This post is the in the City '26 series and continues our ongoing exploration of the City of a Hundred Gods:
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| The Babylonian God Nabu as God of Scribes |
At time of posting (aToP) we're three-and-a-bit months into 2026. In the northern hemisphere of this long-suffering earth Spring is here, and more than 13 weeks of this challenge have elapsed.
The Scribe, Perokhia
The Priests of the Scribe, their students, families, various vendors and servants. . People from all over the Upper City (i.e. excluding the Ladders) visit for the services of street-scribes.
What are its principal features and architectural motifs?
The ward is laid out as a series of terraced villas, usually single storey peristyles facing the statue of an ancestor who in some way embodies the scribe. Muddy donkey tracks wind between these villas, with scattered wooden shacks forming homes for local vendors and their families.
The main temple of the scribe is close to – though not quite abutting – the walls to the Palace of the Golden One (Ward 100). THe large inner courtyard of the Temple of the Scribe is dominated by a 20' tall statue of a man with long, straight hair and a similar beard. . This is Perokhia. His Priests teach young men and women the art of letters in classrooms surrounding the courtyard.
The ward forms part of the broader Temple of Literature complex.
Encounters
Day
- DARRO (NPC) beside a fruit vendor: looking for and sharing local gossip.
- Freelance scribe: willing to translate, transcribe, read/recite and validate documents (including magical scrolls and books)
- Gardener Priests (1d6) from Ward 41, clearing a shrine to an ancestral scribe.
- Paper vendor/apprentice Hornet Priest from the wasp farms (54). 2 guard wasps hover at their side.
- Quill-and-ink vendor with live squid-in-a-jar.
- Sapient Crane: hungry and knowledgeable. Willing to do a great deal for a guaranteed fish supper. Who wouldn't?
- Scribe-Priest leading a promenade lecture, pontificating before a gaggle of bored students (1d6)
- Servants of random noble house (81-90) seeking the services of a scribe for a contract.
- Spell Scroll vendor: has bound several spirits to scrolls, willing to exchange for silver or gems. Scrolls have a 50% chance of backfiring, but are useable by any literate PC.
- Students (2d10), brandishing their stationery as improvised weapons.
- Ward Scroll vendor: these scrolls are 100% effective spirit repellant in a 10' radius about whoever is holding it. Lasts for 1d12 days (vendor will tell you how long they last). 100% effective, require no literacy for them to be effective. Realm specific.
- Wife of DARRO (one of many), draped in silver jewelry, selling sugar water and with lemon juice. Pissed off.
Night
- All is quiet in the streets between villas
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- Ancestral spirit wailing about the transgressions of the ward's youths
- Gang of youths (2d4) writing obscene/political/obscene=political graffiti
- Ghost of AHEMBAREKk, former High Priestess slain by agents of JEHELMEK crying "Murder!" in a bone-chilling voice, advancing towards nay who might listen
- LEKLA (ward 50) in the form of a giant bat
- Priests of Faharra (1d4) carrying out a murder mission against one of JEHELMEK's supporters
- Spell-Spirit escaped from a scroll
Priests are easily identified by their dark grey robes (usually a single piece of cloth with a hole for the neck) embroidered with a gold trim. This is a uniform common to other orders within the complex of the broader Temple of Literature (and imitated by the Artisan Priests of the Engineer, Ward 50), with the pattern of the embroidery indicating status. Pointed hats are won once a week.Priests of the Scribe have an essential role as teachers of letters to all other apprentices within the Temple of Literature and beyond. A smaller number fulfill no official teaching roles, and are instead "street scribes" providing various translation and transcription services for silver, gems and services in kind. This provides a degree of independence from the hierarchy of the priesthood, though socially they are afforded less respect than their teaching colleagues..The Priesthood is hereditary, but status within the order is not. Typically a family's eldest child will become a priest of the scribe, with other children joining other orders within the Temple of Literature.
While High Priest JEHELMEK controls the priesthood of the scribes, is predecessor's family remain a considerable (though weakened) force, willing to resist his reforms by any means necessary – while maintaining a pretense of tacit support for the status quo. Jehelmek's authority is strongest amongst the teachers, but the street-scribes are still loyal to Ahemberekh. They're also the ones with access to most of the magic, though Jehelmek's is working to establish a loyal faction of magists among his personal retinue.
- Conjuring Scroll: reading aloud conjures a 3-5HD elemental of a specific realm, which also destroys the scroll.
- Giant Hornets from the Hornet Temple (54): can retrieve objects, deliver messages or carry out surveillance.
