Port Blackwater

Overview

Who is? What are they doing?

Power Dynamics

Who is in charge? Who is powerful?

Business

What do people do here?

City Subdivisions

• WALLS KEY
  • Grey dotted line is older / lower walls
  • Grey dashed line is newer / taller walls
  • Brown dots and dashed lines for solid wooden walls.
  • Brown dashed lines for haphazard neighborhood walls.
  • Archways in walls indicate gates.
  • Hash marks {///} indicate cliffs.

A: OLD CITY A1 – Old Blackwater: An impossible hive of odd shops and warrens of old housing on winding irregular streets, most of them converted into tenements or owned by decrepit old former money. A2 – Corbie: The fancier part of Old Blackwater, mix of former splendor and overpopulated mess. Now, mostly falling apart. A3 – La Jardin: All things pseudo-Malayan, very few actual Malayans. A Malayan cover band, upper middle class. A4 – Swarznau: The best-crappy place to live in Blackwater. Nice but poor, almost safe. A5 – Castlebrook: Nice fairly-wealthy neighborhood for the posh who graduate to successful but not rich, near the river but not too close to the Rookery, looming just outside the inner-city walls. It also features the glorious Kafigturm, a sinister looking tower that goes all the way down to the river and has roots below, impenetrable prison for those the Lord of Blackwater sees fit to incarcerate. A6 – Rosewood: Trandafir and Ogres, as well as people who don’t mind living around Trandafir and Ogres. A peculiar match but one that seems to somehow gel well for both. A7 – Shady Oaks: Nestled against Castlebrook, the oaks are long gone and, in their place, dense housing, a mixed bag of the less-poor and some acceptable inns and services. A8 – Forks: Tucked into the fork between Rzeka Prona and Dorwa Creek, those parts of this district which aren’t seasonally flooded house a couple of stately, buttressed houses belonging to old wealth. Walling out the water on all sides, homes that were those of THE preeminent families a hundred years ago. B: MERRILY HILLSIDE B1 – South Harbor: More of a fish port than the North Harbor, with much associated business and warehousing. But instead of sailors’ accommodations you are more likely to find fishermen’s homes and families tucked into the low buildings. B2 – Morris: Formerly its own village, modest merchant and working neighborhood supporting the fisheries. B3 – Hammersmith: Craftsmen and metal workers, foundries, and families. Dverg are more common here than in other parts of Blackwater, and the air is thick with industrial smells that seem to drift downhill into Twixt readily enough. B4 – South Morris: An extension of the old Morris lands, this area is largely Alban immigrants of modest but respectable means; with several prosperous fabric mills tucked away in large warehouses or spacious basements. B5 – Mallory: Crawling up the cliff face, this was once a very old posh neighborhood for those who wished to gaze down at the city, in the days when putting something on TOP of the hill was unfashionable and asking for weather trouble. It’s now gone fairly-shabby and boarding-house-y, and the fine view is impeded by Twixt and the smells of Hammersmith. C: TWIXT C1 – The Rookery of Kings: A violent gangland slum full of unspeakable dangers and close-knit cadres of the most dangerous sorts of criminals, but also their families. It is a tight-knit community, its sides walled together to form a complete barrier and keep out everyone. This slum was originally built on purpose to get the unsavory people further out of the center of town, stuffed into crowded many-storied houses without care, but they took it and made it their own, and now “unsavory” is the most generous possible word to describe the place. It is death to enter unprepared and unfamiliar… if you can even figure out how to get inside. But it is the safest place in Blackwater, bar none, if you have the right knowledge and connections. C2 – Nachburg: A quite nice, little ominously silent neighborhood that nobody f***’s with. Retired mercenaries and sailors quite like it, often have good financial standing but strictly modest living. It’s just that they’re connected, they’re secure, and they can live nestled against the Rookery without fear. They are not the only sort of retirees that hang up their hat in Nachburg, after all. Tread carefully. C3 – Poors: Warehouses and converted warehouses and gods know what all. It’s best not to wonder too much what passes in and out of these storehouses. C4 – Blankenship: Doomstadter non-Endrani immigrants thrive here, in a community of unique kinship and internal consistency. These are folks who are expert in surviving tough living and have made their place welcoming and even beautiful for one another. C5 – Caroline: Paleteth solidarity-ville, a cheap and shabby neighborhood, but one where as many as 1 in every 3 residents is Paleteth. They own most of the buildings, they run their businesses without discrimination, and proper Sidhe wouldn’t be caught dead shopping there most of the time. C6 – Threp’ny: Flourishing cheap markets, second hand clothes, rag merchants, used and broken oddities and curiosities, it’s almost like a whole village of value… but the inns are cheap and dirty, the beer is watered, the company questionable, and anyone who thinks warts aren’t contagious should go take a walk through this place. The brothels are also not great. C7 – Ting Ting: Meaning “thin and graceful” as a given name in Mandarin Shalkaran, this village crushed up against the low clifftops overlooking Rzeka Prosna is indeed a narrow one, I suppose. It is presumed to have either been named by the residents after a beloved matron of early settlement, or by outsiders as a racist dig. Either way, it is chock full of Shalkaran culture crammed into narrow buildings with even narrower alleyways and seems to live on an entirely different wavelength than the rest of the City. It too is