What They Don't Tell You About The City of Brass - D&D

describe dot com rex describes the affinity as a towering humanoid whose skin glows like the hot coals of a fire with a similar heat radiating from it a pair of horns almost devil-like crest their skull along with a pair of pointed ears they glower hottie garved in resplendent armor a glorious shade of brass and wielding a blade wreathed in flame this is a fire genie also known as an afritie there is a genie for every major elemental plane one for fire one for air one for earth and one for water however what makes the africa so particularly interesting is that they are the most organized out of all of the genies in fact their capital city is probably one of the three most powerful metropolises of the entire multiverse everyone knows it by name even if they haven't been there such is the legend of the city of brass however before we go full in let's talk about our sponsor today this video is brought to you by stibbles codex of companions we finally got it guys it's here so look sdm i love my crazy monsters i love my dodges and my traps but you know what my players actually want they want to pet the damn dog at the entrance of the dungeon they want to take that dog home and then love it the problem is that there isn't any rule set specifically designed for pets indonesian dragons it is a part of dnd that is completely neglected familiars are easy to deal with because you summon them through magic and they are magically engineered to obey you but that's not how pets or companions are or should be if you're not a beast master ranger how are you supposed to tame a boar or an elephant in dnd soda dragons are supposed to be the go-to wizard companion yet nobody tames them because there are no rules for it other than maybe being a warlock and then simply dominate them here is stibble's codex of companions with over 110 pages just filled to the brim with cool creatures that you can possibly tame and make your companion cool oozes dragons fey and fiends each creature comes with lore stats a rarity number how difficult it is to tame and the environments where it can appear the book has a robust set of rules on how and where these monsters appear and how would one go about taming them and there is a level up system where you increase your bond with the pet the higher it is the more abilities you can get and the more it can help you while you play further there are a bunch of feats that you can give to your pet when you level it up and extra abilities that one can choose if you wish to make your pet combat worthy the book is filled with support for this playstyle too with tons of new spells designed with pets in mind there are magical items to help you for example mount and fight alongside some of the pets and even a cool duel system where you can pit your pet against other players pets pokemon style check out stables codex of companions in the link below you will not regret it now back to the show now when you think about the biggest and most powerful cities of the multiverse you typically think of three their sigil known colloquially as the center of the multiverse it is located right in the middle of the great circle of the outer plains then there's tunarath the capital city of the githyanki set on top of the corpse of an ancient god that floats in the astral plane and then then there's the city of brass the greatest achievement of the afriti it floats on an enormous hemisphere of solid brass up in the sky of the plane of fire now this of course will be the topic for this video the city of brass is over 40 miles in diameter with over 4 million inhabitants however the thing to keep in mind is that only a fraction of that enormous distance is actually the city core when plane walkers talk about the city of brass they are actually talking about the entire floating brass hemisphere which has the city yes but it also has forests gardens rivers of magma mountains towns and farms in fact the vast majority of the area that comprises the city of brass is actually dedicated for the growth of the weird elemental crops that feed and sustain the city there's also tons of military outposts that require plenty of space on the floating island to put it into medieval fantasy perspective the city of waterdeep claims about 2 million inhabitants but that doesn't mean that 2 million people live in the city it just means that water deep taxes and protects over 2 million people of which the vast majority of live outside of the city in towns and villages close by in reality something less than 200 000 people out of the 2 million actually live in the water deep city core this is the case for almost every single medieval city or town in dungeons and dragons if you're ever given the population of a city always keep in mind that about 85 percent or more actually live outside of the city map in farms and villages scattered around the area this is also the case for the city of brass we don't have an actual concrete number of how many people actually live in the in the core of the city but we do know that there is at least four million people living on the floating piece of brass i say at least because there is an exorbitant amount of people that live and die in this city without ever being accounted for especially slaves who account for an entire fifth of the population of the city out of the four million inhabitants of the city about 800 000 are