Mar 1

Mar 1 Ikiuku, a City of Air - Locations

What is Ikiuku?

Located in the Plane of Air, Ikiuku is a small settlement that fled the Material Plane when their city was attacked and they were forced to flee. The people of Ikiuku, pronounced e-key-coo, are largely elemental-kin, also known as genasi, though they also count creatures from the Material Plane, air mephits, a djinn, and other inhabitants of the Inner Planes among their numbers.

The city is a small trading outpost, largely a stopover, for traders on the planes. They welcome any who are peaceful and looking for a place to stay on their journey, and if they have exciting stories to tell all the better. The city is managed by a mayor and a small guard force who rarely have more to do than track down a minor theft. While the town is largely peaceful and sleepy, there is a danger that has the inhabitants on edge lately. The wind dukes, who act more like bandits with huge resources than proper dukes, are each claiming huge swaths of the plane and warring constantly. The biggest threats come from Wind Duke Uzo, a relatively new leader who has taken down several others and is threatening Wind Duke Haalifith’s claim. It's only a matter of time before one of the wind dukes turn their attention to Ikiuku and forcefully claim the city, sending many of its residents off to be sold as slaves in the City of Brass.

History

Ikiuku was founded almost a thousand years ago when the first inhabitants were forced to flee their home on the Material Plane. They were the last survivors of the nation of Asmanti when their city was destroyed by an ancient dragon known as Meerblaus. They had fled their city in the only direction they felt safe, to the skies and beyond the clouds. The asmanti knew of a portal to the Plane of Air that would open on clear days, where no cloud could be found in the stunning blue sky. Constructing hot air balloons, they flew thousands of feet into the sky where the cold froze the ropes of their balloons, and yet still they ascended until the air grew thin.

Just as they thought they had mistimed the portal, the land below them only tiny smudges against the dark blue ocean waves, they found themselves in the endless blue skies of the Plane of Air. They had arrived in a plane that Meerblaus had no way of knowing or reaching, and celebrated. They had somehow survived.

The First Rock

It wasn’t long before the Asmanti encountered another problem. They had no land to call their own, they had focused on escaping the Material Plane, they hadn’t given much thought to their circumstances in the Plane of Air. They first lashed their hot air balloons together, turning them into a makeshift raft. Luckily for them, this only lasted for the first few months before they found their first piece of earth hurtling through the Plane of Air. They hopped onto it, displacing the griffons that were nesting on it, and began settling their home in truth, destroying the hot air balloons they had used and constructing homes out of the few materials they had. They named the rock Ikiuku and this began their new life in Air.

The City Grows

Over the next thousand years, the city grew larger and larger. They were able to grab large chunks of earth that somehow made its way to the Plane of Air, trade for materials to build their town, and have thrived as a small trading outpost. Because only different types of air are native to this plane, they must trade for everything they have. Seeds, water, earth, wood, metal, and more are all bartered and bought, making it so that most who reside here save as much as they can.

The city is made up of six large earth motes with the original earthmote, Ikiuku, being transformed into a garrison that resides in the center of the city. Linked to this central island by bridges are the two main earthmotes that make up the bulk of the city, Oke Island and Nenna Island. These two large earthmotes were captured several hundred years ago and forcefully positioned to reside next to their first earthmote, Ikiuku.

After that, a small earthmote named Soka Island was attached to Oke Island and was transformed into a small defensive structure and the mayor’s place of residence. The people of Ikiuku, who are no longer just the Asmanti survivors but people from all over the planes, decided that if they ever had to abandon their city, they should fortify the small earthmote and have a place to protect them while they would search the plane for a new home. It's not an option anyone wants to take, but the city is fond of being overly secured for the worst events as they were founded from people driven from their homes.

The final two earthmotes, Maka Island and Chib Island have yet to be put to use. They are recent additions to the city and are trailing behind Soka Island as the city decides on how to use them. They might be collided with one of the other large islands to increase their size or sold off to another settlement if the offer is suitable. Earthmotes in the Plane of Air is rare, and the fact that Ikiuku has the fortune of having two more motes than they currently need is a huge blessing for this city built on trade.

