Katta Castellum & the Loyalists

The first Combine city

Katta Castellum was the first Combine city on Luclin, founded when Combine citizens loyal to Tsaph Katta fled Norrath. Several members of its council came over with the Loyalists in that first Exodus. It stands on the cliffs of the Tenebrous Peaks above the Twilight Sea, guarded on one side by a great stone wall and towers and on the other by the cliffs and the sea.

Ruled in Katta’s name

Its government was meant to be temporary. An elected council of nine, the Concilium Universus, rules according to its reading of the will of the Great Emperor Tsaph Katta, with eighteen governors beneath it; its unofficial leader is Lcea Katta. The city militia, the Validus Custodus, answers to the Concilium, and every able young man serves in it for a time. Like the old Combine, the city tolerates every race and culture, except those who follow darker ways. One reclusive magistrate, Nathyn Illuminious, keeps to his dark stone mansion, guarded by veteran Custodus and two sonic wolves, Tero and Basirus.

A long-lived resident, Dralin K’Vekn, says only a handful of the city’s people have ever seen Norrath. To most of its humans and demihumans, Luclin and Katta Castellum are the only home they know.

Vampyres in the dark

Vampyres live secret, frightened lives inside the walls. Most flee as soon as they are made; a few hide successfully, helped by the endless night, though older ones are easier to spot. None is expected to last, because the Custodus hunt the undead relentlessly. Outside, the Coterie of the Eternal Night, an alliance of vampyres led by Valdanov Zevfeer, holds the Tenebrous Mountains and parts of the Umbral Plains. They discovered what they were at about the time the Combine refugees arrived. Rumour says vampyres are made by infusing mortals with Akheva blood, but the research is inconclusive.

Old enemies

The Concilium is devoted to Tsaph Katta’s teachings and set against the vampyres and against Seru and his followers in Sanctus Seru, whose citizens in turn name Katta Castellum’s people as their foes. Not every Combine exile was welcome either. The Loyalists did not want the geomancer Grieg back, so he wandered Luclin and built the fortress of Grieg’s End in the mountains north of the Scarlet Desert, still looking for a way home to Norrath.

The moon’s ores

Inside the city the Combine’s old curiosity found a new subject. Liberus Acrylia Arma records their fascination with the moon’s minerals, above all acrylia, an ore that seems to carry an innate enchantment, “perhaps the handiwork of the mysterious Goddess Luclin herself.”

The emperor returns

The loyalty paid off in the end. In Empires of Kunark in 2016, Tsaph Katta himself came back from a long stasis after being poisoned, rebuilt the Combine Empire over its old ruins in Kunark, and invited every race to join him.