Antediluvia: The City-State of Ho-Olhed, City from Beyond the Stars (Overview)

    Just south of the Urud River and north of the mountains called The Scales of Ohtar, and at the western edge of the known world in the region of Imrur, lies the city-state of Ho-Olhed. It is a wild, strange place, with alien customs and a strange religion. The people of Ho-Olhed are light-skinned and light-haired, but their bodies are entirely covered in green tattoos that they begin to receive at the age of 12. The subject content of the tattoos is highly individual, but the custom is that by the age of 20 a citizen's body must be entirely covered, even the face, eyelids, and other unmentionable sensitive parts of the body. Olhedians wear only green in various shades, and it is illegal within the city, unless a visitor, to wear any other color. Green is the sacred color of the Olhedian god, Olo-gomi. Olo-gomi is not just a god, but the living ruler of the city.

    Olo-gomi's main concern is the spiritual purity of his worshippers. He teaches that spiritual impurity is contagious, much like a disease, and any contact with impure ideas or substances or the dead can taint the soul of a person. If someone is ritually unclean, and comes into contact with someone who is purified, that purification is null and void, and the previously clean person must be cleansed again. Only a blood sacrifice will wash away spiritual taint, done in the name of Olo-gomi. These are performed in the temple at the center of Ho-Olhed where Olo-gomi lives. The type of impurity determines what sort of sacrifice must be made, from animals as small as a pigeon to a human being for the gravest of sins. When a human must be sacrificed, criminals or war captives are used, since the ritual is said to purify both the unclean person and the sacrificial person at the same time (in this way criminals atone for their sins and enemy soldiers do something good for their captors). The sacrifice itself is usually done by burning the animal or person alive on a pyre, bound if necessary to prevent escape from the flames. Visitors must take utmost care in this city lest they run afoul of the long list of sacrifice-inducing sins. Ignorance is no defense where Olo-gomi is concerned.