An Outsider’s Perspective

Visitors find a thriving city focused on growth as being a popular trader stop-off. They are not the site of great views, not that any view on the Plane of Air isn’t breath-taking, but they offer fair prices and are happy to accept most people in their community so long as they aren’t going to start trouble. They are always in need of supplies like wood or raw metal, happily trading in gold and knowledge of the surrounding areas.

Adventurers can find a tavern and free drinks for providing entertaining stories, as few ever leave the city and are always interested in news from all over. While few may have a connection to the Material Plane, they are just as interested in the land-nations that so many hail from. To them, they find life strange when land isn’t a concern, and to hear about mountains, rivers, and even a simple forest can be exotic and strange to them.

A Native’s Perspective

The people of Ikiuku are content with their city, enjoying their life for what it is. They have had little to worry about beyond the occasional bandits that plague everyone in the planes, and have a good relationship with elementals who are rarely, if ever, cruel. They have been fortunate in that they have found so much land to claim as their own, as other communities don’t have as much room to breathe. Few places can be described as ‘sprawling’ but their community even has large farms, something that is almost unheard of throughout the rest of the plane who have to rely on traders to bring in food.

It might be because they are so fortunate that they are happy to greet almost all outsiders. So long as no one comes to their city looking to cause trouble, they are happy to allow them to reside here. Exiled djinn, genasi who escaped slavery in the Plane of Fire, and planar travelers can all make their home on the islands, making it so there is a diverse community on the islands.

Unfortunately, the threat of the wind dukes has been causing tension in the city. Many of them can be seen staring off blankly into the featureless blue expanse, wondering if the next airship they see will be a trader or a warship. While there is tension, it hasn’t gotten so bad that they are cutting off traders or restricting movement to and from the city.

Traits

Appearance

Ikiuku looks like any small city that splits a river on the Material Plane. It has docks, taverns, warehouses, defensive walls, guards, and more that make the entire community look quite boring compared to the grandeur of djinni architecture. On closer inspection, one can see that everything in Ikiuku is repurposed.

Wood is never thrown out unless it is completely rotted, and in that case, it will be added to a compost bin to help provide soil and nutrients to the crops. Metal is only discarded when it rusts and no one can find a use for it. Homes are built of any material that can be found, often with wood and stone that doesn’t match together but is good enough to build out of. Little goes to waste in the city because everything is valuable. For anything except air to be in the Plane of Air, it had to first be carried to the plane. This makes anything have more value to it than living somewhere like the Material Plane or the Plane of Earth where you can at least build a structure out of the stone tunnels there.

Despite that most structures are made out of any material that can be found, the city is well maintained. Streets are kept clean of litter and trash, as anything can and will be repurposed, and the people go to great lengths to maintain their clothes and possessions as replacing even just a shirt can be difficult if a cloth merchant hasn’t been to town in several weeks. The residents are used to living in an economy where almost everything is scarce but plentiful at the same time as traders come in spurts, selling tons of supplies or sometimes having little to offer. This makes it so that many in the city are good at rigging things together so that they are functional.

The top of the islands are where the city resides with a few farms tucked along the outside. Most of the people live on the upper side of the islands, with even farmers residing on the top side. This makes it so that the bottom of the islands can be fully given over to the farmers to produce as many crops as possible. There are a few watch posts, mostly to watch out for massive flocks of birds that soar through the plane seeking food, but also to watch out for bandits who would attack Ikiuku from below.

Traveling to Ikiuku

Because the plane is morphic, they are always in a perceived similar area to portals and other settlements, making it so they are a reliable stop. This is important to traders who can easily get lost traveling through the Plane of Air and its featureless blue skies offer no clues as to your exact location within the plane. Most traders rely on airships to travel across the plane, and a large dock has been set up between the islands to protect ships.

There are several settlements along their trading route, though they are the largest outpost and have been there the longest. Other stops typically only offer a few buildings on a craggy mote of earth and may only last for a few dozen years before they are taken out by bandits or a flock of rather mean griffons.

