Cities of Mercy and Wrath

Known for:

• The Tryst

• Uniquely blended cuisine

• Interesting fashion trends

City of Mercy:

• High-society parties and gatherings

• Nuanced social structures

City of Wrath:

• Crafts of all types

• Vast marketplaces with continent-wide goods

• Artificing

The center of Ostelliach where the joint capitals, The Cities of Mercy and Wrath, marry at The Tryst, is a land of water, waste, privilege, and pity.

Demographics

The City of Wrath is, ironically enough, the kinder of the two cities, where the impoverished, the second-chancers, the downtrodden and abandoned earn their keep mining or building, heads down and communities their refuge.
The City of Mercy, where more privileged families hold court, is known for its vitriol and general distaste for riffraff, sitting in high esteem on the only green land between the rivers Grave and Charity.
Living in the capital cities is not a choice, but rather a selection.
For the City of Wrath, this is a work detail assignment (seen as a blessing for someone struggling to afford life in another city) or a punishment, as in those endentured servants in The Tryst or attending to the needs of those in the City of Mercy.
For those in the City of Mercy, the selection is based on proving social status through a long, convoluted application process. The citiy does not rely on antiquated blood tie judgements for merit so much as provable impact, so there are indeed philanthropists, business owners, and community pillars in the city's ranks. However, the have's and have-not's all agree on one thing: the right familial ties certainly make it a lot easier to become a philanthropist, business owner, or community pillar and the bigger the endeavour one supports, the more people they have to trample to elevate it above the rest to catch people's eyes.
There is no great propensity for one type of species to dominate either area, with goblin nobles and elven day laborers as likely as any other, and the cities are generally seen as melting pots where even in the snobbiest elite classes it's not about what you are but what you've done, who you know, and what you have.

High Societal Gatherings

In terms of social gatherings such as galas and balls, this leads to a general elephant-in-the-room handwaving to social graces, where one person's social upset is another person's standard behavior and everyone pretends that no one is horrifically offended. Thus, despite being a generally-unfriendly and rude culture in the upper elite crust, it is also surprisingly accommodating and accepting in ways one might not accept.

"Sure, it seems rude to ME that they're putting their feet on the table and picking at them with a fork, but I'd rather use that fork myself for dinner than embarass myself by implying they're uncouth. I simply do not have the time to keep up with Orcish table etiquette to know what's what and I need that business deal to go through!"

Lady Embergreen Lashow to her entourage during the annual Starlit Soiree

Now, this collective agreement to not hold each other accountable leads to a good amount of ribbing and manipulation in itself, with business rivals prodding and annoying each other while claiming "in my culture, this is normal and acceptable, whatever do you mean?" and clutching pearls in faux innocence. Many social gatherings held by private entities (dinner parties at a specific house, rules of engagement in a particular business) have ground rules of etiquette. However, these ground rules are agonized over privately and revised often, with some of the most prominent socialites keeping a retainer of social investigators whose entire role is understanding the ebbs and flows of what is faux pas in one culture, house, or species versus another.

Cultural Dispersion

Given the highly varied nature of people coming in and out of the cities, the different types of people represented in gatherings, and the many ambassadors bringing cultures from far and wide, fashion and expression are also a mixed bag in the capital. Oftentimes, citizens will pick up traits they enjoy from different travelers they meet or things they've heard about at the marketplace, creating a hodgepodge of random fashions, art styles, slang and lingo, music, food, and culture unlike anything elsewhere. For instance, even cuisine or fashion named after a particular area is different if it's in the cities, no matter how "authentic" it claims to be.
Much like the mixing of faux pas of the high elite fancy gatherings, this fact is rarely acknowledged, leading to some who come into the city fresh or leave it after a long time feeling an odd sort of displacement with their home culture. Being "From the Cities" represents being a cultured individual of some fortune and privilege, but also an outsider that only other "From the Cities" people could understand.

Government

The twin cities represent the capital of Ostelliach but mostly in location/prestige only. There is no central ruling government over the entire continent, with the capital serving more as a meeting place for different ambassadors and unions to converge.
However, the Cities themself are governed by councils annually elected by those with at least 1 Crescent, with the City of Mercy being called the "high court" and the City of Wrath being called the "low court" though both have (theoretically) equal representation in matters of governance. Each council holds 9 people with 3 year term limits (before at least 2 years of non-council serving before campaigning again), and matters are decided by a 2/3 majority. The Tryst's military League is brought in for tie-breakers or matters of city security.
Petitions, protests, and grievances are tolerated at the civic center in either of the city, though generally protests are held in the City of Mercy to annoy or disrupt (with little chance of actually accomplishing things) and protests are held in the City of Wrath to open actual negotiations (like with another union or guild).

Industry & Trade

The Crescent

The twin cities accept standard gold, silver, platinum etc. but also employ a unique token shared between them: the Crescent. The Crescent is not equivalent to a gold exchange, but instead is a social currency that represents amount of time lived in the city, with each Crescent equalling one year. For more information about this, see The Crescent.

Export and Import

The cities primarily are known for the export of crafted goods, artificed inventions, or other things made by (theoretically) skilled hands. To have a "From the Cities" label on a good generally is a mark of quality and businesses strive to be located there in order to get their goods into the most hands possible.
As for imports, the cities have no room for any sort of mining, agriculture, or cultivation, thus import almost every raw material for these creations. The trade routes in and out of the cities are extremely busy day and night keeping the heart of Ostelliach beating.

