Osibu

Osibu

(City)

N

City

Titles

The Golden City
The Gilded City

Region

Mwangi Expanse

Level

9

Size

Small city

Population

11,470

Demographics

11,240 humans (Zenj), 250 other

Government

Democratic Council

Alignment

Neutral

Demonym

Osibans

Adjective

Osiban

Ruler

Umanja-Jinga

Leader

Dimari-Diji

Source: Heart of the Jungle, pg(s). 41 (1E)
The Mwangi Expanse, pg(s). 246–263 (2E)

The streets of the southeastern city of Osibu are literally paved with gold. Located in the Screaming Jungle within the greater Mwangi Expanse, the city is protected by a ring of statues called the Circle of Twice-Honored Women, which somehow reduces the cacophony of noise from the jungle and also keeps out the jungle's carnivorous plant life. Osibu is incredibly well hidden, with many maps not even acknowledging its existence, or misleading readers to another city or ruin within the Mwangi Expanse. Finding the city is an ordeal that involves many trials with the dangerous flora and fauna along the way.

The city is a democracy, and life is a veritable utopia for its inhabitants. There are plentiful supplies of fruit and water, and the city's wise-women are able to mix rare herbs to produce an ointment which greatly extends life and staves off diseases.

Osibu is home to possibly Golarion's oldest living creature, the hunched arboreal regent Dimari-Diji, Final Tree of the Elder World. The ancient arboreal regent's first memory is the coming of the Starstone nearly ten thousand years ago. Dimari-Diji guards the Nemesis Well, a way between worlds.

Government

Osibu's democratically elected body of are known as the Chyayup, and is made up of 100 women of the city from across the population. The neighborhoods of the city, known as the Twelve Gardens, elect a new representative when the current one is close to passing. Often, a Chyayup can sense their death coming a week or more in advance. This phase of their lives is called Withering. When a Chyayup dies, her spirit becomes one of the Twice-Honored Women who maintain the city's protective wards, while the previous spirit whom they are replacing is reincarnated within the city.

The oldest Chyayup is called the Uur Chyayu, or the Oracle of the Honored who leads the rest and also serves as the senior herb mistress for the great Dimari-Diji. The Uur Chyaya is also different from her sisters in that she cannot sense her death coming, leaving it to always be a sudden affair. What she gains instead is insight into the dreams and nightmares of anyone who has left the city. Because this clairvoyance is the price she pays for not knowing when her death will come, she wastes no time in doing all the service she can for her community.

History

An Osiban halfling holding a golden pot.

In 4332 AR, one Pathfinder named Durvin Gest successfully found the city, and was determined to leave the city with his knowledge instead of having his memory of the city erased. He threw the Lens of Galundari into the city's Nemesis Well and successfully escaped with all of his memories. Another Pathfinder, Deron Melcarian, more recently became obsessed with these reports, and became determined to follow in Durvin's footsteps. He successfully found the city, and lived there for some time, attempting to find secretly another way to escape. Unfortunately, he did at least succeed in getting into and jumping into the Nemesis Well. This has led to much of the goodwill Osibans had towards outsiders who found them to vanish, and they now regard any new outsider with paranoia and suspicion.

Society

An Osiban gardener holding a potted plant.

The mostly human population live a peaceful life within the walls of the city. However, they are far from isolated. Instead, they regularly send citizens out to explore the outside world and return with reports. They are never concerned about these citizens revealing the city's location, as they are always sent out under a geas that binds them to secrecy.