riddled with criminal gangs, but they are largely Shalkaran gangs and largely concerned with keeping order in Ting-Ting. So if you avoid Triad problems you have little to fear here, and outsiders are welcomed and treated with polite respect even when sneering at the insanely bizarre foodstuffs and other varieties of culture shock. C8 – Tillenau: For the worst beer in town, go to Tillenau. A significant number of the people living here are alcoholic, drunk, broke, crippled, and generally dilapidated bachelors. Worn too thin to work the boats or mines, lost and alone, sad and destitute. There are some small temples and some large taverns, many beggars, and those that really wish to work are crammed into dank manufactories doing things like embroidering fine cloth or building simple furnishings. Also home to a very large bakery that produces a rather woody, coarse rye by the cartful, serving much of Twixt. C9 – Barrowlea: Fresh markets with fish, fowl, and produce from out in Ogród kept fresh in the sea air, homes and gardens of modest means, little walled sea cottages, but all in rather rugged shape. Strong ties to the Harbormaster have kept this place more secure than other parts of Twixt, but there is still a lot of danger and difficulty living in a place where violence is simply innate, and any business suffers the heavy tax of protection rackets. D: PORT BLACKWATER (PORT, PORTO) D1 – North Harbor: Merchant ships and traders of all sorts from all over the world flock to Blackwater for the free exchange of goods and services. Well, almost free – the Harbormaster has absolute power and authority here, and none may trade or pass or even dock without his express permission and endorsement, which comes at a sometime agonizing price. But it can be worth it for the freedom of the marketplace, and many ships have found it to be so. D2 – Harborview: The Harbormaster’s kingdom within a kingdom, a tyranny with luxurious trappings alongside slum-like housing and abject destitution. Thriving and bustling, full of markets and mayhem, storehouses and underhanded dealings. Glorious mansion-like colonial homes squeezed near together, half of them full to the eyeballs with tenants, others solitary ship-yard owner castles and similar things. D3 – Elloe: Alehouses, inns, and hostels abound through this flourishing little stop underneath the northern bluffs and up against aa road on its way in. Catching both travelers and sailors, there’s a lot of competition but even more customers. The booze is decently priced and decently good, with a few diamonds in the rough here and there. Brewers love this neighborhood as well; freshwater springs leak out of the bluff face which they’ll swear by. The residents of this neighborhood are used to loud chaos and often work long hard days outside the district to come back and crash at night. The Blackwater Watch keeps a decent eye on this to prevent mass-murder in bar fights, and the Harbormaster’s men for the same reason, so it’s almost purely rowdy. Murder rate of visitors very high, of residents very low. D4 – Vintner: Exactly like you’d expect, there are a couple of tremendously good wineries stuck right in the middle of the city. Also good restaurants, more breweries, and a lot of foreigners with curious tastes in food living in four-story buildings stacked over other businesses, with walkways between. While pretentious, it’s not hugely wealthy or anything. Perhaps a bit like Ballard. D5 – Dockside: Ship builders, woodworkers, travelers supply, anything woodcraft related and working-class neighborhood / outfitters. Modest housing, close to the main markets, remarkably a pretty nice place. D6 – The Bogs: A dock-worker slum crammed onto the water. Its position on the low bank of the Prosna means that the bodies wash up there. A lot. It’s very, very, dense, often tense. It’s overlooked by Ting-Ting and the Rookery. A lot of misdeeds happen there and are never heard of. In a bad flood, hundreds can die despite the mud and sand dikes they are constantly building, and yet within months a few hundred more will have moved in and build new shacks all on top of one another, and things carry on. D7 – Mill Cross: Textiles are a big deal here, particularly wool and linen. It is in the looming shadow of the rookery on one side and the old city walls on the other, so it’s a grim sort of place but low-middle-class for a living. People here seldom run out of work at least, and many of their masters are big-wigs in Twixt laundering ill-gotten goods and gains through their legitimate businesses here. So if you don’t piss off your boss it’s relatively safe, but gods help you if you do. D8 – Sobridge: Squeezed into the north crook of the river under the bottom of the Bane Sidhe bridge, this is remarkedly a moderately respectable place for richer poor people to live, for example foremen from textile mills. People scream when they fall off the Bane Sidhe bridge, and its bad practice to try and save them… also the bridge is supposed to be cursed with dark things living underneath it, but Sobridge capitalizes on that mythology to drive off juveniles and tries to mind its own business. E: JUNCTION E1 – The Bazaar: This large district is almost entirely composed of a giant marketplace. Stores and shops, stalls and street vendors, open air and under cover, day and night. Anything you are looking for you can probably find it here – though be mindful you don’t get taken to the cleaners, mugged, or shanked over a particularly fine purchase. It is bustling and excitable day and night, and not a great many people can live there for all the stores crammed in beside and atop one another, but plenty try. Wide avenues, narrow alleyways, shopping and hawkers all day and night long. E2 – Na’ane: A mix of further markets and sleepy residential, it is much quieter and more civilized here. Luxuriating in the close-proximity of Blackwater Watch headquarters, the