Cities of Nahuac

Nahuac has less than thirty urban centers, with the rest of the territory being unspoiled wilderness, sprinkled with small villages and community farms. A few Altanesi ruins remain hidden in the fog among the woods, mostly avoided by modern peoples, or used as ritual sites. In all, Nahuac is the least urbanized Realm in Valerna, and proud of it.

The Náhuidd don’t understand cities as separate from their surroundings, and don’t usually build walls to demarcate their domains. Thus, they see their cities only as a node, a densely populated core, of their ápal, or ethnic community. The Náhuinn word for ‘city’, ulum, is synonymous with ‘knot’. When the Náhuinn refer to a ‘city’, they usually refer to the whole surrounding ápal, including separate farms and towns.

Nahuacáinn
The Castle of Nahuacáinn was built during the age of warlords, when the leaders of kaabal clans fought each other for territory and leadership. For centuries it was a lesser ápal, barely holding its own against its neighbors, until the rise of the azab people after the First Null War. As the home city of the hero Tálan Maac Tál, who sacrificed himself to save Valerna, and site of the Three Seals intended to imprison the Nullborn forever, the ápal was chosen to be the power center of the new Coalition, and it remains so to this day.

Nahuacáinn is not a site of authority, but a neutral ground where all Coalition leaders can meet and voice their concerns as equals. However, it does hold a special status as an Ílium, an Honor City, and is still considered the hub of Nahuac rule, although it does not rule over any other ápal.

Nahuacáinn is a gem of a city, with immense, white menhili structures for the ruler’s palace, great schools of makaab and tána magic, and sanctums dedicated to the Four Paths. These alone make Nahuacáinn one of the most stunning places in Valerna, not counting its winding rivers and lush gardens, woven into the city plan by makaab architects, which make the city look like part of the verdant hills that surround it. The Great Línau, the immense lake inside Nahuacáinn, is a marvel of both makaab magic and urban engineering, and the site of many festivals and magic rituals during the year.

Contrary to most Náhuinn cities, Nahuacáinn does have walled sections. Originally built as military defense centuries ago, they were strengthened after the Second Null War, during which the city was almost razed. Like all Náhuinn structures, the walls of Nahuacáinn were built so as to merge into the environment, and from a distance they look like vine-covered cliffs.

The people of Nahuacáinn call themselves Náhuinn, like every Nahuac native, but people from outside the city know them as cáinidd, or ‘capitalines’. They are among the most driven and focused people in Valerna; every Cáinidd citizen of every social status receives mandatory training in the basics of fighting and makaab magic, and is taught to live and die for the community almost from birth. They don’t act superior to foreigners, but they regard idleness and levity as dreadful manners.

Itzána
Perhaps the oldest city in the Coalition, which would make it the longest continually inhabited settlement in Valerna, the Buunkun sanctum of Itzána in West Nahuac is a center of solace, wisdom and reflection. While entrance to the city is not restricted, there are 2 kilometers of ascending steps to reach its gates, which ensures it only gets visitors with a good reason to be there. Add that Buunkun populations are the least dense in the Realm, and Itzána would seem like a sleeping city—not dead, because there is a hum to the quiet and a warmth to the space—save for the occasional citizen flying overhead.

At first, the city’s architecture is hard to take in, as it’s built vertically, not horizontally, as several tiers of bridges, arches and alleys carved on a cliffside, and it’s hard to find one’s way around without wings; but Itzána is still a breathtaking sight, with some of the most stunning carvings and makaab sanctuaries in the world.

Like most buunkun cities, Itzána sustains itself by air trade, using flying couriers to trade for basic supplies. The city exports ritual dyes and arcane reagents, receiving food and building materials in exchange.

People of Itzána are known as eccentric and absentminded, and there’s a running joke that the lack of air at such heights does something to their sanity - but they are friendly, easygoing and, contrary to what their seclusion would suggest, they like visitors.

