Tipping the Scales of War
Tradetown
Tradetown is a melting pot of all races, cultures, and occupations. In many ways, Tradetown is a lot like the Blister, but it has been established for longer and it has a mix of fabulous wealth and appalling poverty.
Tradetown, as one might expect, is a commercial and retail district, where merchants, tradesfolk, and prospectors come to do business. Most middle-tier business-inclined people have homes here and gather in coffee houses, upscale bars, and bathhouses to do business. In stark contrast to the bustling commerce, Tradetown is also home to a powerful thieving guild named the Lost Ones. A clandestine organization, they have agreements with nearly all the major enterprises here, offering protection (or rather exemption) from thievery and the promise to leave their customers alone.
Buildings: Tradetown is a hodgepodge of stone buildings (many of dwarven architecture), wooden
structures, warehouses, shops, inns, taverns, and everything and anything a person might want in a city of this size.
Streets: Tradetown is every bit as cramped as the Blister and in some ways more so for the vendors and hawkers crowding the streets. Moving merchandise into Tradetown is a chore and often requires porters rather than wagons to transport anything of size. The roads are roads are cobbled, but alleys and side-streets might be
muddy and covered in rubbish.
People: Tradetown is home to a dizzying number of people, from elves and eladrin to lumbering halforcs and goliaths. Humans and gnomes rub elbows in taverns, while dwarves of low character might engage in backroom deals with sinister tieflings.
Sights: Merchants line the roads, selling an assortment of goods that range from magic items, ritual ingredients, and curiosities, to common goods such as pots, pans, cutlery, trade goods, and everything in between. Shady men and women walk the streets, eyes in constant motion as they search for new marks, while grifters and charlatans peddle cure-alls or use trickery to part their customers from their coin. Urchins run through the alleys, leading visitors through the safer parts of Tradetown, while disguised halflings lead other visitors to the nastier corners,
where the travelers can find beatings and robberies instead of their destinations.
Smells: An unsettling mixture of roasting meats, beer, ale, and spices blends with excrement, sweat, and the strange odors of illegal substances, wreathing the district in a perpetual haze.
Sounds: One can hear woman’s laughter, a dragonborn’s growl, an argument, a shout of “thief!,”
children playing, a yelping dog, a persistent merchant’s pitch, and the whispered invitations from second-story rooms overlooking the narrow streets.