Ireq - The City of Star-flowers

As one approaches Ireq, the dazzling colors is the first sign of it’s distinctive nature.
Nested beneath the Zujaj Mountains, a chain of peaks composed solely of iridescent glass. Created as the result of a fallen comets last moments, these immense crystalline giants have been both a blessing and a curse for the City of Glass-flowers.

In Ireq, every window is covered in with glass, and thousands of people ply the trade of carvers, etching out a wage in the crystal quarries, often a perilous job, as splinters can be slimmer than needles and deadly as razors. Yet, the price of the glass is worth the risk.
Even though the Zujaj have been a boon, Ireq history have several examples of attempted invasion due to those shining formations.
Many a savage tribe have invade to claim these “divine mountains” for the glory of their gods. Even a Fae once took a liking to them, and with an army of towering tusked lions and ravenous jackalmen of the purest glass, he sought to conquer Ireq. And it was only due to the ardent protectors of the city that he did not succeed.

Within his indigo-colored palace halls, the stargazing pasha, Erek bes Fathlan, fill his court with spirits of all manners, sharing his waking moment with creatures of mists and starlight, rather than flesh and bone.
However, his attention is a fickle thing, even among the spirits of his court, and the rivalries between these ephemeral lovers of the pasha has spilled into the streets, causing the common man to choose a side in debates, feuds and even brawls in the great squares.
When the palatial intrigues do not cause calamities in her streets, Ireq is a place of knowledge.

In the Souk of Erudition, the peddlers hawk their offers of scholastic worth.
Scrolls of ancient make, telescopes and sextants, compasses and tomes. Within the Sabbah al’Masir, the Palatial Observatory, the finest astronomers pen their discoveries and debate the meaning of the stars, many of them having sensed a change in the stellar patterns.

At the Schools of Nine Virtuous Wisdoms, students are educated in ethics, philosophy and swordsmanship, shaping them into the famed Golden Jannisaries, a warrior-guild of bodyguards and slayers of wickedness. Yet, their teachers are mere students compared to the true master, and only a select few dares to brave the journey into the desert to find the Silent Mask.

In fair Ireq, the greatest temple is that of Khadae Tajir, the Lord of Peacocks and Aesthetic Wonders, and thousands of pilgrims flock to his door, hoping to catch his eye, and as such, his priests suffer the presence of a hundred atrocious artists on their doorstep, singing their harrowing hymns hoping to be noticed by the god. A god whose sole concern is his plots against those who have spited him.
At times, his chief rival is Nabatha, the Master of Colored Glass, a hedonistic spirit that inhabits the pleasure houses of Ireq as frequently as the glassmith common halls. Which, often, are the same thing, as his adherents are wont to emulate his pleasure-seeking ways. Hundreds of children here bear marks of his bloodline.

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