Nantambu

Sometimes called the Song-Wind City for the cheerful chimes of colored glass that hang from its every building, Nantambu is a bastion of peace and sophistication. Canals from the Vanji River carry water not just to the city but through it, demarcating districts in great curving lines topped by graceful, arching bridges. In Nantambu’s cosmopolitan markets, spices and magic from across the Expanse flow freely—yet the city needs no defensive walls, nor standing armies, for it is guarded by something far more powerful than stone or steel.

Founded by a legendary magician known as Old-Mage Jatembe, the Magaambya is the oldest academy of arcane magic in the Inner Sea region, and perhaps on all of Golarion. Looming over the city’s lesser stone buildings, the academy’s ring of 10 terraced towers form Nantambu’s heart, each decorated with a massive mosaic of one of the legendary Ten Magic Warriors. Students from around the world come to study in its storied halls, focusing primarily on the meticulous art of wizardry. Teaching styles within the school vary greatly; some professors teach only through didactic oral traditions, while others promote the study of ancient texts—many penned by Old-Mage Jatembe and his disciples. The academy’s teachers are notorious for sojourning in far-off lands and visiting scholars in other nations, meaning students must sometimes travel great distances to access particular mentors. The university also encourages fieldwork, and at any given time there are more tenured professors conducting research in the far corners of the world than in the school itself. Such professors often send their favorite students abroad to secure—or uncover—the ruins or artifacts they hope to study. In the Magaambya, it’s said that a wizard learns both by reading and by doing—a philosophy sometimes termed “the Word and the Way”— and thus to shut oneself off from the world in perpetual study is at best counterproductive, and at worst miserly. In Jatembe’s tradition, study is ultimately less important than using what you learn to serve others.

The Magaambyan emphasis on service is the source of Nantambu’s strength, with the resident mages ensuring that no invading force has ever managed to come within 20 miles of the city. This protection extends to neighboring villages as well, and despite no formal agreements of fealty, more than a hundred such settlements gladly and gratefully pay tribute to the city. Supported by the college’s faculty, Nantambu’s governing

council

of elected

magistrate-mayors presides over the city and surrounding territory, using the famous Watcher’s Stone of Nantambiyan Tower to keep magical tabs on Usaro and other threats in the region.

ECONOMICS

The Mwangi Expanse is rich in natural resources. Its fertile soil gives life to copious forests, abundant crops, and rare herbs and medicinal plants, while its mountain mines produce countless tons of ore and gems. Unfortunately, this wealth has as often been as much of a curse as a boon in recent centuries, as locals are forced to defend their claims against militant colonists from Avistan. Much trade with northern nations is concentrated along the western coast, where ports like Senghor host trading ships from around the Inner Sea, while inland Kibwe caters to overland trade caravans from eastern Garundi nations and Nantambu attracts scholars from across the globe. For the most part, while residents may capitalize on opportunities provided by foreign trade, settlements within the Expanse are largely self-sufficient, trading with immediate neighbors and relying little on foreign imports—a fact that causes northern companies like the Aspis Consortium no end of frustration.

MZALI RELATIONS

Without a unified government, the myriad cultures and cities of the Mwangi Expanse have an equally wide array of relationships with foreign nations and each other. In Nantambu and Kibwe, peaceful foreign traders are welcome regardless of their place of origin, while in Mzali non-Mwangi traders face execution or worse. Vidrian and other coastal nations maintain a well-earned hatred of both Cheliax—which would love to retake its former colony— and the Free Captains of the Shackles now that Vidrian no longer pays for protection.

SENGHOR GUARD

Yet Nantambu is far more than just an outgrowth of the Magaambya. Its reputation for scholarship has led to the establishment of many other prominent schools, teaching everything from science and smithing to Mwangi martial traditions. Small wonder, then, that the city should also host the largest Pathfinder Lodge in the Expanse. Famously accepting of strangers, Nantambu’s populace boasts dozens of different ancestries, from Ekujae elves to Jaha lizardfolk, gnolls to catfolk. Here one can find even the most reclusive of Mwangi peoples, such as the shy anadi, many-eyed goloma, bone-feathered shisks, or inevitable-worshipping conrasu with their elaborate biological machines and living wooden exoskeletons. Regardless of their strangeness, all entities of goodwill are welcome in the Song-Wind City. This hospitality has only increased in the wake of the recent Lake Ocota land rushes, and each passing year sees the city grow more secure in its position as the cultural heart of the Expanse.