Cathrac the Gilded City

Chapter 1

The sounds of battle reached the ears of the youth as he climbed a hill. He had come to see his father rid the farmland surrounding their home of the thieving troglodytes. His father was the town blacksmith and had taught the youth everything he knew about combat smithing and magic. His father had a long black beard and spent an hour every day combing and braiding his hair. His father said often "the only thing I'm more proud of then my beard is my only son and my beautiful wife." He would say this with his deep booming chuckle that he used so often that the wrinkles around his eyes though he was only half aged.

When the youth crested the hill he expected his father to be leading the town guards in shining armor crushing the kobolds as if they were chaff before the wind. He couldn't have been more wrong when he saw reality. His father had rallied the last few of his men around their three remaining archers. His father was bleeding from the brow and his sword was bloody. As his father cut down kobold after kobold the stench of battle rose to youth on the hill. The stench of insides becoming outsides and the metallic scent of blood. The blood was so strong the youth could taste it. Suddenly there was a roar from the battlefield. His father had been hit with an arrow it had barely pierced his armor. The youth had only heard his father roar like that once. It was in a town meeting when everyone was arguing and the mayor had insulted the youths mother. The youth didn't understand the insult at the time but his father did. His father was enraged and moved away from the relative protection of his five remaining town guards huddled around the hunters. 

The kobolds had only two archers and they were terrible shots. However, the random shooting of arrows had demoralized the men. His father started to carve through the kobolds his biggest hammer crushing bones and armor alike. His roaring was inspiring the men and they were slowly starting to follow in his wake trying to keep the kobolds off his back. The kobolds had already lost half their troops but still outnumbered them ten to one. The youth was horrified. He watched as a group of kobolds was able to pull a guard away from the group and proceed to tear him apart. He watched as a hunter raised his bow and shot his friend. As the arrow hit the terrible screaming stopped. The youth begin to retch until his stomach was completely empty adding the stench of vomit to the battlefield.

 When he looked up he uttered an ear-splitting howl of desperation and sadness that all heard and all stopped to look at except the kobolds tearing his father apart. It was the howl of a little boy losing his father, his role model, friend the person he hoped to one day be and the one whom he loved. That howl was heard all around the town a mile away. It rose above the howl of battle and drowned out conversations of the small town. Its echo reached across the land the fringes of the scream were faintly heard at the capital of the country, Cathrac the shining city. 

Simultaneously the kobolds ran they dropped their weapons and ran. That was not even the most surprising part The kobolds that had dropped the weapons ran. However, while they ran they stopped once to pull the kobolds off the youths father. The youth ran down that hill faster than he had ever run before. He fell once in the blood but got up in the same motion. He knew in his heart that his father was either dead are close to the Kingdom of the Creator. When he got to his father the men were gathered around him. They had propped him up and had bandaged him as best they could. His father thought was smiling. 

He began to speak in a raspy voice at first one that grew more and more powerful with every word, "Son I feel the end is near and I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you. You must protect the family now. They are your responsibility. You must continue in your learning that I have started." Here he faltered and waved the other men away these last words were for his son and his son alone. "The magic I've taught you is not true magic. True magic comes from a demon and is to never be trusted. Always beware the people claiming to know true knowledge they always lead to danger. What I have taught you is a tool from the Creator one that was given to all the species but has been ignored. Your howl today shows how powerful you truly are. Only within the Creators grasp though will you truly reach your full potential." 

Here he called out in a loud voice "I Leave all of my possessions to my Wife to given to my son when he is of age, this is my final requests that my son has no extra coddling so he might earn all he has and that my wife will live a comfortable life. And this my brothers in arms remember my name, my name is," here he breathed in a deep raspy breath, this is known as a death rattle, then he let out in a strong yell louder than his boy's howl "Savantar." As the howl faded from his lips the Breath of the Creator left his body and he faded before his son's eyes. As his spirit was judged and found worthy, a single tear fell from the boy's eye on to his father's now lifeless face. 

The youth, a lad of ten years old had watched father die, closed his father's eyes and only nodded his head. He summoned an inner fire into which he fed all of his emotions till there was nothing left stood up and steeled himself to tell his six-year-old sister that her father whom she referred to as the bear would not come home again. He readied himself to tell his mother that her fate and that of the unborn child lay in the hands of a ten-year-old who had not yet learned to be a man. His eleventh birthday was tomorrow and that was the time his father was supposed to give him his first public name.

Fortunately, the Creator always had a plan. In the shining city of Cathrac, there were oppressed people. They were of all races and spoke many languages. They had a few things in common they spoke a language unique to them known as the slave language. The other is that they had over the generations become devout followers of the Creator for they realized only he had the power to save from their oppression. Fifty years ago a woman named Omnimatre or all mother. She was the bastard child of the king and a slave woman. The slave people named her Matromnium or All Mother because they knew that she would one day help save their nation. She was never able to come back to her people but she named her son in the language of her people. She named him Sarthac or freedom. His dying howl reached a dejected and oppressed people who needed to hear the loud cry of freedom. They burst into a song only for this time. They sang of the greatness of their Creator and the freedom they could taste. Their song grew as more and more joined in and their picks and the rattling of their chains kept time.

At the top of the Cathrac though an old man woke from a fitful slumber. He was woken by a howl followed by a faint singing. The old man woke from a dream and new tonight was his last night. He called his son and his steward. His ten-year-old son had lived in a life of luxury training in the royal form of combat and what the common people knew as magic his name was Letlive. Letlive was the sole heir to the throne of Carthac. His father made his final requests and made his last choice. This choice rattled the very fabric of the nation of Virtuempi. He handed Carthac not to his son but to his steward.

The city of Cathrac is a unique city. It has ten different layers the bottom being the biggest and the ghetto. Moving all the way up is the king's palace at the very top. The city is completely filling an island connected to the mainland with four bridges set at exactly ninety degrees. The lack of rain in the area means that the water surrounding Cathrac is the only fresh water for miles. It irrigates the four separate farmlands surrounding the city and its neighboring sister cities. They had placed a filtration system connecting their hand-dug moat to the ocean at their north.
The houses are all square and tight together. Sometimes in the lower levels, they stack them up ten twenty stories high till they brush up on the next level. There is a ramp spiraling around the tall city clockwise and a small set of stairs circling counter clockwise.

The city is unique in its politics as well. Everything is centered around geama fuil or the game of blood. The rules are vague but if broken you will die. The game is centered on who has the most money and who is willing to kill the most in order to keep their wealth. Everyone has to play or they will be killed because here morals are an abstract construct along with truth, justice, and kindness. Even if someone performs one of these actions they are trying to get something to increase their honor. Their honor though is not built into their character traits like we see honor but rather their wealth.