Holy Lord City

Biodata

Geography and Layout

• Scale: Before its collapse, Holy Lord City was so extensive that Norton could not see its far edge from a treetop 23.
• City center: Holy Lord Cathedral occupies the former walled city. The surrounding population expanded beyond those walls, leaving the larger settlement without an effective enclosing city wall 23.
• Residential districts: Extravagantly decorated houses stand among dilapidated homes and buildings with collapsed roofs. The outermost districts resemble an unplanned settlement surrounding an older city 14 23.
• Surroundings: Forests, mountains, and monster-infested wilderness surround the city. Norton could not find a surviving village or small town along the nearby paths he explored 23.
• Distance from Lino City: Approximately one thousand miles 50.

Major Locations

Religion and Daily Life

Sacred Status

• Creation and death: Church tradition identifies Holy Lord City as the place where God created humanity and later perished 23 43.
• Excluded from becoming the capital: Despite its religious importance, God’s death also causes the site to be regarded as extremely unclean. This disqualified it from becoming the Papal State’s capital 23.
• Distinct from Holy City: Holy Lord City is not Holy City, the Papal State’s capital. Both enforce unusually extreme religious rules compared with other Church-governed cities 43.
• Religious imagery: Crosses hang at household doors, while costly pigments are used for sacred murals even in impoverished outer districts 23.

Weekly Mass

• All work and production stop for the weekly observance 5 23.
• Residents must grow flowers to supply the ceremony, including on land formerly used for food crops 5.
• Paupers cover the filthy roads with petals while Church knights confine them to the roadside 5.
• Processions leave Holy Lord Cathedral and divide into eight groups to travel through the city 5.
• Clerics distribute black-bread crumbs to starving residents, who fight over them 5 6.
• Stopping during the procession is forbidden. When a starving mother grabs Norton’s robe to beg for food, a knight beheads her and then kills her child 6.

Living Conditions

• Sanitation: Mud, excrement, wastewater, and occasional corpses foul the streets. Even Holy Lord Cathedral lacks toilets despite its size 4 5 14 23.
• Poverty: Many residents are emaciated, barefoot, and unable to clothe themselves adequately 5 6.
• Starvation policy: Norton recalls that the Church deliberately starves the population to deprive vampires of blood 6.
• Clerical cannibalism: The cathedral serves human-flesh soup. Following the population collapse, captive clergy raised within the Church become a source of meat for its upper ranks 41.

History

Norton’s Early Life and Escape

Norton belongs to Holy Lord Cathedral as a prospective missionary. His participation in Mass exposes him to the city’s starvation and the knights’ violence against its residents 4 5 6.

After his burning, a handcart carries his charred body through the city to the western mass grave. He survives and shelters in the nearby wilderness 14 17 23.

Nearly sixty days into his seclusion, Norton returns to seek shelter on the city’s outskirts. A sacred mural burns him despite his concealment beneath roof thatch. Shortly after his departure, Church knights seal off the street, and two Holy Knights follow the traces he has left behind 23 24.

Holy Judgment Order Occupation

Following the deaths of the two Holy Knights, the pope dispatches the Holy Judgment Order. Its five hundred golden-armored Holy Knights enter during Mass, interrupting the procession and causing residents to prostrate themselves 27 29.

The Order assumes control of Church affairs, while Bishop Rosen closes Holy Lord Cathedral and forbids missionaries and ordinary knights from leaving. The purge targets vampires and anyone deemed unclean, including cannibals and people accused of insufficient devotion 30.

Residents discover that accusations of heresy can summon the Order against their neighbors. Poor residents denounce wealthy households and loot their property; wealthy residents retaliate or eliminate rivals in the same way. Disputes over stolen wealth produce further accusations and killings 30.

Depopulation and Plague

After one year, fewer than one in ten residents remain. Corpses cover the streets, rats and wild dogs feed openly, and the stench reaches Norton’s distant mountain refuge. The search for him has produced no useful lead 30.

Holy Lord Cathedral eventually reopens to supervise corpse removal as the heat makes conditions unbearable. The narrative estimates that recovering even some of the city’s former vitality would require at least five generations—more than a century 30.

Famine and plague follow. The dispersed surviving population limits the plague’s spread through the city, but the relatively concentrated cathedral population suffers. Cannibalism and disease steadily reduce its clergy 41.

The disaster also serves Adam’s political ambitions. The pope receives reports that Adam is stirring up disputes to distract the Holy Judgment Order, then recalls them both. He later praises Adam’s willingness to sacrifice Holy Lord City for his goals and names him his successor 31 33.

Werewolf Infestation

The mass grave sustains expanding populations of wolves, wild dogs, and scavengers, which attract larger predators from the forest. As the corpses rot and food becomes scarce, the creatures fight over territory and prey; Werewolves emerge as the eventual victors 38.

Werewolf attacks increase around the city, and impoverished residents on its outskirts begin disappearing. With the Holy Judgment Order recalled and only a little over two hundred ordinary Church knights remaining, Rosen withdraws patrols to protect the cathedral alone 42.

Norton returns while fleeing a Werewolf pack, intending to use the Church’s defenses against his pursuers. Finding starving survivors clustered near the cathedral, he abandons the plan and leaves. Dozens or hundreds of Werewolves subsequently enter the city, and screams announce their attack 41 43.

Later Developments

Years after settling in Lino City, Norton hears that the Church has secretly obtained something from Holy Lord City. Its identity is not revealed; his guesses include a plague, Werewolves, an unknown monster, and Father Mia 48 49.

Later reports indicate that Holy Lord City’s problems have continued to worsen. Norton discovers that Werewolves passing near Lino City are arriving from other directions and traveling toward Holy Lord City, rather than spreading outward from it 50.

Supernatural Defenses