Tu’Narath

I wrote the following a few years ago when a D&D game I was running turned planar.

Hope it proves somewhat inspirational for your project:

Tu’Narath is not a city that you will find in poems or stories. It is in a good spot for trading, easily as central as Sigil, City of Doors but it doesn’t boast the latter’s metropolitan extra-planar prismatic citizenry.

It is a city of eternal twilight but it is not the resplendent Arcadian
twilight with fireflies dancing in a youthful forever; it is a grey overcast twlilight of not a sun but the weak memory of a sun. It is a memorable place, built on the bones of a Dead God but when travelers boast of memorable places they almost always smirk while talking about the City of Brass, far too humid for my taste.

Tu’Narath has one thing that no other city can boast and I don’t mean a
palace blotting out the face of a deceased God nor the fact that it floats easily through the Graveyard Behind the Sky, the Place Where Ideas Die, the Astral Plane. Tu’Narath, capitol city of the Githyanki, Red Throne of Vlakkith, Lich-Queen, resplendent in her purple and gold has ten thousand years of hatred; it coats everything like soot from an oily fire.

Philosophers say that races specialize in order to survive. Elves have
their haughtiness and their supposed balance with nature. Dwarves have
their stalwart stubborn stone-like endurance. Humans are just pretty good at everything. Gnomes…to be true I don’t know what it is that Gnomes have but they keep around, don’t they? Halflings have the small town peace of the Shire, mixed with a guilty love of adventure.

Even Drow, Dark Elves-if you will, have a certain amount of pride. At least the Drow walked away from it all, decided to go their own route and say what you want about a culture built on Demonwebs and Slavery, you rather have to respect that kind of moxy.

But the Githyanki have hatred, hatred and their Queen.

A row of gray trees lines Sternum Row, the wide avenue that leads up to the Liche-Queen’s Palace. These trees are from the many planes. The King Planar Theory says that there are infinite planes of existence, like the peeling of an onion, one reflecting or refracting the last; supplying infinite variety. The Liche-Queen’s soldiers have spilled blood in nearly all of them. That is one bloody onion, a busy people.

Heart’s Keep is located right where you’d think it would be, with the
branches from a house-sized weeping willow the color of ash on Sternum Row tickling its curved walls.

Wings of three or five Red Dragons fly overhead, honoring returning
soldiers, victorious over their hated enemies, the Githzarai or the cursed Illithid.

Why the hatred? Every Githyanki child knows. No child ever has to be asked why they hate as they are raised in their battalions, never knowing nor caring who their mother or father is. It is in the air, put there, perhaps the Liche-Queen breathes it out, or perhaps it is the last angry breath of the Dead God, filtering down past the sad trees through the streets.

Old soldiers, unable to fight from war wounds sweep the streets. Those with the skill see to the children, oversee the Young Battalions, so that they will know their place in the great bloody onion.

Tian is a fine old Githyanki, telling the children a nighttime story:

The children should really go to sleep. Swordsmasters will be coming in the morning. This battalion is celebrating its thirteenth birthday and they are finally allowed to practice with swords, no more staffs. Tomorrow they will handle live steel, blunted but metal none-the less. Making it easier to imagine that one is handling a fabled silver sword.

They are too excited, “Tian, old Tian, tell us a story. A good one,” their babble continues as each says what a good one might be. A little girl with a shaved head and yellow teeth wants something about the Liche-Queen’s ascension at the hand of Ephelemon, Red Dragon Consort of Tiamat. A little boy with a green eye and a black eye below a white head of hair begs for a story about the Mighty Gith, savior of the Githyanki people. A chubby boy, all elbows and knees, impossibly terrible with a sword asks for a story concerning the destruction of the Ethereal Cathedral of the Githzarai.

The elderly warrior's stories are without regard for history or truth. They are like blacksmith's tools, designed to pound their listeners into a desired shape for later use.

