Hercinia
Hercinia is an independent and prominent city-state of the Free Marches that resides in central, eastern Thedas on the tall coastal cliffs bordering the Amaranthine Ocean. Natives to the city are known for holding a defiant, anti-institutional sentiment and for being defensive of their cultural practices. Many sailors tell stories of their voyages passing the city-state, often mentioning a fortress of legendary status named Breaker's Fall.
The city-state is currently in an economic down-turn.
Government
The city-state has three branches of government: one which creates laws and judges citizens against those laws, one which enforces those laws and deals with those who break them, and one which stringently protects the cultural traditions and history of the Hergarran people. While many rulers would see this system as contrived, this system exists to separate the power of government into multiple different bodies where each body also has checks against corruption within the others.
The cultural branch is the most powerful, comprised mostly of elder Hergarrans. These individuals task themselves with ensuring that outside cultural influence does not affect the culture of the city-state or its people in a strong enough way that they'd stray from their Hergarran roots. This broad reaching purpose manifests in many different ways, ranging from the banning of certain foreign cultural traditions to giving money to floundering businesses owned by those of Hergarran bloodlines to sponsoring artists wanting to create art which captures the long history of the Hergarran people.
This became the form of government after Antiva's wealthy ended their soft occupation of the city following the Hergarran Insurrection.
Defences
One of the greatest historical constructions of Thedas that still exists in the modern age is Breaker's Fall, a massive fortress which exists on the outskirts of Hercinia. Breaker's Fall is one of the strongest coastal fortresses in all the world, rising up from the sea higher than the cliffside it borders. It's surrounded by a massive outer curtain wall, one hundred feet high and forty feet thick on its thinnest side and nearly eighty feet thick on its seaward side. The central aspect of Breaker's Fall is the singular, colossal tower that lays at its center.
Each stone making up this fortress is placed so perfectly that the wind and harsh waves can find no weakness. Hergarran legends tell that Breaker's Fall was built by a legendary figure known as Guininein the Defiant. As stories go, Guininein declared a war against the sea and wind after a lifetime of it taking loved ones from him. When his wife ended up dying to a storm and leaving him with an infant daughter, he built a fortress to protect her. It was not long before the unforgiving coast line was hit by an onslaught of storms that sent every stone and brick comprising the fortress into the ocean. Guininein ended up raising five more fortress, each larger and more formidable than the last, but each continued being destroyed by storms. The massive seventh fortress, Breaker's Fall, was able to endure everything the winds and sea could throw at it.
Some versions of this story say the Guininein sought the help of a powerful mage when constructing his final fortress, having them weave magical wards into every inlaid stone. Most native Hegarrans decry such accusations and claim them as ways of undermining the history of their people.
During times of terrible storms or flooding, the citizens of Hercinia are allowed into Breaker's Fall while they weather out the storming. The fortress can supposedly house over 20,000 people within it and the tunnels that run underneath it into the adjacent cliffs.
History
The name for this city-state derives from an ancient story told by the Hergarran people, centering on a species of bird native to the region. Ask any child within Hercinia and they'll tell you excitedly about encounters with such a creature. Often what you'll hear is that the hercinia is a nocturnal bird whose feathers glow so brightly in the dark that they illuminate paths for weary travelers. They are notoriously hard to catch, if not impossible.
The most common citing of a hercinia is in folklore, where one was an ally of the tribal people living in the area Hercinia now occupies. The bird possessed the ability to, with a single glance, determine if you would live or die by a disease currently afflicting you. If the hercinia looked away from the individual, the ill's fate was sealed and they would indeed die by the sickness. If the bird did not look away, the individual would be cured. Through its gaze alone, the sickness was taken up into the bird which then flew towards the sun where the malady would be burned up and destroyed. Sometime later, a new hercinia would come and ally itself with the tribe. A common child's tale tells that the last hercinia to ever help this tribe was forced to against its will, and after it flew to the sun and burned up no other hercinia ever came again.
A illustration of a hercinia bird, found in a beastiary
Breaker's Fall
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