Sellaville, South Options

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Extract from The Companion Issue 6 Vol 2
Feb 2004
By Alan Morgan

Sellaville
In recent years no city has suffered so greatly or faced one-tenth the terror of Sellaville. Once a city of such magnificence and power that it was the seat for one of the three most powerful of the Magiocracies (Seval) it survived even the Magiarchal Wars and continued through Amora’s reign as the most powerful city in the South and the most magical city in the Empire. It was scant years ago though that its power and Entropy were turned against it and the city was cast into the Mittlenacht for a year. There, bereft of aid, the people were hunted down and fed upon by the demons that were fattened on the two-legged cattle they found within.

Small groups of citizens, lead by the Hanot (the Kallah having been driven mad by the lack of a City Spirit) managed to hide and even fight back. When they received brief aid from mercenaries and food from House Stoneheart it was enough for them to temporarily turn the tables on their conquerors such that the (by now) hardened survivors were able to forge a defensive Quarter and see out the remainder of the year when the city was thankfully returned.

It might have gone ill for Sellaville had its scars not been slowly healed by its Governor Latona, but even now the citizens rarely go anywhere unarmed and the Hanot have appointed themselves the cities guardians with the approval of the few hundred people who saw out the Bad Days with them.

Now the city is effectively confined to one corner (the Refuge) where almost everyone lives in the houses they have made from a cities worth of ancient stone. Beside the Refuge and overlooking it on a flat, rocky hill is the Peace Quarter where Latona's roundhouse can be found and beyond that the Tip where the citizens first piled the Brandin stone and seasoned wood that made up the cities rubble.

The people and the Land of Sellaville
A little more than half the citizens of the city itself are those that fought for a year in the 'Nacht. Survivors of the Bad Days they are far tougher than the people found in other cities and more closely resemble mercenaries in their manner and watchfulness. Both the Council and the new life that is blooming in the city now have to some degree healed many of the wounds left by their experiences. Still though there is a fierce determination to never again let what happened to the city do so again. The citizens tend to swing between great happiness at their present lives, new children and even the rays of a yellow sun, and bouts of moody remembrance at what they all went through. The citizens very much want to put their experiences behind them, they truly want to settle and be good people with dreams, aims and desires and to some extent they have succeeded. But it doesn't take much to set the people back again, hands twitching towards a nearby spear, hunched and watchful of a strange sound in the night.

Beyond the city and the rural folk do not carry the scars of their more city-bound brethren. They never went through the Bad Days and if anything came of that it was the way in which each village and town became a little more independent. Even now there are villages and farms that are being found once more by travelling scribes and added to the cities core of knowledge. Healthier than many rural people, Sellaville villagers are similar to Heartlanders in many ways but more likely to indulge in a little improvised crop-hiding or even highway robbery if they think they can get away with it. Primarily, the villagers look after the village first and everything else thereafter. For the most part rural life can be found to the north and east of the city and the further west one goes from Sellaville the wilder and less lawless the land becomes.

Whilst the rural folk dress similarly to their Heartlands cousins (but without the often grandiose colours) the city dwellers are far more likely to wear pieces of armour padded jacks, leather armour and the like and wander the streets with at least a sword or spear to hand.

Why Mercenaries Adventure in Sellaville
Outside of the carefully watched Refuge and the starkly barren Peace Quarters it is possible to actually find work inside the city that would more commonly be found in the countryside elsewhere. Whereas the Tip attracts the attention of the Stadtus and is thus often avoided by stalking creatures, the Desolation and Rubble Quarters hide all manner of nastiness. In places the catacombs and ragged streets blend and merge and each of these Quarters is a jumbled ruin, a shattered cityscape of the sort not seen since the Choas Wars. Many things can, and do, hide here and they have cunning enough to avoid the Hanot patrols that infrequently scour the rubble and broken-toothed buildings that once rose so grandly from streets whose paving is now little more than gravel and dust.

To the south lie the Brandins with the same promise as found by Thimon (see last issue) but to the west the real wilds start. With only one city on the west coast of the Empire and that without a Commisent for many years only the immediate surroundings of Bildteve resemble the relative promise of vague safety found elsewhere in the Empire along the coast.

For the most part the west of Sellaville and most all of the coastal lands are only thinly populated by Imperial citizens and its old hillforts, broken terrain and scattered forests and woods have become a place where law is little known.

Here many an orc tribe has settled away from the attention of the cities and the mercenaries and travellers even speak of ragged towns where cruel men have established markets in flesh both living and dead.

Even though the Brandins is home to many creatures driven there over the centuries by the hunters of Schtoy and the Empire some are said to have found land more like their old homes in the north west of the Brandins and now in the broken lands beyond. It is still the Empire and there are a few scattered, small, estates where the peace is kept by the Lord and his handful of retainers but still more often can be found the barefoot trails that lead to tattered evil, half-forgotten tribes of beasts and strange sails far out to sea where a hundred islands lead in a curve to the south.