Rylan

Small minds dedicate what little space they possess to their limitations. Great minds dedicate their vastness to breaking limitations

— Grand Master of Compliance, Architect General Gravial Beydatar

The city-state of Rylan has a rather complex history with the rest of Tairos despite its relatively short existence compared to the other great nations. When most of the tribes of Humanity were slowly gathering in the Balmorian plains and Frozen North some scattered elsewhere, wishing to live independently. The deep forests and great lake of the western half of the continent were ideal for settlement - being far enough from Melanthris and Ghal Ankhar that they could chart their own destiny.
Unlike their isolationist kin in Frostmere, these settlers valued trade and the exchange of ideas. What these trader settlements had in abundance was trees. The timber in this region would eventually come to define its existence. The trees here were difficult to work because of their durability but the lumber they yielded could be made into enduring structures or products. Even the spears, bows, and arrows could be made from the unnaturally tall trees. It was not just the wood; the fruit here was shockingly bountiful. The hemp and snake plants made for powerful intoxicants and equally strong bowstring material. The animals that grazed off these treasures meant there were plentiful sources of food and hide, too. In these early days, there were groups that sought to take the woods from the trader tribes, but as tempting as the forest's gifts were, the region quickly earned a reputation as being a death trap for the uninvited. The tribes had allied themselves with the source of the forest's power, Totem Spirits of Tairos.

The Age of Green

A man named Rylan De Paz would come to prominence when he and his tribe made contact with the totem entity known as Brother Croatoan, a vastly powerful turtle spirit that dwelled in the deep woods of this region. From this being he and his tribe learned the secrets of druidism that had long been lost since the age of old Skyrir and its Golden God. Croatoan saw within Rylan a goodness and generosity that had not been seen since Golden God scoured the druidic circles from the land. It pained the turtle spirit deeply to remember the genocides that the Skyrirans launched against all he loved so dear, but he pushed himself to love mortals again, to love them enough to share what had been lost.
Rylan De Paz and his people carried the secrets of druidic magic to the other tribes within the western woods. As his teachings spread, he would manage to awaken many more slumbering totem spirits, too, all taking the same chance that Croatoan did, sharing what they knew and chancing to love mortals once more. Together, they defended the woods from outsiders and helped to unite the many tribes into one single nation. Rylan himself would pass a few decades after first meeting Croatoan but his followers made him into the patron saint of the wooden realm, attaching his name to everything. Rylan's Lake. Rylan's Wood. Rylan's City. All of this would, as time past, be shortened into what we see on maps today.

The Age of New Gods

The people of Rylan were welcoming to missionaries from the other tribes and nations of men who carried with them word of New Gods. This pantheon of beings seemed lost and scared to the totem spirits and they instructed their followers to show kindness rather than suspicion. In Rylan, gods and nature soon became part of a singular pantheon. The Rylanders were craftsmen, some of the greatest Tairos had ever seen so deities like Ssambrae The Clock Maker and Wynte Lord of the Moon were met with open arms. They cherished both nature and creature so Atel The Beast and Galidir The Hunter fit perfectly with their forms of worship. The prophecies of Arroc The Raven King were as mysterious and insightful as the engimas of the totems themselves. Malyse The Libertine and Nisaba The Lady Midnight's indulgences were easily woven into the existing reveries and harvest festivals that had been practiced for generations now. All were one; totem and god, guiding Rylan to a greater future.

The Age of Autumn

Rylan played its part during the Fang Crusades and the Plague of Undeath, aiding the The Grand Concordance of Tairos against its enemies dutifully but as a supporting player. The druids of the Rylan Woods rarely marched to war, their place was in maintaining balance, healing the land, feeding the hungry, and mending those touched by tragedy.
When the Fae and their Autumn Queen arrived in Tairos, just as the Rylanders had with the gods long ago, they welcomed the fae. They granted them parcels of land within their woods such as Konning Castle. They invited them into their city, into their great workshops and druidic circles. The fae and the Rylanders were close allies. For the fae, Rylan's way of life reminded them much of their original homeworld. The harvests, the dark majesty of the woods, nature spirits, simple ways... all of it was beloved to the fae so welcome to see here in Tairos.
Even the Queen's War and the truth of her purpose here wasn't enough for the Rylanders to abandon the allies and friends they'd made. Rylan was slow to support the Grand Concordance and even helped fleeing refugees, fae or otherwise, hide within the wooden realm. The Queen's Rebuke soon followed, and it struck Rylan twice as hard as other regions. Not only did it silence the gods but it weakened the totems as well, sending many of them back to slumber within the land. The fae they took in retreated as well, far away from any Tairosian, fearful of the fae hunters and pogroms that followed in the way of the Queen's War.
Rylan had opened its arms to so many, and time had taken each and every one of them away.

