Neat rows of terrace coffee farms surround the road into the valley. The stones in the road are new, especially compared to the well-loved trade routes they branch from. The city ahead is like a great wheel, with each of its spokes leading to the heart of the teeming urban center. A divine blueprint transformed this Broken World ruin into a home for the Unknown.
Doorstep of the Pilgrimage
Twelve years ago, the goddess Unknown pulled the last human city in the Broken World from its roots and dropped it into Bluebell Valley. After its arrival, the queen took a parcel of land from each surrounding barony to form a new one: Patrie. Allemance cooperated with the human Shamans to get the city on its feet. Today, it stands as one of the most powerful cities of the Lupine Kingdom.
The Queen of Allemance granted Patrie to an officer who defected from the Invader army, a human named Diana. She was given the title of Baroness and became the first noble-blooded member of the species. To legitimize the claim, Diana married the canine Indigo, a son of a neighboring barony. A gaggle of their precocious coyote and brethren children now roam the grounds of Jacquet Hall.
The city of Patrie has the largest population of humans in the Beast World, a living relic of their former home. While surviving in the Broken World was brutally difficult, brethren work hard to preserve the city to show future generations their origins and history.
Colors of a Dead World
Patrie is governed by twelve wedge-like districts called quartiers, radiating from its center between the main thoroughfares. Each quartier is inhabited by one of the former Broken World communities that settled in Patrie after the Pilgrimage. The concrete of the city’s buildings is painted with loud colors. Banners with wild patterns and unreadable script hang across the streets. Some are even made of material from the Broken World, scavenged and restored.
Louvain adapts the brethren zig-zags of pink and acid green for runways and upscale boutiques, but Patrie’s look is gritty and authentic streetwear fashion. In recent years, the exclusive fashion house Beauté Amère made waves when it moved its main studio from Louvain into Patrie. It now operates from a gleaming, three-story glass build- ing in the city center. A vicious rivalry is brewing between designers in the two cities.
The Old Third
Patrie was once an abandoned metropolis in the Broken World, and it has far more space than was needed to hold the last of humanity. It was a ruin when the brethren gathered inside it for the Pilgrimage, and they’re still growing into it. Maintenance and gradual renewal is overseen by the historians studying the Broken World known as the Shamans.
The empty quartiers of Patrie are quiet and deserted, save for the birds and occasional curious wanderer. Grass and weeds push through cracks in the asphalt road, and concrete walls are an ivy-covered haven for urban wildlife. This section of town makes up about a third of the city, known as The Old Third.
Ruined roadways and fallen walls hinder movement through these neighborhoods. Sinkholes down to disused sewers swallow the street’s old pavement. For the past twelve years, the Shamans have been making their way from building to building, restoring interiors, repairing walls, and smoothing roads.
An offer stands to scavengers traveling to the Broken World. Baroness Diana gives a reward to anyone who brings the city usable building mate- rials. Since its posting, dozens of scavengers have filled The Old Third with steel beams and chunks of gray and black stone. They sit in neat piles for the restoration of damaged buildings.
Portals and Beans
When Unknown emerged from the shadows of hidden places to aid the world’s newest kin, most beasts had never seen one. Many considered these tall, otherworldly creatures to be a myth. The effort to establish the city of Patrie was world-shaking, but it wouldn’t have been enough without their alliance. The jackals predicted some problems a metropolis from nowhere might face, and offered two gifts to kickstart its growth: one great, and one small.
A New Brew
The first gift was a seed. The long-lived jackals have a cultural fascination with how plants and animals inherit traits. Through crossbreeding and a little nature magic, jackals created a coffee plant that would thrive in the conditions of Bluebell Valley. When roasted, the beans of this “Bluebell Nip” have a distinctive minty aroma.
Coffee has become a part of the region’s identity. Strange roasteries dot the city, tucked away in alleys, on rooftops, and underground. The immortal and enigmatic jackals tinker with new brewing techniques in these coffee shop laboratories, and they’re the most likely place in Patrie to find one.
The Junction
The jackal’s larger gift brought the world closer to the human city. They used powerful magic to erect the Junction, a black stone ziggurat in its center. Brethren are eager to visit the distant corners of an unfamiliar world, and the Junction gives them a permanent means of instant travel. When the jackals revealed the building’s purpose, they demonstrated a rare moment of levity. The jackal Lyneferti told the humans, “We didn’t trust the Allemagnians to manage the logistics of a Junction, but you humans seem to grasp the concept of punctuality.” (Unknown was not amused.)
A thousand glassy faces shimmer like the inside of a gemstone within the Junction’s yawning interior. Stairways and scaffolds grant access to facets covering every surface, each a portal to its shown location. The surreal sight of the Junction’s interior allows one to view the sands of the Beylik and the frigid peaks of Oria at the same time. Visitors travel through the facets of the Junction day and night.
There are two types of facets in the Junction. Major facets are more affordable to travel through, connecting with stone buildings at populous destinations around the Beast World. The Junction doesn’t lead to anywhere in Al’ar, as the homeland’s people refused the excavation and construction of a reception building. Minor facets are smaller and more numerous. They lead to hundreds of disparate pockets of the world, but their operation is more temperamental and prone to error, so special permission is required to use them.
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