people of Na’ane enjoy a somewhat sheltered living. There is a higher density of Gael’Braugh here than elsewhere, and the largest house of healing / hospital is located on its south side. E3 – Blackjack: Businesses serving the watch, military, and their often-particular needs nestle down against the edge of the old city walls. Despite the proximity to Blackwater Watch headquarters, there’s a lot more crime and trouble here than in neighboring Na’ane. It is a wealthier neighborhood, and gambling establishments are common. The name came from a pirate captain, the coincidence to the card game just inspired newcomers to play off the moniker. E4 – Watch Quarter: Barracks, headquarters, businesses directly related to the Blackwater Watch, as well as the base of operations for the Alban army in Blackwater and a variety of officer’s housing. A great place to shop for simple supplies and known for not gouging people who aren’t of the military; but watch your step. The Blackwater Watch is about order, not law. F: EXPECTATION F1 – Deeds: A very nice middle-class residential neighborhood. F2 – Stafford: Specialty goods, imports, homes and businesses for fine crafts, exotic foods, and good inns. F3 – Blotenham: Endrani expat families tend to live here, and have their businesses here, and mind their business here. F4 – Blackhall: Shabbier business district but with particularly great brothels. Not bad, just not nice like Stafford. F5 – Brindle: Lower-class neighborhood, a full step down from Blackhall, but a good place to shop for magical curiosities and apothecaries’ unique needs. It also has some good markets serving the neighborhoods further from the bazaar and would rate at low-to-moderate safety. F6 – Blotenburg: Endrani expat single males have a habit of sort of banding together in this neighborhood, adjacent to but not intruding upon the families. They are numerous and more political than the families (generally speaking), and less tolerant of outsiders in their streets, where they make up nearly 50% of the coming and going. Excellent Doomstadter food and beer can be found in several places here. As well as a collection of silversmiths and other fine-scaled metalwork, watchmakers, etc. F7 – Sand Devil: Once called Sandoval, this place’s name drifted over the course of only a couple generations. Several gangs dispute the area regularly and its hidden wealth in laundries and dyers. Maids for Lord’s Hill are not uncommon residents, and it’s a welcoming place to be a single mother, with the ladies banding into clubs of shared challenges while they struggle not too unsuccessfully to get along. G: NEW TOWN G1 – Bluff: Several travelers’ inns have sprung up along the road looking down over the city, and there are a variety of places for stabling and other general needs. You can also find various reputable and otherwise guides to the city and helpful pointers. G2 – Little Dover: All full of working-class Alban newcomers, crammed in. Too new to be vile, it is nevertheless on the road to slum-hood. G3 – Highkeep: Another slightly more prosperous new Alban neighborhood, residence of at least one very minor knight, has its own informal neighborhood watch which pays the Blackwater Watch for permission to police themselves, which they do with a swift hand and their own little demi-court system. Slightly stepford-ish as a result, but not too unsafe. G4 – Silverrun: A rush of money filled this hillside with ambitious new houses and people eager to see and experience the lands of Warwick about 20 years ago. Prominent, wealthy, big spacious homes. Many of those eager beaver residents found it to be wildly unsatisfactory, dangerous, expensive, or found a better part of it to get to. The houses have become shabby and beaten even in the few years since, but the Alban population surge in 2007 provided a great opportunity for speculators to snap up the old houses and cram them absolutely to the roof with Albans. More buildings sprang up between, and it’s gone from a fine fancy new-money overlook to an overcrowded warren of cheap paint. G5 – Overlook: Perched atop the highest part of the bluffs above the harbor, this seemed like a great place to build fancy Inns and homes for the merchant class of newcomers over the last few years. Lovely view, above the noise; winter storms are a bitch but everything’s a tradeoff, right? G6 – Nenek: It’s about as Damascene as La Jardin is Malayan, which is to say not very, more of a visual cultural impression rather than actual residency. However, the largest and most prominent businesses there are indeed owned by Felinae, and they all make quite a show of it, with the fancy rugs and Ubasti temples and pyramid-themed décor. G8 – North Market:' Lots of market space serving the new Alban area. Expensive but good country food down from Drakenvelt and an excellent place to get proper Alban cheeses. This is where most of the food coming into Blackwater from the north simply stops, and the Bazaar vendors may well come up to the North Market to plunder for their own stalls, allowing the merchants here to act like wholesalers, and saving the itinerant farmer a fair bit of hassle going downtown. G9 – Pike: A modest neighborhood favored by retired or settled soldiery types, some sailors. An increasing number of army veterans, and a fairly nice place to live. Little gardens, picket fences, people with longbows eyeballing the street corners for trouble out their upstairs windows. H: ONHILL H1 – Sligh: This sprawling mass of housing working its way up the side of the ridge alongside Rzeka Prosna’s laughing waterfalls, it is a spacious and independent slum. Fewer people per square mile than any other slum of Blackwater, and an ambitious industry of poaching the Lord’s Wood. Conflict and unpleasantness abound, and many people living there (whether Alban transplant or otherwise) are victims to extortionate unreasonable landlords who promised them moon in