Sero'ak is the capital city of Hroa, and the location of both the Academy and Caduceus.
The City of Reflection[]
On the plain of Adarys, surrounded by the hills of Bel, lies Sero’ak, largest city on Hroa and the capital of Serpens. It is from this place that the noble House organizes its efforts towards the betterment of the empire, from it’s seeking out and training of individuals with M.E.S., to the humanitarian works of Caduceus.
To outsiders, Sero’ak feels as if it is two cities. The area that can be seen on the surface, known as Vasuki, is home to the Orchard of Idun, headquarters of Caduceus, as well as much of the city’s tourism industry. Ananta, a mirror of Vasuki, lies beneath Hroa’s surface and houses the The Imperial Academy of Psionic Learning and Wellness. While visitors are welcome anywhere in Sero’ak, many feel far less comfortable in subterranean Ananta than in Vasuki, though members of Serpens thrive in the natural beauty of Ananta’s caverns.
The repeated vertical symmetry found in Sero’ak has earned the Serpens capital the nickname “The City of Reflection.” Vasuki’s sky-tunnels mirror it’s streets, as do the streets and tunnels of Ananta below, and Ananta itself is mirrored in the glassy surface of The Waiting Sea, over which it is suspended.
Visitors to Sero’ak sometimes joke that the first law the founders of the city passed was a ban on right angles. From the greatest spiraling towers to the humblest cafe, the lines of Sero’ak’s buildings flow seamlessly from one to the next in curves and arches.
Vasuki - On The Surface[]
Home to Serpens' more outwardly facing facilities, Vasuki is the only Sero’ak many visitors ever see. As such, much effort has been expended by the people of the city to make things comfortable for themselves and their guests in Hroa’s inhospitable atmosphere. Throughout the city, towers are adjoined by transparent sky-tunnels, allowing comfortable traversal between major buildings without the need for breathing masks. The ground level streets, however, have no such protections.
In the oldest parts of the city, the sky-tunnels mirror the gently curving streets below. Newer construction, however, is far less orderly. Streets meander and take odd turns, single-story shops rub shoulders with looming towers, and the sky-tunnels simply soar over asymmetrical blocks giving no thought to the arrangement of avenues below. Though the old city would appear from above as an orderly series of stacked rings, the new city looks like exactly what it’s grown to be: a tangle of snakes.
The Orchard of Idun[]
Rising up from the heart of Vasuki is the largest structure on Hroa’s surface: The Orchard of Idun. The Orchard serves as the headquarters of Caduceus, the organization for which House Serpens is best known. Founded in the early days after humanity’s arrival in Acheron Rho, Caduceus has endured in one form or another for most of the Empire’s history and today is known as the premiere provider of medical care in the sector.
The Orchard itself is a set of six towers, all of which twist around a central open space forming a helix. At ground level between the towers is an enormous garden enclosed in a transparent dome. Every few stories, sky-tunnels from each tower meet at another garden-dome suspended in the space between them, with a final massive dome spanning across the tops of all six towers at the top. The final dome holds something more akin to a small forest than a garden, complete with small mammalian fauna. These gardens are used for a variety of purposes related to the care and treatment of Caduceus patients including physical and mental therapy, meditation and relaxation, and the growing of medicinal herbs.
The Orchard draws its name from a myth told among Hroan nobles. The story goes that in ancient times Idun, goddess of healing, met the first ancestor of House Serpens and saw reflected in them her own compassionate nature. She was so moved that she decided to do something to ease the suffering she had observed in mortal life. In defiance of the other gods, she stole an apple from the sacred garden and gave it to the ancient Serpens. Upon eating it, they were granted knowledge to heal the sick and comfort the dying. For her rebellion, Idun was imprisoned forever by the other gods. To honor her sacrifice, the Serpens used her gift to help all they met, and passed the knowledge down their line in a tradition that carries on to the Practitioners of Caduceus today. While any worship of Idun as an actual deity ended with the establishment of the High Church, when the time came to build a home for Caduceus, the early people of Sero’ak decided the tale of Idun was a fitting symbol for the selfless effort of those who work there.
