Atheese

The city of Atheese is the center for learning in the Plutars. The city itself was founded when explorers stumbled upon a tall pillar of white marble standing out in front of the current harbor. The pillar was taller than any building, taller even than the mountain on the island and completely clear except for a series of strange symbols that constantly fluctuate around the pillar. The symbols constantly move up and down the pillar, changing shape and form and never seeming to stick with one language. It is unknown at this time what the pillar is for or why it’s there, but a city of scholars has grown up around it.

Atheese has two main points of interest when it comes to learning. First is the Grand College of Spirits, named for its primary source of study. The college is focused on uncovering the secrets that spirits seek to hide from humans, whether the spirits wish to or not. Oh, there are a few in the college who willingly bind spirits to themselves with pacts or even get a spirit’s spark, but the majority are focused on taking from spirits, not giving back to them.

Binding is the norm amongst the college’s students and professors, and devouring is well known to happen from time to time. Chimera outbreaks are known to erupt from time to time, but the college takes these as minor blips in its quest to take what it will from the spirit world.

Due to the occasional deformities that binding causes as well as the tattoos that are necessary, it is customary for all members enrolling to wear masks and heavy robes that cover as much skin as possible, not for the sake of shame, but as a method of hiding ones’ strength and abilities from others at a glance. Every member knows enough about their tattoos to understand the tattoos that are traditionally used, and so they are covered so that others cannot exploit one another’ weakness so easily.

The other center of learning is the Archive, a large library set into the mountain that overlooks the city. The archive is set into the mountain and was built around a natural cave system that had been discovered during the city’s founding. The Archive is staffed by a sect of Librarians who collect material on everything related to magic and spirits that others try to destroy or hide.

This naturally means that the Archive is full of esoteric, unknown or dangerous knowledge about spirits, their natures, magic in general, and other things that can prove exceedingly dangerous to the wrong person. Because of this, and because they know how tempting of a target they are, the Archive and its Librarians bill themselves as collectors of harmless knowledge, and keep a miniature Archive full of commonly known harmless factoids ready in case someone whom they deem unsuited or a spy comes calling.

However, Atheese still must earn its income, and therein lays the city’s main industry. The city, due to its abundance of magic-users, makes a steady income off of infusing items with minor spirits to produce infused items for others, most often custom-made though a few have attempted mass production. They have not ended well, and in fact a recent fire that swept through the city was the result of one man attempting to mass-produce self-heating clothing from weak heat spirits. This, plus the college’s attitude towards spirits, has done well to make spirits dislike the area. This just means that most spirits have to be bound, which reinforces the attitude, and so on, creating a cycle.

The item infusion business is the city’s main industry, and due to the proliferation of scholarly minds you’re likely to find some strange objects indeed, including somewhat counterintuitive objects like a raincoat that gets itself wet. Some of these are outright failures but the scholars in Atheese are well known for their experiments with regards to item infusion, successful and otherwise. The city's stake in the item infusion business plus the Gradn College of Spirit's site in the city has earned it a nickname; the City of Spirits.

The city’s wealth of knowledge plus its proximately to the Faloran Republic has allowed a wealth of new ideas to crop into the city regarding everything from irrigation to the nature of the universe. This also included various new systems of government, to the point where once if you found 10 citizens from Atheese they’d likely have thought of 11 ways of governing the city. Because of this, and to avoid rebellion that could damage their studies, The College proposed a unique system.

Every decade Atheese’s system of government changes, the citizens willingly changing some aspect in favour of a new one that hasn’t been tried before. The people say that once they find a perfect system then they’ll stop changing, but the system has been going on for at least 200 years and so far they’ve found no perfect government. Some changes have been relatively small, some have been vast, but so far none have stuck, even the ones that wanted to stay around longer. The College has always helped see that every system keeps going out after 10 years, and always make sure that the process is smooth.