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--- zeitgeist:places:flint [2022/04/13 19:58] – [Cloudwood] neyrick
+++ zeitgeist:places:flint [2025/05/21 21:07] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
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 ==== Central ====
 The oldest and most developed district of Flint is
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 <WRAP relinfobox>
 <WRAP relinfoboxtitle>Navras Opera House</WRAP>
-Flint’s oldest surviving building is the Navras Opera House\\
+Flint’s oldest surviving building is the Navras\\
-in the central district. Navras, an eladrin who fled Elfaivar \\
+Opera House in the central district. Navras, an\\
-after the Great Malice, designed the opera house and laid the \\
+eladrin who fled Elfaivar after the Great Malice,\\
-cornerstone with a brick he had brought from his homeland. \\
+designed the opera house and laid the cornerstone\\
-He spent nearly two hundred years personally overseeing its \\
+with a brick he had brought from his homeland.\\
-construction, and was aided by no less than eight Risuri kings. \\
+He spent nearly two hundred years personally\\
-When he completed the building, incongruously huge for what \\
+overseeing its construction, and was aided by\\
-was at the time just a small river fort city, Navras gave the \\
+no less than eight Risuri kings. When he completed\\
-first performance by singing the dirge of Vekesh. As the audience \\
+the building, incongruously huge for what was at\\
-cheered and wept at his performance, he walked off the stage\\
+the time just a small river fort city, Navras gave\\
-and disappeared forever.\\
+the first performance by singing the dirge of\\
-The acoustic design of the performance hall somehow captures\\
+Vekesh. As the audience cheered and wept at his\\
-magical power from song, or from the emotional reactions of\\
+performance, he walked off the stage and\\
-the audience. Impresarios who coordinate performance almost\\
+disappeared forever.\\
-always hire spellcasting bards to harness this energy and\\
+The acoustic design of the performance hall\\
-craft a magic item as a memento of the show. In the three\\
+somehow captures magical power from song,\\
-hundred years since the Navras Opera House opened, most of\\
+or from the emotional reactions of the audience.\\
-these items have found their ways into private collections,\\
+Impresarios who coordinate performance almost\\
-but a rare few have become famous, such as the Hurricane\\
+always hire spellcasting bards to harness this\\
-Violin, which commemorated the Fable of Seaquen and later\\
+energy and craft a magic item as a memento of\\
-banished a sea monster that threatened Flint Harbor in 417 a.o.v.
+the show. In the three hundred years since the\\
+Navras Opera House opened, most of these items\\
+have found their ways into private collections,\\
+but a rare few have become famous, such as the\\
+Hurricane Violin, which commemorated the Fable\\
+of Seaquen and later banished a sea monster\\
+that threatened Flint Harbor in 417 a.o.v.
 </WRAP>
+{{:zeitgeist:places:flint_central.jpg?direct&400|}}
 === Subrail Construction ===
@@ Line 214: / Line 220: @@
 and avoid capture.
+==== The Nettles ====
+A small spur of the mountains of the Cloudwood
+cuts into the heart of Flint, and for most of the
+city’s history these hills were home to druidic rituals, or simply let romantics witness wondrous vistas
+of the beaches from on high. Their traditional
+name came from an old commander of the Flint
+fort, who saw them as a thorny barrier against attack from the north.\\
+But then in 346 a.o.v. a coven of witches took residence upon a jagged mountain at the range’s edge,
+which ever since has been called Cauldron Hill. For
+decades they terrorized the city, sending goblins
+and specters to abduct people for sacrificial rites,
+then hiding in the veil between this world and the
+Bleak Gate whenever any tried to assault them.\\
+Eventually the witches were defeated when King
+Lorcan allied with a Crisillyiri godhand and led
+an assault during a lunar eclipse. Ever since, the
+peak of Cauldron Hill has been rife with haunting and spirit activity, and one of the key tasks of
+the district mayor has been to keep daring fools
+from ascending the mountain and coming down
+possessed.\\
+The greatest achievement of the previous district
+mayor was constructing a highway across Humble
+Hill to make travel across the city easier, but in
+the past few decades the district, even the base of
+Cauldron Hill itself, have grown thick with slum
+housing, as more and more people flock to Flint
+hoping to find work in the factories. The broad
+switchbacks of the highway are cluttered with
+shacks, often with two or three families sharing
+the same building. Poorly crafted houses cling to
+the sides of slopes, and they have become a nightmare for local police to patrol, giving a whole new
+connotation to the name “The Nettles.”\\
+Current district mayor Reed Macbannin has been unable to
+halt the new arrivals, and he hasn’t been helped by the common
+prejudice that the factory workers are prone to crime, laziness, and
+general mayhem. Despite this, he has managed to earn passing
+respect from the people of his district; few are trusted with the
+stewardship of Cauldron Hill, and he has leveraged his office to get
+city tax money for the poorest of the poor.
