Sanctus Seru and the Inquisition

The betrayal

Lord Inquisitor Seru betrayed Tsaph Katta over the question of letting dark elves into the Combine, and that betrayal shattered the Combine. When Katta’s Loyalists escaped to Luclin, Seru’s anger was terrible; in his first rage he killed at least four slaves. At the very moment he should have been taking control of the Combine, he set his followers to finding out how Katta had escaped, while subject peoples rose up and plundered the far corners of the fallen empire. Seru “became obsessed,” and remained “blind to the terrible tragedy he caused.”

In the end he followed them, using his own version of Grieg’s spell. Shadow Haven had to negotiate before it would let the Inquisitors through to the surface.

Building a city of order

Seru found Katta’s people already dug in, and Luclin’s orbit trapped him there. So he built Sanctus Seru, a geometric city of straight streets, fed by fungus farms and made of stone quarried in the Dawnshroud Peaks, perhaps the most beautiful region on Luclin’s light side. Hauling it meant skirmishes with hostile galorian tribes and predatory rock hoppers. The usual road from Shadow Haven to the city runs through the Netherbian Lair, named after the blind, skinless creatures that once filled it. Every building is constantly maintained, so that none ever looks worn.

The Praesertum

Four Praesertum Inquisitors run the city. One oversees the military, one civil life, one commerce, and the fourth watches the other three. Each faction is suspicious by nature and “riddled with spies from the other factions.” Ordinary Citizens of Seru have “all the responsibilities of the other factions and none of the privileges.” Seru himself has not been seen in public in living memory; he lives in the Arx Seru.

The Question

Every adult citizen must undergo “The Question,” a ritual torture held every two years. Many do not survive it, because the questioners themselves are not immune to corruption. The journals of one of the city’s armour-smiths, “Day 1” and “Day 22,” show what living under it feels like.

The Recuso

Those who failed the Inquisitors but were not thought worth executing were exiled to Marus Seru, south of the Mons Letalis mountains: a desert hot in the north, cold at night and frozen further south. These Recuso formed “a rough and violent culture,” surviving by fighting the wasteland’s creatures and robbing outsiders. Few ever left. One investigator found one of them, Rifkin, sitting alone at the end of a bar in Shadow Haven.

Seru and Katta

Sanctus Seru and Katta Castellum are the two halves of the old Combine on Luclin, and each defines itself against the other; the Concilium Universus in Katta Castellum stands against Seru and all his followers. In Katta Castellum the Loyalist quest line ends at his door. When a player brings back the Arx Key, Lcea Katta says: “Seru must be defeated, if there will ever be peace in Katta and truth spread among the people of Sanctus Seru.”

Legacy

Seru’s followers moved again in later years. In 2014, “High in the Sky with Arx Mentis” placed them in Arx Mentis.