City-State of Raam

The sorcerer-queen of Raam, Abalach-Re, calls herself the Great Vizier. She lives in a beautiful palace with ivory walls and an alabaster roof built atop a grassy knoll overlooking the city. Unfortunately, the base of this knoll is surrounded by a complicated and ugly series of defensive breastworks, ditches, and walls, for Abalach-Re is the most insecure of all the city rulers. When I visited there, the people spoke of organizing a rebellion and openly praised the last attempt to overthrow their queen (though it apparently occurred previous to most of their lives, for no one could remember how it had ended). Abalach-Re professes to be the representative of some greater power, and claims that her powers are gifts from this mysterious being. According to Abalach-Re's theory, this mysterious being has picked her to watch over the city of Raam and its people. When she is no longer performing his task well, this same mysterious being will strike her dead and assign someone new to the office of Great Vizier. This is one of the more original ploys a sorcerer king has used to legitimize his or her power. By claiming to be the humble servant of a higher power, and by claiming that this same being approves of what she is doing, Abalach-Re hopes to focus the inevitable discontent of his subjects away from herself. Unfortunately for her, the citizens of Raam are smarter than she thinks. Although they pay lip service to the being she professes to serve, and may even attend the ceremonies the templars of Raam organize to honor this mythical creature, few people truly believe in its existence. Instead, they secretly despise Abalach-Re for being such a weak ruler that she must resort to these ploys, and they flout the authority of the Great Vizier whenever they feel they can get away with it. As a consequence, Raam is the most chaotic city I have visited. Templars hardly dare to show themselves alone in the streets for fear of being assassinated by the nobles. The nobles are little better than raiding tribes. Each noble owns at least a small tract of land abutting the roads, and his guards demand a hefty price from anyone who wishes to cross the noble's land. The merchant houses hire small armies of mercenaries to defend their trading emporiums from armed bands of thieves. The situation is so bad that elves are commonly accepted in the ranks of high society as if they were upstanding citizens! Of course, it is the slaves who suffer most under these conditions. Because most of Raam's fields lie untended and wild, food is expensive and difficult to come by in large quantities. Consequently, slaves are fed only what is absolutely necessary to keep them alive - and then only as long as they are needed. As soon as their usefulness is at an end, they are sent to the arena to entertain the mad crowd with a pitiful exhibition of fighting. The only thing that prevents Raam from being overrun by another city-state is the sheer numbers of the army it can field. Abalach-Re maintains a huge armory beneath her palace and, if desperate, can arm every citizen in Raam with a wooden shield, flint-tipped throwing spear, and an obsidian-spiked flail. Of course, she is loathe to place such might in the hands of a populous that clearly despises her, but the option exists nonetheless.