Sijan
Sijan is an old city, so ancient that no one knows when it was first built. Some of the tombs outside the city walls predate even the First Age. Sijan is dedicated to the dead and to ghosts, providing proper burials for corpses from across the Confederation of Rivers and enacting rites to propitiate angry ghosts. Directed by the Funereal Order of Righteous Morticians and Embalmers (the Morticians’ Order), Sijan tends to the dead and undead alike. Her jet black funeral galleys roam the rivers unmolested by brigands or warlords, and members of the Mortician’s Order with their silver bracers are a common sight in almost every city of the Confederation of Rivers. The dead are not an abstract concept, ghosts are not myths, and the Sijanese are experts in dealing with both.
Sijan lies between the River of Tears on the west, the Avarice River on the south and the fell forest of Black Chase to the north. Two bridges across the Avarice lead to the Plains of the Dead, as the vast cemeteries of Sijan are called. The Rising, or eastern bridge, is the Bridge of Mortals, and only the living may cross it. The Setting, or western bridge, is the Bridge of the Fallen, and only the dead may cross it.
The Plains of the Dead stretch for miles in every direction around the city, leading almost to the horizon. Vast mausoleums rise from the earth, some the size of small towns; some are built for a single hero or ruler, while others hold the population of whole cities. The valley of Sijan was once much deeper and steeper, but millennia of building and overgrowth have stacked tombs, crypts and bones atop each other in such tangled profusion that the valley floor has risen over 100 feet. Many of the underground tombs are maintained by expert morticians, who descend into the hidden crypts to propitiate the buried ghosts. Some areas are lost to time and forgotten, though, and the hungry ghosts there sleep uneasily, if at all.
The city of Sijan itself is a quiet place. No revelers disturb its streets, and no festivals mar the silence save those celebrated for the dead. Mortal revels are held behind closed doors, in feast halls and taverns cut deep in the stone below Sijan, so as not to disturb the dead. Visitors to Sijan who venture out at night are sometimes never seen again or else found dead the next morning. Like any other city, Sijan has its criminals, and not all of Sijan’s are living. The roads around Sijan are likewise hazardous at night.
The Morticians’ Order is the closest thing to a government that Sijan possesses. They are masters of funeral rites, embalmers, fleshcrafters, ghostspeakers, and exorcists. All members of the Morticians’ Order wear heavy gray gowns with thick overshawls, and a given mortician’s rank and membership in one of the three Observance that constitute the Order—Funerists, Mortwrights and Deadspeakers—are indicated by the heavy silver bracers he wears. All morticians swear strict oaths regarding conduct, the wishes of the dead, the sanctity of their role as guides to the afterlife and the need for circumspect behavior. Few break them, but those who do can become infamous.
Sijan has little need to worry about war, barbarian raids or bandits—even the Fair Folk avoid this funeral city. The leaders of the Morticians’ Order meet once a year to determine any important decisions, but there are few questions that have not already been settled by millennia of tradition. If necessary, they can call on the advice of the dead, and it is said that the wisest savants of the First Age frequently assist in their deliberations. The city has no military, because it needs none. It has a small, black-armored town guard to quell disturbances and present a deterrent to the riotous living and unquiet dead. Its most infamous constituent is the ghostly Black Watch, consisting of nemissaries girded in black plate armor who were themselves victims of grave robbery and now take great pleasure in hunting down tomb raiders.
