Campaign Wiki

Credia

Properties2
tagseraedal, location, city, capital, timro, guilds, intrigue
aliasesCredia, Central Credia, City of Credia

7 min read

Infobox

Credia

Municipal Details
AttributeDetail
City RoleRoyal Capital of the [[Timro
WorldEraedal
RulerKing Gedro & The High Royal Council
Population170,000 Total (118,000 Central, 30,000 Rural, 10,000 Military, 12,000 Slaves)
Key FeaturesThe Royal Palace, Star Plaza Pentangle, Grand Public Arena, Imperial Aqueducts
Economic Pillars40+ Recognized Craft Guilds, Stockyards, Slave Auctions, Royal Shipyards
DefensesAncient City Walls, 10,000 Imperial Garrison Soldiers, Royal Mind Mages

🏛️ Overview

Credia is the crowning jewel and cosmopolitan epicenter of the Timro Kingdom. Rising along the southern coast of Eraedal, it is the largest, wealthiest, and most populous metropolis in the realm. Two-thirds of its 170,000 inhabitants are concentrated within Central Credia—a bustling, high-density district spanning roughly three square miles enclosed by towering stone curtain walls.

Credia is an engineering marvel: fresh mountain water cascades through soaring stone aqueducts to supply hundreds of public marble fountains, while sea-water-flushed subterranean canals wash the city’s sewage into deep offshore outlets. Within its fortified gates, four- and five-story stone tenements, aristocratic manors, massive guild halls, and cathedral domes stand shoulder-to-shoulder, alive with the deafening clamor of imperial merchants, courtly knights, foreign diplomats, and thousands of toiling laborers.

Yet for all its marble grandeur, Credia is a city of stark, terrifying contrasts. Outside the pristine palace parks, thousands of non-human slaves and indentured debtors are bought and sold in public stockyards; a sprawling maze of rotting tenements harbors deadly assassins, rogue alchemists, and demon cults; and deep beneath the ancient flagstones of Star Plaza lie runic seals binding primordial fiends from the world’s forgotten dawn.

🗺️ Key Districts & Sectors

                        [ NORTH: ROYAL GARRISON ]
                   (10,000 Infantry, Cavalry & Sentinels)
                                   |
    [ WEST: RESIDENTIAL ] <--- [ PALACE DISTRICT ] ---> [ EAST: ORCHARDS & RANCHES ]
    (Middle Class & Wealthy)   (King Gedro's Court)     (Agricultural Slave Estates)
                                   |
                           [ STAR PLAZA & GUILDS ]
                           (Pentangle / Arena / Markets)
                                   |
    [ SOUTHWEST: WOOL MILLS ] <--- [ TENEMENT MAZE ] ---> [ SOUTHEAST: SEWAGE RUINS ]
    (Fabric Weavers & Docks)   (Slums / Cults / Outlaws) (Plague Wards of Manaqua)

1. The Royal Palace District

The pinnacle of imperial prestige, occupying the commanding bluffs overlooking the ocean:

  • The Royal Palace: The ancestral residence of King Gedro and the royal family, featuring grand marble colonnades, gilded audience chambers, and manicured banquet terraces.
  • The Royal Docks: A private deep-water basin housing the King’s royal yacht and a permanent battle-ready warship of the Timro Royal Navy.
  • The Royal School of Mind Mages: A secluded, heavily warded academy where psionicists and mind-mages train in service to the crown, providing counter-espionage and mental shielding to the court.
  • The Imperial Guard Barracks: Quarters for the King’s elite bodyguards, royal pikemen, and master swordsmiths.

2. Star Plaza & The Civic Core

The commercial, political, and esoteric heart of Credia:

  • Star Plaza (The Pentangle): An immense public plaza paved with ancient, weather-worn flagstones carved into a massive occult pentangle. Beneath centuries of soot and municipal graffiti lie elaborate pre-cataclysmic runes. Scholars and arcanists from across Eraedal gather here to study the carvings, which according to ancient lore bind five primordial Demon Lords into the earth beneath the city.
  • Credia Council Hall: The municipal assembly where city councilmen convene. Legend holds that the magistrates possess the City Voice—a magical acoustic enchantment capable of projecting authoritative commands across the square.
  • The Greater Guild Hall: The meeting chamber for the leaders of Credia’s forty recognized craft and merchant guilds. Every new moon, guildmasters convene to negotiate city tariffs, trade writs, and judicial suits under the patronage of Abadar.
  • The Grand Public Arena: A massive amphitheater seating twenty thousand spectators, hosting gladiatorial combats between captured non-humans, chariot races, and spectacles of exotic beasts imported from the Yin-Sloth Jungles.

