Deci

With about four fifths the urban population of Halgar, Deci has a greater number of people within its walls than even Scarlene. Unlike the other great cities however Deci has a minimal number of citizens in the rural lands that abut and surround it. The imbalance is the result of both the city’s unusual growth and the thin, rocky land that surrounds it. Arguably the most famous of the Imperial Cities, Deci was actually the last of those possessed of such status to join the Empire and it was never part of any real Magiocracy, nor the Republic, despite the attempt in IM 452, or even the Principalities before that.

Little more than a village in the early days of the Second Age, Deci was successively attacked and taken over by brigands of every stripe. Within a century it was a town, one with ramshackle yet high walls and an extremely rough system of laws and justice based about various codes and traditions decided by the then Mocker Lord, Robber Baron, Mouse Lord, or one of a dozen titles invented by the current ruler. So far north as to be of little interest to the Heartland’s centralised societies elsewhere it prospered in population over succeeding centuries due to the arrival of more wolfsheads, attacks and settling by various tribes and even those exiled by the Princes and then the Republic. Indeed it was the latter that lead to the emergence of some kind of stability as the brigand leaders wed their daughters to those exiled holders of the Blood. Justice became harsher, more simplified and the old rule of the strong over the weak just took on the veneer of civilisation.

Nevertheless the city was not ruled by one person, nor even a single family. Rival groups assembled in a crude council and over the years each developed different areas of control and expertise in craft and trade as well as crime. It was not until IM 752 though that the city truly united, if only for a short time, when it was attacked and taken by the tribal hero Cavrin. Part of an uprising against the demands of Magiarch and the cities Cavrin used Deci as his base but in half a year his horde had been poisoned or lured away, his treasure was stolen and his people scattered and divided.

Even when House Amora was exiled by Glorianave it came to Deci and there prospered. Such a time though, the Magiarchal Wars, are the cause of much of the cities current woes. Refugees came to Deci by the thousand and by the time of the establishment of Empire the city had tripled in population, if not in actual geographical size. It had not only been swamped by those fleeing the result of the Magiarch’s conflict but had sustained less direct assault at the hands of the same. Where once it had been able to support itself through trade, raid and even some farming this was no longer possible and for a good fifty years now Deci has either been under the rot of famine or desperately fending it off.

Deci is very much a traditional fantasy city in the manner of Lankhmar and Sanctuary.