Akaltepek, City of Bones

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“My houses’ Greatmother used to tell us stories of Akaltepek.

Back when she was a girl, the royals called it the Upstart city, a trading port that grew to rival the Imperial Capital, where coin rules everything and greedy merchants worship wealth instead of the gods.

I guess not much has changed then, except now the royalists are all either dead or exiled into the posioned lands, their reward for a bloody secession and a catastrophic civil war.

The Index now rules in their stead – orginally archivists tasked with cataloging the Bones, they were one of the few groups allowed to access the crystals that were considered the holy relics of the Empire. They converted the Central Palace into an Academy, and recruited every scholar they could find into its ranks.

Researchers for the Index eventually figured out what the Imperial family and the Temple refused to admit – the Bones weren’t sacred at all, they were simply tools. Objects that could manipulate heat and light, change the weight and density of the matter around them, or send signals across vast distances.

And like any tool, they could be researched, refined, and manufactured. The Index quickly became the biggest exporter of Bone, and harnessed Akaltepek’s vast trade network to hold the Empire together even as its leaders killed each other.

Even the likes of the Stone Guard and the Temple turned a blind eye to what was once the forbidden selling of holy relics, since they now relied on the Index’s money most of all. The Stone Guards now enforce the Index’s law, and the Temple preaches their guidance.

So long as the merchants and the mercernaries and the guilds all keep profiting off this, everyone stays happy. And so Akaltepek remains the same as it ever was. Everyone here is just trying to climb over the body of the person ahead of them.

…and if the Index was able to justify taking over the Empire because of their enlightenment, then who are they to exile me? I understand things about Bone that they’ll never comprehend. So maybe it’s my turn to take Akaltepek from them. “