3. The Merchant & Market Sector

  • The Great Stockyards: The exclusive, legally mandated livestock market of Credia. All four-legged animals—warhorses, dairy cattle, oxen, and exotic menagerie beasts—must be traded here to satisfy imperial taxation.
  • The Circular Farmers’ Market: Hundreds of colorful stalls where rural farmers sell grains, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and poultry at high volume.
  • The Slave Auction Hall: A grim, iron-barred complex where two classes of slaves are processed: captured non-humans (Orcs, Goblins, Ogres) sold for plantation and mining labor, and debt-slaves auctioned into fixed terms of domestic or galley servitude.
  • The Merchant College: A comprehensive academy funded by the guilds to educate apprentices in mathematics, metalcraft, cartography, navigation, and commercial law.

4. The Tenement Maze & The Underbelly

Sprawling along the south-central sewage line, this labyrinth of crumbling, multi-story wooden tenements is Credia’s most dangerous quarter:

  • The Slum Warrens: Packed wall-to-wall with impoverished laborers, escaped slaves, and fugitives. Structures are frequently dismantled and reassembled overnight to confound imperial rent collectors and tax assessors.
  • Walrue the Faceless: The most feared and elusive assassin in the kingdom, believed to be a shapechanging changelite whose true identity is unknown.
  • Ixtembloth the Rogue Alchemist: An exiled member of the Alchemists’ Guild who operates a covert laboratory peddling illegal venoms, hallucinogens, and banned elixirs.
  • The Underground Shrine of Yin-Sloth: Hidden within the foulest subterranean tunnels beneath the tenements, escaped Orc and Goblin slaves have established a covert temple to the primal demon-god Yin-Sloth, seeking revenge against their human masters.

5. The Southeast Ruins & The Plague Vaults

Far to the southeast, where the sea-flushed sewage canals discharge into the ocean, lie the overgrown ruins of ancient necropolises and burnt quarantine wards:

  • The Burned Wards of Manaqua: During the devastating outbreak of the Curse of Manaqua (the Red Death) centuries ago, thousands of infected citizens were quarantined and incinerated here. Even today, respectable citizens avoid the misty ruins for fear of the lingering magical blight, leaving them as a sanctuary for grave robbers, necromancers, and wights.

🕵️‍♂️ The Five Bound Demon Lords of Star Plaza

DM Hidden Lore: The Bedrock Seals

In accordance with Eraedal’s Praemal/Ptolus synthesis, the runic pentangle of Star Plaza does not merely adorn the city; it is an active abjuration matrix sealing five primeval fiends within subterranean basalt vaults:

  1. Rebob (The Winged Fire-Fiend): A 6-foot leathery-winged fiend who dresses in refined black aristocratic vestments; master of fire elementals and psionics.
  2. Grombeer (The Earth-Breaker): A 30-foot malformed elemental titan completely invulnerable to mundane magic.
  3. Aprek-Nar (The Mountain Savage): A 65-foot primeval hairy colossus whose thunderous roars deafen entire city blocks.
  4. Lemerhop (The Corpse-Mist): An amorphous 30-foot cloud of luminescent green fog possessing absolute control over all nearby undead.
  5. Wsitrab (The Abyssal Kraken): A 25-foot one-eyed, single-tentacled sea horror sealed in the flooded foundations beneath the royal docks.

Should the occult resonance of the dark moon Vallis align with the waning wards across Eraedal, cracks may form in Star Plaza’s runic lattice, leaking psychic corruption directly into the capital.

🎯 Adventure Hooks in Credia

  1. The Forged Naval Manifest: The Black Regiment in Borlon traces the missing shipments of ironwood back to an illicit shipping syndicate operating out of Credia’s Shipbuilders’ Guild. The party must navigate high-society aristocratic balls and sewer docks to identify the corrupt guildmaster behind the conspiracy.
  2. The King’s Inquisitor: Captain Marcus Renault summons the heroes to Credia to testify before the High Royal Council regarding the unrest on Oen and the atrocities committed by the Order of the Indomitable Shield, only for an assassin from the Tenements to strike at the witness chambers.
  3. The Red Death Resurgence: A criminal cell unearths a sealed burial urn from the Southeast Ruins, inadvertently releasing a strain of the Curse of Manaqua. The heroes must track down Ixtembloth the Alchemist to brew a counter-elixir before the plague sweeps the civilian quarters.

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