Occupations and Roles

City of Mercy

There are the general "higher" status roles, such as:

• Business owners and managers

• Nobles of some status or other

• Organization heads, faction representatives, government ambassadors

But there are also a huge collection of jobs dedicated to keeping the city itself running. These "lower" status roles are usually filled by people who commute to work in the city, or pay for inns in the Dust Quarter during the week, since not everyone is up for the 5 mile commute between cities.

• Sanitation workers such as janitors, cleaning staff, waste disposal

• Security

• Secretaries, documentarians, envoys of all types

City of Wrath

The City of Wrath is home to an incredible number of merching and crafting guilds, as it is a hub of commerce with a direct route to the highest wealth in the City of Mercy as well as many trade routes to elsewhere in Ostelliach.
This includes, but certainly is not limited to:

• Smiths

• Tailors and Cobblers

• Artificers and inventors (especially given the relative proximity to the Forged Basin and the number of wealthy people in the City of Mercy that enjoy keeping a quirky inventor on retainer)

• Clerks overseeing the goings-on of the cities or inter-city affairs

• General daylaborers employed at The Tryst

There are also a number of adventuring contractors and guilds for hire in the City of Wrath, given how many people come in and out of the area; most adventurers know if they're looking for work to check the twin cities, though this of course breeds fierce competition and many higher-paying jobs are meted only to people who have Crescents to show they're "knowable."
(Crescents for those who have migratory jobs are given based on some equation factoring in time renting/owning in the cities versus percentage of a given year spent away on business and how important to the cities the businesses are, with traveling ambassadors or caravaners bringing things into the city given favor over a random adventurer.)

Infrastructure

Of particular note are the great bridges that connect the plateau the cities sit on, a plateau that over the years has slowly risen higher and higher as the rivers Grave and Charity erode the land around them lower and lower.
In addition, all of the smiths and furnaces belching smoke day and night in the City of Wrath funnel through a shared network of pipes and ducts installed underneath the city, shunting all of the worst noxious fumes over to the great flue of the AHARRG Guild Hall hearth, so that the smoke is mostly controlled and can be sent out of the way.

Guilds and Factions

Rumor has it that the underbelly of the twin cities hides both thieves and murderers. But you wouldn't know about that, would you?

Architecture

City of Wrath

The City of Wrath is a pragmatic one, a city of survival, so the buildings there are known for doing what they need to do. Typically, they are squat with a maximum of 3 stories to combat the pervasive wind the City Plateau sees; many people live in hostels, inns, or other once-temporary lodgings converted now into homes with shared bathrooms and other amenities. Others build family apartments, usually above their shop or smith.
The City of Wrath is not known for being a pretty one, with most of the buildings at least a little soot-smudged from the artificing and smithing going round-the-clock. That said, people of this "lower" city are known for elaborate murals advertising their businesses, lovingly commissioned and maintained as the pride and joy of one business or another. In addition, most homes have at least one plant in the windowsill (often several), some say to clean the air.

City of Mercy

Almost as a sort of rebellion against the pragmatism of its poorer counterpart, the City of Mercy sees "gaudy" as a compliment. Architects in this area tend to take from whatever trends are big in other cities, heedless of if they make sense in this location, so many of the structures are large, opulent, and completely nonsensical in their mismash of different textures, colors, facets, building materials, and shapes. It is not uncommon to see construction on a nearly annual basis as a family decides one facet is "out" and another is "in," often largely in response to something a neighbor said or did with their own home.
In contrast to the homes of this city, the commercial buildings (the boutiques, the financial district, the government sector) are sought to be kept as crisp white as possible, lacking any hint of color other than the crest of the business flown via wood (if you're trying to be a laughing-stock) or metal hanger in the front. These buildings defy the location's wind by being as tall as is feasible, with the average being about 5 stories to be traversed via magical elevator systems.
(This desire to go higher and higher often leads to wars between rival companies seeking to have the better view by being taller than their neighbor; every 5 years or so, a building has some sort of accident or collapse due to this reckless assent.)

Geography

Ostelliach's primary river, the Broadlysle River splits in the center of the land, dividing into the Rivers of Grave (north) and Charity (south), before rejoining approximately thirty miles east at the Sullen Tributary. In the space between these rivers, the City of Wrath (north) and the City of Mercy (south) nestle, with the massive stone fortress of The Tryst forming a triangle in this flat plateau of hard-packed earth.

Climate

The entire City Plateau features relatively stable climate of arid, mild summers and breezy, snowy winters. There is little to shield the plateau, so it sees its fair share of wind. The rivers on either side tend to keep the heat suppressed but invite plenty of snow (that mercifully is cleared away by said wind quickly enough).

Founding Date

181 PB

Type

City

Location under

City Plateau

Included Locations

• A Fortunate Look
• AHARRG Guild Hall
• Boravilla's Baubles
• Eufloria
• Katallo & Katarin's Antique, Artifact, Artifice, and Assorted Oddity Assessments
• Third Place
• Where Labor Lapses to the Quiet Breath

Characters in Location

• Gleddy Goodvine
• Ourelios Heia Eefissa
• Piras
• Zedron Eefis

Related Reports (Primary)

• Session 1: The Bungeon Dungeon Sungeon Mungeon Rungeon
• Session 2: Where Chests are not Chests & Rats are not Rats
• Session 20: Everyone's Got a MILC
• Session 22: Touchy Feely
• Session 3: Scrutin' & Scroungin' & Baby Mimic Snugglin'
• Session 4: The Gang Gains Substantial Responsibility
• Session 7: The Rizzbot Strikes Again

Related Historical Events

• 145 AB
  AHARRG Founded
• 181 PB
  Founding of Cities of Mercy and Wrath