actually slaves but again those are just the ones accounted for slavery is so huge in here that it is actually their main export selling people and monsters to the highest bidder which most times tends to be devils ifritian devils have an extremely lucrative inter-planar trade agreement where the e3d produce slaves and high-quality weaponry while the devils produce either soldiers or gold other than this the city also exports metals gems worked stone and colored glass anything even remotely related to smithing the a3tr fantastic ad anyways we went into a bit of a tangent there let's talk about how the city actually functions so as the head of the city you have the great sultan of the afriti who is also the tyrannical ruler of the entire race his name is marac all olsedan al-harik ben lazan and he's known as the grand sultan of all the ifrit the lord of flame the punta tate incandescent the tempering and eternal flame of truth the most poisoned of hunters marshall of the order of the fiery heart the smoldering dictator and the crimson firebrand according to the second edition he is supposed to have the power of a greater deity or at least be as strong as one with each of his viziers being of lesser deity or demigod status the great sultan controls the city in more ways than one too having the magical ability to decide where the city floats to and whether or not it lands he also has the singular ability to protect the city and his inhabitants from the fiery doom that lays outside of the plane of fire if you remember our last video on the plane of fire well nobody survives it the heat of the plane is so strong that unless you have magical fire immunity you and everything that you're carrying will combust into nothing well the great sultan can protect the city from this heat not just the people in it but also the buildings its wealth and materials within it this ability he can of course revoke at any time singularly targeting any person or location that he wishes if you displease the great sultan he can make you once again vulnerable to the oppressive and deadly heat of the plane now the great sultan rules from the charcoal palace where he holds court once a month he doesn't particularly care or bother with the trifles of everyday ruling which he instead leaves to his vesiers instead he only deals with matters that pertains to the nobles and some of the more powerful and important guilds of the city for matters that pertain to the prime material realm he instead has six great pashas who rule the effete on the prime and direct them towards matters of importance to them all quote though the core of the city is the heart of e3 power the ifrit empire depends on its far-flung network of slave takers and tributary states the base and emirs of the city are each responsible for a thurgood or military zone which might contain up to four great fortresses these distant colonies are maintained everywhere on the plain of a lamental fire and each is a haven for up to 40 e freit ruled by a malec or valley a common effort of the largest size the fortresses or albaranas are regional centers of defense they are constructed of many materials including brickstone and a type of volcanic concrete each fortress is garrisoned by an ifrit legion of at least 1000 and up to 5 000 soldiers in the field these legions are commanded by a novel given the title of all saeed master or chieftain they are accompanied by dalil local guides who serve as scouts and translators these outposts are spartanly military and strictly functional end quote i don't have to go too deep into it but fights in the plane of fire do happen every so often and this requires the a3d to be always vigilant fights against salamanders and assers do happen every so often but the biggest threat that they have is the air genies you would think that it would be the merits the the water genies but realistically the water genies could never invade the plane of fire since they well they physically cannot exist here and the same for the afriti on the plane of water no instead they constantly war against the air genies who make constant constant strong attacks against the plane relationships between the tao the earth genies and the ifrity on the other hand are actually very good because both love themselves some slaves and they trade with each other in the market of flesh but now outside of the great sultan and his viciers the ifriti family is organized in different levels of power which is defined by how high or low they are in court and power basically some knoll families are more noble than others in this great map of the city of brass you can see that in the big elevation here where the sultan lives there are different elevations and districts within the big hill well each of those circles is kind of like a higher tier of novel generally speaking the higher you are on that hill the more powerful you are within the city and the more you go down the lower the tier of noble and this is important to know because only the most powerful of afriti can actually grant wishes not every genie can do that the nobles are also the ones that command armies and rule over great houses whereas the common afridi they just go about living normal lives or fighting the great armies quote noble e freet are great patrons of the hunt and they often go to far-flung outposts and even to the prime material plane in search for sport they while away days and weeks