Overview
Riseholm is a sprawling city built across floating islands in Postremo Limine. Renaissance-inspired spires, domes, cobbled streets, runes, and machinery shape its appearance. Rune Gear-powered airships connect its many parts, while carriages and other vehicles serve movement within them.
The city forms a City-Class Safe Zone network rather than one continuously protected territory. Separate protected areas belong to the same settlement, with smaller Safe Zones between some of them. The airspace connecting those areas is not covered by one continuous protective field.
Riseholm was built over older ruins belonging to its Node. Its present society combines invention, cultivation, trade, monarchy, and the practical need to travel between islands.
Nari, a Rattarian now belonging to the Office of Infinite Horizon, formerly held a high-tier research position in Riseholm. Her pursuit of magic that could affect or control Rune Gear Technology became problematic during her time in the city.
The Floating-Island Node
The Node consists of floating islands with no clear top or bottom. Some believe the space loops endlessly, but wind and other conditions prevent anyone from establishing whether that belief is true.
The suspected loop remains unconfirmed. The absence of a clear top or bottom does not establish a known endpoint or a proven repeating route. See Nodes for the broader nature of these separate reality environments.
Protection and Travel
Covering the entire spread of Riseholm would cost too much. Its protection is therefore broken into many parts, with smaller protected areas situated between some larger ones. These form a network without making all the intervening space safe.
Airships are required for most journeys between the city’s parts. Residents often leave protected territory while traveling to another protected area. The Air Force guards the skies, but that security does not turn the gaps into continuously stabilized Safe Zone territory.
Movement between Riseholm’s islands takes place within its Node. It is distinct from crossing an edge into another Node. Travel Between Nodes explains ordinary edges, fake edges, cargo limits, and the Diver-protected routes used for wider migration and trade.
Districts
The Sunlit Heights
The Sunlit Heights are Riseholm’s affluent districts, with marble mansions, glowing runes, gardens, and floating terraces. Nobility, prominent inventors, and esteemed academics inhabit these areas. Ornate carriages and experimental personal flying machines form part of their daily surroundings.
The Gearwork Slums
The Gearwork Slums contain densely packed streets, workshops, and compact homes threaded with pipes and gears. Forge fires, steam, and enchanted machinery surround the working class, artisans, and mechanics who live there.
The Arcanum Quarter
The Arcanum Quarter houses mages, artificers, and scholars of Rune Gear Technology. Libraries and workshops sit behind moving mechanical walls, bringing arcane study and enchanted machinery together. The wider rules governing mana and casting are described in Magic and Mana.
The Market of Echoes
The Market of Echoes is a center of trade, with exotic goods, antique relics, and Rune Gear inventions offered among haggling voices, steam, and the smell of spiced food. It connects the city’s everyday commerce with the things brought into its markets.
For the wider systems used across settlements, see Currency and Trade: universal credit coins, faction currencies, exchanges, local payment arrangements, and merchant payments.
Landmarks and Infrastructure
The Clockwork Cathedral
The Clockwork Cathedral is both a place of worship and a giant functioning clock powered by Rune Prisms. Its bells mark the passage of time, joining magical machinery with a prominent place in the city’s life.
The Grand Aqueducts
The Grand Aqueducts form Riseholm’s water network, distributing water within the city.
The Skyports
Skyports connect the separate parts of the city. Steel masts, docking bays, and cranes serve Rune Prism-fueled airships and other flying contraptions. The ports are guarded by the Air Force and form an essential part of ordinary movement through Riseholm.
Food and Daily Life
Riseholm’s food supply combines grown food with flying birds native to its Node. Cultivation and the birds provide the basis of its diet.
Its wealthy districts, crowded workshops, markets, and separated protected areas support different experiences of city life. Airship travel connects these communities even where protection does not cover the whole journey. Life Within Safe Zones explores the broader differences in government, food, work, and services between settlements.
Shinu-Jin Silverleaf, a Half-Elf inventor and repair artisan, runs a modest workshop in a poorer part of Riseholm. Repairs to magical devices and enchanted equipment support the shop while he continues developing inventions of his own.
The King and the Succession
Riseholm is currently ruled by an aging king who is loved by his people. His son does not share that popularity.
Rumors suggest the Inventors’ Guild may take over after the king’s death. The rumor has not established what will happen or confirmed that the Guild will rule. The succession remains a source of uncertainty within the city.
Guards and the Air Force
The city guards handle security throughout Riseholm outside the skyports. The Air Force guards the skyports and protects the skies.
This division places the city’s ordinary guarded spaces and its air transport under different forces. Patrols and escorts provide security, while the boundaries of the Safe Zones determine where stabilization applies.
The Inventors’ Guild and Festivals
The Inventors’ Guild is a center of technological activity. Inventors share creations and ideas, and the Guild holds exhibitions of Rune Gear inventions. Its role in invention exists alongside the rumor of a future political takeover.
Festivals of Steam and Runes celebrate the city’s magical and mechanical traditions. Enchanted displays, automatons, mages, inventors, and parades fill the celebrations.
The Undertracks
The Undertracks are maintenance tunnels used for illegal Rune Gear races. Participants modify Rune Gear-powered trams, betting fortunes and risking their lives for excitement and recognition. Airships remain the usual means of traveling between the city’s separated parts.
The Veiled Syndicate
The Veiled Syndicate is a shadowy organization rumored to influence Riseholm’s politics and economy. Reports place its reach in the Gearwork Slums and among the Sunlit Heights. Its supposed influence remains a rumor rather than an established account of who controls the city.
The Forgotten Depths
Older ruins remain beneath Riseholm’s present construction. Known as the Forgotten Depths, they predate the city built over them. Explorers and scholars seek lost Rune Gear technology and forbidden knowledge there, though few are reported to have returned.
The ruins connect Riseholm to the earlier history of its Node. Building above them has not resolved what remains below.
Current Status
Riseholm remains an inhabited city ruled by its aging king. Its protected areas, smaller refuges, skyports, and airships hold a widely spread settlement together. Questions about the Node’s possible loop, the royal succession, the Guild’s future, and the older ruins remain unresolved.