Sutzam

The city of the Tzalan, founded in 815 around the largest step-pyramid in the Verdant Deep, the first jungle settlement large enough to be called a city since the Age of Ruins. From the 1030s its Sun-Speakers began uniting the jungle villages under the pyramid cult, and in 1142 Sun-Speaker Ixatl took power and declared the jungle closed to outsiders; he rules perhaps twenty thousand here and preaches in the pyramid halls from glyphs he claims to read. Maize grows on the pyramid terraces, hairless Sutzam dogs sleep by the hearths, and leaf-cutter ants lay out gardens the Tzalan take as their model for farming. His ward Kaltzi, the best blowgun in the city, is called the Sun's arrow.

See also: Verdant Deep, Serpent Pyramids, River Nhal, The Canopy