using both fire falcons and hellhounds to track down the odd animal of the plane of elemental fire earth novels also hunt insolent and disobedient slaves using bronze chariots pulled by nightmares these hunts involve small parties of noble ifrit they're retinue of common efferent servitors and packs of hounds or falcons each noble has his or her own fiery chariot in which to pursue the unfortunate prey end quote now even though there are some afridi who are more important than the rest the law applies equally among them all the 3t are equal to the law but only e3 there are laws that the afriti must follow and then there are laws that the rest of the inhabitants of the city must follow see the city of brass is an enormous hub of activity and it is considered one of the biggest trading centers of the multiverse you can find in here many and all kinds of adventurers traders explorers and artists from all across the realms now the rules that they have to follow are very different than the rules that the e3d have to follow in general everything is tougher for the non-genie and they also have to pay higher taxes and also suffer heavier restrictions but to top it all off punishments for crimes are also much harsher and one of the reasons why there are so many slaves in the city is because one of the most popular punishments for crimes in here is to be sold to perform indentured servitude as a penance if for example you cannot pay a debt you might be given to a noble family to work as a slave for a year in order to pay it off what many consider to be a death sentence many a time because particularly evil africa can basically keep you on forever thanks to several loopholes that can be found within the system for example if you address your master inappropriately you may receive an extra year of sentence so if you're a slave in here it is already very difficult to get out the f3d also have a very patriarchal system that not only covers ruling and business ownership but also bleeds heavily into the home quote female nobles are kept in seclusion but have their own household hierarchies they hold no official power but the skimming nature of the ifrit allows many females to rule through figurehead males end quote i should also bring that the afridi would not see themselves as evil at least not in the way that a devil for example would they are as evil as the romans were when they enjoyed seeing slaves battle each other in the coliseum i am sure that the romans back then didn't see themselves as evil and so doesn't the afridi the devils and hags revel in their evilness they love to torture for the sake of just seeing you suffer but ifrity they just don't really care about your feelings and if you die well there goes the investment at least they gotta use of you now we have talked a lot about the affinities let's take it back to the city we have two major topics for this we have regions of the city and then the military power of the city so let's start with the former the central core of the city known as the furnace is where the noble e3 live this hill is so tall and the tower at the top is so massive that at the very top the great sultan can gaze upon the entire city from his balcony avenshina is a slum of broken and rocky ground where harrigans of the city congregate and live hargens basically look like bipedal fire methods a very common fire elemental in the plane the quarter called the kef inspires is the home of most of the assers in the city and here they have built beautiful golden towers many of which are linked with aerial walkways most asters in the city of course are blacksmiths which are constantly working to create weapons for the military of the afriti they are also forbidden from doing any side business with the adventurers unless they are given the aok from the great sultan himself they are always just way too busy to do anything else ash larks is where most of the comedy free tea live and this would be the best place also to ironically meet the noble ifrits since they wouldn't let you simply walk into the furnace instead they would meet you here sort of like a nice middle of the ground place the rocker in here is the most infamous quarter notoriously known throughout the plane as the single most dangerous and lawless area of the city where even the sultan's warriors sometimes fear to go in here you would find gambling dance pleasure gardens and fighting pits and this is also the area where most of the fire nudes congregate here in piraculum this would be the main market and where most of the craftsmen would live margate is a warehouse district that stays for the most part fairly empty it's used mostly to store goods meant to be transported over into other realms this particular district is also sometimes rented out to private armies who are staying in the city so for example when the dao come in here to trade in slaves their private armies would then stay here the foundry would then be where the richest common e3t would live it is filled with places white streets and imposing homes now this one is really interesting the gate of glory right here is an entrance to a salamander infested warren within the very rock of the city the warren itself is called the glory mine and it is said to be impenetrable except without a salamander guide this is of course only a rumor as nobody actually knows that this place truly exists most guards wouldn't even know that this place