Another option of traveling to Ikiuku is to use the nearby portal to the Material World that the original settlers fled from. It’s a difficult portal that rarely shows up, and when it does it blends almost entirely into the plane unless there is a nearby cloud that gets dragged in. Not many traders like to use the portal as it constantly opens and closes, making it difficult to know when you might ever be able to return to the plane. Luckily for traders who do make the journey, the dragon that originally ran the asmanti out died hundreds of years ago and is no longer a threat.

Traversing Ikiuku

Traveling the city is as easy as traveling the Plane of Air except you have an earthmote to stride upon. Since the city is separated into islands with a few bridges connecting them, it isn’t uncommon to watch residents ‘fall’ off one island and land on the next one as they expertly shift their ‘down’ on the plane. This is a common method of traveling on the plane, and while it isn’t technically flying, the residents often call it that. Outsiders typically call it falling and aren’t skilled at adjusting their ‘down’ to properly fly through the city or the plane.

Locations & Landmarks

The city of Ikiuku is separated into six landmasses with four of them being used while the last two are largely left alone except to grow a few crops on them while the city decides how best to use them to serve the community. The city itself measures out to be a mile and a half wide and two miles long, making it one of the largest trading posts in the plane.

created from Feyerlun - Fantasy City Map by AvalPenworth and Air Battlemap by mrvalor

Chib Island

This small island was captured from bandits who had planned on using it as a massive ram to smash through the islands. They had thought to destroy the castle constructed on Ikiuku Island, annihilating most of the guards in the process so that they could easily come in and take over. Sadly, for them, their plan failed when a trader happened upon them and warned the city of the attack.

Ikiuku Island

The first island to be found and populated by the asmanti people, it has now been transformed into a small castle that sits in the center of the city. From here, the guard can easily travel to any other part of the city inside of a few minutes by falling there, making it so they have a fast response to most dangers. There are a few other structures on the island, most of them are lodgings and homes for the guards and captain of the guard, but a few of them are for merchants who like the idea of living near the guardians of the city.

Soka Castle

Built of stone, a substance more precious than gold in the Plane of Air, this castle was built hundreds of years ago when the city captured a second earthmote and the city could expand off their first mote. It acts as the protection for the city, and until recently, was to be the final defense for the city if their exterior islands were attacked. Due to the large size of the earthmote, it’d be far harder for the island to escape the rest of the city, and so now it is simply a massive fortification that watches over the docks and the city. It’s quite imposing on merchants and bandits who may not be used to seeing such large structures made of stone and has weathered dozens of attacks against the city.

Soka Island

Named after the founder of Ikiuku, this small island is in the process of being built up for the express purpose of being a haven for the residents of the island in case they are attacked. With the news of the wind dukes warring for more territory, many are quite grateful they started this project several years ago, but due to the scarcity of materials, it’s not a very fast project. A small castle sits on the top, the current home of the mayor, and the interior of the island is being hollowed out to act as a vault for supplies, residents of Ikiuku, and anything else the city might need in case they ever had to flee their city.

Many hope to never use this vault, but the city was founded on the idea that there are some dangers that you can’t face. You must be willing to do what it takes to survive.

Mayor’s Defense

This small castle is known as the Mayor’s Defense, though it has no official title. People have taken to calling it that as their current mayor, Ogech, often hides away behind the stone walls. He does this whenever he is stressed about outsider dangers, often retreating to the stone structure where he comes up with solutions to these dangers. The residents accept he has a few eccentricities, but still have elected him as mayor time and again simply because he does a good job maintaining the city. The mayor has proven that he is up to the task, he just likes to be locked away in a stone castle while he thinks.

Maka Island

Another island that has yet to be used by the city. It is a jagged rock that needs its surface to be broken up quite a bit to be useful as farmland or to build on the surface. The city is hoping to trade it to an enterprising wizard looking for a rock to build their tower on or sell it off to the djinni for a dragon’s fortune.