Dover and delivered a paper plate in Blackwater. H2 – Wesley: Just a wooden palisade wall away from the grossness of Sligh but still “Onhill”, Wesley is a very wealthy merchant class neighborhood that gazes lovingly up at the wall and Lord’s Hill beyond it with high aspirations. H3 – Swayle: Another merchant class neighborhood, but of somewhat lower brow. While diverse, Swayle is known particularly for the shops that sell second hand estate contents and castoffs from the wealthy and noble families, consignment or simply buying up the discarded things. They have a flourishing movers-and-fixers population servicing the hills providing temporary labor as needed and of course handling furniture when it needs replacing. Also, glazing! Very fine glassmakers, doing both window glass and blown glass of all sorts. I: DOWNTOWN I1 – Grand Avenue: The avenue itself and the few side streets are chock full of grandiose minor nobility, fabulously wealthy merchants, and owners of entire fleets of merchanting vessels. The finest and most expensive eateries and markets dot the district, which is lush and beautiful with walled gardens and elegantly diverse architecture. I2 – Queen Anne: Homes of the fairly-wealthy but not noble families litter this wealthy and well-maintained district just under the Lord’s Hill. I3 – The Boulevard: Large public buildings fill up most of this district, aside from a few wealthy and noteworthy estates. The old public forum exists here, part market and news distribution point now, and are where public affairs are handled and the city’s courts hold sway in buildings nearby. Much of the administrative functioning of the city happens in this quarter, and it is full of stately gothic architecture and broad avenues with greensward and trees through the center. I4 – Goddard: Second rate wealth, but still far and above the rest of the city, fills Goddard. A slightly older part of the city, the large houses are close together and with fewer gardens. But it sports many historical and unique buildings, including the remarkable Goddard theater and concert hall which has stood through several sackings, always tirelessly repaired. I5 – Yorktown: This small area off Goddard is less high society than the rest of downtown, for certain, and is host to the wealthy of York who moved themselves to the land of opportunity. Densely populated in tightly packed but clean and well-maintained structures, Yorktown mimics the flair and society of York itself, and keeps close watch on the politics back on the island. Everyone in Yorktown is quite good friends with such-and-so the important nobleman back in York. I6 – Temple Row: Almost the entirety of this part of town is devoted to a wide array of places of worship. While many are scattered throughout the city, here are the finest, the largest, the grandest, and the best funded of all the temples, each unique in style and design. The most prominent and beautiful is the temple to Valerian, who is sometimes considered the patron deity of Blackwater, at least by those who donate so much money to it. I7 – Glockenheim: From the word “Glocken” for “Bells”, Glockenheim resounds with the bells of the Temple Row day in and day out. A modest middle-class neighborhood with many good shops and entertainments, Glockenheim plays host to a couple of small schools and other rare treasures. J: OGRÓD J1 – The Glen: Someone had a good time planting birch trees throughout this part of the city, and they are beautiful. It’s a lower middle-class neighborhood but has straight streets, sturdily built homes, attractive parkland and above all the lovely birches. This idyll is a little poisoned by gangsters and middle-rate thugs who make living there a constant challenge, hiding inside the veneer of respectability to smuggle dangerous or unusual material through to the East of Warwick. J2 – Skulls Village: The spooky name comes from a pair of large stones broken free from the steep edifices of the Terrace millennia ago that have been worn by time and Human assistance into closely resembling a pair of wicked-looking skulls, well sunk into the earth. The village is home to odds and ends of society, from odd little old ladies to the sort of person who collects wagon wheels for no foreseeable reason and covers the house with them. It has tall, tight buildings and a mostly working-class population, but is known particularly for being a chosen residence of the mad, for various reasons. J3 – Weeping Hollow: Willow trees cluster against the overhanging bluff of Lord’s Hill, concealing entrances to a small but beautiful cave system whittled away under the hill. People have attempted for generations to weasel those caves up higher and closer to the lords keep, but it is well known in such circles that it’s never gotten anywhere close, always discovered and destroyed and what have you before it gets anywhere. The caves are often haunted by curious Fae who trouble the Hollow residents a fair amount. J4 – Fable: Beast markets, oh the beast markets. Even though the city has grown out around and beyond them, they are still held here constantly, in stone pens and charming buildings to ease the mind off the stench. The slave market is also here, having seen near-continuous use through much of the history of Blackwater, but is now seldom used except for auctions. J5 – Benchly: Simple roads delineate wide open fields and periodic clusters of small simple dwellings, where produce is ambitiously grown right up near town, to good effect. Benchly capitalizes on the beast market’s surplus manure and produces good table fruits and vegetables that help serve at least the wealthier fraction of the city’s residents. J6 – Deadman’s Run: Featuring the tourney grounds at one end and a slim arrow of land between Benchly and Mullen, Deadman’s Run was the land used for a cruel sport that suited lords of Blackwater in ages past: loosing a man (hopefully a criminal) to flee