exists the plume is a commercial district that functions a bit different than the pure column the pure column is more of an open market whereas the plume is more of a big collection of streets jammed with stalls tiny shops and coffee houses alongside tons of serviceable taverns and inns this actually might be the best place for a group of adventurers to feel welcomed the char is walled off and it is what they call the slave barracks in here they keep the slaves which are the property of the sultan and his nobles these slaves are meant to work in the smithies in the smelters and some of the shops the castings over here are the home of the fruity army that reside in the city apparently duels and brawls are very common in this district and so going here is not advised and then lastly the chimney is a switchback trail that leads all the way down into the cinder sweeps which is the center of the navy the arches over here would stand close as well and would form the staging area that serves as the processing grounds and market for new slaves now most of the time the harbor and the navy are quite empty since the city floats in the sky most of the time but every once in a while once a sultan gives the order to land the city lands by the river of magma and then it becomes flush with people and activity this is also the best time to enter the city you can of course fly to the city while it is in the air but you would still have to present yourself at any of the gates the afriti punish those who enter the city without going through the proper channels you don't want to get on their backside or you might end up being a slave so don't do that outside of the city the regions are patrolled extensively and kept safe you have the pits which is where the slaves would dig for tin copper and diamonds and then there would be the slag which is where the city dumps all of the unwanted refuse and leftovers from mining quote the obsidian fields near the city are cultivated with fireweed fodder for the nightmare cavalry of the sultan and the foodstuffs that sustain the ifriti quam a type of soft spongy grass habit a dark wild grain verdova a nutty dark purple tuber and unbelieving a spicy brown bean serves and even common freak laver here by day tilling the fields tearing out weeds and harvesting crops by night the scarecrows of the friti remain the bodies of criminals and deserters are hung from giblets on the field where they are left as a warning not just to the elemental birds and vermin but to other wrongdoers the only unpatrolled region of the city's lands is the sable forest which the nobles of the city reserve for their special use the black trees themselves are towering but perpetually bare they are called serpent trees and they live entirely upon the heat of the plane which nourishes them as light does to other plants hunts take place here almost every day and trespassers may find themselves hunted down not by patrols seeking to arrest them but by packs of hellhounds ready to tear them apart or keep them up a tree now lastly let's talk about the military force of the city of brass which of course is legendary as it should be being one of the primary and most powerful cities of the multiverse first though keep in mind that as we discussed before even though the city of brass is the core and center of power the empire of the africa is held thanks to nobles who live across the entire plane of fire each of which controls one to four strongholds those strongholds hold power in the region and each keep has over one thousand to five thousand ifrity soldiers so it is very difficult to tell exactly what the total number of units that the free ticket monster is but what we do know is how many units actually exist within the floating rock of brass that makes up the city of brass and it goes like this the main simple bulk of the force goes by the name of the soldiers of the eternal crimson which is under the command of general ab multihib this is a force of one hundred thousand defeat common soldiers which are then supported by a battalion known as the alasaf or the sorrowful which is composed of about 25 000 horse archers and lancers this would be then the least equipped and least trained force within the army they are not meant to be specialist or really do anything particularly crazy they're just afritie with weapons basically now that being said that is still very impressive i mean consider that an affirity has a cr of 11 compared to perhaps a human veteran which would have a cr of 3. i mean even if these affinity are not hardcore navy seals they're still extremely strong and they have to be considering that they have to contend with multi-planar threats even in the plane of fire things can get pretty dicey i mean salamanders have a cr5 and fire giants have a cr of nine and like i said constant raids by the gen from the plane of air can be very deadly unless you have an army anyways the city also has 35 000 afridi archers who comprise the angels of death legion they are armed with composite bows and include mounted troops and infantry their mounds are nightmares and skeletal horses then lastly at least as far as big numbers go there's the ten thousand dragoons of the striders which are the fire nude light coupled religion these would serve the afridi as armies of conquest and are rarely seen in the city and they are particularly good at breaking the ranks of the assers now then after this you