For the past few years I’ve been toying with the idea of truly giving time to developing a fantasy world and campaign setting tied to a series of novels and short stories that establish the central conflict inherent in this world. That conflict, I believe, is in place. There is a lot of history that forms this core conflict, one piece of which involves a religion that has been militarized over the years. The religion, one of if not the primary religion of the world, is seen as law in only two regions. One of those regions is an ever-expanding militaristic empire run by factions friendly to the church but not entirely of the cloth who use the word of their God to promote their expansion and violence as the way to free the people. The other is a Pius region that acts as a counterbalance to the first and also houses the main and oldest churches of the faith. These churches are all constructed around a walled area. Outside of this area a city is growing filled with peasants and patrons and all of those who wish to curry favor with the leaders of the faith, but realize they have no power or opportunity to operate within the walls of the faith’s domain. It is in that sense a city in a city, and in that a tale of two cities–one of power and corruption and the other of a much older and officious style of power and corruption masked by faith.
I want to spend more time thinking and writing about this specific place, and about the very reason it was formed on these lands. That is why I’ve elected to focus this free write on the subject. I suspect I’ll be writing even more about the subject over the next few days.