down the narrowing landscape, literally hedged in, while being run down by hounds and hunters on horse. If he could make it to the end of the run, he could supposedly earn his freedom, but none are believed to have done so. Now the Run is a series of gardens and berry fields, and a mock-dead-man’s run is played at festival times. J7 – Champagnon: Storehouses and granaries interspersed with a variety of homes and a couple noteworthy mushroom farms, also profiting from nearby beast markets. J8 – Thatcher: Many who work in the fields or the markets live in Thatcher, a densely build stolid neighborhood where poverty is rampant, and nepotism is the order of all business. An ugly place, with competition for seasonal work being stiff and severe, Thatcher is home to many downtrodden laborers and the scummy masters of their time. J9 – Mullen: Tightly packed orchards transition seamlessly into tightly packed little dwellings and back again, sometimes the homes dug right into the soil with only a small mound and door showing above. A tribe of Barbarian herdsmen made Mullen their home within the last 20 years, and have made it very much their own, keeping a tight watch on their own business. The orchards, tended carefully by the same, provide a lot of fruit for Blackwater, but not nearly enough to export. Mullen is also absolutely lousy with goats, which get along quite well with fruit trees, as it happens, and is positively riddled with beehives, which both provides for honey and discourages shenanigans. The people of Mullen guard their homes and trees violently, and are excellent and hiding amongst the orchard, so a hungry wayfarer thinking surely one apple won’t be missed may pay with his life. If you can get in, you’re safe as hell. If you get off on the wrong foot, you’re full of arrows. K: THE WARRENS K1 – Bolero: At the base of the hill down which Dorwa creek tumbles, Bolero is a meandering hive that was once a slum but has improved itself. The roots still show – but the buildings have been added to and improved upon and added to again, creating structures that meander as much as the streets do. Just off downtown past the wall, Bolero is a place that seems inviting and then suddenly bites you, peopled mostly by tough-as-nails former slaves that do not, as a rule, play well with ordinary society. K2 – Greenhill: What Orcs and Goblins can behave themselves well enough to interact with the city are most likely to find a home out on Greenhill, as most places in the city won’t give them a pot to piss in. Also those of Barbaric origins often wind up out there on the fringe, and Humans with thick enough skin to dwell with them. Greenhill is a long winding road up the steep hillside. While the roads are sparse, many entrances lead to simple caves and caverns (sometimes entire systems of them several rooms deep) that help house many more people than the number of surface dwellings would suggest. Some speculate whole tribes of Goblins are hiding deep in the rock, though it’s unlikely. K3 – Vrodichny: A separate village rolled into the Blackwater control, Vrodichny has a mill and most of the community exists simply to support it. Woods close to Vrodichny are tended but unlogged, while those farther easts are whittled away constantly to support the thirsty shipwrights and many industries requiring wood in Blackwater. K4 – Lightfoot: The outermost of the eastern portion of Blackwater, Lightfoot is a busy and overpopulated community huddled between a hill and the eastern palisade wall. What once had large barn-like structures whose only purpose was to serve as evacuation housing for those in the countryside have instead become more permanent housing for residents of the city. People of all walks of life live out in Lightfoot, and it is a likely place to lose your purse but is aggressively intolerant of violence. L: THE TERRACES L1 – Bitterrun: The steep switchback trail to get up the hill to the road on to Newcastle is dotted with last-chance and first-look businesses eager to sell convenience over price. Many live in the sometimes-beautiful homes all along the terraces, but the dust and continuous noise of traffic up and down the hill is a deterrent to the wealthy and influential. L2 – Clematis: Overlooking the busy Bitterrun, Clematis is tightly stacked vertical stone-built dwellings crawling with their namesake vines and ivies. Wealthy Albans snap these homes up, unique in design and aesthetic, as have a variety of merchant tradesman from the world over. Clematis is thus a cosmopolitan and private neighborhood where people try to avoid thinking that they even have neighbors at all. L3 – Providence: Up close to the Lord’s Wood and Hill, from Providence you can almost imagine you are truly one of the very elite. Much less steeply inclined than Clematis or Bitterrun, Providence is mostly large houses for the powerful and wealthy that can neither live on Lord’s Hill nor enjoy downtown. This often includes potent public figures outside the peerage, as well as relatives of important Peers. L4 – Thornton: Right up under the edge of the forest, Thornton is a middle-class enclave of, for lack of a better term, complete hippies. A certain prestige is associated with asceticism and not letting the city get to you, staying in touch with nature and so on. L5 – Brighton Wood: A younger neighborhood, less well-to-do than Thornton but not strictly poor, riddled with Albans and transplants from East Warwick. M1: BLACKHALL KEEP An ancient castle and the surrounding manor grounds and minor fortifications, it used to be quite independent of Blackwater, but the city grew out to reach it. The Night’s Watch have a significant presence and post occupying a corner of the estate, which is run by a knightly family of the old guard, passing their knighthood from father to son for generations and keeping the place steady against invasions from the west. It has an excellent watchtower.

