THE MONTEBRUCIATI

One sees Monte Tifone long before reaching the shores of Montebrucia. The great volcano rises above the peninsula like a judgment not yet delivered. Olympetic scripture holds that Zeus imprisoned Typhon beneath it, and that every tremor, ember, and poisonous breath is the Father of Demons struggling against his chains. The Montebruciati build their homes beneath it anyway. This tells you nearly everything necessary about them.

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The peninsula was once the heart of Saro, the second great Olympetic empire. Ancient Mirithar sacked that empire more than a thousand years ago, but failed to erase it. Sarite roads still cross the mountains. Sarite arches stand inside modern markets. Old laws survive in courtrooms, and old names are polished and worn by families whose imperial claims grow grander with every missing document.

Modern Montebrucia is divided among independent city-states, each loudly devoted to republican government. Councils are elected, citizens debate, guilds vote, and magistrates invoke the liberty of the people. In practice, the same councils are crowded with merchant princes, banking dynasties, admirals, guild coalitions, and ancient families. The Montebruciati have perfected the art of allowing everyone a voice while ensuring that wealth speaks last.

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Their ships travel nearly every sea known to honest cartographers and several known only to smugglers. Montebruciati warehouses hold silk, grain, spices, timber, silver, relics, and occasionally entire nations’ unpaid promises. Their bankers can turn a war in a distant kingdom by moving ink between two ledgers. I have met wizards less capable of transforming reality.

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Gunpowder was born here, as were the first weapons built to harness it. Foundries labor beneath civic towers, casting bells for temples and cannon for fleets from the same bronze. The Montebruciati see no contradiction in this. Both, they will explain, are instruments by which important announcements are made.

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Montebrucia is also the ancestral home of the Order of Hercules. Its armored knights stand apart from the jeweled excess of the merchant courts, holding discipline, courage, and sacred duty above profit. Whether the Order restrains the ambitions of the city-states or merely gives those ambitions respectable armor depends upon whom one asks—and whether that person currently owes the Order money.

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The people themselves are sailors, artisans, magistrates, soldiers, scholars, merchants, and relentless negotiators. They inherit the names of living Montebrucia, fallen Saro, and the Olympetic faith, carrying all three histories at once. A common dockworker may bear the name of an emperor, while a merchant prince answers to a surname that began with a baker or smith.

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It is easy to call the Montebruciati greedy. It is more accurate to say that they believe value can be discovered in anything: ruined empires, volcanic soil, foreign quarrels, dangerous powders, divine legends, and tomorrow’s debt. Beneath Monte Tifone, nothing is permitted to remain merely buried.

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—Lantern of the Thirteenth Word