Ivthia

The Ivthian Subcontinent comprises nearly the entire southeastern quarter of the continent of Demurra. The population of Ivthia is primarily human, though they do not claim to have originated from the Western Isles and instead beleive their ancestral homelands lay somewhere to the east.

Ivthia is primarily semi-arid plateau, desert, and steppe, though small forests and marshes can be found in the coastal regions.

The Ivthian people have a clan-based, nomadic culture which espouses separation from the rest of the world, through violence if necessary. The city of Miir, the primary hub though which Ivthians conduct trade, is as much a fortress as a trading post and was built primarily to keep other cultures out.

During the Epoch of Dragons, great numbers of the beasts settled in the Targash and Western Ivthain mountain ranges, which helped enforce the legendary Ivthian isolation. The Ivthains revere dragons, and every generation a "dragon lord" is born who possesses the power to speak with the creatures and serves as an ambassador between the two races (though the draconic word for the Ivthian Dragonlord translates more accurately to "pet monkey" than "honored leader").

Ignorant Demurrans assume that the city of Miir is the capital of Ivthia, a mistake which most Miirians would make as well. Truthfully, most of the nomadic desert tribes view the "shadow-worshiping freaks" of Miir with only slightly less contempt than the "degenerate and decadent scum" who live to the west.

The Great Houses of Miir: House Dythanus

The following is an excerpt from  "The Traveler's Guide To Miir" by Volo Magrathe, published 1300 YA:


The Great House Of Dythanus is the youngest and most dynamic of the six Houses of Miir. It holds interests in the Physician's Guild and the Entertainer's Guild.

House Dythanus (the clan elders eschew the "von" honorific used by the other Great houses) is unique in that it is the only house primarily composed of a non-human race. The Dythanus family are the descendants of a clan of elven physicians, expatriated from Horeti for unethical practices.

History: When the Dythanus clan settled in Miir (circa 1174 YA), they sold their services to House Von Mordok. The alchemists coveted the elvish medicines and herbal recipes, and entertained notions of using this boost in their power base to reclaim the Tower of Miir, which the house had not controlled for centuries. House Von Mordok also wanted to check the recklessness of House Von Hastur, which had spent most of the 12th century engineering the fall of several of the oldest institutions in Miir, the Great Houses of Miir and Morgan. This paid off in 1179 YA, as House Von Mordok succeeded in ousting House Von Kaje from the Tower.

The Dythanus family expected to be well-rewarded for their help in raising their allies the Mordoks to Lordship. What they got was more demands from their masters, barriers placed on their ability to rise high within the ranks of the House, and about as much respect as the servants who shined the Mordoks' shoes. This lead to festering resentment. When House Von Kaje took back the Tower in 1196 YA, the Mordoks blamed the elves, imposing even more sanctions on elvish medical practices through the Magicians and Alchemists Guild, forbidding them to treat patients outside of their house, and generally being royal pains in the backside. The Mordoks thought they could whip the Dythanus elves into submission. Instead, they were sharpening a dagger pointed at their own heart.

Forbidden to make money off medical treatments for Miir's population, the elves could still make money off the medicines themselves. The first decade of the 13th century saw an explosion of narcotic use among Miir's lower classes, especially use of Dreamlily (an elvish plant that causes hallucinations in humans). The Alchemist's Guild sent investigators to try and track down the supply of these narcotics, but since this was considered scut work it was delegated to the elves. Since the investigators were also the ones with the supply, not a blessed thing was done about the "Dreaming Plague."

Also during the turn of the century a great number of new gambling halls started operating in the Cobwebs, halls owned on paper by Miirian citizens but overseen by pale, sharp-toothed, pointy-eared patrons. The same thing happened to a number of brothels. Word of mouth spread that those establishments with "the elvish touch" were the best--the brothels had the cleanest and loveliest girls, while the gambling halls paid the best odds. Elvish moneylenders offered deceptively good loans to those seeking quick investments -- the term "loan shark" hadn't made it's way to Miir from Arden yet. Many of these loans were made with money given to the Dythanus family from House Von Krueger, one of House Von Mordok's perennial enemies.

By 1206 YA, the Dythanus family was ready to make its final play, openly breaking from House Von Mordok to petition for Great House status from the Lord of the Tower. Lord Rudolf Von Kaje hose to grant the petition, and House Dythanus was born. It was the first Great House to rise since the end of the Imperial Occupation. In order to consolidate itself, House Dythanus threw open its doors to all elves and half-breeds in the city. Though the House has since closed those doors, this initial boost gave the House the numbers it needed to weather the retaliation of its former employer. To further cement itself, the House hired on a band of mercenaries lead by the ferocious Ten Monkey "Halfcheek" Xien.