N1: DECEPTION ISLAND Some of those on the island live only to serve and maintain the lighthouse there, others have a fierce independent streak, and a few are pearl-diving maniacs, all of whom are utterly stranded at the first hint of foul weather.

O1: LORD’S HILL Held in by glorious modern walls, the highest point on the ridgeline overlooking Blackwater is the Lord’s manse. Spiraling down around the promontory from it, the narrow but beautiful cobblestone road features more than half a dozen lesser but still phenomenal estates belonging to hereditary nobility at the pinnacle of the Blackwater social scene. Cousins of this lord or that duke, Baronets, and so on and so forth. It is richly landscaped, covered in manicured gardens and walled or hedged properties with bare rock between, and the grandest of all is the beautiful home wherein the Lord of Blackwater dwells – or at least it was the most beautiful sight in town, until someone burned more than half of it down in a misguided political gesture in 2013. Rebuilding is in progress.

Notable Features

A - Lord’s Manor: Surrounded by a low wall on the crown of Lord’s Hill, the Lord of Blackwater’s estate overlooks the entire city and surrounding countryside, being higher at the pinnacle than any of the city’s other towers or watchtowers and the Lighthouse as well. B - Blackwater Watch HQ: A complex including barracks, training ground, quartermasters, a sort of simple court and jail, and administrative offices. This large and stately block of structures dominates the Watch quarter. C - Night’s Watch Post: Tucked away into a corner of the Blackhall fort, the Watch is a welcome addition to the ancient family estate, occupying almost a quarter of the available buildings including its own watchtower and gatehouse. The community within and without the ancient walls supports the Watch far more than it does the family estate. D - Nul Magicus Monument, statue of Queen Anne: A beautiful statue of Queen Anne, regal in dress but unpretentiously helping an ailing man to his feet. Located in the Queen Anne district surrounded perpetually by flowers, prayers, tokens of good luck, and other minor tributes. E - Stone Faerie Ring: Almost beneath the woodland canopy near Vrodichny, this ancient stone circle of indeterminate origin is composed of more than forty irregular shaped boulders arranged in a perfect ring. It is a known place to associate with the Fae but is also known to host a powerful guardian of some kind. F - Lighthouse of the Lovelorn Mariner: If it sounds more like a sad poem than the real name of Blackwater’s largest and most prominent lighthouse on Deception Island, there’s a reason for that. This beautifully designed structure earned its flowery moniker as a result of a contemporary poem by a Blackwater native more than seventy years ago while the building was still being constructed. It reads as follows: “And oh her light will carry his heart As out he goes to Marin’s delight By storm and sorrow torn apart But ever holding her beacon bright,

Through catch and squall, with heavy soul Each torment greater than the last By love betrayed and left to dwell on maidens’ fancies of the past

But spurred ahead by amber gleam and constant faithful promise known The lovelorn mariner on canvas wings Flies swiftly home to rest alone.”

