An old Fajadi satellite city on the isle of Jazimir, Mehar was once a prosperous port, a shipbuilder's hub, in the days when the sea lanes saw busy traffic. Now it is a crumbling, dilapidated husk of itself, bleeding out slowly as other routes to the West become more popular. Its once bustling shipyards are nearly abandoned, row upon row of skeletal whaling vessels and carracks left to rot unfinished. Mildew blankets its once pristine waterfront buildings and barnacles devour its wharves and jetties. The families who could afford to flee for greener pastures did so long ago, now its population is perhaps a third of its total capacity; mostly fisherfolk and a handful of bitter nobility fallen into genteel poverty. Sea fog that locals call The Miasma shrouds the city with increasing frequency, as if a manifestation of the malaise that afflicts it. Too insignificant now for the Realm to bother extorting tribute from, the imperial garrison left for Fajad even before the Empress disappeared. Indeed, most of the world seems to have forgotten about Mehar, leaving it to its despair, and to The Miasma
It rolled in, on a faerie raider, almost half a decade ago. It might have been hungry fog once, but the Raksha who tried to tame it found out too late that it had become something else entirely, something more. It filled their hollow selves and drove them to beach their vessel upon the rocks. The raksha did not survive, but The Miasma did.
The Miasma blankets Mehar often but not every day, a smothering gray-green fog in which ethereal centipede shapes can be glimpsed swimming out of the corner of one's eye. Its strength depends on the mundane weather. On summer days it is thin and boils away by midday, retreating to sea caves and old tunnels beneath the city, resurging in the night. In the autumn it reigns nearly every day, covering the city like a mantle and extending far out to sea. At times it ranges afar of the city to feed upon natural fog or to satisfy its own alien urges, leaving the sky visible.
The Miasma thinks and perceives, though not as humans do. To communicate it requires a vessel, a host personality to translate its alien desires to the world. It makes do with a handful of calcifying hobgoblins and now humans who have willingly given themselves wholly over to it. Other things lurk in the fog, the half-solid husks of wyld things, sea beasts, and human victims that it has devoured and now uses as appendages to enforce its inscrutable will on the days that it is strongest.
The Miasma views Mehar as its domain, its prize, its nest. If it has designs beyond the city it has yet to make them known, but in Mehar it is the true master of the city. The city leaders are all its vassals, nervously taking orders from the fog's babbling oracles and arranging sacrifices to appease it. The commoners are mostly ignorant of the truth but know enough of the fog's power to remain indoors when the things in the mist stride into the city.
The Miasma is a strange and sometimes cruel master. It demands sacrifice of blood and hopes in elaborate and bizarre ceremonies when it is thickest. Its minions prefer to grab passing sailors for this purpose, isolating them from their fellows and getting them blackout drunk before spiriting them away to their ritual altars. In return it devours pirates, raksha, and undead who would otherwise threaten the city, and drives schools of dazed flying squid into the nets of the Mehar's fisherfolk. Occasionally it misleads merchant ships to run aground on the cliffs and rocks near the city, its minions plundering the holds of their cargo and finishing off unlucky survivors.
With every sacrifice, The Miasma grows infinitesimally thicker, more able to sustain itself in the light of the sun and withstand winds that roll in from the sea. Perhaps one day it shall cover the city perpetually, strong enough to manifest its thrall-limbs whenever it wishes. But for now it waits and bides its time.
Crumbling economy and inscrutable alien fog aside, the people of Mehar largely resemble the inhabitants of other settlements in Fajad's former hegemony. They are devout Abhari, hardworking fisherfolk and shipbuilders who toil to support themselves and their families as best as they can in Mehar's age of dissolution. They laugh and quarrel amongst each other as do people all over Creation, though these days a malaise hangs over many. The Miasma, though still feared, has lost much of its novelty, and they spend the days when it rolls into town nervous but otherwise unimpeded. Most carry whale oil hand lanterns to assist them with visibility, and follow guide ropes to find their way to and from their places of business. The signature dish of the city is barnacle chowder, eaten piping hot with rye bread after coming in from a long day's work at sea.
Mehar formerly saw ships from across the West and North, but now its harbor traffic consists largely of small fishing boats belonging to the natives. A smattering of whaling vessels also call the port home, but often set out to sea for extended periods in search of prey. Ships visiting from outside the city are now typically only from Fajad or Crocus, Abhari merchants and fishermen stopping for a brief resupply before moving to more prosperous ports.
Around two thirds of the buildings in Mehar are abandoned, left behind by the original inhabitants. Enterprising citizens have repurposed some as storage or workspaces, or have scavenged furniture and other items from them. Other buildings lie neglected, rotting in the mist, sometimes explored by foolhardy children or local eccentrics. Both cultists and ordinary criminals sometimes use the particularly empty districts for their activities, relying on isolation for secrecy. Some structures have been colonized by things that the fog brought in from elsewhere in the Northwest, those victims who retain enough selfhood to remain behind when The Miasma leaves.
The nominal rulers of Mehar are the Governor and City Council, offices largely dominated by a smattering of noble families who were too poor or too proud to leave the city when the trade did. They and a number of other local leaders are The Miasma's slaves, whether through fear, avarice, or genuine desire to help the city. Many believe, not without reason, that The Miasma is the only thing keeping Mehar alive. The fog, either not caring for or not comprehending the intricacies of actually governing a settlement, grants them wide latitude to do much as they did before it claimed Mehar. Continued exposure to the thick vapors at The Miasma's heart have begun to instill a strangeness within some, bestowing upon some unwholesome physical changes, wild personality shifts, or a few unnatural powers. A handful have given themselves wholly to the fog, walking into its depths and returning only as half-solid mouthpieces when it demands something of the cult. Some of the cult have begun to distill substances from the vapors, using Fajadi alchemy to bottle and concentrate the mist into a variety of drugs and reagents.
