Wormhold

Although Hekaga is well-known for tolerating abominations which most dracon cities would eschew (at least officially), it is not the only place which gives legal sanction to detestable practices. One of the most notorious cities for this purpose is the city of Wormhold, a name it adopted not out of malice, but out of self-interest. While the city is infamous for its toleration of necromancy, it is also a major tourist destination for the same.

Originally named Aropus, the city of Wormhold has about 50,000 people living in its walls. Built as a compact, roughly square-shaped city, it is known for strong walls and well-built defenses. Faced with large and hostile neighbors, the city could hardly spare any source of power for its defense, including necromancy. Some three centuries ago, the city’s government hired a cabal of necromancers to raise undead in order to bolster the numbers of its army. While not a smashing success, the effort enabled Aropus to hold its own. As a condition for their help, the necromancers demanded that their school of magic be legalized, a term Aropus’s king reluctantly agreed to.

At first, legalized necromancy came with many strings attached. By the king’s decrees and the city’s laws, the necromancers could only raise the undead in their towers or in areas specifically designated by the government, mostly in places controlled by the army. With the growth of undead in the army came a greater voice for necromancers in the city’s government. Eventually, this call grew loud enough to win significant concessions. In time, the undead were used to supplement the city’s guards, patrol its streets, and protect its walls.

As with any large-scale summoning of undead, accidents inevitably occurred. For the most part, this was a series of small-scale incidents: a loose skeleton wandering off, a rogue spirit haunting a house, things of that nature. At one point, a pair of skeletons under the control of rival necromancers both broke free of their masters’ control and fought each other until both were nothing more than piles of splintered bones. From this incident came the idea which would not only give necromancy a good name in the city, but would lead to serious cash for its coffers: undead gladiators.

Against the expectations of the necromancers, the king and citizens were intrigued by the idea of skeletons and ghosts fighting for the amusement of the crowds. When the first arena fights featuring the undead were finished, they were regarded as little more than a novelty, albeit a popular one. Soon, it was apparent that using undead to fight in the arena had many advantages over the living gladiators. First, no one had to die in these matches, obviously. Second, the undead could take far more damage than the living and still keep fighting, making for longer matches which kept the crowds on edge. Third, the undead were far cheaper and easier to train and replace than normal gladiators, allowing for seven matches a day, every day of the year. An arena that active was unheard of anywhere else in the dracon lands.

While visitors avoided the newly renamed city at first, over time, a small but influential niche of tourists came over, intrigued by tales of the undead fighting in gladiator matches. Some came over just to see the senseless violence. Others, usually of magical inclination, came over to see if the undead truly could be used for (relatively) non violent purposes and if a huge number of them could be kept under control. To their pleasant surprise, both of these things were true. The undead, while not truly used for good, had found a useful purpose.

Of course, there were limitations to this usefulness. All of the undead that the necromancers summoned had to be of the simpler, weaker, and mindless kinds. The summoning of stronger and sentient undead was usually impractical due to the difficulty of controlling them. As such, necromancers foreign to Aropus decried the mages in the city as “lightweights” and as charlatans who wasted their talents on entertaining and protecting the masses rather than using their powers to control them.

Over time, the opinions of the citizens towards the necromancers changed from begrudging toleration to outright acceptance, and eventually, a great deal of approval. Fifty years after legalizing necromancy, Aropus had been completely and irrevocably changed by it. As such, the king decided that a new name for the city was needed. Thinking of a descriptive name, he chose “Wormhold” based on the greatly increased number of worms and other vermin the city had accumulated due to the presence of the undead. By this time, the undead made up the greater part of the city’s armies, wall guards, and almost half of the street patrols. Citizens regularly and voluntarily signed away their physical remains for reuse after the deaths in exchange for money in the present, and the city’s catacombs were transformed from a burial ground to a reanimation factory.

Naturally, not all are happy with this state of affairs. While Wormhold has kept itself under control for the last several decades without a major incident, many mages and clerics have reason to believe that it is only a matter of time before something goes wrong. There have even been suggestions that the undead are only kept under control because a vast, hidden power is manipulating them from behind the scenes. This entity, if it exists, is surely very patient and crafty, for if it is real, it lets a few Wormhold undead get out of control every now and then to prevent anyone from getting suspicious; when things go too well, odds are something is wrong. At least, that is how dracons see it. At the very least, if there were no accidents at all, there might be an inquiry as to why things were going so unbelievably well, an inquiry which might uncover the presence of this powerful being.

Of course, this is only conjecture based on personal experience. To date, there have been no signs of a “hidden puppet master” operating from under everyone’s snouts. Even so, visitors to Wormhold are advised that the undead are inherently hard to control and are never completely safe to be around. A great deal of caution when visiting is highly recommended.

-- A visitor’s guide to Wormhold