~Miles Xavier Caldwell of Blackwater, 1941

G - Aerie Tower: A tall watchtower planted near the south harbor, ingeniously constructed with a fat base dug right down to bedrock and a narrow spire. It is manned by those who watch for the weather as well as incoming ships and includes a very fine telescope to that purpose. H - Tower Grim: Its base hidden away in the rambling wooded streets of Corbie, the tower nevertheless spikes high above most buildings in the city. Its ominous name is a reference to the legacy of magically inclined owners of the structure, which is not at all grim in appearance. It is instead full of bright expensive windows particularly near the upper reaches. The current owners have held the tower for more than thirty years and it contains a private library and some of the city’s most talented scribes, while the lower reaches are occupied by old and infirm mages affiliated with the ownership, plus their occasional students and apprentices. I - Forum and Courthouse: These old granite buildings date to Thracian times and include a wide-open marketplace around the Forum amphitheater, where public debates are still held on occasion. The city courts are in adjacent monolithic but beautiful structures, and justice is accomplished fairly-publicly. While the Forum was to be the gallows site for hanging, public complaint about the potential smell and interfering with ordinary daily activities called for the gallows to be integrated into the building of the majestic Boulevard Bridge instead. J - Bande Sidhe Bridge: A heavy and squat bridge of heavy stone, flat, sturdy, ancient, with solid arch beneath, this bridge is considered haunted, unlucky, and is a popular site for both suicide and the involuntary departure from the land of the living. These people scream and then die, and this happens often enough to have earned the old bridge its name, though that has led to several myths with variable truth to them about things that might haunt it – for example, Rusalka are seen wading in the shallows and avoided carefully by the residents of Sobridge. The old stone is blackened by centuries of city dirt but shows no sign of weakness or cracking. K - Lenora Bridge: Just upstream of the Bane Sidhe bridge, Lenora Bridge arches gracefully between two of the most tree-rich parts of the old city, parallel to the low wall that encloses them. It was designed and its construction funded by a Gael’Braugh nobleman who undertook the project as a penance to Bloodstrike after insulting a beautiful lady courtier that desired his affection. The finished bridge, while sturdily built, has the characteristic arching look of Gael’Braugh design, is liberally adorned with wrought-iron fancywork that is also structurally relevant, and the balustrades are covered with simple but beautiful carved designs in leave and vine motifs. L - Boulevard Bridge: A very modern looking bit of bridgework, a mix of stone and ingenious wood design, this attractively sturdy contrivance features a built-in gallows-drop which, when not in use, blends in well with the rest of the structure so as not to be unduly depressing to passersby. Corpses are typically left to hang only for a short while before being hauled away, with the occasional impressive exception and even the rare crow-cage parker (also integral to the bridge structure are lovely hooks from which hang such devices.) Corpses do occasionally drop into the water, but it is not the standard practice to put them there. M - Halfmoon Bridge: This bridge at the other end of Forks has only the narrow width of the Dorwa to span but wanted to be a very large bridge anyway. As such, it is steeply arched like a Nipponjin ornamental garden piece, even including steps along the sides of the main thoroughfare to assist travelers. This bridge is both beautiful to look at and summarily hated by locals, though there are holdouts who say it helps keep the lazy Riffraff out of Corbie and La Jardin. N - King’s Bridge: A heavy and essentially boring stone bridge made from tiresome square shapes and uninspired design, it is nevertheless perfectly serviceable and stout enough to support a troupe of elephants dancing while carrying ten ton loads on their backs. It spans rather more than just the little river, connecting higher portions of road to one another well above the level of the water and ignoring the slope down to it, which may account for its essentially ugly, stately appearance. O - La Jardin Bridge: A much more practical bridge than the Halfmoon, the La Jardin bridge is built of sturdy timber and supports a riot of vines hanging in a veil down over the Dorwa. P - Ainsley Arch: Crossing Mallory Creek south of Blackwater with a beautiful view of Ainsley Island, this bridge has the interesting challenge of going from a rather low bank up to a very high one, and arches upward in a way that seems quite improbable or asymmetrical. With more than thirty-foot increase in elevation across the span, experts will tell you in no uncertain terms that it’s not crooked or tilted, it just stops sooner on one side than the other. Q - Courier’s Station: Where the couriers are stationed, and mail is exchanged and sorted. R - Army Quartermasters and Field Operations: The base of army actions in Blackwater and east Warwick. Not a large garrison but simply a collection of offices, storehouses, and a minimal amount of necessary housing cobbled together around a side-street in the Watch Quarter. S - Promenade Gate: Tall walls surround the approach to Kings Hill, even on the city side, having swallowed up the old, lower walls of central Blackwater in the building. The primary entrance through these mighty fortifications is a double-gatehouse tunnel complete with state-of-the-art murder holes, double portcullis, and all the amenities of the future. The portal is quite wide and tall, and one of the more elegant fortifications in all of Warwick. T - Harbor Fortifications: In several places around both harbors and on the islands sit low, squat towers with defensive features that vary from reign to reign. These short towers vary