The World of Abadonya

Where Every Road Eventually Ends

Vek'Tar rises along a long wall of dark desert cliffs, its towers, terraces, temples, and stairways carved directly into the stone. From a distance the city appears to climb toward the heavens. At its highest levels stand the great funerary sanctuaries; below them spread crowded markets, hostels, embalmers' courts, stonecutters, caravan yards, and homes belonging to generations of families who have made death their livelihood.

Across Zan'Karu, carrying a loved one to Vek'Tar is considered one of the greatest final acts of respect. The city's priesthood teaches that proper rites help the deceased leave the burdens of the mortal world behind and begin the passage into the afterlife without becoming lost, restless, or forgotten.

For that reason, Vek'Tar is never truly quiet. Funeral bells ring throughout the day. Processions enter through its gates beneath white, black, gold, or family-colored cloth. Incense drifts from cliffside shrines, and the names of the dead are spoken aloud so often that visitors sometimes say the city seems to remember more people than the living world does.

The Journey of the Dead

The traditions of Vek'Tar differ between families, faiths, and social classes, but most ceremonies follow the same broad path. The deceased is brought into the city, washed and prepared, given a public remembrance, carried along the Processional Way, blessed at the Gate of Last Breath, and finally placed within a tomb, crypt, memorial vault, or family chamber.

Wealthy houses may arrive with musicians, honor guards, carved sarcophagi, and days of ritual. Poor families often arrive with little more than a wrapped body and a handful of coins. Vek'Tar's oldest custom holds that no person should be denied the final passage solely because they died without wealth, and several temple hospices maintain communal resting chambers for those who have nowhere else to be laid.

A funeral in Vek'Tar is not meant to be a celebration of death. It is the final duty of the living: to name the dead, settle what can be settled, and release them from the world with dignity.

The Road Taken by Kings and Beggars Alike

The Processional Way is the most famous street in Vek'Tar: a broad stone avenue beginning near the lower caravan gates and climbing through the city in sweeping terraces. Thousands of shallow grooves have been worn into its paving stones by bier wheels, sandals, ceremonial poles, and generations of mourners.

Shops along the route sell memorial ribbons, grave lamps, incense, carved name tablets, burial cloth, flowers, offerings, and small bells traditionally tied to a bier. Tavern signs are deliberately subdued along the Way, and local custom discourages shouting, gambling, or public fighting while a procession is passing.

At sunset the avenue becomes particularly striking. Hundreds of lamps are lit in niches along the cliff walls, creating a river of fire climbing toward the upper sanctuaries.

The Threshold Between Memory and Rest

Near the upper cliffs stands a monumental arch known as the Gate of Last Breath. Every formal funeral procession is expected to pass beneath it before the deceased is taken to a final resting place. The arch is covered in thousands of names, some freshly carved and others so weathered that only fragments remain.

Mourners traditionally stop beneath the arch while a priest asks three questions: who was this person, what did they leave behind, and who will remember them? The answers need not be grand. In Vek'Tar, a farmer's name is considered no less worthy of speaking than that of a prince.

It is considered deeply disrespectful to cross the Gate as part of a funeral procession while carrying an unsheathed weapon, and even soldiers lower their banners when passing beneath it.

A City of the Dead Above the City of the Living

Beyond the Gate of Last Breath, the cliffs are honeycombed with tombs. Some are little more than narrow niches sealed with stone plaques. Others are elaborate family complexes with courtyards, shrines, statues, and entire halls carved into the mountain.

The oldest sections of the High Necropolis predate much of modern Vek'Tar. Their architecture includes heavy Ophidian influence—coiled pillars, scaled mosaics, narrow ritual passages, and sealed stone doors whose original purpose is debated by historians. Later generations built around these older chambers rather than destroy them.

Grave robbing is among the most hated crimes in Vek'Tar. The city's tomb wardens patrol the necropolis day and night, and families often maintain their own guards or ancestral keepers as well.

The Lower Gate

The largest entrance into the city. Funeral caravans, pilgrims, merchants, and ordinary travelers all pass through its inspection courts. The district is filled with stables, caravan yards, lodging houses, bathhouses, and businesses offering transport up the steep city roads.

Embalmers' Row

A quiet district of tiled courtyards and shaded workshops where the dead are washed, preserved, dressed, and prepared according to family custom. Vek'Tari embalmers are respected artisans rather than social outcasts, and many belong to old hereditary guilds.