The Age of Metal

Rylan died with the Queen's Rebuke. It lost its connection to magic, to the teachings of the totems, the powers of the gods, and the kinship of the fae. Its many settlements were abandoned, much of its population fleeing for places like Ghal Pelor, Talbot, or Far Harbor. Those that remained crowded into the capital city of Rylan, huddled around what little resources could be gathered from the lake or the forest edge.
With each passing year more of Rylan's people perished or left until hope too abandoned the crumbling city. It was in that moment that a figure rose to prominence, a man named Marcal Salazar. Salazar was unknown to the druidic leaders of the city but in those dark times such was common. He claimed to be a traveler of Tairos and a student of ingenuity. Dwarven engineering, Carda's clockwork tinkering, and Balmoran smithery were all areas of expertise for Salazar but he was not simply parroting what he learned but blending them together into something new. Steamtech.
This new science was able to replicate much of what was lost with magic and faith. Oil and coal took the place of Manacite. Steam supplanted the mana of the Leylines. Cold steel replaced the protection of gods and totems. Salazar science was unlike anything that had been seen before, even to those privledged enough to have witnessed gnomish engineering. Rumors swirled that Marcal Salazar wasn't just a traveler of Tairos but from another time or another world. Where he was from mattered less than what he accomplished, returning hope to dying people.
His science came with new teachings as well, most notably a deep scorn for the gods who abandoned their people. Salazar directed the temples to be torn down for raw materials or gutted and transformed into workshops. Their symbols were shattered, their holy books burned, and the few remaining faithful were religated to the fringes of Rylan's second coming. The city's leaders were still believers in the druidic ways even if their patron spirits were slumbering. They reluctantly allowed the temples of the gods to be destroyed but they could not remain silent when Salazar hungry machines rolled off the assembly lines, their blades eager to cleave down trees or tear into the earth. The druidic leaders consulted with their oldest ally, Croatoan, asking for guidance and aid in slowing Salazar down so that a balanced solution could be explored. Croatoan, weakened like many of the other greater spirits, pulled on what reserves of might he had to entangle the foundries and jam the assembly lines so the Rylanders could speak.
Salazar tolerated the druids' reverence for their nature spirits so long as it didn't interfere with his work. When his factories were halted, he rallied the rest of the city around him, making the case for a future without the suffocating hand of gods and totems. The druids were appalled to find out that few Rylanders remained who cared about the old ways and the totems. Technology was their god now.
Salazar hatred for the divine now came to include the totem spirits as well so he did the only logical thing he could, kill them. His logging machines were armed with weapons, his followers became steampowered knights in his service, and one by one totem spirits were dragged from their slumbering place and put to death by saw blades. The Rylan of modern Tairos rose from the blood of Croatoan. He was the last of Salazar opposition and his murder was displayed for all to see, ripped apart by chain and gear in the shadow of the city's largest forge.

The Age of Profit

Modern Rylan is dominated by corporations. With Croatoan's death and the subsequent exile of all druidic sympathizers, Rylan's merchants, property owners, architects, and scientists ascended into leadership. Salazar, his lifespan increasingly prolonged by steamtech augments, organized a new government. One made up of the largest corporations in the city along with the greatest scientific and industrial minds. This new council would be known as the Governing Trust of Rylan, or simply The Trust. Profit and innovation would become the new twin greater gods of Rylan and the corporations the new pantheon.
Pleased with the state of creation, Marcal Salazar would leave his city in the hands of the Trust while he vanished into Tairos supposedly in search of new science. Rylan would continue to prosper, cleaving apart the forest for timber, coal and oil. Their oil platforms would come to dot Lake Rylan (and now the first of these platforms has appeared in Ghal Pelor too), their factory crawlers tramble both land and lake, their hospitals open their doors to all comers and churn out amaglamations of flesh and steel, all of this in service to the corporations. In turn, these corporations hand out loans, leases, and contracts like the old gods granted prayers.
The new religion of Rylan is work. Profit, science, and logic are the only virtues held dear, the only prayers spoken are benedictions for fair prices and sound science, and the only gods left to listen are Governing Trust.

Demographics

Rylan is primarily a human city much like nearby Frial or Talbot. Less than 3% of the city's population is made up of other species. The cultures of most other regions find the practices of Rylanders, specifically their desire for mechanical augmentation, to be abominable.