Angdáin
The ‘second brother’ in the unofficial triad of Ocelinn states that preside the Nahuac Coalition, Angdáin is the home of obsidian jaguar-kin, the oldest ocelinn breed in the Realm. Angdáin is known for its cultural scene, and its many distinct tlahuílid classes, from bards and musicians to thespians and painters. Some of Nahuac’s greatest creators come from the artistic movements and schools of Angdáin. The city also has nine observatories, where Makaab wizards study numbers, symbolism and the Source; the greatest of these, the Four Stars Academy, houses the legendary Stone of Times, a carved monolith rumored to contain the whole story of the world from its creation to its end in the far future.

The people of Angdáin are refined and elevated, given to philosophy and deep contemplation. This often reads as frivolity or haughtiness among other Náhuinn peoples, but the Angáidd are not posturing - usually they are in fact reflecting on important stuff. And it doesn’t slow their mahuílid activities one bit, with even the most prestigious thinkers and celebrities doing their duty, tilling the ground and carrying bricks.

Hishcáin
Of the three most prestigious cities in East Nahuac, Hishcáin is the smallest in size and power, but it remains one of the Coalition’s foremost political centers. Like Nahuacáinn, it has a majority population of Azab ocelinn, and a tradition of loyalty, duty and military strength.

Hishcáin is mostly regarded for its great lake and its rich fishing trade, having some of the most active food industries in the Realm. Every day, hundreds of Híshinn runners and flyers, carrying fresh catches and other foodstuffs, travel to and from every corner of Nahuac, confirming the city’s fame is well deserved.

The people of Hishcáin are humble and uncomplicated, yet great workers and incredibly tough warriors. They are noted by their sharp, acid sense of humor, and are known to challenge their enemies with rhymed jests while they fight. They are unmatched masters of double entendre, and visitors are advised to be on their guard against the locals’ mocking innuendo.

Bab’al
If Nahuacáinn, Angdáin and Hishcáin are like three brothers, Bab’al is their unwanted cousin. The city of aléb ocelinn, or pale jaguar-kin, Bab’al used to be a great power center during the Age of Warlords, and at its height it demanded tribute even from Nahuacáinn. But the city sided with the null cultists during the First Null War, and after their defeat it fell into disgrace. Even though its rulers gladly joined the Nahuac Coalition, it never regained the respect or power it used to enjoy. Centuries later, Bab’al, like its people, remains diminished, with its old tribes all but extinguished and its customs nearly forgotten.

The city itself is half-overtaken by the forest, with vines and moss growing over the monoliths and buildings, although the ancient grandeur can still be glimpsed below the canopy of green. Bab’al holds the greatest library in Nahuac, although most of the writings in its collection are at least five centuries old—a testament to ages past, rather than current greatness.

Bábidd still excel at rituals and spellcasting, and they study all kinds of magic, from sacred numbers and makaab weave to foreign arts and xibac necromancy. They are a haughty and stubborn people, convinced of their cultural superiority and clinging to a glorious past that not even their great-great-great-ancestors remember.

Gú Dzau
The lively town of Gú Dzau is the largest settlement in bendavee lands, and the unofficial hub of the South Quarter. A great cluster of clans and buildings, surrounded by swamp on one side and by a misty waterfall and mountain on the other, Gú Dzau is an enchanting place even discounting its architecture. Its buildings, while sparse, are monumental mahuíli, carved with the faces of bendavee ancestors and monstrous saurid creatures, from which the houses and neighborhoods of the people extend like the spiraling petals of a flower that can only be glimpsed from the sky.

More a confederation of smaller apálid than a state by itself, Gú Dzau leads the lizardfolk state by sheer majority, as it contains more different bendavee clans than any other place in Nahuac. Its barter market is larger than most Valernian cities, with tens of thousands of people trading goods that would surprise even the Nwoda sky merchants.

Like all major Náhuinn cities, Gú Dzau has temples dedicated to the Four Paths, but they are given dragon faces as per the bendavee custom, and the colossal dragon statues at the ápal’s four corners remain one of the most popular and breathtaking sights in the Coalition.

In a culture that already worships cohesion and cooperation, lizardfolk are by far the most collective-minded; and to a foreigner, dzáinn citizens seem to have a hive mind. They rarely show emotion in their daily dealings, they navigate the crowded streets as if there was a preordained choreography in place, and they understand each other by the merest grunt and gesture.