Tian puts his hand up and the begging ceases. He might be a kind old man but he is first and foremost a warrior, veteran of countless campaigns and his patience travels only so far, “Gith was a child, the same age as you when he first picked up a Silver Sword,” it is a wise choice of stories, tomorrow being their Swordsday. The entire battalions falls into rapture, breathing from their mouths, dreaming awake, “He was the finest general of the Illithid armies and he went far and wide to scout a place for his Masters to conquer and destroy. Countless are the suns that went out under the terrible command of Gith.

We all know that he rose up and destroyed those who would hold his people down, the vile Illithid. We know that for every sun extinguished, for every civilization destroyed, he made the Illithid pay in blood and agony despite the betrayal of his brother-in-arms, Zarai.

What made him do so, though? What makes a fine general rise up and
overthrow those he was bred to serve?

The last mission the Mind Flayers sent him on he was to take a fine
civilization with a sun, ripe like a hanla melon. Gith went to the court of the Wizard-Emperor who ruled this place, a stern ruler named Vecna. Vecna met Gith with his own finest general, a warrior named Kaz. In Vecna’s gardens the three of them had tea.

Vecna was the greatest warlock his people had ever seen and Kaz was the
finest swordsman of his generation but Gith stood proud among them.

Gith explained that his armies were unbeatable and that despite Kaz’s
prowess, and Vecna’s wizardly might, their sun would be turned to a sickly blue and their swords would be broken.

Vecna turned his back on the great Gith and left the generals alone in the garden. They sipped their tea and knew that before the next moon they would meet in battle. There was a silent comradery, two old soldiers doing their master’s cruel bloody chores.

“I have heard your master is a grand wizard and that no secret is beyond his reach,” Gith remarked, sipping his tea.

“I have heard your masters are wielders of an obscure mind magic that can destroy one’s thoughts,” and they sat in the silence of these obvious statements.

“Who would win, if they met in battle?” asked Gith, looking at how the
full-bodied sun of these lands played on the clouds, “This is a sunset, no?”

Vecna nodded, “A beautiful sunset, yes. If they were to meet in battle it would be a terrible thing. They would leave the battle weakened and
distraught, would be open to all manner of deaths.”

Gith grunted his agreement, “All manner of deaths. I have never seen a sun so fine as yours. If we were to take over this place that is the first thing my masters would do. They would use their, what did you call them?”

“Obscure mind magics.”

“Yes, their obscure mind magics, called Psionics, if you care to know the names of things, to make your sun sickly and blue, like a bruise. Your plants would lean towards its dead light but it would be no good and soon, they would wither and die. These lands would only be good to Illithid after that.”

“A shame,” Kas said.

“A shame,” Gith agreed.

A week later the armies of Vecna, led by Kas and the armies of the Illithid Empire led by Gith met on the battlefield. Whereas their masters demanded quick victories the battles were one stalemate after another. Finally, after months of fighting, the Illithid Psions and Vecna met in battle.

Vecna left the battle hurt and frustrated and when he met with General Kas to discuss the coming battles, Kas raised his sword and took out Vecna’s eye and lopped off his hand in a fast thrust and chop. So it was that tea with Gith changed Kas.

The Illithid, the finiest Psions in all of the Illithid ranks were weakned from the meeting and afterwards Gith and Zarai dispatched them. When Gith rallied the troops to go out and destroy the remaining Illithid, it was Zarai who took his monks and retreated to the Ethereal plane, “If we exterminate the Mind Flayers we will be no better than they are.”

And this is why the Githyanki and the Githzarai fight and this is why
Illithid still live, enslave and sup on the brains of the innocent to this day, Zarai’s cowardice.

Go to sleep, battalion, tomorrow you will handle live steel. May the
Liche-Queen’s emerald eyes watch over you in your sleep.”

The light outside was dim as always in Tu’Narath, the eternal grey light sifting through the windows and with blood, battle and hatred dancing in their dreams, the battalion slept.