Once the pride of Mehar, the Shipyards now lie mostly deserted. When Mehar was prosperous, the shipbuilders of the city had pioneered a process to build a single ship within a day using mass produced parts, but now the city is too poor and underpopulated to undertake such ventures. Numerous ships in various states of assembly and disassembly sit in drydocks like the skeletons of colossal sea beasts, rotted by the fog or embalmed by the salt breeze. The Cult of The Miasma has carved strange runes on some of the ships, and now when the fog falls the silhouettes of the hulks appear even more twisted and unnerving.
Wrecked upon an islet just outside the harbor, The Prince's Folly is the raksha frigate that brought The Miasma to the city. Scavengers have looted the otherworldly cargo in its hold and stripped away its jasper planks and lorelei hair sails, leaving only the pewter keel and ribs. Its crew were found dead in its hold, their inhumanly beautiful visages contorted into looks of utter terror. Well meaning Abhari clerics gave them funerals and buried them on the islet in a small row of graves. Lesser wyld-twisted flora and fauna, none particularly dangerous or valuable, sometimes cluster around the burial site, providing passing fishermen with an occasional source of minor curiosities and trophies.
Former base for the Realm's garrison detachment, The Barbican is an old abandoned seafort overlooking the harbor. The city council boarded up the main gate but left a few underground passages leading to and from the fortress open. It is here that the Cult of The Miasma performs its darkest and bloodiest rites, storing sacrificial victims in the dungeon beneath the fortress until the mist arrives to accept their blood offerings. The Barbican's tunnels connect to a network of sea caves and cisterns that The Miasma shelters in during the summer days. The fog has commanded its servants to expand the tunnels, and to this end some of their abductees toil chained in the dark before they are hauled before the sacrificial altar.
Ancient and tenebrous, Izimiral Wood, just outside the city limits, is where Mehar acquires most of its lumber. Strange powers have nested in the forest since long before The Miasma arrived, and even now the wood seems impervious to the fog's incursions. Logging operations once entered the forest's depths heavily guarded and laden with apotropaic talismans, but now Mehar's people mostly cut just a handful of trees from the edge each year. Its mortal inhabitants, small groups of trappers and other woodsmen, live in huts and cabins raised on stilts above the forest floor. They have resisted all attempts to convert them to the Abhari Creed or Immaculacy, despite strident missionary efforts by Fajad and the Realm in prior generations. Instead, the woodsfolk worship shape-shifting spirits of decay and shadow, leaving offerings at the mouths of woodland caves that they themselves fear to enter.
Scion of a dwindling noble lineage Governor Kelem is the official ruler of the Mehar, but a figure of only middling standing in The Miasma's cult. A nervous man entering middle age, Kelem was never particularly brave, but one day his wife Saira walked into the mist and came back as its creature, shattering what little potential for defiance remained within him. Saira's husk is The Miasma's hold on Kelem, the governor desperate to see some fragment of her former self when she arrives to give The Miasma's demands. To the citizens, he issues calming decrees and advisories to remain inside when the fog is at its thickest, trying to hide the cult's activities. To dull his terror and soothe his nerves, he has turned to the narcotic vapors distilled from the mist, imbibing them and dreaming of happier times in the privacy of his office.
Though of common birth, Harbormaster Taruj holds a seat on the city council and ranks high within the Cult of The Miasma. By day he oversees docking fees and customs for what little foreign traffic that Mehar sees and commands the handful of toughs who pass for a city militia. Devotion and exposure to The Miasma have changed the harbormaster. Formerly gaunt with age, he's nearly doubled in size, greyish skin hanging loose in folds over his now bulky frame, and no longer does he feel the need to blink. Hiding his features beneath a voluminous oilskin cloak and cap, he sizes up visitors to the city, looking for sacrifices who will not be missed. Years ago, Azurite sailors shanghaied his only son onto their ship, never to return. Taruj feels that it is personal vengeance upon the outside world to inflict a similar fate upon visitors, though if there are none available, he will offer up local "undesirables" to The Miasma to preserve his beloved city.
The most senior Abhari cleric within the city, Marabout Yeshua knows of The Miasma's cult and is horrified by their actions, but is largely unable to oppose them overtly. He does not think for a second that the cultists would not haul him away into the mist if he made an open show of resistance, and he has responsibilities to tend to the local mosque and instruct junior clerics in the ways of the faith. Through blessings and a few occult teachings he picked up in Fajad, Yesha believes that he's warded the mosque from The Miasma's influence, for now at least. An unlikely ally in his secret war against the mist is Gerasinus the Burned, a Shining Way apostle who escaped imprisonment by the cult by invoking the Underworld's pyreflame, and now nurses his wounds in the hinterlands with the marabout's assistance.
A young woman with old eyes, Nadia's husband once set out to sea on his fishing boat six years ago and never came back, leaving her with two children to take care of. To make ends meet she dives for pearls and coral in the warmer months and farms oysters beneath the dock by her home. On one of her dives, she encountered the skeleton of a great whale-like creature and brought back a tooth to scrimshaw. Ever since then, she feels as if she's accompanied by a protective presence whenever she heads out to sea, singing mournfully in a voice she can almost hear. The song has recently led her to dive sites where she's uncovered ancient jewelry and even some scraps of magical materials, but she fears selling these trinkets immediately, lest others rob her in search of more.
