Sailing from Lake Encarthan, past the Reaping Rocks, a thousand fog lamps reluctantly emerge from
the swirling haze, and the weirdly echoing din of countless faceless souls heralds one’s arrival in Caliphas, mist-shrouded capital of Ustalav.
Constructed behind the treacherous shield of a natural breakwater, Caliphas f lourishes as the nation’s wealthiest, most accessible, and most cosmopolitan city. These factors—along with other, more mysterious persuasions— argued for the royal court’s relocation to within the city’s walls 30 years ago. Although a new capital, Caliphas is still an old city, and the grim statuary, soaring buttresses, sharp gables, and endless intimidating embellishments common to the nation’s oldest cities adorn its ominous structures. New industries also belch black clouds into the sky, mixing with the frequent fog to cloak some parts of the city in a wretched coat of ash. Yet numerous gardens, private menageries, and fenced parks dot the crowded cityscape, making Caliphas feel more alive than many Ustalavic cities—which often seem better suited as tombs for dead princes. The past decades have brought thousands of immigrants to the capital. While the nobleborn find and create luxurious housing with ease, their attendants have considerably more trouble. Such has led to not just overcrowding, increased squalor, and street violence in parts of the city, but to stranger crimes against which the overwhelmed constabulary has little defense, such as kidnapping, hidden slavery, underground fighting bouts, mysterious murders, and rumors of terrors lurking amid the city’s labyrinthine sewers.
Locations in Caliphas
Every corner of Caliphas is the potential setting of untold plots, tragedies, opportunities, and crimes. Only the most noteworthy are highlighted here.
Castle Stryithe: When word of the royal court’s relocation reached her, Countess Caliphvaso ordered and personally oversaw the construction of Stryithe, a castle of elegant stained glass, daring flourishes, and crimson stone. Now completed, the imposing, spire-crowned citadel rises from the city’s center like a bladed, fiendish heart trapped amid a web of mounting buttresses. Home to the audience hall and black-antlered royal throne of Prince Ordranti, the echoing Hall of Peers with its 16 traditional stations, the portrait hall known as the Gallery of Ancestors, the royal archives, a private wing for visiting dignitaries, and a maze of shadowed alcoves, conference chambers, and salons, Servants also spread rumors of myriad secrets, both predictable—like hidden floors, shifting passages, and escape routes—and sinister, such as shafts to unknown oubliettes, stores of treacherously hidden poison, and construction plans that suggest blasphemous agendas.
Havenguard Lunatic Asylum: A most unusual hospital spreads its batlike wings across the crumbling cliffs overlooking Caliphas. Here doctors seek to see past legends of fiendish possessions and cursed blood to treat unfortunates suffering from ailments of the mind. Under the direction of its founder, the dedicated but locally slandered Dr. Beaurigmand Trice, the asylum’s physicians attempt to protect, understand, and heal without the aid of expensive magical interventions—though many admit incomplete understanding of the maladies they treat, or missteps in their more experimental therapies. Occasionally, the physicians’ treatments reveal unsettling causes of their patients’ unease, which makes Dr. Trice’s standing as a venture-captain of the Pathfinder Society and his hospice’s support of the organization’s members a frequently employed boon.
Lethean Manor: Private gardens of sweetly scented poisons and watchful statuary hide the ancestral town home of Caliphas’s counts. Built upon the Laurelight Hill, the luxurious estate of Carmilla Caliphvaso serves as the most frequently used of the countess’s residences, as well as the abode of her all-male staff and the site of her frequent private fetes. Those who answer the countess’s personal invitations recall decadent accommodations and hedonistic entertainment amid impressions of scandalous innuendoes and constant observation, but little else.
Maiden’s Choir: A gigantic dome of amethyst-veined black marble stares unblinkingly heavenward from Caliphas’s temple of Pharasma like some vast empty socket. At the chapel’s heart stands a silver, mausoleumlike reliquary said to bear such holy treasures as the Sarkorin song skulls, the scroll bones of Father Gesenge, the armored Gown of Tears, and—or so high priestess Mother Verith Thestia claims—one of the steel splinterfeathers of the goddess’s own herald.
The Quarterfaux Archives: Both museum and academy to Caliphas’s young nobles, the curators of the Quarterfaux Archives seek not to explore the world, but to bring its wonders to Ustalav. Whether gathered by traveling professors or purchased from unscrupulous organizations, the artifacts of the museum’s collection range from Ulfen longboats and mysterious northland fossils to living elven root sculptures and strange Mwangi fetishes. Currently of greatest local interest are the Canopic Ethers of Menedes XIV discovered by Osiriontologist Abraun Chalest, and the temporary display of the Moulot Family’s Thassilonian treasure, the Invidian Eye.
Rumors in Caliphas
Between the agendas of members of court and the rampant gossip of commoners, waves of rumormongering jade a population already inured to scandal and misfortune.
Royal Rivals: A bitter rivalry between the ruling line of Ordranti princes and Caliphavso counts extends back to the earliest days of the country’s refounding. In past generations, distinct territories have limited conf licts between these powerful nobles, but now, their arenas are the same. Some claim Countess Carmilla orchestrated the capital’s relocation and Prince Aduard’s ascendance to the throne as steps in a sinisterly subtle decades-long coup. Others say the trenchant prince plans to remove his politically deft rival from power, seeking spies to catch the notoriously cunning noblewoman in some undeniable act of treason. Regardless of which noble ultimately comes out on top, the outcome promises to be both bloody and soon.
The Old City: Ustalav’s capital is merely the most modern settlement to control Lady’s Harbor and claim the name “Caliphas.” Through the ages, communities have risen and fallen upon the site, their ruins used as the foundations for new cities. Today, the people of Caliphas have little idea what lies beneath their streets, as new construction and expanding sewer tunnels regularly break into forgotten vaults or sepulchers. Workers, criminals, and constables who dare the sewers frequently don’t return, and those who do speak of dumping grounds for hundreds of corpses, living muck, and the ruby-eyed gentlemen of the sewer.
Rumors in Caliphas
Between the agendas of members of court and the rampant gossip of commoners, waves of rumormongering jade a population already inured to scandal and misfortune.
Royal Rivals: A bitter rivalry between the ruling line of Ordranti princes and Caliphavso counts extends back to the earliest days of the country’s refounding. In past generations, distinct territories have limited conf licts between these powerful nobles, but now, their arenas are the same. Some claim Countess Carmilla orchestrated the capital’s relocation and Prince Aduard’s ascendance to the throne as steps in a sinisterly subtle decades-long coup. Others say the trenchant prince plans to remove his politically deft rival from power, seeking spies to catch the notoriously cunning noblewoman in some undeniable act of treason. Regardless of which noble ultimately comes out on top, the outcome promises to be both bloody and soon.
The Old City: Ustalav’s capital is merely the most modern settlement to control Lady’s Harbor and claim the name “Caliphas.” Through the ages, communities have risen and fallen upon the site, their ruins used as the foundations for new cities. Today, the people of Caliphas have little idea what lies beneath their streets, as new construction and expanding sewer tunnels regularly break into forgotten vaults or sepulchers. Workers, criminals, and constables who dare the sewers frequently don’t return, and those who do speak of dumping grounds for hundreds of corpses, living muck, and the ruby-eyed gentlemen of the sewer.