Greystone

The city-state of Greystone, lay a fortnight to the southwest of Sanctuary, and was built over what is thought to be the site of the fallen city of Rendora (destroyed by Sorn several millennia earlier - the waters of the nearby lake are said to be Sorn’s tears). Unlike Rendora, Greystone was a city of men, and although the population was fairly cosmopolitan, the aristocratic class was composed mainly of human families.

The rulers of the city-state traditionally governed with the aid of the monastic Order of the Half-Sun, who brought trade and prosperity to Greystone. But as the Church of the Shroud grew in influence, the Shroud Elders became de facto law-makers. They installed a new ruling family, the Rickhearts, who dismissed the Order of the Half-Sun and outlawed the Knights of Magilone.

The Temple of Krell became both a fortress and a prison and the common folk lived in constant fear - and things got worse. Most of the Shroud Elders of Greystone found themselves on the wrong side of the Shroud Civil War, and the city bore the brunt of the purge that followed. The Shroud Loyalists set about ruthlessly crushing any institution not sympathetic to their cause. The Order of the Half-Sun was dissolved and even the puppet-king Rickheart was deposed to make way for direct rule by the church.

The purge quickly spiraled out of control. The Church of the Shroud employed huge swathes of the civilian population and even tradesmen required religious patronage to further their careers: clerks and carpenters, musicians and militiamen were all caught up in the frenzy of accusations and counter-accusations that spread through the city like wildfire. For the vindictive and the craven this is an opportunity to settle old scores and indulge their baser instincts: thousands of innocent people were murdered and worse by baying mobs on the basis of nothing more than hearsay. Many fled the city and lived as refugees in the broken lands beyond the city walls: the city of Greystone become a hell on earth.

A thieves’ guild called the Bloody Talon flourished in the city of Greystone. When the Shroud Loyalists wanted to acquire six of the shards of the key to the Crown Spires from the Temple of Krell (thus precipitating the civil war within the church) they employed a thief named Sbik, and in return for his services gave him enough men to take control of the Bloody Talon. Sbik’s takeover of the Bloody Talon was violent and ruthless. He effectively made the thieves’ guild an organ of the Church of the Shroud, and opposition to this policy was brutally suppressed. The Bitter Union was founded by several former Bloody Talon members who managed to escape the city, and spent the rest of their live preoccupied with the worry that Sbik’s goons were coming after them.