The City..

How can so many things be happening between four walls? These City Walls, are they meant to keep evil out or are they in place to make sure that evil doesn’t get out? There is no one left to tell us. The City is old and no one left alive has a memory that stretches that far back. Only a few memorials remain and even then much of what we think we know is simply what we have guessed.

We citizens inhabit The City because there is nothing else we know. There used to be a time in which people would try and visit the world outside the walls which was closely followed by the time in which people were too afraid to even think about it. Those who left never returned and it was therefore that people came to believe that The City was meant to shield us from danger.

And now we find ourselves in the time in which people don’t care anymore. They are content, living out their lives in The City. They manage to look past its dangers and see only the peaceful lives they might lead. This is especially true for the Noble Houses, who have taken to locking themselves inside their castles believing themselves to be more shielded than others. The citizens have gotten used to The City’s quarrels and its oddities and they know that, at least on the inside, they are reasonably safe.

But they are all of them deluded. Perhaps it is what we Keepers call our curse. Our observant nature makes sure that we are always aware of the dangers that lie inside The City walls and none of us ever allow ourselves to think of ourselves as safe. We know too much and we see things that others remain blissfully unaware off. Perhaps we really are cursed, and perhaps keeping the Balance within this City is a task that no one should be charged with, but nevertheless we do our duties.

It is not just mysticism and dark magic that we keep hidden. It is true that The City holds many ruins, artifacts and rituals that upset the Balance, but the order between The City and its secrets is easily restored. Artifacts are taken in by men, and their vaults and their museums where their magic stays silent and untouchable. Ruins bury themselves deeper below the surface, making sure that no citizen will come close enough to touch their secrets. And horrid and dark creatures guard places in which equally dark mysteries await to be unfolded.

No. The City does a fine job in keeping the Balance between its citizens and its secrets all by itself. It is the Balance between Order and Chaos that keeps the Keepers occupied and it is us that must make sure that no harm will come from it.

The Pagans, led by their deity, the Trickster, and the Hammerites, led by their deity, the Master Builder. Two factions that have made war upon each other for as long as the memory of our library stretches. It is said that once upon a time the Master Builder stopped the Trickster from fully coming into being and ever since then the Pagans and the Hammerites seek to best each other on behalf of their dark masters.

Each seeks to take hold of The City, the Pagans using nature and the Hammerites resorting to metal. They fight their battles through magic and technology, vine meeting hammer, with roots trying to undo stone and fire burning itself away through plants and trees.

That is the Balance that we are trying to keep.

A Balance that we fear might soon be undone.

Keeper Annals
Year 729