The Den of Snakes[]
In the shadow of the Orchard of Idun sits the center of Serpens government: The Den of Snakes. The Den is the only structure to exist in both Ananta and Vasuki, with the building itself driven like a spike through the crust of Hroa.
The Vasuki Den is a an ovoid bowl centered around an open-air courtyard. The elegant but humble building is where Ministra see to the concerns of lesser Serpens nobles and all but the most important dignitaries from other Houses. It is also home to the bureaucracy of Hroa’s planetary government.
The central courtyard, known as The Broca, is completely unprotected from Hroa’s atmosphere. Citizens of any stature may enter and be heard by a panel of Ministra, who sit on a raised dais at the rear of the Broca. Supplicants must stand in the center of the bowl and speak unassisted. While Serpens leadership insist this is to keep with tradition, the effect is that anyone without the ability to endure the atmosphere without a breather will not have their voice carry to the dais, silencing those without M.E.S. or the means to hire someone to assist them.
Psiball Arena[]
It’s the oldest one in the sector. Someone pls halp
Ananta - What Lies Beneath[]
While the architecture of Vasuki is beautiful to behold and as impressive as any capital in the sector, even it pales to the marvel of engineering beneath. From the ceiling of a massive cavern, suspended over an underground sea, hangs Ananta, Vasuki’s mirror.
When the cavern was discovered during the founding of what was meant to be the only side of Sero’ak, the people of the city were inspired to embark on what was then the most ambitious architectural project in the history of the Empire: To recreate their work on the surface in defiance of gravity. With the decision made, the first step was to seal the cavern from the planet’s atmosphere, followed by the installation of bio-engineered algae and lichen to scrub and refresh the air inside. The process took decades, but today Ananta is a pocket of perfectly habitable comfort hidden in the dark.
With no need to protect from Hroa’s thick atmosphere, the sky-tunnels in the undercity are not enclosed but simply bordered by sturdy railings. While any member of House Serpens could cross these open bridges as easily as their own living room, most tourists do some form of what the natives call “the offworld slink,” a way of walking while clinging tightly to the railing and trying desperately to appear unafraid.
The Academy[]
Suspended from the heart of Ananta is the largest structure beneath Hroa: The Imperial Academy of Psionic Learning and Wellness, better known simply as “The Academy.” The Academy is the oldest and most prestigious center of psionic training and research in all of Acheron Rho, with a history nearly as long as humanity’s presence in the sector.
The structure of the Academy is a near perfect mirror of the Orchard of Idun, which lies directly above it and to which it connects through a series of lifts and tunnels. Like the Orchard, the Academy is six towers twisted around a central space. Unlike the Orchard, however, the Academy’s center houses a seventh tower, larger than the others and twisting on its axis.
Each of the Academy’s outer towers is dedicated to one of the psionic disciplines, biopsionics, metapsionics, precognition, telekinesis, telepathy, and teleportation. The seventh is more general purpose, housing administrative offices, dormitories, training facilities, classrooms for non-psionic education, and labs for research into non-specialized psionic theory.
The Den of Snakes[]
The true heart of Serpens government, the Ananta half of the Den of Snakes is much larger than its counterpart in Vasuki. The building itself is a thick spiral, resembling a coiled viper.
Access to the Ananta Den is strictly controlled, limited to the Fates, Compilers, members of the Oracular Council, High Ministra and those accompanied by them. In the dim halls and gloomy conference rooms, these trusted individuals turn the real-time and precognitive intelligence from the Council and Serpens sources throughout the sector into directives to guide the House and, by extension, the Empire.
The Ananta Den is also home to the Prime Oraclatorium, the chamber that houses the Oracular Council themselves. The chamber is round, it’s walls lined with tubular suspension tanks, each holding a single Council member and all linked together with heavy medical and psionic machinery. This infrastructure allows the individual Oracles to forge their wills together into a singular psionic force able to pierce the Veil deeper than any single precognitive could ever hope to. The Council is attended at all times by very select Practitioners, Takumi, and Compilers who attend to their health, the machinery, and the recording of their visions.
