The city of gold and chains, where a dragon sleeps beneath the streets and the ruling family's touch turns flesh to metal. Mpehi is the second wealthiest of the Free Isles city-states, and the most feared. The Gattorini family has held power here for longer than anyone can count, bound to their patron Bathemiel by a bargain whose terms have been forgotten—but whose price is still being paid.
The City
Mpehi sprawls across a cluster of connected islets linked by bridges of gold-veined stone. The architecture is heavy, fortress-like, built from dark volcanic rock quarried from the island's interior—but every surface gleams with gilded ornamentation. Gold leaf covers domes, lines doorframes, traces patterns on street cobblestones. The effect is gaudy, overwhelming, deliberately intimidating. This is a city that wants you to know it could buy you.
The streets are narrow and winding, designed centuries ago to confuse invaders. Old fortifications have been converted into pleasure houses and gambling dens, arrow slits now windows for watching the crowds below. The harbor is smaller than Kokotintin's but fiercely defended—chain booms can seal it in minutes, and the watchtowers are always manned.
Beneath the city, in caverns that predate human settlement, Bathemiel sleeps. The dragon's presence can be felt in subtle ways: warmth rising through the stones, a faint vibration during deep night, the occasional tremor that sends gold-plated fixtures rattling. The Gattorini palazzo sits directly above the primary cavern. They call it the Golden Seat.
The Gattorini Family
The Gattorini are the oldest of the four families, and the strangest. Their obsession with gold extends beyond wealth—they believe it purifies, protects, sanctifies. Family members are ritually gilded at important life moments: gold leaf pressed to the forehead at birth, golden jewelry bonded to the flesh at coming-of-age, golden death masks sealed over faces before burial. The family crypt is said to contain centuries of golden corpses. Outsiders read the gilding as vanity. Within the family it is nearer to a pact with the gift itself: every patrón who has wielded Bathemiel's blessing comes, in the end, to feel gold creeping through their own flesh, the blood thickening toward metal and the heart slowly setting, and the ritual is the Gattorini meeting that terror on its own terms — claiming the gold before it can claim them. It never works. Most patróns spend their last years certain the change has reached them, and several have died clawing at their skin.
Donna Serephina rules with cold efficiency, maintaining Mpehi's position through calculated marriages, strategic violence, and the ever-present threat of her touch. Cross her, and your most prized possession becomes worthless gold—your ship's wheel, your heirloom blade, your wife's portrait. She rarely needs to demonstrate twice.
The family maintains a corps of golden-masked enforcers called the Mani d'Oro—the Golden Hands. They're recognizable by their gilded masks, golden gauntlets, and absolute silence. They don't make threats. They make examples.
The Arena
Mpehi's coliseum—the Fossa d'Oro, the Golden Pit—is smaller than Kokotintin's but more brutal. The fights here tend toward lethality; survival rates are lower, and the crowds prefer decisive endings. The arena floor is sprinkled with gold dust before each match, turning the sand glittering and slick.
Gladiators who please the Donna receive gilded weapons and armor—worthless for combat but invaluable as status symbols. Champions are sometimes offered a choice: a fortune in gold, or one touch from the Donna's bare hand on an object of their choosing. Most take the fortune. The smart ones take the touch.
Economy
Mpehi's economy runs on gold and fear. The Gattorini don't need to trade—they can create wealth from nothing—but they choose to, maintaining the pretense of legitimate commerce. Their real power comes from lending: Gattorini gold funds half the merchant ventures in the Free Isles, and the interest rates are murderous. Default, and the Mani d'Oro come calling.
The city also specializes in luxury goods: goldsmiths, jewelers, artisans who work with precious metals. Rich merchants from across Alaria commission work here, paying premium prices for the prestige of Mpehi craftsmanship. Much of this gold is transformed by the Donna personally, guaranteeing authenticity.
The Dragon's Price
Bathemiel's bargain is coming due. Donna Serephina has begun dreaming of golden hands—her own hands—reaching up from the earth and pulling her down into the caverns. The dreams are getting more frequent. The dragon's messages, once cryptic, have become demands: bring me the blood of a willing sacrifice. Bring me a soul that chooses the chain.
The Donna hasn't told her family. She's been quietly researching alternatives—ancient texts, planar scholars, anyone who might know how to break a dragon's bargain. So far, nothing. The Blood Pact offers her nothing here either: there is no arena bout to win and no council ruling that can discharge a debt owed to the thing beneath the city, which is the other reason she keeps it quiet—the day the families learn of it, they will reach past the pact rather than honor a procedure it never had. The Gattorini have been paying Bathemiel's price for centuries. Soon, someone will have to pay the principal.
The oldest layer of the family papers says plainly what the dragon is asking for, and the Donna has read it. Bathemiel does not want out. It wants to be let go, to die having paid, and the only coin it will take is a living soul that chooses the chain in its place. Knowing this has changed nothing about how she spends her days: every hour with planar scholars, learning how to break the bargain, is an hour spent perfecting the one outcome that guarantees the dragon never gets what it asked for. Free the Gattorini of Bathemiel and you leave Bathemiel chained forever, its debt standing and its patience finally spent.
The family tried the other road exactly once. Don Vittore Gattorini, a patrón of the early centuries, understood the bargain and went down to honor it, alone and ungauntleted, offering himself for the chain. He never came back up, and the dragon did not die. The account of what he found is kept in the family papers, not the sealed vault, and Serephina is the first patrón in generations to have read it through. It is why she wears the gauntlets. It is why she has not gone down.