Hestavar

An Astral sailor's vision of Hestavar from the Astral Sea.

The Bright City of Hestavar is a Dominion in the Astral Sea of Dungeons & Dragons which houses the gods Pelor, Ioun and Erathis. Home to the Gods of Light, Knowledge and Civilisation, it strives to represent the greatest heights that civilization can potentially achieve, hindered only slightly by such things as the presence of an embassy of Baator, constant intriuge and machinations by bored exalted souls, the shady elements of Erathis' "Great Game of Making", and a Primordial being bound off of the "coast". It is covered in brief in the sourcebooks "Manual of the Planes" and "The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea", but was most fleshed-out in an article in issue #371 of Dragon Magazine.

Hestavar in Brief

Population: Approximately 300,000. Exalted souls and angels make up most of the population, with a smaller number of devas and mortals.

Government: The deities Erathis and Pelor rule over Hestavar in name, but they leave the actual administration of the city to an efficient bureaucracy headed up by the high minister, an angel named Kemuel.

Defense: Several legions of angels of battle, angels of valor, and exalted warriors.

Inns: House in the Clouds; Methion Arms; Garden of Geras. The Methion Arms is an excellent choice for travelers who desire a good mix of location, privacy, and reasonable rates.

Taverns: Silver Tankard; Andarman’s Taproom; Kossian Vineyard.

Temples: Cathedral of Aurosion (Erathis, Pelor, and Ioun); University Chapel in Kerith-Ald (Erathis, Pelor, and Ioun). The palaces of Aurosion and Kerith-Ald include great halls of reverence, attended by angels and exalted clerics who served Erathis, Pelor, and Ioun in life. Smaller shrines dedicated to most other gods in the pantheon (even a few dark ones) exist elsewhere in the city, since the people of Hestavar are pious and give respect to all the deities.

History

Even the most ambitious historians of Kerith-Ald — Ioun’s own bastion of learning in the Bright City — do not believe anyone can compile a concise or complete history of the epochs of war between the gods and primordials. The time period involved is so expansive that it boggles the mortal mind. Eventually, even the most earnest and disciplined scholars might find it difficult and belittling to comprehend that one’s life is just the blink of an eye to a deity or a primordial. But what is known and well documented by the scribes and seers of Kerith-Ald, which is also called the Swan Tower, is that in an early and violent period of that war, a powerful, blustering primordial named Heur-Ket invaded the Astral Sea and caused great havoc with his advance. As he pushed deeper into the Astral Sea, deities perished and their dominions were blown asunder. With each victory Heur-Ket grew stronger, bolder, and more arrogant in his belief that the deities and their servants should be punished for their interference with the First Work.

A trio of deities who held domains in relatively close proximity of each other knew that they would eventually become the target of Heur-Ket’s wrath. These three gods — Pelor, Erathis, and Ioun — each controlled domains that were peaceful paradises. And though each commanded his or her own legion of angels, none of their domains were particularly well suited for war or even an extended siege. Pelor’s domain, a field of sun-drenched planes dotted with farms and gardens, had no walls or parapets. Erathis held a city atop a large earthmote, and villas and workshops cluttered its surface. Traditionally its streets were open, because trade and innovation thrive among an open society. Ioun’s dominion was a large scrying pool in the form of a vast and sparkling lagoon surrounded by white sandy beaches; her domain’s only real defense was its mistress’s ability to divine its approaching doom.

For mutual defense, Erathis, Ioun, and Pelor not only decided to pool their forces, but also combine their dominions. Fusing the features of all three of their former domains together, the trio waited and planned for the primordial’s attack. They didn’t have to wait long. Tales of their alliance reached Heur-Ket, and it enraged the primordial. Hastily he moved to attack the dominion, forgoing any form of reconnaissance or tactics. He would destroy these upstarts like he destroyed their kin, with the swift brutal force of the Elemental Chaos.

