Kloster Storkenfels

Kloster Storkenfels is a demonic city-state in the Near Umbra, the "sleeping mirror" of the plane of Waking Materia. Aside from Epitaph, it is perhaps the most familiar-seeming of demonic settlements in terms of Waking architecture. Material visitors tend to report a sort of horrific nostalgia, as if they had visited Kloster Storkenfels many times before, and not under pleasant circumstances. The Umbral Encyclopedia of the Dragon Knights of Tallarax calls this feeling saudade.

Geography

See also: Kloster Storkenfels Image Gallery (External)

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Storkenfels is a vast mess of disorganized warrens, halls, temples, apartments, bridges, towers, ramparts and more, in a dizzying array of architectural styles that are vaguely, unsettlingly familiar but never outright human. It is a dangerous place but one of the least alien of the Near Umbral cities, allowing Waking travelers to make business there if they're brave enough.

Society

There are three surviving, First Age attestations of the city-state, one from the Umbral Encyclopediæ of The Dragon Knights of Tallarax and two from journals of roving Dreamshepherds. Both records describe the citizenry of Kloster Storkenfels as generally hostile to Material travelers. Attempts to communicate verbally usually fail; it is assumed the resident demons communicate via gesture, scent, telepathy or some other nonverbal method. As such, hostilities may be due to the difficulty in communicating proper deference to the locals.

It is known Kloster Storkenfels is not a signatory of The Old Accords, which ban the use of dead and dreaming souls in chattel slavery, and seem to have chilly relations with the Umbral provinces that do, like Orms-by-Gorr and Sarkoldu'un-Imathratep. It is thought that signatories of the Accords also agree to some level of boycott against soul slavers.

Observers have noticed loose similarities between the architecture of Kloster Storkenfels and the towering hive city of Dis. Both are also famous abstainers to the Accords. It is possible there is some shared ancestry between the two.

Banner art credit: Ian Miller

Type

Geopolitical, City-state