Hara

City of Healers
Seat of Grannus
Where the Medicine is Made

Day 113
I hate travelling to Hara. For one thing, it takes a full week to cross the desert surrounding it in any direction. What arsehole thought it was a good idea to build a hospital out there? Even worse, you can see the city almost the whole time as you cross! The damn salt flats are SO DAMN FLAT, you spend a good five days staring at the Morning Arch which never seems to get any closer as you approach. Not to mention the heat, the salt stinging your eyes and mouth, and the fucking salt-flies.
Then there are the Harans themselves, with their judging eyes watching you haul up the prisoners. Why's it my fault? They're the ones who offer a bounty on slaves! I'm supposed to turn down an honest living because they sneer at slavery? If we were in the Southlands, their whole damn city would be under the control of the brutal southern kings. And I'm freeing them, aren't I? I'm bringing the wretches to be bought in Hara, where they're freed! I could be taking them across the sea, for a much higher price! They ought to be thanking me for saving their worthless lives!
But no, it's the Harans who receive all that praise. "Oh thank you Isangoma, you've saved me, you've saved me!" What about me? How about "Thank you for dragging my moaning ass across the salt-flats and keeping me alive until the monks swoop in to take all the credit"?
And after all that, there's not one fucking pub in the whole city.

- Excerpt from the journal of Hieronymus the Slaver, 985th year of Enlightenment

Demographics

There are only two true groups to distinguish between in Hara. The Healers and the Infirm. As there is almost no economy in Hara, the distinction is mainly ideological. The population of healers is made up mostly of Morning Monks and occasional envoys from the medical communities of other races, who live in massive dormitories known as the Residence. The healers' entire lives are dedicated to service of those who come to Hara for medical attention - the infirm. At any given time, the infirm population of Hara sits somewhere around twenty-thousand souls, comprised of injured, diseased or insane members of all races and species. The infirm are housed in stark, humble suites which contain only a bed, a wash-basin, and the tools or medical apparatus necessary for their treatment.

Government

Haran government consists of two halves. On one side, responsible for the medical operations of the city and the management of the people who live there, the Dawnbreak Council consists of twelve of the most senior or well-respected members of the Morning Monks and their allied organizations. To the Council are brought all logistical or ethical concerns, and their wizened guidance is enacted as law. Only the Dawnbreak Council have the authority to name a healer Isangoma, the title given to Morning Monks who have made a life-long commitment to the Haran tradition, or to strip that title from one found undeserving. The Council is presided over by the High Abbot, the oldest living Isangoma.
On the other side of things is the Emperor's representative in Hara - the High Surgeon. Trained in Imperial methods, the High Surgeon is occasionally called on to perform ghastly procedures on those whose injuries are of the insidious, internal variety. While the Morning Monks have many ways and methods of treating even the most horrendous of wounds or conditions, their commitment to non-violence is iron-clad. Such is their reticence to cause harm that they refuse to cut their patients in order to operate on their innards. In addition to his medical duties, the High Surgeon has ultimate financial authority in Hara, awarding funds from the Emperor's coffers based on the needs of the city as he deems them exigent.
There is very little crime in Hara, as the city's purpose precludes any material wealth, and those in the city are often in no condition to cause problems for anyone. However on the rare occasion that a patient becomes violent or marauders harass the population, the pacifistic Morning Monks rely on the Emperor's protection, as they will not even take up arms to defend themselves. As such, there is a small Imperial presence in a garrison just outside the city - the inglorious Haran Protectorate - a punishment detail to which all troublemakers, mutineers or cowards from the Imperial army are sentenced.

Defences

A large stonework wall surrounds the city, allowing the Haran Protectorate to concentrate their defense on the choke-point entrances when necessary.

Industry & Trade

Though the Morning Monks flat out refuse payment for their medical services, they do participate in one important industry - the production of medicines for use across the Known World. Their remedies demand a high price outside the city walls, and despite the Harans themselves refusing to engage in true commerce, the infrastructure of the city is dependent on the boons granted by the High Surgeon for production of such goods.

Infrastructure

The City of Hara developed haphazardly, functionally, as the original hospital grew beyond its capacity. Behind the city wall - a recent addition itself, constructed by the Empire in the 823rd year of Enlightenment as the first action of the Haran Protectorate - is a maddening labyrinth of roads and doors, which only the Harans themselves seem capable of successfully navigating. Among the sundry wards and pavilions dedicated to particular treatments exist: burn wards; trauma units; birthing suites; apothecaries; long-term care houses; cursebreakers; venom priests, and myriad other specialists, all built or rehoused as necessary to serve the ever-expanding population of infirm. The Morning Monks also treat injuries or malaise which affect the mind, offering help for those affected by mental disorders and diseases. This therapy takes place mainly in the Temple of Tranquility, near the very center of the city, where the original oasis water still springs from the sand.
Unfortunately, there exist in the world diseases so virulent that their exposure cannot be risked. Beneath the ground, stygian quarantine chambers contain those unfortunate souls afflicted with those most horrible of conditions. Despite the ungodly demise sure to any who enter the forsaken catacombs, the Monks refuse to leave the quarantined to their fate. Even in the black horror beneath the city, there are disciples of Grannus ministering to the sick. When a Morning Monk feels their end is approaching, they perform a ritualized farewell ceremony with those closest to them, and then go beneath, carrying on their duties until they succumb to the diseases trapped underground.