The house took the motto "ingratis servire nefas," which is Imperial Demurran for "It is wrong to serve the ungrateful." This would turn out to be hauntingly ironic.

In 1217 YA, at the Annual Ball on All Fool's Night, Lorwyn Dythanus had an argument with Ten Monkey Xien, allegedly about the fact that Xien and his, shall we say, peculiar habits and customs were being flaunted for all of Miir to see, while his combat prowess was set by the wayside. Xien was of the opinion that Lorwyn had hired his band to act as warriors to defeat Dythanus enemies, not clowns to parade about for the elves' amusement. Lorwyn ended the conversation with the infamous phrase "Your job is not to question your betters. It is to do as your told! House Dythanus is the teat that feeds you sodomites, so get on your knees and suck!"

Xien stormed out of the ball. That night, he gathered all his followers, along with House Dythanus' servants, eunuchs, and concubines, and robbed the Lair of thousands of aecus in gold, silver, precious gems, and fireglass artwork.

Overnight house Dythanus went from prestigious up-and-comer to city laughingstock. Worse, the Von Mordoks chose this as their opportunity to strike back at the upstart elves, and the two forces got embroiled in a House War. That conflict ended in the Eagle Street Massacre, when both sides of the conflict were set upon by a motley force consisting of soldiers, whores, and eunuchs. The misfit band routed both sides, then vanished into the Belly.

This was the opening battle of what would become known as the Gorgeous Gang Rebellion. Over the next several months the Houses were attacked by the Gang, which seemed to be growing larger with every engagement. House Von Jeggett (the current ruling house) put the city under martial law and evacuated The Pen, and the Great Houses all put aside their enmities to hunt down the Gorgeous Gang. The Gang managed to outwit the Houses and had an uncanny knack for slipping behind the house lines, but eventually they were surrounded and cut off. The Gorgeous Gang made its last stand at the Drunken Crane bar and brothel, inflicting 3 to 1 casualties on the House forces before they were slaughtered to a man(/woman/eunuch). Xien's body was never positively identified, fueling rumors him raising havoc and striking at the nobility long after his probable death.

House Dythanus was not nearly as crippled as the other houses were by this fight. Their main contribution to the battles had been in support and medical roles, so their forces remained relatively lightly damaged. The elves used this opportunity to grab a firm hold on the prostitution industry of Miir's back alleys. Whereas before the house had been the largest player in that field, they became the only player. This monopoly allowed House Dythanus to pull in the funds it needed to push out independent pawnbrokers and moneylenders. With control over both gambling and moneylending, the elves prospered. They even managed to recover about a third of the treasure Xien had stolen from them (though the rest is still lost to history and rumors of The Gorgeous Gang Treasure has fueled folklore ever since).

The House grew so powerful, in fact, that in 1225 House Dythanus ousted House Von Jeggett from the Tower, an impressive feat for a house less than two decades old and still smarting from the Gorgeous Gang fiasco. This moment of glory was short-lived...the Nobles of Miir didn't take well to being ruled over by a foreign species. The Dythanus only held on to the Tower for 11 years, one of the shortest tenures as rulers of Miir since the Imperial Occupation.

Still, while House Dythanus hasn't managed to rise quite to the heights of it's former glory, it has remained a powerful force in city politics. The Physician's Guild is widely regarded as having the finest doctors in the city, as well as the most accomplished midwives. The Entertainer's Guild oversees all the city's prostitution, gambling, bliss dens, and theatres.

In recent years House Dythanus has started experimenting with alchemy and magic, accepting half-bloods and caliban into its ranks in defiance of the Magician's Guild ban on cultivating such members. House Von Mordok regards this development as a threat to their existence, since the elves have a strong alchemy tradition in their study of herbalism and medical remedies and it wouldn't be difficult for them to turn such knowledge to military purposes. There is no proof that the elves are secretly training an army of wizards, but then, there wasn't much proof that the elves were running brothels and gambling dens before they broke from House Von Mordok, either. It may be very interesting to see how this situation develops in the future.

The World of Aldora

The tale of Gaven Morren began as a dream of a world-building project called Aldora. The idea was of a shared world, using the Creative Commons, to give authors tools and weave a tapestry of ideas together, building on the ideas of others.