Nenna Island

The second-largest island of Ikiuku, this island is thought to be the more upscale of the earthmotes and is where most visitors head to upon landing on the city. Fine taverns, restaurants, shops, and more can be found on the island, all offering a wide range of goods from across the planes. While they don’t offer anything too rare, they have plenty of goods and magic items that an adventurer might find useful, though they have little in quantity as the city is always waiting for the next trader to come and bring more supplies to the city. Restaurants feature different menus every day, to maximize what food they have, and general stores have lists a hundred names long for certain high-priority items like bolts of fabric, leather, and cookware.

Planar Travels & Mysterious Finds of Dr. Karnassus

While many might mistake the proprietor, Dr. Karnassus, for a centaur, he is a bariauar who traveled from the Outer Planes to the Plane of Air. He was once an explorer and adventurer, claiming to have traveled to all of the Upper Planes from Elysium to Mechanus and many of the Inner Planes themselves. He claims to love the Plane of Air the most, that its brilliant crisp air agrees with his health, and set up a small shop on Ikiuku when he got tired of traveling so much.

He offers a wide array of goods, some that he crafts when he has the available components, and can even offer teleportation coordinates for locations in the Inner Planes, like a circle in the City of Brass, though he makes no guarantee on the reception you’ll get upon arrival.

Oke Island

As the largest island in Ikiuku, it houses the bulk of the populace and is where the largest docks are located. Warehouses line along the docks, standing dozens of feet high as space is always a premium in the Plane of Air. Cheaper taverns, mundane supply stores, and more can be found on Oke Island and it has the bulk of the governmental buildings, though there is only a handful of them. The city long ago decided to keep their government small so that they didn’t have to worry about constructing as many buildings to house them, freeing more room for residents to build their homes.

Most traders and sailors who are looking to save on coin will stick to Oke Island. While it lacks in the more put-together look of Nenna Island, it’s comfortable and functional enough with its haphazardly constructed taverns and inns.

Air Docks

The best way to travel the Plane of Air is to charter an airship so you can travel in style across the plane. These airships can come in a wide variety of styles, though the most common one is used by merchants. It features a large blimp filled with rare air that allows it to ‘float’ on the plane and gives the most control for sailors who crew the ships. Other airships feature using large pillars of fire to raise and lower the overhead balloon, while others might rely on crystals that can levitate the craft.

The Underbelly

Since there is no true ‘up’ in the Plane of Air, the land ‘below’ the city is on the other side of the earth mote and is taken up in farmland. The population is growing and they need a lot of food to keep everyone from starving in a plane with next to nothing in natural resources to use. Because most of the farmland is locked to the ‘bottom’ of the earthmotes, the residents have taken to jokingly referring to it as their seedy underbelly.

If an outsider looks confused at them, they reveal the joke. The farms require seeds to grow food and they are on the ‘bottom’ of the city. This rarely gets more than a confused look from outsiders, but the inhabitants delight in it.

Tunnels

Throughout the city are tunnels to connect the top and bottom portions of the city, making it far faster to travel from one side to the next. These tunnels are set up to look like extra-large wells where residents can either climb a ladder or simply control fall to the other side of the city. Before entering a tunnel, it is proper manners to check no one else is using the tunnel before throwing yourself down it as there have been several accidents where people have collided with each other in the tunnels.

Inhabitants of the City

Residents

There are dozens of races in the city, though the bulk of the population is made up of genasi from all across the planes. Several families in the city can trace their roots back to the original asmanti people, though these descendants have been touched by the plane, their children influenced and warped by the plane into air genasi. This natural phenomenon happens when a group of people spends hundreds of years in the Inner Planes and it slowly changes them to better match the plane they live in.

Beyond the genasi are humans, halflings, bariaurs, and more who have traveled to the city and found it to their liking. Even an exiled djinn has made its home in Ikiuku after fleeing from the Great Caliph, the djinn swears it was a misunderstanding, though they hide whenever a djinn trading party comes to the city.

