Maldum
Maldum the Stern, Maldum the Unforgiving, the City of Brands
Maldum, the capital city of Hexton, is often called the Stern, the Unforgiving, or the City of Brands. With a current population of 26,000 people, this settlement was established as a Jotun trading post in 797, and it has never received a charter belonging outright to the Palatine Duke of Hexton. Maldum’s crest is two maces and a great sword on a field of argent and purpure.
Maldum is both a port town and a bridge town, and it lies in the Arch Barony of Maldum, the County of Hexton, the Palatine Dutchy of Hexton, in the High Kingdom of Rhonce. It stands where the Griffin River empties into the Arlin Sea. It is surrounded by agricultural land, as well as major slave interchanges and pits reserved for pit fighting. Maldum connects to Idorn to the west by Marling Street, Arlton to the northeast by Marling and Never St, and Dhasmyrr to the north by northeast by a secondary road. Maldum also is connected to Arlton to the northeast by a combination of the Dorwin and Shurm Rivers.
The city’s infrastructure looks a bit like a jumbled heap and it is in a perpetual state of poor repair. Approaches to the city gates are lined with hanging trees, gallows, drunkards barrels, stocks, breaking wheels, and gibbets, and some of these include decaying corpses. Human and animal bones are strewn about the approach to the city. The city gates all have bull horns carved into their lintels. Indeed, the bull’s horn motif is throughout the city. While the walls and towers are mismatched and esthetically displeasing, Maldum has never been broken by siege. Maldum’s streets and alleys are all unpaved. The city’s cathedral, devoted to their patron saint Ertur the Smith, and its other churches are not up-to-date or decorated, in line with the citizenry’s penchant for practicality and stoicism.
Malduum Castle, aka the Stacks, is a moated, fortified manor. It is a huge, rambling building without grace or style and it was built over time by accretion. Much of the house is in ruin, and only about a fifth is currently inhabited. Portions of Maldum Castle contain deadspace traps (see High Strangeness). Hundreds of victims have perished in the oubliettes beneath the castle, and that may account for the many aggressive ghosts that wander its halls today.
Maldum’s citizens pride themselves on stoicism, practicality, and a healthy disdain for ceremony, pomp, and adornment. This is all true, but they are also are hard-eyed, with all the empathy beaten out of them, and hardened against the suffering of others. Most education in Hexton involves ritual beatings as a memory aid. This makes students cruel and devoid of empathy, but their memories are sharp. City industry includes the leather crafts and tanning, poppy juice, and specialty liquors (Hextonian Red and Hextonian White). Saurian leather, sourced from the reptile men in the Dithmurge Swamp, is also processed and sold (much favored as boots). Slavery is legal here, as is pit fighting, and slave markets and auctions abound. Slaves are stored in crude, open-air cages. It is notable that Maldum has an infestation of shadow people lurking about.
The infamous Temple of Despair abuts the city. Now in ruins and grown over, this was a soaring tower constructed by the 10th century alchemist Kenneth deWick, aka Dark Rune. No one knows what he delved into, but the tower was destroyed by a series of monumental lightning strikes and subsequent fires. It was never rebuilt, and Dark Rune is believed to have perished in the conflagration.
Maldum’s most infamous historical citizen was Tankred, the Red Reaver. He is celebrated in Hexton as a national hero, but in greater Aorlis he is remembered as a butcher. He flayed or spiked tens of thousands of victim, and his wife Matilda lived on a steady diet of maids she murdered. Tankred was a giant of a man. His ghost is now bound to the Hextonian ax of state, which now bears his name, Tankred the Red Reaver.
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