The Bell Quarter

Home to bell-founders, scribes, memorial carvers, cloth merchants, florists, lamp makers, and craftsmen who support the city's funerary traditions. Its name comes from the constant chiming of small remembrance bells hanging outside shops and shrines.

The Pilgrim Terraces

A vast collection of inns, hostels, kitchens, shrines, and public courtyards built for families who may spend several days completing funerary rites. Travelers from nearly every corner of Zan'Karu can be found here.

The High Sanctuaries

Temples and ceremonial halls occupy the city's upper terraces. Priests from several accepted traditions serve here, though Vek'Tar's funerary orders maintain authority over the passage rituals themselves.

Those Who Serve the Dead

The collective priesthood and ceremonial officials of Vek'Tar are commonly called the Keepers of the Passage. They are not a single faith so much as a civic religious institution charged with maintaining the city's burial customs, protecting the dead, witnessing final declarations, and preventing disputes from following a body into the tomb.

Among them are readers of names, tomb wardens, embalmers, procession guides, bell keepers, memorial scribes, grave architects, and priests trained to recognize signs that a spirit has not passed peacefully.

The Keepers possess considerable influence but are expected to remain neutral in most political disputes. To interfere with a lawful funeral for political revenge is considered an attack on the city itself.

Vek'Tar Is Still a Living City

Outsiders often imagine Vek'Tar as permanently mournful. Residents find that idea amusing. Children race along terrace stairs, merchants argue over prices, couples marry beneath flowering awnings, and taverns remain busy long after the funeral bells stop for the evening.

Vek'Tari culture simply treats death more openly than most. Families speak about burial wishes without discomfort. People purchase memorial tablets long before they need them. A person's name and reputation are regarded as things worth caring for while they are still alive.

The local phrase “leave a clean name” means more than behaving honorably. It means resolving debts, repairing broken relationships, and ensuring that those who survive you are not forced to carry unfinished burdens.

Death Sustains the Living

Vek'Tar's economy is built around pilgrimage, stonework, preservation, hospitality, and the enormous logistical effort required to bring the dead across the region. Funeral caravans require guards, wagons, animals, lodging, food, cloth, incense, craftsmen, priests, scribes, and tomb space.

The city is especially famous for stone carving, brass bells, grave lamps, sealed burial vessels, memorial jewelry, scented oils, and elaborate sarcophagi. Its masons are sought throughout Zan'Karu for monuments and civic stonework.

A secondary trade has grown around genealogy and record keeping. Vek'Tar maintains enormous public registers of burials, family lines, and memorial inscriptions, making the city invaluable to historians and those tracing ancestry.

Respect the Procession

When a funeral procession passes, locals step to the side of the street and remain still until the bier has gone by. Hats and helmets are often removed. Interrupting a procession for convenience is considered extremely rude.

Do Not Touch Memorial Stones

Small tablets and ribbons placed along shrines may appear abandoned, but they belong to the dead or their families. Taking one is treated as theft.

Never Joke About an Unnamed Corpse

Unidentified dead are taken seriously in Vek'Tar. The city believes everyone deserves a name if one can be found.

Funeral Bells Are Not an Alarm

Visitors unfamiliar with the city sometimes mistake the many bells for emergencies. Different rhythms mark arrivals, departures, remembrance services, and the closing of tomb gates at nightfall.

Whispers Beneath the Bells

The Nameless Stair: Some claim there is a staircase in the oldest necropolis where every carved name has been deliberately removed.

The Bell That Rings Alone: A bell in one abandoned upper shrine is said to sound shortly before an important person in the city dies.

The First Tomb: Scholars argue that one sealed Ophidian chamber predates Vek'Tar itself and may be the reason the city became associated with burial in the first place.

The Returning Procession: Night watchmen occasionally tell of seeing a distant funeral procession descending the Processional Way instead of climbing it, though none admit to following.

The Book of Unclaimed Names: The Keepers are said to maintain a ledger containing every unidentified body ever brought to Vek'Tar, in the hope that one day their true names will be restored.

What Vek'Tar Feels Like

Vek'Tar should feel ancient, reverent, crowded, and strangely beautiful. Death is visible everywhere, but so is care. Fresh flowers rest beside thousand-year-old tombs. A laughing family may share supper within sight of a funeral stair. Priests walk beside merchants. Stonecutters work while bells echo from the cliffs.

The city does not worship death. It believes death deserves preparation—and that memory is one of the final gifts the living can give.