Of Lusia, Its Cities, and its Relationships to the Empire

Lusia is easily reached from Singhapura or from the Rosantic League. It is a family of city-states rather than a single dominion. It lies west and south of the narrow strip we call the Taprobane Desert, in a country of rivers and fertile valleys, and in those valleys sit seventeen city-states, bound together by language, custom and a shared taste for fighting one another, and by no single government.

Lusia invented modern banking, double-entry accounting and lawyers. Its money therefore reaches further than even its formidable mercenaries. Lusian banks have underwritten the ambitions of Pendragons, provincial lords and city-states across the known world; during the Mirrored States they held a controlling interest in the Sunset Empire itself, and ended that war when they judged that peace served the investment better.

The Adhiraj has forbidden the Singhapura Treasury, the Haugris Church and the inner ring of the nobility from Lusian dealings, and treats the matter as one of state security. The prohibition does not extend to everyone else, and many a Singhapura noble has, at one time or another, looked at the terms.

Four of the seventeen cities are of a size with Singhapura itself, which is more than can be said for the whole of the North put together. Let us begin with them.

Of the Four Great Republics and the Nature of Their Power

Each of the great republics is nominally governed by a Principe, a First Citizen whose post rotates every three years. The title misleads. The Principe’s function is chiefly ceremonial, and while he may sign in a city’s name, he does not always decide what he signs. It is around the various councils that the great noble houses orbit, each with its own private army and its own commercial enterprises. The joke is that every possible war between the Septimura and Altomente houses has already been declared, and only the scheduling remains.

Picture Daub with nobody at the top to knock heads together, and you have something close to Lusia.

Septimura is the first and oldest of the republics. Like Singhapura, it claims descent from Samarskand, and there may be something in the claim; it may well have been the seat of some far-flung vassal kingdom. It lies south of the Taprobane desert among seven hills, linked to the other cities by an extensive network of rivers. It is large, orderly and rich, and makes fine wool, silk and silverware. Above all it is home to the great banking families, the Orenzo among them. Your Grace may recognize the name; it was an Orenzo who built Adhiraj House.

Septimura’s reputation rests upon law, and upon enforcing it. Its Senate convenes rarely, but when it does it enforces contracts regardless of political consequence. Its bankers have been known to purchase the other debts of a man who has wronged them, and to drive him to ruin and beyond. The general Septimus, said to have founded the city, has this upon his grave: No friend has ever served me whom I did not treat with gold; no enemy has ever wronged me whom I did not repay with ashes. Thus all accounts are settled.

Behind the bankers stands the Order of the Sound of One Hand Clapping. Plainly said, Your Grace, the Order is dangerous. What it does is a direct counter to the kind of structured magic that underlies much of the Singhapura Empire. Its members are mercenary by nature (Mohandas Siege, the Emperor’s own Bitterness, comes from this cabal), but Lusia has made itself the Order’s chief patron, and Septimura’s families are close to it. When a contract with Septimura is broken, it is often the Order that is sent.

This is the foundation of Septimura’s most useful function to the Empire: parties who do not trust Singhapura to keep its word call upon Septimura to witness their arrangements with us. The Adhiraj keeps Septimura publicly at arm’s length and privately close. Singhapura funds the Temple of Eighteen in Septimura generously, and many a Septimura noble travels to Singhapura for business or pleasure.

Marezzia is a naval republic. Its wealth comes from controlling the sea routes between Singhapura and the other republics, and from glasswork of extraordinary quality. Its merchant fleet is said to be larger and faster than Singhapura’s, though more dispersed, and when one speaks of Lusian merchants at sea, one means Marezzians.

Marezzians wear masks in public. Each style is recorded in a central ledger, and a mask is removed only among family and in negotiations of established trust. Vassal families wear cruder copies of the masks of the noble houses they serve, to display their loyalty. The Council of Ten, which governs the city, is drawn from the wealthiest and most powerful. Its members must be unmasked to one another and to nobody else. It is said that the post of First Citizen is offered to the youngest member first, as an education in the requirements of ruling.

The business of masks is often dismissed as affectation. I would caution Your Grace against that. It is fundamental to the Marezzian and to Marezzian dealings. Everything is hidden, and everything is recorded; honesty and vulnerability are privileges extended selectively, and only after great deliberation.

Altomente is the capital of the arts, and not of Lusia alone; I do not believe there is its equal anywhere in the known world. Long ago, it seems, its houses concluded that there was more profit in owning the region’s imagination than in matching their neighbours in arms. Altomente’s taste now sets the standard for music, theatre and the novel, at home and abroad, and its banking families collect both the profits and the gratitude of every artist they have raised up. Your Grace will recognize in this the echo of Ealdorfold, and I have said elsewhere how much weight culture can carry.

Ferrocinto is the northernmost republic. Its mercenaries have fought in every conflict worth naming; its siegecraft and cavalry are without peer; and its border with the Rosantic League ensures that it never lacks for practice. It grows its own food, produces armour of great quality, and is said to employ a great many alchemists in peace and war alike. Nobody can starve it, disarm it or outbid it for soldiers, which makes it very difficult to coerce. It is commonly assumed that everyone from Ferrocinto is of a martial character. Those I have met were mostly reserved, and much given to the poetry and plays of other lands.

