Mage guilds love Hybris. It has magic, but no gods. So they can operate freely there... in fact, because they're powerful, they might well consider themselves the effective government.
In a city of war refugees, what kind of government do we have?
First, there's the Stranger, the really powerful warrior who originally led the first refugees here. Prior to that, Hybris had been completely closed and apparently abandoned. Either immortal or just really slow aging, the Stranger still rules a decent chunk of the city by force of arms and personality. He has a brigade of lieutenants who have pledged to his cause and help patrol the area. His rules are simple... don't make trouble and all actual refugees are welcome here, regardless of what side they were on. He insists on a strict neutrality, making it a crime to refuse to do business with someone.
He's afraid that, left on their own, the populace will break up into gangs until the largest one drives the others out. After that, Hybris will no longer be arguably neutral... instead, it'll be on one side or another and either that god will send troops to secure the city or one of the others will invade to wipe it out.
When Arthalcus seized Hybris as his new capitol, the Stranger agreed to publicly support their new lord to prevent bloodshed. When Arthalcus vanished and his whole temple was laid waste, he was quick to renounce that and retook control of the city overnight. A few people speculate that he had a plan all along and picked the spot for Arthalcus's temple... that he knew that there's some terrible Devourer or something else there that would eat the tyrannical deity. The Stranger refuses to comment.
I really need a name for this guy. There's no way he'd go by "Stranger", even if that's my conception of him. Really, he's the equivalent of the main character from Planescape: Torment, now sick of the blood wars. Without a Sigil to live in, he's making his own. A good name. Maybe just Adam. I think he used "Adahn" as his alias a lot... that might be kind of cheesy, though, especially if he resembles the main character in other ways (the belt of skulls will go, though).
Priesthoods aren't too welcome here. They're tolerated, but not loved, and open prostelytizing is seen as "making trouble". They mostly serve their followers and attempt to convert anyone who asks them about their church. In order to encourage that, the churches often offer services based on what sort of magic they can perform most easily. Getting the service often entails sitting through a sermon or other "hard sell". Several churches were established solely to keep an eye on Hybris for their deity, so their leaders tend to be more powerful and influential than you'd expect in a minor, backwater realm.
Basically, churches here were founded to 1) serve believers who fled here, 2) keep an eye on Hybris and lay the groundwork for a potential takeover or 3) keep an eye on the churches of type 2 and make sure that they can't pull it off.
The mage guilds are here because of the lack of gods, mostly. It's a good place for a powerful mage to come, since there aren't any gods here to boss them around. They bring apprentices, take on new ones, and build big, impressive abodes for themselves. The guilds vary as to how much they mess with local government. Some are very insular, and others are constantly meddling. Some pointless but very bitter rivalries exist between some schools, mostly ones that teach very similar arts. You might expect a school of Fire mages to hate Water mages, but they'd probably have more of a rivalry with a school of Heat mages if one existed.
Posted by Kiz at February 8, 2005 12:10 PMCommentsPost a comment