Sumbru

Sumbru
(City)
Titles	City of Shades and Shadow
Region	Landadel Baronies
Size	small city
Demographics	mostly human
Government	Theocracy
Alignment	LE

Sumbru, the City of Shades and Shadow, is a walled city in the center of the Landadel Baronies cloaked in perpetual shadow. Thick black clouds hang heavily over the city blocking out the sun and casting the city into a somber, spirit-dampening gloom that has lasted for decades.

History

In its past Sumbru was a vibrant city filled with riches and light and beautifully ornate architecture where merchants and scholars gathered. The key to the city’s greatness and its downfall was its gate. Their gate, which they called the Gate of Gates, led to a land rich in resources and wealth for the taking. A rival, the King of Acomay, wanted to possess the gate that opened to so much richness and so set out to conquer Sumbru.

War raged for years, advantage passing back and forth between the citizens of Sumbru and the Knights of Acomay. In the end Sumbru could not hold and the rulers of the city decided to destroy the gate rather than let it fall to their enemies. A spell of unmaking was crafted and released upon the gate. The effects far outstripped the expected, unmaking the gate and releasing a storm of destruction that devastated sections of the city, scattered the beseigers and frayed the fabric of the prime at the former site of the gate leaving the city exposed to the influence of some dark plane.

Monsters rose up in the city, seeping through to the Prime from that other realm, and the spirits of the dead were cursed to repeatedly walk the paths they walked in the moments preceeding their death. To protect themselves the remaining citizens sealed the center of the city behind tall walls and tried to carry on.

Present

Now, 50 years since the unmaking of the gate, the citizens of Sumbru have managed to obtain some semblance of normalcy though not one that would be recognizable as such elsewhere in the Baronies.

The destroyed center of the city, poetically described as the ‘pulsating black heart of Sumbru’ by the bards of the Dream Theatre, is walled off to contain the haunts and the dark creatures that have passed through the frayed fabric of the prime. Buildings around the wall have been razed and guards patrol to keep citizens from entering the central district and awakening some dark creature that might threaten the rest of the city.

The rest of the rubble-strewn city is underpopulated holding approximately half the number of people that walked the streets during Sumbru’s glory days. Every district of the city suffered extensive damage during the war and the unmaking and many buildings have been plundered of their stone to rebuild other buildings and the structures have an oddly ornate yet piecemeal quality to them.

Politics

Positioned on the eastern trade route, Sumbru’s fall cast the Landadel Baronies into disarray and propelled Venza to the forefront of mercantile power. The Kingdom of Acomay, the best of her knights slain during the unmaking, weakened and fell to the grasping of other nearby kingdoms. The eastern trade route is broken and merchants are taking other routes to avoid the City of Shades.

Within the city itself, a new power has arisen and taken control and holds the city firmly within its laws. The Inquisitors of the Night rule from their temple stronghold dedicated to Our Lord of Perpetual Night.

Religion

Our Lord of Perpetual Night (Stranger) – This could be a new god of night or, my preference and, imo, more interestingly the frayed portion of the city could lead to the orcish god Arakan’s realm giving that god influence on the surface. -Organization: Inquisitors of the Night (LE)

Lady of Sorrows (Consort) – ancestors, protection

-Organization: Oracles of the Lady