebellious populace firmly of the belief that they are free of the yoke of the Empire and that being the case that they have rebelled there is no need for further rebellion…

It was also obvious that the day to day running performed by its cunning Vizier from his ever elusive halls of power that make up the ever changing and never constant Invisible Quarter. Still, Selgard was no fool and having grown up and lived in Deci long enough had expected little else than he had found. To be fair, his tenure was already going far, far better than that of his predecessor’s predecessor, despite the lack of anything resembling actual power, influence, bureaucracy or even an office. The lack of an office being mainly resultant of a lack of a Citadel…

Of the Citadel Selgard found little trace, it having been torn down brick by brick by Blackjack during the short tenure of a previous Governor, leaving only a strange castle like folly, home to the city’s Mennihaft, Dirk Drakken. Similarly he had found no trace of Imperial Scribe, they too having been long ago extinguished in the city, like the absent watch, unable to function.

Strangely, whenever his thread’s of investigation into the city showed promise they seemed to end up with a somewhat busy Master Halfblack at the end.

Of King Troy The Faceless and his Kin Baron Throttle The Lord Sleek, no word was to be had, though no doubt they had quiet business in the Spire of Nobility or on the Majius estates at the ever auspicious time of year.

The Forge, as is his custom, spent the Dawn forging a dawn blade, rumoured to be a pair of Knives for Death, tending to his mine, The First Mine and, of course, claiming the role of Guildsire of the Warsmiths for a second year running.

The Black Knight was seen for but a short time in the city, the Spire Guard, or as some referred to them, Black Guard, due to their black enamelled armour, had reformed and now served the Black Knight in defence of the city, or at least its Nobles and rumour was that over the Final Dawn the Black Guard had Primus bear witness to their oaths.

One of the more intriguing events was the replacement of the Sires and Masters of the Hundred’s Guilds. The recent slaughter of the previous Guild Sires and Masters by the Werewolves had resulted in a less than smooth transition to new master at the end of the year and that Jander managed to retain his position as head of the Warsmiths for another year, in a role that, in his hands, is becoming seemingly more ceremonial than practical, will no doubt lend to great stability in the Warsires. Still the unusual lack of politics and careful handover from outgoing guild Sire to incoming will no doubt have reverberations for Deci society for the year and perhaps beyond as the new lack the guiding, some might say constraining, hand of their predecessors.

The ever busy Vizier, having seen to paperwork relating to the city’s markets took time to ensure that those who had worked hard for him personally over the past year were well rewarded for their efforts and afforded the opportunity to celebrate the year’s end at his largesse.

Cheapside, ever insular to the rest of the city found itself entertaining the ambitions of Sire ‘Berry, who over the year had spread the mark of the Black Hat across sizeable parts of the quarter extending from Stab Street. Now, undoubtedly, the biggest gang in Deci, the rest waited to see what his next move would be, would he, could he, emulate the Grate Black Orc and seize the quarter?

In the depths of the Deathly season life in Forgetown went on as it does, although the absence of Mayor and local Alchemist Gideon was marked. The Preacher Man, Master Tirack, took it upon himself to visit the pariah town of “Don’t Go There”, its name and reputation in conjunction with the harshness of the season however meant that those supplies Tirack had wished sent to help the unfortunates of that town that had been organised by Master Halfblack never got further than the relative comfort of Forgetown and the Cart and Hammer.

Rumour went round about the enlarging of the First Mine and the founding of a surrounding Hamlet by the imaginative name of Forge Holm by Jander.

All in all a somewhat quiet Final Dawn for the usually chaotic Deci.