Hueminu
When surviving human tribes populated the North at the onset of the Age of Warlords, they didn’t build - they simply took over the abandoned cities of their fallen Altanesi masters and dug their underground cities below them.

Hueminu, the Old Graveyard, was the first such city, gathering the new Míg tainn tribes under a new rule and a new credo - that of eternal life. By powerful xibac death magic, the Mígtaid built a mighty citadel under the ruins of Hueminu, protected by undead hordes and ghost guardians.

For centuries, Hueminu stood unbeaten by the efforts, either separated or concerted, of source-gifted armies, growing stronger with every army that fell trying to conquer it. When the Mígtaid joined the buunkun alliance, the kaabal states had no choice but to welcome Hueminu as the northmost point of the Nahuac Coalition.

Even the ruined surface of Hueminu is an imposing, oppressive city, combining rebuilt Altanesi architecture with Náhuinn-style menhili structures - one dedicated to each of the Nine Lords of the North, although only Hún Ka the One resides in Hueminu.

While it maintains a considerable population of living humans, Hueminu uses muláid - mindless, animated corpses - for many menial tasks, not as replacement of foot soldiers or mahuílid citizens, who must still fulfil their quota of cooperation with the community, but as a support workforce, performing mechanical activities that require no thinking at all. By the same token, the city’s tlahuílid demographic includes the position of ‘Deadmaster’—specialized xibac casters that, apart from their daily labor, must direct and organize nearby undead.

As a rule, only citizens that have already died are risen as muláid, but transformation into a mindless corpse might be inflicted as punishment for some heinous crimes, and some citizens volunteer for ‘Full undeath’ - becoming immortal husks, with their minds and willpower intact - which is only granted to those that prove deserving by their magical talent or relevant deeds.

Tlaminu
Mígtal, the North Quarter of the Coalition, remains the most feared, and least visited, region of Nahuac. And those that visit it rarely get past Tlaminu, the New Graveyard - the closest city to any Mígtal border.

Formerly a bendavee fortress, a citadel erected during the Scaled League and abandoned by the lizardfolk millennia ago, Tlaminu is a great ceremonial center for the Míg tainn, particularly its wizards, who have turned the city into the capital of necromancy in the Coalition, as decreed by its ruler, Míguainn the Five.

Contrary to other northern cities, and despite its magical tradition, Tlaminu does not have a significant undead population, with necrotic immortality reserved only for the most advanced xibac casters, who use almost all the undead they create for teaching purposes, or export them to other Mígtal cities. The citizens, however, do worship death, and practice necromancy ritually, and even the youngest tláminn knows a couple of necromantic charms for luck or protection. Tlámidd people are grim and bloodthirsty as a rule, giving their individual life even less value than the average Náhuinn, displaying gory images in their everyday imagery, and telling disturbing horror stories as if they were light puns.

Ayólinn
If Nahuacáinn is the Head of the Coalition, Ayólinn is doubtlessly its heart.

At first it was a lone temple—the Ayólinn Menhili, a gigantic structure in the forest, which received wizards and worshippers from the Four Quarters, all year long, to practice rites dedicated to the Four Paths. As the centuries passed, some of the worshippers built schools by the structure’s shadow; the wizards that taught there settled near the temple, and their offspring built their homes around those settlements. Today, Ayólinn is an ápal state on its own, presided not by a mahau, but by a circle of high-ranking Makaab weavers.

Ayólinn is the most cosmopolitan city in the Realm, with short and long-term visitors of every species and ethnicity, of all social ranks and beliefs. Even its residents belong to every imaginable people, from Ocelinn priests and Buunkun wizards to Bendavee guards and Itzcuinn street artists; from Maame travelers and Nwoda tourists to Mun kisuut pilgrims and Pint food vendors. All rites and all magic schools are welcome in the city, and no one is allowed to raise their hand against another within sight of the Ayólinn Menhili, on pain of banishment. Thus, even xibac necromancers have a presence in the city—their schools are lesser and their altars are smaller, but there they are.