Quartz 5

Teremisis

Properties1
aliasesCity of Teremisis, Teremesis, Termesis

6 min read

History & Lore

General Information

Etymology

Size and Structure

Teremisis is a walled river city. At its heart stands the Citadel, and around it cluster the central guard house, the courthouse, and both the old and new prisons. The old wall still rings the inner city while a new wall rises under construction further out. The river runs through the city down to the docks, where merchant warehouses hold goods in transit - among them those of Farnid Diselcrop (mostly cargo moving from Jaknia to the Republic) and of Phat Brighty. The city’s Great Temples stand together in their own quarter.

Demography

Economy

Income Routes

Taxes

Imports and Exports

Rulership

Teremisis is governed by a Council seating a representative of each great power alongside one for the city itself:

  • Cinali Delin - the Jaknian representative.
  • Bornan Aetos - the Theocratic representative, a precise and ascetic devotee of Athena who steadily advances Theocratic interests in the harbour and the trade rights.
  • Elsavir Cartos - the Clairnian representative.
  • Ky-lee Osha - the Republican representative.
  • Katalina Drovard - the representative of the city.

Guards, Laws and Military Presence

Teremisis enforces only a portion of the Theocracy’s Steel Reins - the sweeping body of magic-restriction law that the Theocracy’s Inquisition imposes in full across its own lands. Only part of it reaches this neutral Hub city, pushed in by the Theocratic council member Bornan Aetos as he advances the Theocracy’s grip on the harbour. Even so, the city’s mood has turned against the arcane (a “magic is distasteful” sentiment): every caster whose power does not come from the gods must register, declaring the spells they can cast and the magic items they bear (a city mage verifies whether a given power is god-given). To enter the city or cross its borders such a caster must show a licensed charm-certificate and wear an identifying arm-band - green for druids, yellow for sorcerers, red for wizards; clerics wear none. Magic of necromancy, enchantment, and illusion is forbidden outright without express authorization, counted a crime against the city and the gods. The hardening of the city’s mood is bound up in memory with a disaster at the docks: a caster who loosed a fire elemental there, killing more than a hundred - and was never caught.

Crime

The Night Market

Organizations

The Emporium Recollectors

The Emporium Recollectors keep their repository here in Teremisis. From the street it is plainly a building that was a three-storey townhouse until recently and now stands mid-renovation, ringed with scaffolding and fresh paint; a bored-looking guard in brown, uniform-like clothes leans by the door with a bladestaff.

Inside it is thoroughly unremarkable: three handsome statues stand at the centre of the room, but everything beyond them is under repair, with workers painting, hauling tools and hammering at the floor. The hall has been opened into a lobby - several walls knocked through - with a staircase to the upper floor and three doors leading off it. The statues depict a plump old man in robes with a mischievous smile, one hand holding a literally floating orb of light; a tall, hard-faced woman holding a rune-carved cube; and a short, bearded, bespectacled man with a paunch, clutching a thick book and wearing a green robe.

The basement is a wide room of dark, new-looking stone, set with tables, chairs, cabinets and metal chests; catalogued jars line the chests - a mage’s stock-in-trade. Cauldrons stand unused at the far end beside tables of vials and glassware bent at strange angles, and chalk markings streak some of the walls and floor-tiles. The room is lit by wall-lamps etched with odd signs that give off neither smoke nor smell, and the din of the construction above vanishes the instant one crosses the threshold - as though the whole chamber lay under a Mordenkainen’s Private Sanctum.

Religion

Culture

Inns, Shops and Magical Services

Inns

Shops

Magical Services

Points of Interest

The Night Market

Teremisis’ black market, the Night Market, is run not by the thieves’ guild but by a mysterious and evidently very wealthy woman who calls herself “Clanmeister Elana Ducain.” Her people see to everything - the venue, the security, the bribes that keep the watch looking away, and the quiet word-of-mouth that draws customers - and everyone who enters pays her a single silver coin. The thieves’ guild resents the arrangement but suffers it in silence, unwilling to go to war with a rival whose true resources they cannot measure.

The market moves to a new location every month and is divided into four quarters:

  • Forbidden goods - poisons and, above all, drugs, along with banned reagents, dubious books and stranger oddities.
  • Living goods - though slavery is outlawed in Teremisis (as it is throughout the Lexalian Republic), slaves can still be found here, alongside ordinary and not-so-ordinary beasts kept in poor conditions.
  • Stolen goods - jewelry, artwork, warehouse stock and anything else seeking to pass into hands that will “wash the stain.”
  • Services - forgers, fixers, bribe-brokers and worse; for the right price, someone here will do almost anything.

The market is entered through a concealed door that looks like part of a wall. Behind it waits a tall, menacing doorman dressed in black, his face hidden behind a bird-shaped mask; he takes the entry coin, ties a coloured ribbon around each visitor’s wrist, and bids them “welcome to the Night Market.” Within, the knocked-through walls of many rooms have been joined into a single roofed street, and patrons drift between the quarters in black robes and masks of raven, owl, imp, dragon and wolf.

For the Dungeon Master

A zone-by-zone walkthrough of the Night Market - its wares, its caged creatures, and the secrets behind the doorman’s ribbons - is collected on Settlement-Teremisis Mechanics & Encounters.

Important People

Settlements

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