Raam is a city-state of strife and squabbling factions. With the frequent unrest and riots, most structures outside the sorcerer-queen’s palace incur damage.

Population: More than 40,000 people live in Raam, making it the most populous of the city-states. Another 40,000 or so dwell in the warlord-dominated estates surrounding the city. Humans constitute less than half the population. Elves and dwarves are the most numerous minorities, and muls, half-giants, and half-elves make up most of the rest.

Water: Raam draws water from a deep reservoir below the city, which provides enough to sustain the populace and irrigate the fields beyond.

Supplies: Although the renowned mines have been picked clean and the current troubles have all but paralyzed trade, Raam retains enough commodities to lure merchants. The city exports silver, gemstones, flint, silk, rugs, art, and textiles, among other goods.

Defense: The mansabdars form the heart of the largest army in the Tyr Region, leading thousands of wretched slave-soldiers. In addition, Abalach-Re hoards weapons, armor, and equipment in an enormous armory beneath her palace.

Inns and Taverns: With the city’s trade in disarray, many inns and taverns have closed, their buildings joining the scores of empty, shuttered shops. A few determined places remain open near the city gates, where they compete for increasingly rare customers.

Raamites are a somber, spiritual people, now given to a certain degree of fatalism. Before Abalach-Re’s “revelation” many years ago, Raamites venerated a host of mythological figures and held mystics and sages known as saddhus in the highest esteem.

Badna Dedicate: The Badna priesthood maintains innumerable shrines and leads the people in prayers to the elusive god who chose Abalach-Re to rule the city in his stead. Do you believe that Badna exists? Did you join the priesthood to secure some benefit or advantage for yourself or your family? Do you serve in the priesthood still?

Dedicated Rebel: You fight alongside other disaffected citizens, battling the templars and mansabdars to oust Abalach-Re and right the city’s course. Were you recruited, or do you fight alone? Why did you join the uprising? Can you move freely about Raam, or are you hunted for your part in the rebellion?

Honest Mansabdar: The mansabdars, ostensibly charged with enforcing the laws of Raam, are thugs and criminals more interested in taking bribes than anything else. You served in this dubious organization. How did you persevere in the face of rampant corruption? Did your colleagues pressure you to let certain criminal elements go unpunished? Did your good intentions cause problems?

Centuries of age have not diminished Abalach-Re’s physical allure. Her voluptuous figure is as youthful as it was the day she first seized the throne of Raam. She is the exception to Raam’s rigid castes, largely because she has the power and arrogance to ignore them. However, her citizens still view their ruler through the prism of their culture’s stigmas. After five hundred years of her shocking dalliances and scandals, sometimes involving individuals of the lowest castes, many Raamites consider the Grand Vizier to be unclean and beneath contempt.

Over the nearly thirty generations that she has ruled Raam, Abalach-Re has taken many mates and borne scores of children. She has little affection for her progeny, discarding them or keeping them depending on her mood. Those she abandons at birth are given to one of the noble nawab families and raised as foster children. Abalach-Re’s hundred or so current living descendants, known as the Offspring, dwell among the citizens. Many of the Offspring manifest unusual magical or psionic talents; it is rumored that Abalach-Re manipulates her children with sorcerous energy before they are born, and that they pass their unpredictable gifts to their own children in turn.

The residents of Raam exchange whispered tales about the purpose behind the Offspring. Some say that Abalach-Re grows old and wishes to move her intellect into a younger version of herself. Others believe that she is preparing for a great ritual that requires the aid of scores of people sharing her potent bloodline. Still others claim that she cannot die as long as at least one of her children remains alive.

• Templars: Abalach-Re has comparatively few templars. When she has need of new ones, she performs divinations to discover young citizens who might be suited for wielding magic. Then she removes the candidates from their families, regardless of caste, and trains them to serve her. The templars take new names and exist outside the caste system, like their mistress.
  Raam’s templars are not bureaucrats; the city-state has many ranks of officials that oversee civil administration. Instead, the templars serve as the eyes and ears of Abalach-Re, representing the Grand Vizier’s interests and instructing officials and functionaries in her will. The current disorder and strife in Raam has made it dangerous for templars to walk the streets without armed escorts. Many barricade themselves in their estates, ignoring their duties to their queen.
  Abalach-Re raised up people from all cultures, races, and genders to serve as templars. Given the erratic training the templars receive, many look to other traditions to supplement their powers. As a result, many Raamite templars multiclass into other arcane classes (bards), martial classes (rogues), and psionic classes (psions and ardents).
  
• Mansabdars
• Nawab Warlords

Templars

“They are a frightened few—a herd of sycophants and hangers-on who dare not reveal their connections to Abalech-Re lest some noble put them to the sword.” 