basically start to see a little bit of a breakdown of the legions into smaller battalions that are more unique and specialized for their intended purpose for example there's the black darts a unit of two thousand men scorpion slave soldiers who use javelins to soften up our flank opponents then there's the bronze phalanx which are aster siege engineers which are 1200 strong they primarily are used against other genies or even against a freity themselves specifically rebellious nobles then there's the legendary order of the fiery hearts which are essentially the best of the best if you're a decorated warrior of great renown or a champion of the ifrit this would be where you go the the sultan's finest company is a collection of griffin-mounted shock troops which primarily serve as ambassadors couriers and commandos on missions of great importance those who do the best in this particular order are sometimes even granted marriage to one of the sultan's many daughters now there are a lot of different legions a lot of different groups but most of them are not really even worth talking about there are very few and low in number and they're not very interesting so i'll skip those but then there are some that are actually pretty cool it's just that they're not particularly used for war so we'll talk about those now the unquenchables are the palace guard these would be the ones that would protect this entire section of the map and then the sultan himself always at the ready these are 3 000 elite and fanatical ifrit warriors and are always directly at the sultan's command then there's the branded a group of 150 e-fried mamluks which basically means e-freed slaves these e-frites are eunuchs so they have been castrated and the reason for this is their job is to live within the palace and personally protect and guard the sultan's harem which is said to be a collection of 101 wives that the sultan barely ever visits these ifrit are trained to be observant discreet and unbribable now other than this the city also holds over 50 000 soldiers which comprise the legions of the illuminated and this is a fairly strong force though it is not used for war instead they protect and patrol the city functionally they basically behave like constables enforcing curfews and working as police i should also mention that the city of brass has a mandated curfew every single night once it gets dark enough the illuminated and some other priests they come out with their gongs bells and drums to signal the curfew and if you're caught selling merchandise or just even walking the street after this curfew you are punished the first offense is a rest and a fine a second offense is the loss of a hand and the third offense would mean death they take their curfews seriously in the city of braz anyways we also have the watchfire legions also called the orphans which are a group of 40 000 irregulars that rarely ever see any actual combat instead they functionally work as the sultan's secret police which is necessary considering how many scheming nobles there are and how many rebellious effetes one might find in such a big plane now the sultan's personal fleet is comprised of over 130 ships all magically warded and capable of sailing through magma 10 of which are enchanted to be able to fly the navy then has over 18 thousand slaves sailors lava divers shipwrights and general navy marines who can work or could man the ships for war though it is rarely used in that fashion more so than anything the entire fleet is used to transport slaves into the city now the navy is also meant to operate the sultan's pleasure galley described as an ancient vessel road by 500 slaves especially chosen for the task by the sultan himself now these slaves are different these slaves would be all former nobles or officers who were stripped of their titles or ranks for insulting or plotting against the sultan now that's it as far as the military might of the city of brass there's of course more that we could talk about in the city but i just cannot keep making this video longer and longer and the last and only thing that i would like to add is that the great sultan is marked by what they call the sultan's fire see by the charcoal palace there is this enormous pillar of flame that erupts from a giant fountain this fountain is so large that it can be seen from any location of the city the pillar of flame is always active except for when the great sultan dies at which point the next sultan will activate the pillar once more and officially become the next great sultan this ritual marks a sultan with an aura of pale red fire and smoke now this aura is permanent and it is believed that this is what grants the great sultan all of his many great and overpowered abilities it is encouraged to revere the great sultan as a figure akin to a god and many shrines are scattered all across the city where one could pay homage to him other than him however there are only a few other entities which one can openly pray to most of which are gods of fire there is a shrine to coseth one to emix one to sorter a fire giant god and then some others but other than these very specific fire gods it is basically illegal to worship anyone else in the city and you have to remember that there's actually a lot of animosity between the primordials and the gods there was a great war in the dawn times at the beginning of history between these two and that hatred has not died