Ikosium

The Holy City

Ikosium is the holy city of the Faith, located in Numidia on the southern shore of the Mesogeios. The Mazigh were here first; the cathedral with its golden dome stands over the sacred spring. The Holy Campaigns were fought to control the city, and pilgrims have been coming since the crusaders settled down to managing trade routes: Sahilian salt and spice from the south, Valdaran textiles and tools from the north. The theological schools that once drew scholars from across the known world now train bureaucrats for villages too far away to ever see Ikosium’s whitewashed terraces.

The bells and the call to prayer overlap at dawn. Olive-skinned and quick-tongued, dressed in djellabas, the locals haggle in five languages and debate theology over mint tea. The bread is flat and warm, dates and saffron in the markets, woodsmoke and incense in the streets. The pilgrims follow the guidebooks from shrine to shrine, and the spice merchant and the relic seller share a wall.

You grew up on the pilgrim calendar. By ten you spoke three languages and knew which prayers belonged to the cathedral and which belonged to the well.

The locals still visit shrines not on the official tour and slip prayers into the cracks of the harbor walls built during the Holy Campaigns.

The quarter you were born in follows maktub and your trade was written at your birth. Your father builds dhows in his grandfather’s yard, saying the old boat-prayers over every hull. Your mother runs an inn in the pilgrim quarter, three rooms over the spice market. Your family was granted noble title by the first cathedral patriarch, but you only attend the ceremonies deemed socially acceptable.

In Grimmloch the spirits in the springs are real, and the Ka Agorate’s Asāsīyyūn will teach you to meet them face to face — at the line between vision and madness. Ceremony has actual weight in the Aelfyn Sith’s halls, and their Gentry will give your noble title back its meaning — for obligations that last centuries. Hospitality binds at the Golden Court, and the Brocade Queen will let you be the host the pilgrims always wanted — until your smile falters.