In the shadow of the city sits the town of Petona, whose name means “little soldier”. Angry young men from all over Lusia go there to make their fortunes in Ferrocinto. Few come back, and the ones who do are no longer angry, having spent it.

Of the Condottieri and the Lusian Theory of War

I have said that the Lusian cities fight among themselves. War comes to them about as seasonally as the monsoon comes to Singhapura. Yet Lusia does not collapse into general civil war, and the reason is the Condottieri, the mercenary companies.

When a feud grows beyond what the noble houses, or even a single city, can manage, the mercenary captains are engaged. These armies are professionals. They avoid fighting in cities, they avoid harassing the townsfolk, and they prefer to settle matters across open plains and vineyards and mountain passes. In this fashion they preserve their clients for future hire, and win honour for themselves and their patrons alike.

This has produced a curious code. It is no great shame to lose a battle. It is deeply shameful to kill an innocent, or to fail to present a very large invoice afterward. Your Grace may find this amusing. In practice it makes soldiering a lucrative profession, and so Lusia can summon vast mercenary armies, led by some of the finest commanders of our time, at private expense, while the great body of ordinary citizens remains in relative safety. The endless squabbling keeps the Condottieri in practice. It also means that a great republic in the wrong may find itself facing a coalition hired by the smaller cities, and unable to proceed.

This is why every proposed invasion of Lusia has been abandoned. The carrots are difficult to harvest, as they say, and the sticks are many.

Of the Temple of Eighteen in Lusia

There is a serious claim that the Temple of Eighteen originated in Lusia, and that what Singhapura received was an export. There are equally serious counterclaims. I would advise Your Grace against raising the question at dinner with Singhapura scholars present, as the record suggests this ends badly for the crockery. Any comparison between the Rosantic Ascended and the Lusian Litanies is similarly fraught.

In Singhapura and its dominions the Temple was suppressed, and suppression held it together. The Temple in Daub still belongs to the same organization as the Temple in Ruhunupura, for instance.

In Lusia, left to develop freely, it fragmented. There is no single Lusian Temple to negotiate with. At best there are individual temples, some of negligible influence, and some seated on the highest councils of the major cities. Each of the Eighteen Litanies has its noble house affiliations, its city patrons, its competing interpretations and its sects.

There is significant traffic between these temples and the Temple that calls the North home. Before formal banks were established on those shores, Lusian commerce and finance often flowed through the Temple, and something of that habit remains.

Of Lusian Magic

Lusia may be said to have magic of two kinds. Lusian sorcerers fall broadly within the Invoker tradition, as do the Temple and the Haugris Church. Their particular method is the making of bargains with higher powers: gods, daemons and entities of uncertain classification. Where a Temple adherent approaches his Litany with devotion, a Lusian sorcerer approaches his with a proposal of exchange. Their books of magic are less grimoires than annotated contract portfolios, jealously guarded. A few are on display in the Taprobane museum in Singhapura, and are said to be woefully out of date.

Lusian sorcerers are held to be of great power, and especially proficient in curses, protections and war. Taprobane has a long history with them, and Lusian Archmages have made significant contributions to magical theory, so it is wise to suppose their arts considerable. A sorcerer born to a family is cause for celebration, and may even raise the family, if it is vassal to a noble house. Those of uncertain heritage, it is said, are often adopted and given the finest education money can buy.

It is not known whether the Lusian sorcerer developed from the worship of the Litanies, or whether the Litanies were themselves powers bound by the Temple and afterward cast into a religion. It is unwise to discuss the matter publicly. At present the sorcerer and the Temple devotee are two very different creatures, bound by different interests.

The second kind is the alchemist, much as in the Rosantic League. In Lusia, however, there are no universities, and the alchemist is subordinate to the noble house or the mercenary company: a servant of rare skill, called upon to draft and design and solve problems for his employers, and rarely able to command great power in his own right. Lusian nobles do not dabble in alchemy as Rosantic nobles do, nor do Lusian alchemists hang their names in the street. It is thought of as a poor man’s sorcery. Yet a keen-minded alchemist may rise high within his master’s house, and some are poached by rivals at great expense and risk.

In Singhapura we say that ability rises from any mud, like the lotus. I have often wondered how much higher it would rise if the pond helped rather than hindered.

Of What This Means for Daub

Lusia and Singhapura are deeply intertwined, through finance and through the Temple, and so is Daub. These threads cannot be cleanly cut. The question for Your Grace is how to keep the Lusian presence in Daub’s commercial life a resource and not a liability, and I offer three answers in order.

First, I would advise Your Grace to operate on the assumption that unexplained money, in any political context, has some Lusian component until demonstrated otherwise. Learn which of Daub’s houses and merchants hold Lusian paper, and from which city.

Second, I urge Your Grace to keep an eye upon the Temple. Its Lusian branches move money as well as prayer, and what passes between them and the Temple in Daub will not appear in any ledger the Merchants Guild can show you.

Third, and to be blunt: should any creditor of Daub’s ever call upon the Order of the Sound of One Hand Clapping, Your Grace must know of it before the Order arrives, and not after. Nothing the LTU can raise will stop them. The only defence is to ensure that no contract with Septimura is ever broken by anyone Your Grace cannot afford to lose.