- Hornet repellent: available as candle, ointment or liquid spray: all effective up to 12' for 12 hours.
- Invocation scroll: read to invoke a spell-spirit of a particular realm. Attempt can then be made to command it to produce a spell effect, or some scrolls contain pre-ordained commands.
- Pair of enchanted papyrus scrolls: what is written on one instantaneously appears on the other, regardless of distance. Only works with red or black ink, words cannot be erased.
- Rosetta stone: powerful enchanted item enabling the holder to understand any written language.
- Spirit Poem: reading aloud induces minor magical effect or prescribed emotional response in all who can hear it.
- Squid-in-a-jar, sapient: ostensibly for ink production; many have other abilities.
- Transportative text: reading induces a psychedelic experience akin to imbibing an entheogen, permitting access to one of the Spirit Realms.
- Warding scrolls: as sold by the vendor, above: in addition to spirits by realm, other scrolls can be used to deter wild beasts for 1d100 days
- Wasp Paper: delicate paper from the Temple of the Hornet. Takes graphite wonderfully.
- Writing Materials: papyrus, quills, ink, charcoal, chalk and wax (corpsewax from Waxtown, 29)
Anabastalatica, feline Ambassador: An enormous (lion-sized), long-haired "domestic" cat with a pinched visage. An ambassador of the cat-god Ubasti (ward 71, city of Cats), he is enrolled in a class of scribes but has so far been unable to develop his writing skills. Would like to be a master schemer but very easily distracted. And vain: he is so very, very vain.
Corus the Rat: Spindly-fingered weaselly wizard with scraggily hair and bulbous eyes. Constantly smoking Quickleaf rolled up in blank wasp-paper pages. He grows this himself in the hermitage he occupies on the grounds of the Ahemberekh family villa. Can produce scrolls to instantaneously produce nearly any desired spell effect, boasting he only needs one week and... very specific ingredients. Possibly (definitely) implicated in the death of his former master, the late High Priestess, though has done a good job of covering-up his involvement. Almost universally disliked and respected.
Darro, local busy-body: A bald-headed, brown-skinned man with a single tooth, always dressed in a grey toga. Former Major Domus to the previous High Priest of the Scribe, but lost his job when High Priestess Ahembarekh was murdered and replaced by her rival, Jehelmek. A literate autodidact, he is well-connected and desperate to restore his former status, especially to keep his seven wives content, each of whom works as a fruit vendor throughout the Temple of Literature Complex.
Jehelmek, High Priest of the Scribe: Wiry, smirking, fu manchu moustache and heavy eyeliner. Ruthlessly ambitious but unsure wher eto direct now he has accomplished his goal: destroy Ahmbarekh (using foreign agents, no less) and return the office of High Priest of the Scribe to a membe rof his family (himself) after three generations on the periphery. Ahembarekh's family suspect foul play but Jehelmek has done a grand job of destroying the evidence. His hubris might compel him to set his sights on a yet loftier goal: The Temple of Literature Proper. To this end he has begun to recruit students schooled in the dark arts of written magic.
Ozwalop, Student/Activist: Brown-skinned, green eyed, curly red hair, stocky. The second son of an Artisan Priest, he is currently in training by the Priests of the Scribe as a precursor to enrolling in the Priesthood of one of the other Orders of the Temple of Literature. Unusually politically aware for a 15-year-old, possibly due to his voracious consumption of forbidden historical texts. Expresses his radicalism through graffiti: KILL THE ANCESTORS and TEAR DOWN THE WALLS being his two favourites. Leads a loyal gang of similarly disaffected youths, though most are not fully aware of the severity of the crimes they are committing against the City.
Shamala of the Wharves: An apprentice underwriter (ward 37) and eldest daughter of a southern Merchant Prince, Shamala is immediately noticeable due to her vibrant blue skin and excessive gold jewelry. Although seconded t the Temple of the Scribe as part of her apprenticeship to the Wharves, she is in reality a agent of her parents looking to turn the City of 100 Gods into a vassall of the Southern Princes. Young and pretty but unexpectedly shrewd, she is enacting a machiavellian scheme she concocted while just an infant.
Trismeticus the Heavy: a scribe with an atypical capacity for violence, porcine and beady eyed with a clammy and pale complexion. Hale yet otherwise ordinary, he carries a 3' wand with no magical properties other than the fear it invokes in his students. Favours enforcement classroom discipline through performative street beatings. A vocal and fervent supporter of Jehelmek.
Links
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/search/label/City26
https://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2021/02/city-of-hundred-gods-part-110-city.html
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