The Waiting Sea[]
One of the most disorienting experiences in Sero’ak is looking down from the bottom of Ananta’s dangling towers into what seems to be a black, starry sky. In reality, the view is of the city’s lights reflecting off the surface of an enormous body of fresh water: The Waiting Sea. Discovered along with the rest of the cavern during the founding of the surface city, the sea has been a source of fish and water for as long as there has been an Ananta.
There is a species of fish unique to the Waiting Sea known as the Korpin, which some Serpens scholars believe is similar to a Terran species known as a “base” which featured in a wide variety of Earth cuisine. Much like it’s cosmic cousin, the Korpin is known for its unique, strong flavor. Korpin is a staple of the Hroan diet, and offworld is considered a delicacy.
The origin of the sea’s name has been lost to history and so is a topic of friendly but passionate debate among the people of Sero’ak, from scholars to serfs. The two most popular theories are known as the “founding” theory and the “vigil” theory. The founding theory states that on the day of Sero’ak’s first groundbreaking, a Serpens precognitive foresaw the discovery of the Echoes and the Waiting Sea, but did not live to see his vision come true.
While the vigil theory also feature a prediction, the details are very different. The theory holds that the first person to break through the ceiling of the Ananta’s cavern was a precognitive. When they set their eyes on the sea, they were struck with a powerful vision. They would not share the nature of what they had seen, but they had clearly been shaken by it. When excavation finally allowed crews to visit the floor of the cavern, the precognitive found a place on the rocky shore of the sea and simply sat. When asked to explain themself, they would only say that they could not leave, that “everything” depended on them being there. Believers in the vigil theory say the psychic stayed there, unmoving, until they died. Whatever their vision had told them to wait for never came.
There is a third theory which, while scoffed at by city natives, is very popular among offworlders. Known informally as the “troll” theory, this supposition holds the name “Waiting Sea” is a joke played by the ancient Serpens on tourists after seeing the latter’s discomfort on the Ananta’s open-air bridges. These nobles supposedly said the sea was “waiting” to pull anyone who wasn’t cautious enough down into the abyss when they slipped.
The Echoes[]
The cavern which houses Ananta is only the largest part of an extensive cave network known as The Echoes. Since the Echoes were discovered during the construction of Sero’ak, the people of Hroa have filled the barren caves with life and culture.
Some of the larger caverns are home to tiny communities of ten or twenty who make their lives fishing in the Waiting Sea or one of the smaller lakes that dot the Echoes. While still technically citizens of Sero’ak the people of these caverns tend to be quite insular, only coming to the city proper for trade or medicine.
Some of the smallest caves of the Echoes have been transformed into meditative spaces for students of the Academy. Some Sophists, especially those teaching precognitives, will sometimes lead entire classes in the quiet solitude of these caves, as they are an ideal venue for teaching mental discipline.
The Whispers[]
Apart from the Ananta cavern itself, the most visited part of the Echoes is the series of caves known collectively as the Whispers. Each Whisper represents the culmination of a Hroan artist's life's work as part of a tradition dating back to the founding of Ananta. An artist who is recognized as having a profound and prolonged impact on the culture of Hroa is granted tremendous funding and a cave amongst the Whisper to completely transform into a permanent art installation.
Cultural Events[]
The underground waterways and lakes are also home to multitude of different kinds of microscopic and coral organisms that have adapted to the natural darkness by bioluminescence, emitting wide range of light frequencies, of whitch most common are frequencies near ultraviolet or infrared. Giving the otherwise dark space redish and violet glow to it. Colors ranging to orange and blue are not that uncommon either. This splendid display has given rise to a festival ( that is at this time unnamed) where all of the Night side of Sero'ak goes dark, allowing the faint light from the cave illuminate the space. As the time passes (1 to 3h ) the light from the surrounding cavern brightens and its peak the phenomena is compared to a view where the city itself was floating in brightly colored nebula.
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