Renesal City

Renesal City as seen from a distance

The former center of the Ghostlands, and of the Renesal Dynasty before that, Renesal City is a relatively large city acting as an insular city-state in the desert region of eastern Etera. Today, it is ruled by Ephemera, the only royal survivor of the purge that led to the formation of the Ghostlands in the first place.

The City Of The Dead

Renesal City is open to the public, allowing settlers to come in and populate the city. In many ways, it is among the safest places to live on the continent, as the entire city is actively protected by a dense concentration of powerful undead. Ephemera is a hands-off ruler, not particularly caring what the citizens in the city actually do with their time, but she does enforce peace and stability via undead patrols that can respond within moments to disturbances anywhere around. Put simply, those who avoid causing trouble will find the city quite safe, but others will find themselves tossed out and given no choice to return.

Fields outside the city are worked by undead who plant, harvest, and generally tend to them, ensuring a steady supply of food for residents. Taxes paid to the city are mostly used to purchase goods from abroad that people have requested, as general maintenance and construction is handled by the undead under Ephemera's control.

Ephemera's Palace

Formerly the royal palace of the Renesal Dynasty, Ephemera's Palace is the private residence of the city's ruler and where she spends most of her time. It is broadly off-limits to the public outside of scheduled meeting hours where people can present petitions. However, the ruler is known to have little patience for frivolous or self-centered complaints, so those who attend are generally just those who have a serious issue to bring forward.

Relations With Others

Renesal City is relatively insular. Its ruler isn't particularly interested in international diplomacy, having an attitude that could best be summarized as "just leave me alone and there won't be any problems". It does engage in a moderate amount of trade, but this is mainly for the benefit of the city's residents.

The city is on somewhat more tenuous terms with many faiths, which often object to the presence of undead. However, as Ephemera's powers are capable of spawning more undead automatically to deal with threats, forcefully removing the undead is not considered a practical option. Calling the opinion of other groups "acceptance" of the situation is probably too generous to them, but most are generally willing to focus on other matters and not actively try to remove the undead within the city unless they become a problem to others.

City Defenses

Although no longer the Ghostlands, Renesal City still has many of the characteristics that made that land such a hassle to deal with, including automatically creating undead with no apparent limit on the number of them. As the city can quite literally raise entire armies on a moment's notice, it is a generally well-defended location, and the area immediately around the city is mostly clear of monster threats and similar problems. Ephemera has actively decided to not interfere in other areas, however, so the city's defenders generally ignore anything beyond the horizon.