Population: 2,000 to 4,000
Exports: Mountain iron ore, defensive masonry stone, medicinal salves and tonics
Government: The Sanguine (supreme head, holds both religious and civic authority)
Administrative body: Council of senior blood rite officiants
Castle-citadel built against the mountain face, on the same road network as Grimstead and Thislandia despite the schism. Trade does not stop for theology.
Character: Seat of the Blood Faith. Not literal vampires — blood is their sacrament and religion, not a biological condition. Carries a "vampire feel" in rumor and reputation among outsiders, exaggerated by Grimstead's hostility. Aware that Grimstead hates them, lives with that weight. The hatred is one-sided, coming from Grimstead. Inside the walls, Ravenmoor functions like a massive, peaceful monastery. Children play in stone squares. The streets are orderly and clean. The community has been made tighter and more fiercely loyal by being collectively misunderstood.
To a traveler from Grimstead, Ravenmoor looks terrifying. The architecture is sharp and imposing, citizens dress in dark conservative clothing, and the symbol of blood is everywhere. The reality inside the walls is something more complicated than the rumors suggest.
Districts
The Sanguine Market — outside the city walls entirely. Ravenmoor is protective of who enters its gates, so standard secular trade happens here. Foreign merchants buy mountain ore, medicinal tonics, and cold-weather crops without stepping foot inside. Caravansaries and stables line the road.
The Outer Ring — through the Crimson Gate, this is where laypeople live and work. Blacksmiths, stonemasons, weavers. Dark mountain stone architecture, gothic and towering, but the streets beneath it are safe and well kept.
The Inner Ring — the administrative heart. Senior officiants, scribes, and those training in the faith's rites live and work here. Quiet, filled with burning incense and the scent of metallic herbs. The Blood Vaults and scriptoria are housed here.
The Sanctum Sanguine — a looming castle-citadel built directly into the mountain face. The Sanguine rules from here. Beneath it lie secured vaults holding the faith's most precious resources, and below those, something older that the faith does not discuss openly.
How Ravenmoor Actually Runs
Economy: Grimstead may hate Ravenmoor's theology but they still buy from them. Ravenmoor controls the mountain passes, giving them leverage over iron ore and masonry stone that the rest of Krazina needs. The faith's apothecaries produce medicinal salves and tonics that have no equal in the region, which creates a quiet irony — a town rumored to drain blood is also the best source of healing in Krazina.
Taxation: Citizens pay a tithing system managed by senior officiants rather than civic tax collectors. Because the administrators are devout and view greed as spiritual failure, corruption in Ravenmoor's finances is virtually nonexistent compared to Grimstead's bureaucracy.
The Sanguine Guard: Order is kept by fully armored paladin-monks who view policing as a holy calling. Justice is handled by a council of senior officiants rather than courts. Punishment focuses on spiritual penance or exile. Crime within the walls is low.
The Blood Faith: The Pact of the Soil
The theology of the Blood Faith holds that the mountains and the land require a blood tithe to remain fertile and to keep something dark sleeping beneath the earth from waking. The blood is not for them. It is a heavy, necessary price they pay to protect the world — including a world that hates them for paying it.
This is not presented to outsiders as heroism. The faith does not advertise what it is containing or why the tithe must be paid. They simply pay it, generation after generation, because the alternative is something they do not name aloud.
Open threads
- Name and character of the current Sanguine not yet decided
- What exactly sleeps beneath the mountains — connection to the divine war and the goddess's fragmenting is possible but not confirmed
- Whether the Blood Faith knows the full truth of what they contain or only that the tithe must continue