Marg
MARG THE CRIMSON, CITY OF SLAVERS
A city built on the slave trade, Marg is one of Thule’s richest city-states—and one of its most wicked. Here the coin of the realm is human misery, with slaves suffering under the lash until they’re shipped out across the rest of Thule. Many “enlightened nobles” in other city-states openly detest Marg’s slaves, even as they discreetly choose not to inquire where their house-slaves have come from. Marg is the city no one likes, but it’s also the city everyone secretly trades with. Many slaves spend only a few months in Marg, but for them each day is a lifetime of anguish and pain. Marg’s slavers scour Thule for barbarians, unwary travelers, and other victims to imprison. The newly enslaved come to Marg, where they’re trained (often cruelly) in a useful
skill, bought and sold (often several times), then shipped off to their new masters (often far from the slaves’ original
homes). The life of a slave in Marg is nasty and brutish, but rarely short. The slavers care enough about profits to
keep their slaves alive and suffering as long as possible. This city is essentially a massive slave encampment where powerful families bring newly “acquired” slaves for training, discipline, and resale.
CITY DESCRIPTION
Marg is a city of squat, stone buildings, many taking up entire city blocks. The first structures in the city were warehouses along the river, and the city spread out from the riverbanks based on the whims of the slaver princes, not any sort of central planning. The swampy ground near the city breeds mosquitoes and other insects, which gather in immense clouds to become an actual danger, not just an annoyance. To keep the insects at bay, Marg relies on the smoke from pyres built at strategic points throughout the city. (Slave labor brings a steady supply of fuel to the pyres, of course.) Those pyres put the entire city under a pall of smoke that keeps the mosquitoes away, and they give everything in the city a reddish cast. Some wonder whether the smoke is worse than the mosquitoes, but once they’ve seen the insect swarms darken the skies outside the city, they happily accept the discomfort of smoke inhalation.
Devrith Ward: Home to Marg’s oldest and richest merchant family, this district has a pyramidal fortress at its heart. The Devrith elders haven’t left their pyramid in years, using magic to direct their slaver expeditions out in the field, negotiate deals with faroff nobles, and scheme against rival slaver operations.
Freehold Palace: This ironically named fortress is home to the figurehead ruler of Marg, Kaz Vurin, a distant descendant of Vanadar, the Crimson Prince. This opulent castle has every luxury provided by the Crimson Council, because the slaver captains want Vurin too busy living in decadence to take an active role in leadership. Their scheme works; Kaz Vurin is disinterested in anything other than the novelties and riches brought as “tribute” by the slaver fleets. His 16-year-old niece, Neira Vurin, is much more interested in making Marg into something more than one big slave camp, but she wields no actual power .
. . yet.
Catacombs of Qurothaq: Even by Marg’s standards, the cruelty and torture delivered upon slaves in this dungeon are legendary. The Qurothaq family sells slaves of all ordinary sorts, but they also offer slaves intended for use in dark rituals, slaves transformed into something beyond human, and slaves who were once important people before they needed to “disappear” and were sent to Marg in chains.
College of Scribes: Marg educates many of its slaves, simply because an obedient scribe or seneschal fetches a higher price than an ordinary laborer. A cluster of towers near the city’s northern wall is home to the College of Scribes, where brighter slaves learn to read, write, and perform simple bookkeeping for courts and merchants across Thule. The instructors,
almost all free citizens, live comfortable lives and are free to pursue their own academic interests when they aren’t teaching slaves. The college is thus an unlikely but thriving center of academic learning in Marg.
Demographics
Marg is more than 85% human (60% slaves), with the rest being mostly Atlanteans whose families fell in with the slave trade centuries ago.
Government
Kaz Vurin is the city’s figurehead ruler, but the real power lies with the Crimson Council, the eleven leaders of the largest slaver operations. The four most prominent among them are Gerritt Calumnis, Bran Devrith, Serini Qurothaq, and Vuth Zoser.
Industry & Trade
Marg’s primary—and sole—export is slaves: everything from unskilled laborers to concubines to learned scribes to future ritual sacrifices. It imports food and luxuries from across Thule, all to keep the slaves fed and the masters happy.
Guilds and Factions
Gerritt Calumnis is the urbane leader of the Calumnis family. Gerritt sees slavery as “the family business,” and he doesn’t lose any sleep over the human misery he presides over. He’s pragmatic and hard-hearted, though unfailingly polite. Gerritt is also an accomplished warlock, though few have ever seen him demonstrate his powers.
Sankra Rumani is the high priestess of Asura in Marg—and consequently Marg’s most wanted criminal. She’s frequently morose, because her small network of allies is only an annoyance to the slavers, not a true threat. Having to choose a tiny fraction of slaves to liberate breaks Sankra’s heart, and she’ll listen eagerly to anyone with a scheme for hurting the slaver families.
Gree the Sage is ostensibly an instructor at Marg’s College of Scribes, but he’s fallen under the sway of the Great Old One Yog-Sothoth. Under directions only Gree understands, he has assembled a mystery cult within the college and is using enchantment magic to direct the construction of new pyres in a specific constellation across the city. When the network of pyres is complete,
Gree believes Yog-Sothoth will reward Marg with “The Great Scintillation.”
History
“THE ATLANTEAN SHAME”
Marg grew into a city from a collection of human merchant warehouses on the fringe of Atlantis’s colony on Thule—unassuming until an Atlantean exile, Vanadar the Crimson Prince, seized the city in 1114 AR. The Atlantean settlers needed cheap labor cheaper than shipping help all the way from Atlantis, at any rate. Under Vanadar’s guidance, human merchant companies such as Devrith, Calumnis, and Qurothaq started providing indentured servants to the new arrivals on Thule. As Atlantean conquests expanded, the period of indenture grew longer, and eventually Marg’s merchants started kidnapping entire tribes from the nearby wilderness.
Dealing with Marg was considered uncouth by the Atlantean elites, both because of the exile Vanadar’s presence and because of the slave trade; Atlantean philosopher and historian Graela Tuur called Marg’s very existence “the Atlantean shame.” But as the Atlanteans pushed north and east from Katagia and Devilsun Bay, someone had to till the earth on Atlantean plantations and carry supplies to the advancing Atlantean armies. Marg grew rich on Atlantean ambitions as it supplied those “someones.”
The slaver princes of Marg, gathered into a Crimson Council of eleven wealthy captains, took the chaos of Atlantis’s downfall in stride, expanding their clientele to include more nobles from the human city-states that grew in strength as the Atlanteans
retreated to Katagia. Nearly every city-state buys slaves from Marg, though some are more open about it than others. Marg doesn’t count any city-states as rivals because all of them want the supply of slaves to continue unabated . . . but that doesn’t mean Marg has no enemies. Followers of Asura want to see Marg burned to the ground, and many a barbarian tribe
has long memories and would love to sack the city to avenge their kidnapped kin. Among many Kalayan, Dhari, and Nar tribes, nothing unites a barbarian horde faster than a promise to “burn the city of slavers to the ground.”
Founding Date
1114 AR
Alternative Name(s)
City of Slavers, The Atlantean Shame, Land of Smoke and Sorrow
Type
Large city
Population
35000
Location under
Included Locations
Owner/Ruler
Owning Organization
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