2nd District: Prossporo
Home of the Pross
Prossporo lies along the southern slope of the Nostridan Bowl, a district of breathtaking beauty. Its white marble and warm orange-yellow sandstone structures are crowned with gilded brass and golden domes, broken only by cascading waterfalls and arched bridges that crisscross the skyline. Prossporo is home to the Pross, a race of humanoid animals who live through cycles of rebirth, rising and falling through castes as their essence seeks enlightenment, ultimately to reunite with their goddess, Ahdieah. The district is ruled by a theocratic queen, the Exalt of Ahdieah, Madra, and her wife, Kalzeen.
Battlemaps set in this location
Rabbitrun
Sometimes called Hotriver, this stream of sediment-loaded hot springs water flows down the mountainside from the outer range of the Godless Hush and the Briney sulfur fields of Drearloch. The water, purified of its poisons by its journey through the mountains but no less scalding hot, is funneled through copper pipes and gutters of Rabbitrun to fill the lavish bathhouses and hot springs of the northernmost region of Prossporo.
Rosewood Station
Once the illustrious manor of the Lord of the Reaches family, the Rosewoods, their house made an unbelievable fortune during the founding of the city of Grand Nostridan—selling their previously valueless land to the Lerin as the city was built. With mountains of wealth, they built a massive castle mansion where they collected payments from the city for generations until recently. The entire Rosewood family vanished under mysterious circumstances, and their mansion was purchased and transformed into a station stop for the Sanroko-II cross-world train.
The fabulous wealth of the family has never been found, and any evidence of what happened has been kept very quiet by the Bluecoats, the Lerin, and the six syndicates. Even now, years later, it remains one of the most controversial mysteries in the city.
Ahdieah's Font
In the golden temple at the heart of Prossporo is a wide and shallow fountain, filling a huge antechamber tended by low humming religious song and kneeling faithful who venture here to bask in the amber waters. The center of the font deepens and glows with a pulsing golden light that fills the room. From this light steps forth each and every Pross reborn into Crudilex. Emerging from this holy font around the age that a human would call early teen, all Pross who are reborn here after they die are adopted into a waiting family to live another life.
This is, with a few secret exceptions, the single most holy and sacred place in all of Crudilex. It is one of the only places where one can simply enter and lay eyes upon a Divine power at work. It is the greatest treasure of the Prossporans and is protected by generations of sworn paladins and clerics.
The Anitine’s Wreckage
Hanging off the southern face of the island-like peak that forms the plaza before the grand Prossporian temple and Font are the bones of a massive wooden ship slowly returning to nature. Its ropes and pulleys create a giant web-like structure. It crashed nearly 300 years ago during the first colonization attempt on Grand Nostridan, then known as Everspring, and has since become something of a symbol left by the city as a memorial to that history.
However, as it stands abandoned and untouched by the Bluecoats, it has become a cliffside shanty and a known underbelly where only the foolish venture at night. The wreck spans the entire face of the cliff, and many areas have been reinforced inside to create roads and ramps all the way to Lowside below, where a few smugglers make what can pass for trade with the greater underbelly of Grand Nostridan.
Goldbridges
The primary crossings from the larger Prossporo area to the inner golden palace and church of Ahdieah, known as Goldbridges. Their tall arches part above huge torrents of waterfalls pouring down from the Godless Hush and the upper falls into a reservoir, then below the Goldbridges and down into the cliffs beyond the Bowl. The bridges are lined with buildings, most of which are small performing theaters and lounges, as well as small religious shops selling prayer wheels and effigies of the goddess of rebirth. The Goldbridges are world-famous for their beauty and their magnificent lined gardens, where all are welcome, the locals well known for their tradition of hospitality and grace.
The Golden Palace
At the top of the quarter of Prossporo known as the Tiers is a palace of gilded gold. Properly named Castle Toska, it is more widely referred to as the Golden Palace. Serving as both a governmental and defensive facility, it has many gateways and roads that lead through it to the Tiers and back into the residential neighborhoods. The palace monitors commerce and fights the constant, extreme smuggling regularly committed by the Skyfishers in nearby Cull.
Toska Memorial Statue
The great memorial statue of an elephant Pross with a tall pointed crown, wielding a halberd and standing proud over the waters flowing down the falls of Prossporo. The memorial is honoring the late Exalt of the goddess of rebirth and patron deity of the Pross, Ahdieah. King Toska was a regal elephant Pross with a single massive tusk and an eyepatch, remembered as a warrior in the war with the Gouldel Necropolis, a war which raged for decades and ended at last in a peace accord where both sides came together, shook hands, and laid down arms, banding together as a single nation, bringing in all other nearby cities to form Grand Nostridan. King Toska is considered the great city's hero and the primary reason for its founding and later its unbelievable success.
The warrior Exalt lived to see his daughter take the throne, abdicating it as he was taken by a madness curse that rampaged through many of his kind, a disease that would, in his later years, ultimately be his end.
Mummers Circus
The Mummers Syndicate is a gang of performers and cultists, secret worshipers of a creature called Nescience. Their criminal realm is primarily one of subterfuge and bribery. Using their talents as performers, they pass into and out of all corners of the greater city to collect, sell, trade, and pass information.
They also have a more personal mission: to slowly influence the culture into worshiping their heretical god, subliminally weaving rituals and practices into their performances and the culture at large.
Smoke and Silk Club
An extremely exclusive hookah lounge and secret society, the building is like a palace gilded in gold on the highest cliff overlooking the falls of Prossporo. The wealthy of the world fight for a spot on its shortlist of members. Only a few are invited to purchase membership at a time, and the criteria for securing an invitation is a high bar even for those with wealth beyond counting. The only other place more exclusive than Smoke and Silk might be Cirrus Casino, and the owners of both are close personal friends.
There are those who believe the reason for the extreme secrecy surrounding Smoke and Silk is a secret within its walls that only the absolute elite of the world can be trusted to protect. Speculations about what it could be run wild, but the club makes no effort to stop the rampant rumors. The most recent theory is that within the club is a creature capable of producing infinite wealth. It must remain imprisoned there, or the economy would crash across the world and coin would completely lose its value. Only those who already have money beyond counting can access it.
The Falls
The great falls have spilled over the mountains south of Grand Nostridan into the Bowl since before there were mortals here to witness it. Huge, powerful torrents of water drop over five tiers of cliff, making their way down to the lower Bowl areas of Lowside and into the Undercity. This magnificent natural wonder is sacred to the Pross, and it is believed that temples touched by the mists of water are blessed. The gathered liquid on their awnings and gutter creeks absorbs the prayers of the Adiahan worshipers and gets carried on the river or wind to spread across the world. This deeply held veneration for the water is a core ideology of the southern Pross of Grand Nostridan, and the falls are littered with many such temples wherever they can find a suitable foundation to build.
The Fresnel Theater
Crowned as the jewel of the performance row through the noble quarter of Prossporo, the Fresnel Theater is owned and directed by a satyr from the Everspring Bowl before it was transformed into Lowside. The theater is extremely popular, with thespians from all over the world visiting in hopes of a chance to perform. However, the satyr is very strict in finding talent from the widest possible reach, not favoring known actors at all when casting his roles.
A community has grown around the Fresnel, a culture of performers eager for nothing more than to prove their devotion to the art. There is an air of uplifting inspiration and a divestment from the dollar as motivation. This satyr, called Chestnut, is beloved by some as the Exalt of the god of nature, Edoro.