City States of Pelegar

Excerpted from the Realms of Chirak; still a bit dated but I plan to bring it current soon...

Valen

Valen, the Neutral City

   The immense walls of Valen, the gateway city, stretch from one wall to the other of the Cossarit Pass. The walls are as high as two hundred feet,  built over the ages by many dedicated hinterlanders who seek to preserve the privacy and integrity of their land from any outsiders.

   Valen is said to have been founded shortly after the apocalypse, and its age shows. The city is a great and maddening maze of multileveled streets and towering buildings with a pervasive gothic architecture. Here dwell both hinterlanders, lowlanders, and zealots all in harmony (on the surface) in what is agreed upon as the only neutral city of the land. Ruled by three regents named Lord Gale Medeban of the hinterlanders, Pastakar Ranhadal of the zealots, and Cherathas Delitharia (the younger sister of the queen of Talosin), Valen is carefully kept as a neutral territory for all disputes.

   Behind the curtain of Valen, the dark being Gloom rules with a quiet perseverance, maintaining its eternal charge as the slayer of Avatars. It was summoned long ago to insure that no avatar of any god should enter the Pelegar land seeking forbidden knowledge, or to lift the curse of the people. Gloom is ruthlessly efficient and enjoys the flesh of avatars in a vampiric manner. He despises all holy men, in fact, and preys upon anyone who is not a member of the Cult of the Lost Gods.

Talosin

Talosin, The Dreaming City

   With the Cossarits looming like a great and endless wall of darkness, Talosin is nestled in a fertile basin of green along two major rivers that cascade down from the mountains. It is called the dreaming city, for its lowlander nobles are said to dwell in decadent squalor, and rely on their thralls to keep them comforted and safe. The city is ruled by a king or queen chosen by the Servants of the Dream, mages who have learned to divine through dream magic the hidden will of the land. The current ruler is a young woman named Vialle Dianeni. Her youth and energy have prompted a new era of warfare, as she struggles to unite the decadent nobility in to an effective force against encroaching orcish raiders from the mountains as well as the overwhelming armies of the Empire of Sabradan in the west. 

Vanholm

Vanholm, City of Relics

   The quiet and murky city of Vanholm is ruled by a council of three nobles, the chief of which is Cartus Vindaros. Vanholm is a relic city, in which the population goes about its daily affairs in a dreamy state, but the life of the land seems gone. Only the threat of Dalevar incursions rallies the people, and then only briefly. Strange beings and predatory undead are rife in the region of Vanholm, and some suspect that the torpor of the people is in part an ensorcellment caused by these entities which use the population like fodder. The suspected leader of these beings is a vampire called Eris the Red, an ancient being, said by some to be a soldier who was alive during the apocalypse, who drank deeply of the blood of Ga'Thon, and whose enervated life force was corrupted in to a permanent servant of the destroyer.

Pillar

Pillar, City of War

   Pillar is a militant community, and many of Pelegar's finest warriors come from this region. Warfare as a sport is common here, and the grand arenas are a fabled attraction for those seeking the glory of war and bloodshed for sport. The ruler of the city is Corbas Halone, a violent and dangerous man who is known to be the famous general who repulsed the now infamous Omnios Invasion of two decades ago, in which the Sabradan Empire sought to exterminate the Pelegar once and for all under Emperor Suvias.

   Pillar is haunted, like its fellow cities, by an entity of dire nature. Memneres is a fallen Eholim, it is said, once the general of Pallath, the fallen sun god. Memneres is said to have betrayed Pallath for the love of a demon woman named Trivvetir, and when he realized his error, he remorsefully threw himself in to the Battle of the West, but was slain. The blood of Ga'Thon seeped in to his mortal wounds, and he was resurrected as the undead that he now is. Memneres now lives only to be sated by the perpetual war games of the Pelegar he incites, relishing in the deaths of the cursed people.