Miir was my contribution to this project. I wrote pages and pages of information on this city here, and used a few things from other authors. Other writers, in turn, took some of my ideas and fleshed them out in interesting and different ways. I plan on posting may of the Miir-specific background I posted there on this blog, but I feel I should acknowledge the project that helped me get this far in the first place.

Feel free to visit the AldoraWorld site and browse around. There is a LOT of information there, more than I could possibly fit into this story. And hey, if you feel like joining, it would be great to see the porject picking up steam again.

The Six Noble Houses of Miir

The city of Miir is ruled by an aristocracy of six extended families known collectively as the Houses of Miir. Each of the Houses has control of at least one of the major trade guilds that allow the city to function. Each House is comprised not only of the families themselves but various members of Miir's gentry, guild inductees, and private mercenaries, and various rivalries and power struggles between interests are a common aspect of Miirian politics. Armed conflict between the Houses is not uncommon, though most such skirmishes fall far short of full-scale civil war.

Originally, there were a total of 13 Houses, but time and infighting have whittled down the original families, and new houses have formed. At various points in Miir's 850 year history, there were as many as 18 Houses and as few as three.

Each of the houses has one over-reaching goal: to control the Tower of Miir. The head of a House that controls the Tower not only rules his house but sets policy for the entire city, and gains tremendous power. Plotting control of the Tower (and removing the current Ruling House from power) is a favorite pastime for all the House Rulers. In practice, however, the fall of a house from the Tower is cause for civil war, and most House Rulers prefer to work to keep the other Houses from gaining enough power to both take and keep the Tower rather than attack the Ruling Family directly and risk open warfare.

House Kaje

House Kaje seal
by Anson Brehmer

The current Ruling House of Miir is House Kaje. House Kaje is one of the older houses in Miir, with a line stretching back to the great war between elves and humans. The Kaje family controls the Mason's guild, and they like to claim that most of Miir was built by them. They also have a strong interest in peacekeeping around Miir, and fund the city watch. This gives them a lot of influence (It's easy to win an argument when you can say "we guard you while you sleep and keep your homes from caving in on you") and there are rumors that House Kaje masons have installed secret passages in many of the buildings they work on, passages that only the House Elders know about and can use.

House Kaje is also related to House Miir, the family line that founded the city. The Miir bloodline married into the House before House Miir fell to the machinations of the Von Hasturs, and Damien Kaje himself is a direct male descendant of Naros Miir, the first Lord of Miir. Strange rumors about Damien Kaje abound: he's never seen during the day, he hates holy symbols, he has wings and flies around at night, etc. None of these rumors have proven true, but of all the leaders of Miir he does seem to have the least to fear from The Shadows.

Lord Damien Kaje is the current head of House Kaje, in addition to his duties as the Lord of the Tower.

House Von Jeggett

House Von Jeggett seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Jeggett is the strongest of the Houses in terms of force of arms, but the house is in serious trouble. House Von Jeggett has traditionally controlled Miir's military and was a formidable power during the Human-Elf wars that occurred during the start of the Current Epoch. However, Miir has faced no serious military threats in over a century. The constant vigilance that House Von Jeggett maintains is appearing more and more pointless with every passing year, and the mercenaries and bounty hunters of House Kaje have largely supplanted House Von Jeggett's role in protecting the precious trade caravans that supply Miir.

The increasingly desperate House elders are contemplating starting war with other Ivthain tribes, simply to get the resources they need from House Kaje. They have also been training Caliban, mutants born of twisted magic, into a fighting force in a bid to compete with House Kaje's forces. It remains to be seen how well this gamble plays out for the beleaguered house. There are rumors that the House has actually learned how to create Caliban within its ranks. One source of this rumor centers around their support of Le Cirque d'Aberrations, a traveling carnival that has set up shop in Miir, in which all members of the crew are Caliban and new members seem to appear with alarming regularity.

The current head of the house is Lord Oswald Von Jeggett.

House Mordok

House Mordok seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Mordok is the oldest of the six Great Houses. House Mordok was one of the original 13 Great houses and has survived mainly because the House Elders prefer to rule from behind the scenes rather than overtly control the Tower. This house has only gained control of the city 5 times since Miir's inception, but remains a power to be reckoned with because they control a resource none of the other Houses have yet been able to match: House Mordok has magic. It is an open secret that House Mordok controls the city's Wizard Guild, which regulates the use of magic and the availability of enchanted items. Practice of wizardry in Miir without a Guild registration is forbidden. The guild is very picky about who it allows to have a license, and very few non-humans make the cut. This exclusivity keeps magic in the hands of the "deserving," or so the House claims. This attitude, however, may prove the house's undoing.

