Pathfinder Chronicles - Gazetteer - Asamnet

Pathfinder Chronicles
30
Pezzack, in the razor hills of the Devil’s Perch, remains a
hotbed of sedition and plotting against the new aristocracy
of Cheliax, but its fierce people are completely cut off from
the outside world by naval and land blockades. Only the fact
that the winged folk can f ly protects them from periodic
raids that raze the town to the ground. Elsewhere, the
people of Cheliax are tired and defeated. Even
citizens with no investment in the diabolic
order turn in a suspected traitor to achieve
wealth and social advancement. Westcrown,
the old capital, is a crumbling mirror of its
former self, where the remnants of shamed
and ostracized noble houses do their best to
maintain a crumbling city utterly abandoned
by the orderly civic planners of Egorian.
Shadowbeasts imported from Nidal stalk
Westcrown’s streets at night, devouring
traitors and supporters alike. The port
city of Ostenso is home to the largest naval
works in Avistan and hosts the vaunted
Chelish Navy, the dominant military force
on the waters of the Inner Sea. Here, on the
eastern edge of Cheliax, war is in the air, as
soldiers gather to protect the homeland from the righteous
rebels of Andoran, and perhaps soon to attack that land and
put an end to its pernicious republicanism forever.
Cheliax is a hopeless, decadent empire weakened by losses
in glory and colonial wealth but deluded with pretensions
of greatness spurred on by the infernal court and its fell
adherents. It is a stain on the face of Golarion, and a mockery
of what was once the greatest kingdom of mankind.
Druma, Kalistocracy of
MERCHANT’S RELIGIOUS PARADISE
Alignment: LN
Capital: Kerse (18,300)
Notable Settlements: Detmer (8,200), Highhelm (5,600
dwarves), Macridi (3,200)
Ruler: High Prophet Kelldor
Government: Mercantile Oligarchy
Languages: Common, Dwarf
Religion: Prophecies of Kalistrade, Torag
The isolated hill country of Druma hosts the most
productive gem and precious metal mines in Avistan,
granting its doctrinaire leaders—adherents to the Prophecies
of Kalistrade—overwhelming influence over the politics and
affairs of the entire Inner Sea region. The Prophecies—dreamrecords
of an eccentric mystic from the early days of the Age
of Enthronement—dictate a personal routine involving
sexual and dietary prohibitions, exclusive adornment in the
color white, and the wearing of full-length gloves to prohibit
physical contact with those outside the cult.
At its heart, the Prophecies of Kalistrade encourage adherents
to justify their worth in the celestial order through
the attainment of personal wealth. High-ranking merchant-lords
of the state, indistinguishable from the
quasi-religious bureaucracy that supports the official
philosophy, adorn themselves with gold and platinum
chains and glistening gemstone baubles as a show of
their status and wealth.
Traveling “prophets”
of Druma make
constant targets for
overzealous thieves
and confidence men,
but knowledgeable
denizens of the underworld
give them wide
clearance, knowing that
their untold wealth all too often
buys a host of magical contingencies,
powerful divinations, and vengeful assassins. The
jewel-bedecked traders thus comport themselves with
an assiduous arrogance and casual fearlessness that frequently
grants them the upper hand in negotiations.
Clever diplomacy played a critical role in the rise of
the prophets more than 2,000 years ago, when their calm
mediation at long last united the squabbling dwarves of
the Five Kings Mountains. The human folk of Druma had
long suffered under the conf licting decrees of the high
kings ruling from their mountain citadels, and the Kerse
Accord of 2332—facilitated by white-gloved adherents of
the Prophesied Path—ultimately granted the humans
autonomy and significant control over the vast mineral
resources of the upcountry south of Lake Encarthan. As the
region’s historical dwarf lieges turn increasingly inward
to their ancient mountain vaults, the prophets of Druma
consolidate their domestic power by ensuring widespread
dedication to the Prophecies of Kalistrade. Other religions
and non-believers meet with grudging tolerance in the
Drumish homeland and casual indifference elsewhere
in the world. Outsiders seldom achieve positions of rank
and inf luence in the official bureaucracy, and adherents
always favor each other in financial dealings.
Those who swear by Kalistrade’s writings do not f linch
at the disruption to prophecy triggered by the death of
the living god Aroden and the advent of the Age of Lost
Omens. The most potent prediction of the Prophecies
concerns an imminent hour of victory, in which adherents
to the way leverage their financial power to, in effect,
“own” the world, becoming its masters and achieving a
sort of metaphysical immortality. That other prophecies
have proven false in recent years gives little pause to
believers, who cannily contend that theirs is a secular
prophecy immune to the dictates of magic and wholly up