History

At the outset of the Age of Enlightenment, just decades after the sealing of the Universitas, an Imperial citizen named Cecil Hollister found himself destitute and alone after the death of his family at the poxy hands of the Trivellian Epedemic. Near mad with grief, Hollister blamed the Empire's merciless quarantine procedures for his loss, and decried the crippling expenses demanded by the practitioners of medicine, which had cost him his family's meager savings and a lifetime of debt beyond. Disillusioned with Imperial society and life in general, Hollister wandered off from the capital, exhausting his meager supplies in a southward trudge. As he came upon the entrance to the arid Flatlands of Pur he continued undaunted, intending to die 'neath the heat of the sun and so join his beloved in the Eternal River.
Few men last longer than a week out on the salt flats, even with adequate supplies. Between the oppressive heat, the total lack of moisture, and vicious desert predators, the Purrish salt flats are a brutally hostile environment to most terrestrial races. As he wandered, Hollister mused about the medical community of his dreams. Where the only priorities were care and compassion, rather than success rates and financial burden. He dreamed of a place where the wounded and diseased might be saved, where their worries might be assuaged and their passings eased. Within his mind, Hollister began to lay the foundations of a society unlike any fathomed in the Known World. A society wherein he might not have lost...everything.
Cecil Hollister did not last a week on the flats. He did not last two weeks, or three. Cecil Hollister wandered the desert for forty days and forty nights. He would later refer to this period as the "Walking Dream". At a certain point between exhaustion and death, Hollister began to hear a voice in his head, urging him onward. As his weathered body stumbled, his mind was renewed, as if a cool spring of clarity had been uncovered within him. Though he wandered without direction, without true sense, he pressed on at the voice's urging. And at dawn on the forty-first day, Cecil Hollister witnessed a miracle.
As he fell for the thousandth time, slumping onto his exhausted knees, Hollister wondered if he had truly gone mad, and the voice he heard was only his own hallucination. He wondered how he was still alive, having not eaten or drank since the outset. He cried out "Am I to wander eternity? Have I ventured beyond the gaze of Death itself in this place? Will I ever see them again?"
And the answer came as a voice from all around him. "Yes, Cecil. You will see them again."
Above his kneeling form, Cecil then beheld a glorious white luminescence, brighter than the sun but softer somehow. Enraptured, Hollister knelt while the light poured into him. As the light surrounded and pervaded his form, he came to understand that his pilgrimage had attracted the attention of a godling. Grannus, as it named itself, had dwelt in the center of the flats since time immemorial, undisturbed for centuries. Though it was only a fragment of what it once was, its power was still beyond anything Hollister could comprehend. Grannus granted Hollister visions of the past, showing him how the passage of eons had freed the salt flats from an ocean that once flooded the entire landscape. It showed him how some of the waters receded to form the young oceans he knew today, and how some became trapped beneath the flats within subterranean aquifers. It showed him how one of these aquifers was only just below the surface of the ground he knelt upon. Then it showed him the future - just a glimpse - a future which included the medical utopia Hollister had envisioned.
Moved by the genuine compassion it could sense in Hollister's soul, Grannus expended the last of its flickering life-force to consecrate the area. All around Hollister, the ground began to rumble and change. A wellspring pricked up through the sand between his knees, bubbling into a puddle, then a pond - an oasis in the midst of the desert. Where the earth was sandy and barren, it became full and green with fragrant grasses, and a tiny grove of trees sprung into adulthood in front of Hollister's bewildered eyes. The trees brought forth large, nutritious fruit, and the water was clear and clean. As the being that was Grannus transformed into new life, Hollister's vision took shape. He spent the next twenty years of his life tending and planting the grove, creating an orchard and a forest where once was only hard-packed desert. And though his encounters with others were extremely rare, word slowly began to spread of the miraculous oasis in the middle of the desert.
Thirty years following Hollisters' Walking Dream, nearly a hundred pilgrims had found their way to the Grove of Grannus, dedicating their lives to the pure pursuit of simplicity and compassion which Hollister taught. With the help of his disciples, Hollister began construction of the healing center he had envisioned. The trees of the grove became the timbers used to build the first care-houses. And as the first patients found their way across the flats, the fruits borne by those trees became the first meals served to them.
At the end of his life, as Hollister closed his eyes over a tiny but bustling village of healers, he smiled and said to his aides - "My daughter would be proud. I give this place her name, that she may live forever as compassion itself."

Type

City

Population

~15,000 Healers
~20,000 Infirm

Owning Organization

The Morning Monks