House Dythanus has recently opened its doors to magic users who are unable or unwilling to bend to the Wizard's Guild rule. Many Half-Bloods, unable to find acceptance anywhere else, have been welcomed with open arms by House Dythanus, and rumors are spreading that Dythanus is secretly training magic-users and breeding Half-Bloods within its ranks. House Mordok has no proof of these rumors, but it keeps a watchful eye on the young house, waiting for any pretext to go to war.

Lord Wilhelm Mordok is the current head of this house, though his brother Cireulan Mordok holds the title of Archmage in the mages guild. The two do not get along.

House Von Hastur

House Von Hastur seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Hastur is one of the oldest houses in Miir, behind House Mordok. It is also one of the wealthiest houses, behind House Von Krueger. It has controlled Miir more times than any other house except House Miir. This has always been a problem for the House elders...House Von Hastur always seems to come in second best, and that thought gnaws at the elders and fuels their ambition.

House Von Hastur controls the Merchant's Guild of Miir, and has a lot of economic pull within the community. The House has the reputation of being power hungry, ambitious, and untrustworthy, and this reputation has worked against it. House Von Hastur is rapidly losing ground to House Von Krueger. Independent merchants have banded together in an attempt to fight against the Merchant Guild's oppressive and heavy-handed policies, and the house elders suspect Von Krueger support. The shadow war that is brewing between the two houses threatens the very stability of the city, and House Kaje has yet to step in to this dispute.

A very weird rumor circulating about this house is that the scions are all part of a cult dedicated to a figure known only as "The King in Yellow." The rumor has it that all the house scions are required to undergo bizarre and blasphemous initiation rights and have a strange glyph known as "The Yellow Sign" tattooed somewhere on their bodies, granting them magical powers. Most folk disregard this rumor.

The current head of this house is Lord Boris Von Hastur.

House Dythanus

House Dythanus Seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Dythanus is the youngest of the Six Houses, having come into existence scarcely a century ago. The house was formed by a clan of Elven expatriates fleeing south for some unknown crime. The Elves quickly took root in the city, taking control of various gambling, vice, and prostitution rings. House Dythanus specializes in "entertainments." They work to provide a good time to anyone looking for it. They provide outlets for prostitution, gambling, and narcotics as well as more legitimate venues such as theaters and opera houses. House Dythanus is also one of the more cosmopolitan houses, accepting members who are human, Half-Bloods, or elven, as well as Shadow Fey and Caliban. This diversity has helped the house gain power, but has not helped its reputation among the other Houses.

Another reason House Dythanus is not taken as seriously by the other Houses is the fact that they were the ones who brought Ten Monkey 'Halfcheek' Xian, who later rebelled against the houses and formed the Gorgeous Gang, into Miir in the first place. This embarassing loss of face has never been entirely forgotten.

Hungry for advancement in Miirian politics, House Dythanus has recently opened its doors to magic users who are unable or unwilling to bend to the Wizard's Guild rule. Many Half-Bloods, unable to find acceptance anywhere else, have been welcomed with open arms by House Dythanus, and rumors are spreading that Dythanus is secretly training magic-users and breeding Half-Bloods within its ranks. House Mordok has no proof of these rumors, but it keeps a watchful eye on the young house, waiting for any pretext to go to war.

Lady Sylvia Dythanus is the current head of the house.

House Von Krueger

House Von Krueger Seal
by Anson Brehmer

House Von Krueger controls the Miner's Guild, and is the wealthiest of the Great Houses. They are also seen as one of the weakest of the Houses, because the House has never yet gained control of the Tower of Miir. This perceived weakness rankles the house elders, for they control the most powerful guild in the city. Without the Miner's Guild, the city would grind to a halt, and the house elders have entertained the idea of creating an embargo on their minerals at one time or another to reinforce that fact. However, since such an act would likely result in an open House War, such plans have never seen fruition.

Another mark of weakness is the House's reputation for decadence and excess. Rumors of the house elder's sexual appetites range from merely lascivious to rumors of truly bizzare fetishes, incest, and extreme deviancy in the ranks of the scions of the House. No sane Miirian wants to know the truth behind the rumors of House Von Krueger "Parties."