Amadi

The city attracts a great many who are runaway slaves, hoping to find help in Ikiuku or at least a place to rest before continuing to flee. Amadi has taken it upon herself to help save as many as she can and acts as an unofficial representative for the city to outsiders when the mayor is unavailable. She works tirelessly to help those who have escaped their genie and elemental slavers to find jobs, find homes, or to help them continue their journey out of the planes. Many recent arrivals to the city; like humans, genasi, and others, have Amadi and her dire great dane, Nkita, to thank.

Chia Soka

While she has passed away by now, she was the founder of Ikiuku, it was her idea to escape into the Plane of Air and to escape Meerblaus, leaving their home behind them forever. She led the expedition to the plane and was able to help the community to survive the first few dozen years until she passed away from natural causes. To celebrate what she gave for the city, an island and garrison were named after her, as well as several businesses that include Soka in their name.

Mayor Ogmech

The mayor might be one of the odder air genasi as he likes tight and confining spacings to help him think. When he is faced with a difficult decision, he retreats to the Mayor’s Defense and begins working out the problem from multiple angles, agonizing over problems for days and weeks until he arrives at a decision. He hates making snap decisions, often avoiding it if at all possible. Despite his eccentricities, he is well-liked by the city as he has done a lot to help grow the city and tries to stick to the founding values of the city.

Currently, the mayor has himself locked away as he is trying to figure out the best solution for the wind dukes problem that has reared its head. He wants to avoid bloodshed, but at the same time doesn’t want his people enslaved. His first reaction is to fight, but he worries that if they lose, it will be the end of Ikiuku and the death or enslavement of all its residents.

Wind Dukes

The wind dukes are growing into a greater problem for the city, though they have dealt with them in the past. Wind dukes are often thought of as brutish bandits with the resources of a small nation, sending out dozens of airships across the plane and raiding what settlements they stumble across. They claim they only take what they need to protect the people of their ‘territories’ but with the fact that death follows them, it makes it hard to believe such statements. They happily take anything they can find, destroying anything they can’t fit on their ships, and enslaving anyone they don’t kill. To help fund their war efforts, they bring these slaves to the City of Brass in the Plane of Fire, to Gloomwrought in the Shadowfell, the City of Dis or Tantlin in Stygia located in the Nine Hells, and many other locations.

Wind Duke Haalifith

Haalifith is thought to be the strongest of the wind dukes, cutting down many of the other bandit leaders and claiming their airships for himself. His fleet is often found at his base, Taifun, where he is seeking to wipe out all others and claim his title as The Wind Duke of Air. He is an imposing figure, standing head and shoulders over many others, which he claims is proof that he is the child of a storm giant, granting him immense power over lightning and wind.

Wind Duke Uzo

He was once from Ikiuku, causing trouble for many of the residents and known as a bully. Almost five years ago he disappeared from the city, many thought he ran away and thought little of it as he wasn’t liked by many. A year passes before they hear his name again, but this time it is with the title of wind duke and that he has over a dozen ships. He has now increased his power, commanding the largest warship in the plane with the skull of a dragon as its figurehead.

Many in Ikiuku think he is planning for his ‘revenge’ on the city, that he is going to destroy his homeland and fuel his ever-growing army. It’s only a matter of time before he faces down Wind Duke Haalifith, and he is going to need to double or triple his forces if he has any hopes of winning.

Encounters

Contact With The Past - Ikiuku is looking to reach back to their traditional lands of Asmanti in the Material Plane but is worried about what they might find there. They are looking to hire a team of explorers to travel back and clear out the ruins of their ancient city and report back.

Runaway - A genasi has escaped their masters in the Great Dismal Delve in the Plane of Earth. They are hoping to make it to Ikiuku and beyond before the dao catch them and drag them back.

Supplies Needed - A regular trader hasn’t been seen in Ikiuku for a month, which is odd as they stop there at least every two weeks. The city is concerned for their safety, fearing that something might have happened to them, and is sending a team out to investigate.

Uzo Strikes - It was as the residents feared and Wind Duke Uzo has turned his attention on the city. He is planning on using large rocks to bombard the city before sending his warships in to enslave the survivors.

Mar 1 Ikiuku, a City of Air - Locations

What is Ikiuku?