Government

The Governing Trust makes up the ruling element of Rylan. The exact companies that comprise the organization change somewhat frequently as their fortunates wax and wane. Entities like the Sabol-Raos Mining Corporation have been staples on the Trust since its beginning where upstart organizations such as Intrepid Defense are recent additions. Together they form a council of 9 voting members who push governing policy forward. However; each of these nine seats is tasked with overseeing specific specialty duties as well. For example, Casteles Forgeworks holds the Forgemaster seat which oversees protocol at all forges and smitheries in the city. Red Star Industries has held the Lardermaster's seat for the last decade and standardizes practices across all Rylan's factory farms. The Sabol-Raos Mining Corporation has held the Grandmaster of Compliance seat since the days of Marcal Salazar. This chair is responsible for rooting out corruption, dangerous thought, anti-science sentiment, and collective bargaining efforts.

Defences

The greatest defense the city state has is the woods. They're incredibly difficult for outsiders to navigate and all manner of creatures dwell in them that cannot be found elsewhere. Rumors of fae within the woods also helps deter raiders from venturing far. Should an enemy manage to push through all of that they will face the mechanized legions of Rylan

Industry & Trade

Rylan's profits and stability come from cross-continental sales of their timber. This is by far their largest industry and export because the rest of Tairos is ill-equiped to be able process things like coal or oil on a large scale, prefering instead to continue relying on dwindling supplies of manacite. A slow but growing additional vertical for profit is the establishment of Rylan import vendors within foreign cities. The more that Rylan products are adopted foreign markets the more demand there will be. Most of the corporations in Rylan are confident that this demand will never be able to be met by the backward and underdeveloped industries of foreigners. The few corporations that do harbor this fear have seasoned espionage wings that are able to effectively cripple foreign efforts to emulate steamtech.

Infrastructure

Rylan has much the same infrastructure as Ghal Pelor, the only difference is what powers it. Rylan operates entirely off of coal, oil, and steam to fuel systems like sewage and water management.
The city creates considerable amounts of waste though, something Ghal Pelor doesn't do. This waste is reprocessed several times over, an operation overseen by the Lardermaster. When neither a speck of nourishment or usable material can be made from the remaining waste it is generally disposed of the depths of decommissioned mines as overseen by Quarrymaster (often casually referred to as the Lord of the Pits).

Districts

The city is laid out into very organized sections, usually by industry. Residential zones are very tightly packed into highrise structures, made possible by strong Rylan timber and the abundance of metals hauled from the earth. More expensive properties can be rather luxurious, even with the industrial aesthetic charished by Rylanders. More affordable spots can be rather compact, the lowest quality of them sometimes having their own small factories inside.

Assets

Rylan has an abundance of valuable assets in the form of natural resources - timber, lake access, oil, coal, and ore

Guilds and Factions

Virtually none thanks to the efforts of Grandmaster of Compliance. Unionization, compeating political factions, and trade guilds are all viewed as enemies of progress. These types of groups are quickly stamped out, their leaders paid off, promoted, or disappeared.

Tourism

All of Rylan is a sight to behold for outsiders. There is a constant clang of machinery that blankets the city. Outsiders are welcome in Rylan, many industries exist purely to cater to them. The city believes the more who visit and bring word of the technology they saw here to their homes the easier it will be to open import markets there. Some of the city's tourism highlights include a floating hotel and casino that operates on Lake Rylan named the Queen of Gold. They do operate tours of the woods as well, showing off the nearby sites that were once precious to the old druidic orders. Many of the factories are dedicated to brewing ales and beer, compeating stiffly with businesses like Ackley Ales in markets where they overlap. Also, many "tourists" venture to Rylan seeking augment surgery to replace limbs or heal injuries that magic no longer can. This is particularly pleasing to the Trust and is key priority of the Grandmaster of Hospitality

Architecture

Rylan's unifying aesthetic is industrial and mechanical. They find complex workings to beautiful in their own way. This can be impeccably written formulas or arithmatic eteched into metal, masterfully built clocks, or wooden furniture built with exacting precision. In general, their arcitecture will include a great deal of gears, piping, and machinery - allowing for a building to serve functional purposes all the better.

Climate

Rylan's climate is a temerate one with moderate seasonal shifts. It has mild winters and modest summers. Some of Rylan's scientists have run models predicting a potential gradual warming of not just the regional temperature of all of Tairos' should expansion efforts spread across the continent but this not seen as a deterrent to progress. It is a welcome challenge for augment engineers and the Grand Master of Hospitality.

Type

Large city

Population

206,000

Inhabitant Demonym

Rylander