Here broken arches and fallen columns are covered with awnings and surrounded by market stalls. The twisting, improvised streets are crammed with people, most of them visitors, making their way through the city and stopped at every turn by hawkers trying to sell them one thing or another.
Three great buildings loom over everything in this quarter: Falconer’s Spire, with airships docked against it; the bazaar, a gigantic tent sheltering the city’s great open-air market; and the Lorsmarch Palace, center of the Storm Lords’ power.
This is the heart of the city. Here all the city’s struggles, opportunities, and dangers are gathered and intensified. You can feel it in the air, and soon something is going to change.
The Marketplace is the natural center of this city sustained by legitimate and illegitimate trade. The Lorsmarch Palace, the seat of the Storm Lords’ collective power, is here, near the shops and stalls that are the foundation of the city’s economy. The district has always been the city’s most defensible, and the older parts of the palace date back to the age of the pirate kings.
Centuries ago, the Marketplace was not the center of the city. Coastal erosion has shifted the center to this point, which appears to have been a temple district in the Age of Giants. Remnants of those days are abundant: carved stone heads, a circle of visions, towering pillars, and ancient tunnels that have been turned into basements for many of the district’s buildings.
For adventurers, the Marketplace is the best place to resupply or to sell whatever goods they have discovered in the continent’s interior. Although goods can be expensive here, the Marketplace is the only place to buy or sell many things.
Word count: 0