Sawa Ike
The Dark Matriarch Darth Shōjō
- Intent: To continue to expand on Atrisian Lore
- Image Credit: Generated with AI
- Canon: N/A
- Links: Kazue Stone
- City Name: Jiedushi
- Classification: Ruined City (Submerged Necropolis)
- Location: Atrisia
- Affiliation: N/A
- Demographics: Fish sentient and pale, blind fish gliding through the depths; malformed eels and razor-reeded schools; occasional apex predators drawn by the rot
- Wealth: Low: The city is ruined with nothing left living within it.
- Stability: Low: Destroyed
- Description: Once a gleaming bastion of white marble and silver filigree, Jiedushi was the jewel of ancient Atrisia a city built to honor Jiedushu, goddess of Love and Fertility. Its spires and domes caught the sun like polished bone, fountains sang eternal hymns, and every street bloomed with devotion. Now it is a drowned mausoleum, half-submerged in black, viscous water that reeks of iron and decay. The Jade Empress's judgment sealed its fate: poisoned rivers, barred gates, shattered dams. The flood came without mercy, swallowing screams in the night. Centuries later, the city endures as a spectral warning its marble facades bleached sickly grey, veins of dark algae threading through cracks like corrupted veins. Thick, perpetual mist clings low, glowing faintly with bioluminescent spores. The air tastes metallic, heavy with the rot of unburied dead. Strange currents tug at intruders, as if the city itself breathes, reluctant to release what it has claimed.
- The Sunken Plaza (Former Heart of the City): Vast open squares once alive with festivals and priestess processions now lie under 10–30 meters of water. Toppled statues of Pital nude, serene, arms outstretched in blessing jut from the murk like pale ghosts. Their marble eyes seem to follow movement; some bear faint, weeping cracks where tears of black water trickle eternally. Schools of blind, luminescent fish dart between them, their scales flashing sickly green in the dim light filtering through the mist above.
- The Temple Districts: Grand ziggurats and colonnades dedicated to love's rites now tilt drunkenly, half-flooded. Marble halls echo with distant, distorted bell tolls no wind moves them, yet the ancient bell towers chime irregularly, as if rung by unseen hands. Inside, murals of ecstatic union peel in layers, revealing older, darker images beneath fertility twisted into something predatory. Overgrown reeds, sharp as obsidian blades, pierce through cracked floors like spears from below.
- The Drowned Avenues: Broad boulevards lined with bronze busts of long-forgotten priestesses and acolytes, their shaved heads now encrusted in barnacles and glowing algae. Waterlogged theater stages sag under the weight of silt; faded curtains trail like funeral shrouds. Fountains, once musical, gurgle with poisoned effluence black water bubbling up in rhythmic pulses, as though the city's heart still beats feebly.
- The Forbidden Depths (Lower Levels & Submerged Tunnels): The city's ancient sewers and filtration catacombs form a labyrinth beneath the flood. Here the darkness is absolute; pale, eyeless predators massive eels with lamprey mouths, schools of flesh-stripping fish hunt in silence. Legends speak of "the Drowned Choir": faint, harmonic whispers rising from the vents, remnants of final prayers or screams frozen in the Force.
- The Dam Ruins (Outskirts): Shattered remnants of the great irrigation dam that the Empress's sappers destroyed. Massive stone blocks lie scattered like broken teeth; rusted metal gates hang ajar, eternally barring escape that never came. Currents here are strongest pulling swimmers toward the center, as if the river itself hungers for more souls.
- None organized. The city defends itself. Intruders face collapsing structures, sudden undertows, toxic algae blooms that burn skin and lungs, and apex predators (large serpents, tiger-like beasts that prowl the shallows, drawn by the scent of blood). Whispers persist that the unquiet dead or echoes of the drowned manifest as pale, waterlogged figures that beckon before vanishing.
Once constructed as a symbol for the ancient goddess of beauty and fertility, Massive buildings of carved marble, murals, statues, bronze busts and priestesses across the city to welcome visitors to the temples. Training halls for acolytes in the temples, all were expected to serve shaving the hair from their bodies male and female. Being taught the prayers and rituals that would be used. It was seen a a technologically advanced city with water filtration, sewers and systems to make fountains, metal working, arts, theater and prayers. The fabled bell towers across the city to tell when to preform devotions, when to wake and when to sleep.
For thousands of years it is rumored the city flourished competing against Sarnoi for people, for influence. It was closer within the continent, it was near people and had more access to fertile farm land and forests. THey sought to unseat the people there but were turned back. Where Sarnoi had priests and people, the Jiedushi people had concubines and softer stock. THe ones who were for fighting as much as for serving the gods. IN the first war between them the Sarnoi priestesses legend says used beasts of the forests, beasts of the air and sea with fang and claw to tear itno them.
The first massacre soured relations even more but it also made them stay back, made them avoid fighting as the centuries went by and they got involved in different courts of petty emperors and warlords. The new people who had come across the mountains, the different ones had spread across the region but as soon as they had gotten and escaped from their tormentors they were turning on each other. Each one finding Jiedushi and bringing tribute for their services. Bringing priestesses to their cities, acolytes and with them their knowledge but it was short lived.
The first time they encountered her and her yovhsin was outside the gates. The Empress of Jade who wore armor and swords, hair a jet black and skin pale like milk. She gave them a chance to join her and serve her son as religious council. When they refused she promised they wouldn't survive the year and would bow. Returning to their respective sides the people of Jiedushi hid behind their walls and stone. They had their own systems for filtering the water, food in stores and livestock. Then their water and animals were poisoned, the Empress blocked and barred the gates.
She didn't bother to fight them, she didn't bother to offer a second chance. Barring the gates to make sure no one from the city can escape. Down the river where the irrigation and filtration systems had ben built. A dam of the water to funnel and control it so they could control their fields, so they could even control the river and mess with Sarnoi should they prove difficult. The Empress destroyed it with sappers. Letting the water rush in and smash against them, letting it drown the men and women in their sleeps. Children drowning while they kicked and screamed.
The city was destroyed and the wars of unification continued to unite all of them under her rule but Jiedushi sat there its history nothing more then a cursed place. Over time it was said to have become corrupted from all fo the bodies that floated to the surface. Ruined, destroyed and with poisoned water things changed. Mist settled in, the once white marble seemed to become sickly and grey with the water looking black. Legends of monsters, of creatures escaping being hunted to extinction retreated into the destroyed buildings.
The centuries have preserved it as it is, submerged and mostly destroyed for now until it was visited by explorers during the plague and dark times. They found black waters that seemed to be polluted, with pale fish, malformed and blind... algae that glowed in the dim light on the surface and stalks of reeds that were sharp to the touch. Fish that could strip the flesh from bone and large snakes. Tigers, dangerous creatures that were attracted to it. The netherworld and destruction on Atrisia barely touched it leaving the ruins to be seen and investigated by explorers.
Last edited:
