Blue Lords

Blue Lords

(Organization)

Headquarters

Absalom

Scope

International

Members

Minor Taldan nobles

Source: Guide to Absalom, pg(s). 55 (1E)
Absalom, City of Lost Omens, pg(s). 16–18 (2E)

The Blue Lords were a group of minor Taldan nobles who were one of two major foreign organizations (alongside the Keleshite Cult of the Hawk) to effectively rule Absalom during nearly a millennium of the city's Age of Excess, from the 20th to 30th centuries AR.

History

Origins

The Blue Lords were minor but wealthy nobles who used their largess to purchase seats on the Low Council of Absalom's Grand Council from corrupt Absalomian natives. They then used this access to redirect Absalom's wealth to Taldor and use their powers toward its benefit.

Proxy Laws

By 1997 AR, the nobility of Absalom's Grand Council had increasingly refused to involve themselves in the governance of Absalom, considering it and the common folk of Absalom to be beneath them. To avoid this work, they begin hiring out their voting and labor to foreign contractors.

Led by proxies who were part of the Blue Lords—and of the Cult of the Hawk, a group composed of Keleshite mystics and traders from Osirion and Qadira—Absalom's Grand Council then enacted the Proxy Laws that same year. These laws required the city to employ outside professionals to perform the acts of governance and municipal labor, practically handing governance of Absalom over to the Cult and the Blue Lords. This era became known as the Age of Excess, during which Absalom's population descended into a state of perpetual indulgence while foreign powers effectively raided its wealth.

Age of Excess

Their rise led to the "Mount Absalom" construction boom, during which many new buildings were constructed atop existing buildings to literally raise Absalom's profile. The Blue Lords relaxed zoning laws to a precarious state, allowing such rapid construction of buildings atop buildings that Absalom developed an undercity whose streets would later be converted to sewers.

The Blue Lords' influence led to peak of the Taldan architectural trend in Absalom in the 21st century AR, dominated by painted bricks, bilaterally symmetrical structures, decorative columns, and opulent entryways. This included the construction of several hunting lodges, which the Blue Lords numbered rather than named to avoid the complications of Taldor's aristocratic structure.

Siege of Krakens and Kings

Conflicts continued to grow between the Cult and the rival Blue Lords, which culminated with the Siege of Krakens and Kings in 2502 AR, a proxy war of mercenary troops hired by each side. The Blue Lords commissioned Counterfeit Peak, a magically elevated siege castle of earth for siege engines to target Cult forces, but an attack by the Cult forced the wizards performing the ritual to rush to an unstable completion.

This caused a thinning of, and eventually a planar rift in, the barrier between the Plane of Earth and Universe, allowing earth elementals and other creatures from the elemental plane to overtake both armies and reshape the hill, which was soon abandoned. The Foreign Quarter of Absalom also suffered extensive damage in the conflict.

Decline and withdrawal

In the early 29th century AR, the Blue Lords held a majority on the Grand Council and ordered the 2820 AR Radiant Festival—traditionally held in Absalom—to be moved to Oppara. The decision was unpopular in both Absalom and Taldor; Absalomians rioted in protest, and the Festival was a historic bust in attendance in Oppara.

In 2850 AR, Absalom's primarch ordered the executions of many Grand Council members and replaced them with hand-picked sycophants. Dissatisfaction with both the Cult and Blue Lords led to the unsuccessful Conjured Siege, led by Arclords of Nex affiliated with the Arcanamirium.

Earthquakes in 2920 AR caused widespread damage in both Taldor and Qadira, and many of the Blue Lords and members of the Cult of the Hawk withdrew from Absalom overnight to focus on their homelands. Absalom rescinded the Proxy Laws in the following year. A subsequent audit of Absalom's treasury found that much of its wealth was gone, and attempts by remaining Taldan and Keleshite landowners and guildmasters to take advantage of Absalom's suddenly desperate workers led to the Red Wealday Riots that ended their remaining influence on Absalom.

Members

Blue Lords members included the Gevrin family, a small family who remained in Absalom and resided in Hunting Lodge Seven after the rest of the Blue Lords had departed.

Legacy

Taldan architecture and culture fell immediately out of favor in Absalom after the Blue Lords left the city, though it experienced a revival from the 38th to 42nd centuries AR. The 360-foot-tall, unicorn horn-shaped Blue Tower in Eastgate, once the Blue Lords' headquarters in Absalom, remains the tallest building within the city's walls and its third-tallest building overall.

The Blue Tower is now the headquarters of the Winged Sandals, who serve as Absalom's postal carriers and messengers. It also included a subterranean doomsday shelter encompassing eight city blocks, three of which remain populated as a secretive private village (and even more secretly, a haven of Lion Blades spies) known as Little Oppara. Taldan spies also have access to every message handled by the Winged Sandals, thanks to massive bribes paid to the Sandals' leader Aftrin Undrol.

Other structures owned by the Blue Lords, such as their surviving hunting lodges, also became city property.

The Low Council of Absalom still reserves one at-large seat each for the Grand Ambassadors of Osirion, Qadira, and Taldor, a tradition that has persisted since the Cult of the Hawk and Blue Lords ruled during the Age of Excess. To remain popular with the people of Absalom, these members almost always abstain from voting. The Grand Ambassador also employs the Javelin Gallery guards who control entry to Little Oppara, and one of its manor houses serves as his private office.