from fifteen-foot fat stumps with a single parapet up to thirty or forty-foot-high towers with multiple options, room for Ballista, trebuchet rigging, and other fortifications. Most towers include a large storeroom in the base that is only accessible from inside, making them viable for protective housing in difficult situations. U - Ruins of Fort Blackwater and Monument: Long before Blackwater was the bustling metropolis of today, it was a small fort above a budding fishing village dating back to the 1400s. During a crisis of the intense plague, most of the fort was contaminated and almost everyone in it died. Fear and lack of good understanding spurred the few survivors to summarily destroy the fort and all its fetid contents rather than attempt to retrieve and bury the dead, using magic and alchemical means to enhance the act into a spectacular destructive inferno. It is said that three hundred dead were burned along with fourteen volunteers who went inside to facilitate the blaze and in so doing contaminated themselves. The monument is a stone pillar carved with fourteen ribbons winding around it which have been re-lacquered and painted or maintained through several phases of Blackwater’s history. The low hulking shapes of blackened weathered stone foundations remain across the hilltop as well, but brush and a few trees obscure most of the shape from the city below. V - Harbormaster’s Headquarters: The palatial home of Blackwater’s highest authority figure fills the upper stories of several interlinked buildings in Harborview. While he has offices and posts of observation all around both docks, the elaborate homestead also includes a variety of offices for important business, homes of underlings and protectors, and several businesses that he owns sprout from beneath his elaborate estate. His roof garden is always the finest in Blackwater, where roof gardens are not common to begin with, and his home is high enough that he can see miles out to sea from the bedstead if need be. It takes quite an effort to get in to see the Harbormaster, but when you do it is worth every minute to see some portion of his spectacular abode. W - Grand Temple of Valerian: The building is composed of a long rectangle with basilica off one end and four large round tows that are perpetually in the process of getting taller. It is the most luxuriously appointed and fancy-looking temples in town, on account of how popular Valerian is amongst people with money to bet on the cosmic wheel. Many other beautiful halls, churches, and towers huddle together in Temple Row. X - Goddard Theater and Concert Hall: Built in 1880 for Endrani lords, Y - Victory Garden Z - House of Healing / Hospital / Orphanage Aa - Mother Cassandra’s Institute of Advanced Study: A finishing school and boarding school primarily for young noble fillies and Blackwater landmark both for the size and beauty of the estate and for the lengths to which it is protected, on account of being, how we say, a “target rich environment”. Bb - Tourney Grounds: A large expanse of open field space with several semi-permanent and permanent structures in place, the site where annual fairs and various holiday festivities take place. Once located outside the original city walls, the fact that the city has grown to absorb and encapsulate the once open area has done nothing to impede its use for this purpose. Cc - Dragon’s Tree: This ancient oak, easily the diameter of a house, is so indescribably old and vast that it is commonly held that it’s been there since the Dragon Wars. Indeed, great scars mar a portion of the upper trunk which are attributed to dragonfire. The tree leads a charmed existence, having survived multiple assassination attempts and efforts to destroy it through history. It is never struck by lightning, carving your name into the trunk never works, and it’s lived through more wars than surely any other living thing in the world. Despite its massive girth, the tree is not uncommonly tall. Tall yes, but not shockingly so. The trunk is straight for a good twenty feet off the ground, preventing people from tying charms and tokens to the lower boughs, but gifts for the tree litter the ground beneath it. The tree is considered a great treasure by the city. Dd - Prosna Falls: More a series of falls than a single place, the water descends over 100 feet in about a quarter mile of reach over a series of little rock falls and twisting passages, at one point looping back under itself through a remarkable trick of eroded rock in differing layers, where the deep channel above banks backwards into a deeply sunken pool carved deep into the softer sandstone below it before spouting out a large hole in the rock a few feet below. The falls are very ornamental and hold a place in popular imagination as being perfect for secret meetings. Ee - Thracian Amphitheater: Exactly what you might expect. Old, worn, weathered, and in places broken beyond repair, but still used particularly for summer plays. The amphitheater is small by Thracian standards, but well-formed along the curvature at the base of the terraces to have the right acoustic properties. Ff - Käfigturm: The prison tower sits right on the Prosna near Bane Sidhe bridge. A sturdy fortification eight stories high and going all the way down to below the waterline, where there is boat access to the under stories. The lower parts of the tower are short to middle term holding for the dangerous or insane awaiting trial or execution, and the upper reaches are more comfortable accommodations for noble criminals or people under elaborate protection. It is not a spacious place, so stays tend to be short and end with an axe or a noose. Additionally, it is fairly forbidding in appearance, and there is a certain amount of vagueness about the middle few stories. While legends of torturous and nefarious deeds within are widespread, most would be wildly impractical and it’s all probably just a bit of spooky mystique.

History

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Recent Events

What should players know about the recent history.