House Von Krueger also controls the Miirian slave trade. Slaves, indebted criminals, and indentured servants make up the bulk of House Von Kreugar's workforce, and the House has been known to fund press-gangs when workers get scarce.

While the Miner's Guild is powerful, it has very little influence inside the city proper, since most of the mines are far from the city limits or deep beneath the city streets. Instead, the Merchant's Guild, run by House Von Hastur, has the most in-city influence, and rivalries between the two guilds are fierce. in recent years, House Von Hastur has been rapidly losing ground to House Von Krueger. Independent merchants have banded together in an attempt to fight against the Merchant Guild's oppressive and heavy-handed policies, and the house elders suspect Von Krueger support. The shadow war that is brewing between the two houses threatens the very stability of the city, and House Kaje has yet to step in to this dispute.

Lady Vanessa von Krueger is the current head of this house.

The City of Miir

There is a darkness here, my friend. It is a darkness that does not sleep. It is not banished by light--merely hidden. When the light is gone, the shadows will rush back, thicker and darker than before. The City of Shadows was aptly named.

Miir broods, nestled against the northern arm of the Western Ivthian Mountains. It is the very gateway to Ivthia for those from Arden or Garamond, squatting at the end of the only reliable pass through the treacherous range of jagged volcanic peaks between Ivthia and the rest of Demurra.

The city is shaped like a wheel, inside a pair of concentric walls that separate and isolate the citizens. In the center of the city is The Bastion, where monolithic Noble Houses extend like claws into the sky, all surrounding the castle known as The Tower of Miir, which stands a full two hundred feet high and can be seen from any point in the city limits. The great Bastion Wall cuts this area off from the rest of the city, and the gates are well manned, well barred, and (most important of all) well lit after sunset and long into the night.

Once past The Bastion Wall you enter The Pen, the most populous section of the city. Successful merchants, minor nobles, and the halls of the Trade Guilds that control almost all aspects of Miirian life are all found here. Surrounding this section is The Pen Wall, which is neither as well built nor as well kept as The Bastion is. At night, after the curfew settles, the brazers that light the streets are allowed to burn out, leaving this section of the city at the mercy of The Shadows.

Once through the Pen, you enter a labyrinthine spiderweb of hovels and crude huts called The Cobweb, where the poorest of the poor live. This part of the city is often ignored by the watch and the poor citizens left to rot until the next press gang for the mines is needed.

Miir lies on the only navigable route through the Western Ivthian Mountains to Arden and Garamond, and control of this important trade route is the city's life blood. It depends heavily on outside trade for food, since most of the plateau on which it rests is rocky, barren, and choked with gray volcanic ash from nearby Mount Morrine. Miir is blessed with an abundance of mineral wealth, and much of the population makes its living mining iron, gold, and other metals from the rich seams that open up after the earthquakes that rock this land, or else in the foundries that smelt the iron using volcanic heat. Volcanic tunnels snake under much of Miir, and have been converted into a reservoir and sewer system that fills the wells and fountains.

The city of Miir is ruled by an aristocracy of six extended families known collectively as The Six Noble Houses of Miir. Each of the Houses has control of at least one of the major trade guilds that allow the city to function. Each House is comprised not only of the families themselves but various members of Miir's gentry, guild inductees, and private mercenaries, and various rivalries and power struggles between interests are a common aspect of Miirian politics. Armed conflict between the Houses is not uncommon, though most such skirmishes fall far short of full-scale civil war.

This place is known as "The City of Shadows" for a reason: legend has it that the shadows are alive, and they are the true power of the city and surrounding area. When the Shadows descend on a person, they say, he might suddenly become lost in a part of the city he's lived in all his life and wander for hours, even days...if he's lucky. If he's unlucky, there are all manner of monsters said to live in the Shadows, and sometimes the Shadows themselves supposedly drain people of their life, or making folk just vanish into thin air.

What, exactly, the Shadows are remains a mystery, but their effect on the lives of average citizens is keenly felt. Many Mirrians are terrified of the dark, and try to keep a candle or other light source on around them at all times, and purposely eliminating a person's flame is an intolerable insult, usually met with violence. Every resident of Miir knows a tale of a person misled of vanished due to the shadows, and no resident of this city will open its doors to anyone after midnight, and will try to repel anyone who tries to force their way inside.