out immix is the most active power in the plane of fire and many freed novels actively venerate him which of course puts them all directly at odds with the gods of the outer planes veneration to coseth is actually discouraged but not completely criminalized out of fear that the cold god of fire elementals might respond in anger the great shine to koseth was built at the very beginning of the creation of the city of braz to basically placate the god and no sultan has dared tear it down since veneration to sorcery is allowed since there is a great concentration of fire giants in the city of braz which of course would demand a shrine hey guys so there's a little addition that i want to make into the video i didn't have the time to actually sort of put this in into the script and then edit it into the video because i'm already running out of time but i still wanted to add this little section in here just me talking off the coughs so that you would have access to this information because it is really important and really interesting the first thing is why the city is actually called the city of braz the reason it is called the city of brass is because of the walls which you wouldn't think so so the wall even though the entire floating island is 40 miles in diameter the walls are actually hundreds of miles long because it goes all around the different perimeters of the floating island and then goes around inside as well and the walls are made of covered they're covering sheets of beaten brass and that's why the city is called the city of brass not because of the floating island of brass or because the the buildings are made of brass out of which a lot of them are is because of the wall now the wall was designed when the uh the city of brass was grounded it was later through millennia thanks to slave work that the entire city was made to float in this big sort of the floating island of brass but the city doesn't get its name because of it it is also believed that this particular part uh what they how they made it to float was one of the things that the answers probably helped on and that's why the asters believed that they had a lot to do with the construction of the city but it was actually the e3 to build the city itself then uh when the city is floating you you notice in in some of the beautiful maps here that i have on the screen that uh there are these rivers of magma that kind of flow to the city those rivers are only active and filled with magma obviously when the city is grounded because it tends to ground on big oceans of magma and so the the magma goes into those canals and fills up those rivers with the magma normally when the city is floating which is most of the time those rivers are actually filled with oil you can still swim in them and people tend to do it for for smuggling purposes but it's dangerous because every once in a while the sultan likes to turn them on with fire uh because it's sort of beautiful it's meant to be this very beautiful very sort of like illuminated thing that just goes all around the city the e3 really love to have that sort of fiery river running around the city now the last thing is that even though the city is floating and it can't move around while floating it doesn't and the reason why it doesn't move is because i mentioned in the video that the uh the city of brass is the center of power in the fruity empire and i and i mean it if the city moves even you know just a few hundred miles in any direction it basically leaves some of the frontiers of the in the other direction vulnerable to attack and also vulnerable to particularly rebellious ifrit nobles who want to secede out of the empire of the friti that happens a lot so they don't really move it is said that in the script here none of the script i mean in the in the lore it says that the few times where the city of brass has actually floated into a different direction those has all those have always been times of cataclysmic war within the uh the e3d empire so they never do it but that's it just some additions i figured you guys would enjoy those all right guys there it is i'm a little concerned because there was a lot of like really factual information in this particular video not necessarily like interesting or like really like mind-blowing information so i hope it was good i hope you guys enjoyed it anyways but yeah anyways i would like to personally thank my patreon supporters barry maskant 5e magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne biotechnofrag doc feeder brad salazar walker motley the great kodini terry kolp omega scales ozol alex cookson benjamin boster is full key951 stephen or doric prince daylight morning crown sabine kurschap solarensis thomas hunt bushido burrito nathan mccomb soulless rider werewolves and games roleplay with advantage lost crusader mr salty stalia jd green olaf clap treb 909 tony rc famine 52 george fortland sovereign mind trevor hess drag logia 5 husteur zirin king the living guild pack michael walker street blow describe and halvard johnson for supporting me on patreon at the 25 level if you would like to support me as well then please please head on over to patreon.comrex to support all right guys thank you so much for watching you guys are the bomb and i'll see you all next time

Channel: MrRhexx

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Id: 2dCUPw0KZKM

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021