Raam’s templars are as rare as peace in the chaotic city-state. They have fallen far from their former glory and influence in the city. Thanks to the erratic and decadent Grand Vizier, few templars emerge from their personal estates, and those who do either go under guard or find a swift and brutal death. Attrition combined with the sorcerer-queen’s waning influence keep the templars’ numbers small in Raam. Lost agents are replaced only when Abalach-Re can be stirred to search out a worthy candidate.

Recruitment: Abalach-Re has long been more concerned with feeding her appetites than seeing to the needs of her beleaguered people. Sequestered in her fabulous palace, her thoughts rarely drift toward the challenges Raam faces, let alone sharing her immense magical talent with worthy students. When fancy strikes her, she might cast out her senses, using divination rituals to seek out a viable candidate. She then sends her guards round to bring the favored to her, where she instructs these new students in the magical arts until some other pursuit captures her attention.

Training: Those called to serve the Grand Vizier face their new responsibilities with a mix of apprehension and dread. Abalach-Re can be generous with her gifts and bestow onto favored servants fabulous riches and power, but such blessing is often met with derision and hatred from the citizenry, who exact revenge by any means they can, even if it means striking out against the templar’s family and friends. Most templars discard their old lives and assume new identities to insulate themselves from whatever repercussions they might face. Training is haphazard and largely comes from existing templars who have pieced together the essential techniques needed to perform as the sorcerer-queen wills. The Grand Vizier might take a hand in this training, but one must sift through her confusing lessons to arrive at anything useful. Unpreparedness is the primary cause for templar death in Raam, since many cannot stand against the innumerable dangers arrayed against them.

Duties: The templars know they cannot move openly in the city where the danger to themselves is simply too great. Instead, templars act as spies, monitoring developments and passing their intelligence up the chain of command in the hope that their reports reach Abalach-Re on a day when she has some passing concern for their content. In addition to gathering information, templars can also influence city leaders to support the sorcerer-queen by pressuring them with threats against their lives, livelihoods, and loved ones, though few templars now have the muscle to back up their warnings

Advancement: Whimsy determines how a templar might rise or fall, because the Grand Vizier’s servants come into and out of favor with unnerving regularity. Her vanity is often her only guide, and she rewards flatterers and sycophants with greater estates and gifts. She also favors those templars who catch her attention through other means. AbalachRe delights in beautiful things, and she claims many templars as her lovers, regardless of gender or race.

Adventuring Templars: The templars’ fraying structure allows tremendous flexibility and latitude for templar actions. No complete roster of templars in the sorcerer-queen’s service still exists, allowing her servants to come and go as they please. Those whom the Grand Vizier does not take a personal interest in have the greatest freedom, while those she favors live almost as slaves.

Extensive irrigation combined with the water beneath Raam’s holdings have transformed the natural scrubland into a rich, verdant area ringing the city for miles. At its height, Raam rivaled Draj in grain production, and its date orchards were second to none. Now, many fields lay fallow, burned, and salted, the work of raiders and warring nawabs. Such destruction has led to food shortages, driving up prices for the most basic foodstuffs.

The Road of Kings and the Nibenese Road lead directly into the city from the west, south, and east. Noble estates front these roads, each one a small fortress replete with steep walls, turrets, and garrisons to protect the households within. Most nobles try to collect tolls from passersby. The crude huts of field slaves lie clustered in squalid hamlets between the estates. The three great ways meet at the plaza where the Circle Market stands, near the middle of the city

Each Raamite belongs to a caste, and most remain in their social class until death. Custom disallows marriages between those of different castes; even casual interactions between such individuals are brief and irregular. From highest to lowest, the castes are as follows.

Priest: Mystics known as saddhus hold the respect of all Raamites. However, their esteemed rank has been compromised by the less worthy priests of Badna.

Nawab: This caste consists of the noble warlord families.

Vizier: Viziers include public servants, bureaucrats, and other officials. All viziers wear colorful silk robes to denote their office. Abalach-Re refers to herself as the Grand Vizier, although she does not consider herself restricted by traditional caste boundaries.

Warrior: Mansabdars, mercenaries, and other soldiers belong to this caste.

Merchant: Those who buy and sell goods created by others belong to this caste.

Laborer: The laborer caste includes common artisans, farmers, herders, and other poor free citizens. This caste is by far the most populated and most disaffected.

Slave: The slave caste is unusual in that upon gaining freedom, a former slave can assume a new caste.

Unclean: The most wretched caste is known as the unclean. Any who make their living handling carcasses or corpses fall into this category.