Background Information for Jerris based Earthdawn campaign run by Chris. This is the basic knowledge your character would have picked up about Jerris in the timeframe before the beginning of the adventure.

You are sitting on a hard bench in an open air pub in Jerris thinking about your past few days in this strange city. You each come here seeking information, but have found it hard to scratch the surface of the lay of the land. Jerris is a city of great wealth, brought by its position on the airship trade route, the airships it constructs and the elemental air they mine. You still remember the other day seeing a gleaming white airship, obviously a trade galley, sliding through the sky to the air docks, as well as the smaller patrol ships ghosting through the day and night. Even though there is wealth the people walk around like they are in a dream, there is a noticeable tang to the air, an unusual taste that cannot be pinned down. Ash swirls around the tightly packed streets, and even if the sun can hardly break through the monotonous smog, the city is squashed together, a strange feeling of fear forcing people to live cheek by jowl. Even though the people walk around with downcast eyes you have seen great displays of emotion; anger, laughter, joy and violence occur, yet natives seem to move on, uninterested in the interruption, wrapped in their own thoughts.

You look across the merchants square, empty of merchants in the late afternoon, but with the teamsters and porters sweating furiously to move goods along. The evening is warm, and while the beer in your had is not the best you have ever tasted, it is cool, and more importantly cheap. There is a hushed silence in the pub, not the rowdy atmosphere you would expect with a venue filled with miners, teamsters and porters and mercenaries. You use this time to plan your next steps and how you are going to achieve your goals.

You look up at the sun, now burning orange in the late afternoon. You believe that there would not be many other places in Jerris where you could view the sun from the ground. As you turn back to your beer a shadow passes. You look up and see the a large shape moving across your vision. It is big, and as you start to focus properly you can see it is a giant castle, floating in the air, with walls and towers and levels, just like you have seen in books or on your travels. It is flanked by several other triangular shaped airships, that look swift and mean in the red glaze. You look to your left and right seeing that everyone in the bar is pretty much staring at the same thing, probably wondering what powerful magic's keep such a large item in the sky.

A shout breaks the revere, and a bell starts to clang. As the floating castle starts to take position near the airdocks you hear the pffsst pffsst of arrows falling from above. The smaller airships employed by Jerris move towards the structure, firing arrows, catapults and magic's at the structure. A bell is clanging. People in the pub start to quietly shuffle towards the exit, the shadow of the great castle moves directly overhead, a bit of a quiet shove and then a stampede as the clientele race silently into the night. A stone hatch opens on the bottom of the vessel and what looks like liquid fire pours out only a hundred feet to your left, instantly incinerating a warehouse and a number of guards standing in front of it. The stamp of feet and the jingling of armour is heard as the town guard and militia start to take position in the square, also firing bows and ballistae at the smaller flanking vessels, which have spread out over town dumping rocks and arrows below. One soldier is physically ill when the waft of burnt flesh from the warehouse guards reaches him.

Now you start to hear the civilians, normally quiet start to cry out in panicky voices, scream and point at the invaders. A loud voice scream out "Quick lets flee, lets flee the city, it's the Therans come to enslave us all, follow me"