Some say the battle for Hestavar lasted a century, but scholars of the Swan Tower believe that might describe the entirety of Heur-Ket's campaign into the Astral Sea. In the end, the combined might of Pelor, Erathis, and Ioun defeated the primordial, but not without cost. To this day a section of Hestavar's paradise is marred by Heur-Ket's legacy. A swirling mass of wind and occasionaly destructive bouts of thnder and lightning churn at (and create) the windward end of the dominion, marking the Salts neighborhood of the of the dominion. Some still suggest that the trio of deities didn't destroy Heur-Ket, but merely bound him to the spot in the domians, like the gods bound countless primordials elsewhere in the universe. This accusation is officially and vehemently denied by the angel Kemuel, who serves as the voice of Hestavar's rule and high minister of the city's angelic bureaucracy.

Geography

Pale clouds of bright metallic hues look down on Hestavar. The first glimpse of the Bright City that visitors get is of a terraced city thirty miles wide and just as high, held aloft on a cascade of earthmotes that drift in set patterns or remain in place if they are locked in by silver bridges.

Astral vessels that enter the cloud veil emerge a few minutes later sailing on the surface of a great lagoon that occupies the lower third of the dominion. Travelers that fly or swim through the clouds come out above one of the sandbars that dot the lagoon, perhaps within easy reach of a home or a palace built in the lagoon, or perhaps out among the fishing boats.

It is always the height of daytime in Hestavar, though the sun walks the city as a deity instead of waiting in the sky. The clouds above the dominion serve to reflect Pelor’s glory, shedding brilliant radiance from overhead. Sometimes the clouds darken to a silvery cast, but usually they shimmer gold.

Whether one travels by boat, by flying beast, or by foot, a traveler eventually comes into contact with the city’s directional jargon. In a city where the illumination constantly rains down from the upper cloud cover, direction is reckoned by the landmarks of the dominion. The people of Hestavar reconnoiter their city by the directions windward, leeward, waterward, and lightward.

The windward side of the dominion sits toward the swirling Eye of Storm—the remains of the primordial Heur-Ket—and the Salts neighborhood that is within it. Leeward is, of course the opposite direction, toward the calmer (and richer) end of the lagoon, with its cardinal being the neighborhood of Seven Pearl Shoal.

The city is navigated vertically with the directions waterward and lightward. For the most part, the gravity of the dominion often works as one would anticipate: lightward is usually up and waterward is usually down. However, a few anomalous earthmotes and islands on the windward side of the Bright City feature strange gravitational features. Often these indicate damage to the city done during the battle with Heur-Ket, but sometimes they are changes purposely perpetrated by exalted houses for reason both novel and industrious. Such anomalies are prevalent enough that the waterward and lightward directions are more useful than up or down.

Lightward is accompanied by a relative distance. Low lightward is of a lower altitude than high or highest lightward. Such references to altitude are often pointless when describing waterward, unless the starting point is lightward, or when describing one of a number of trendy taverns, feasthalls, and expensive villas that sit underwater in or around the Painted Reef.

Another dimension of travel has its own rules in the Bright City—the dimension of time. With a steady and unblinking sunlight coming from the uppermost clouds of the dominion, there is no night in Hestavar. Instead, the city measures time by way of a number of water clocks situated on the hundreds of earthmotes that feature endless springs, and by the large one atop the tallest tower of Whitebell Bastion in the lagoon.

Time in the Bright City is split into three 6-hour cycles called belling (short for bell-length, since each cycle is announced by a cacophony of ring bells), and each is named after one of the three deities that calls Hestavar home. As a matter of reverence and custom, the city tends to rest and meditate during Ioun’s belling, but the city never really sleeps, and it only slows slightly during this belling. These bellings are further split into two hands, and each hand is split into 3 hours.

References

Manual of the Planes describes Hestavar in brief.

The article on Hestavar in Dragon #371 covers the dominion's origins and expands upon the dominion-proper and its daily life. It also includes new monsters, new magic items, and a new Epic Destiny; the Prison of the Winds.

Secrets of the Plane Above expands upon the plans of each of Hestavar's resident gods, and focuses on detailing the Daybreak Islands, the archipelago that surrounds the dominion proper.