+==== North Shore ====
+<WRAP relinfobox>
+<WRAP relinfoboxtitle>Traversing Flint</WRAP>
+Flint is a sprawling city, and often the party’s investigations will\\
+take them across it and back in the course of a single day. If you\\
+use carriages, as the genteel almost always do, it takes roughly\\
+half an hour to move from the heart of one district to the heart of\\
+an adjacent one. Walking doubles this time.\\
+Crossing Flint’s harbor or reaching one of The Ayres is usually\\
+an hour-long affair by sailboat, or half an hour if you know a\\
+friendly steamboat captain. Moving through the maze of rookeries\\
+in the Nettles can take hours, and it’s always faster to just\\
+go around than go over. Few paved roads lead to the Cloudwood,\\
+which makes carriages unsuitable, and one could spend hours or\\
+days roaming the mountains to the east or bayous to the west.\\
+The few completed subrail stations in Central District do\\
+provide fairly swift transport, on par with a carriage while being\\
+cheaper and able to carry more people. Once the full subrail\\
+network is completed, it should be possible to move between Central\\
+district and either Bosum Strand or Stray River in as few as ten\\
+minutes. And if ever the route under the Nettles can overcome\\
+sabotage, it could shave nearly an hour off the time it takes to go\\
+around the troublesome hills.
+</WRAP>
+The sun rises through the mists of Cloudwood, banishing the night
+with pale purple clouds dashed by the golden gleam of dawn. Fresh
+sea breezes sweep the gloomy haze of soot away from pristine
+beaches, letting clear daylight fall upon gently crashing waves. The
+day wanes, and the sky explodes with crimson and vermilion as the
+sun sets behind the twin peaks of Great Horned Mountain. Night
+drapes a starry curtain across the world, and still the waves gently
+lap upon the North Shore.\\
+Home to the most beautiful urban beaches in all of Lanjyr,
+Flint’s North Shore district prides itself on its appearance, despite
+being so close to the polluted Parity Lake. Demand for beachside
+property has pushed out all but the wealthiest land-owners, those
+who can afford to hire druids to pray for favorable winds to keep the
+smoke at bay, and armies of cleaning crews to scrub their walls and
+streets when the druids fail.\\
+Of course with wealth comes corruption and temptation. Young
+girls end up dead in alleys. Criminals stage daring robberies of
+villas protected by curses. Destitute nobles, dragged down from
+their towers by the machinations of rivals, stumble from nighttime
+streets into strangely-scented shops they’d never seen before and
+find offers they cannot refuse.\\
+The district mayor, Aaron Choir, unabashedly serves the inter-
+ests of the wealthy, and he is currently petitioning to build a wall
+between North Shore and Parity Lake to keep out “undesirables.”
+Likewise, police violently deter the occasional protest that crops
+up outside the Danoran consulate, which sits a few blocks inland
+from the shore. Mayor Choir is careful, of course, not to appear too
+friendly with the unpopular Danorans, no matter how much they
+pay him in kick-backs.
+==== Parity Lake ====
+When Flint first began building factories, this inland lake, fed by
+run-off from the Nettles, was chosen by Governor Stanfield. A massive construction project widened and deepened a natural river that
+ran from the lake to the Bosum Strand harbor, providing easy transit
+of manufactured goods out of — and coal or heating oil into — the
+district. Homes of fishermen on the lake were demolished, while
+new flophouses and stacked tenements were erected for the waves of
+people who came from around the country seeking work in the new
+factories. Wealth poured into the city’s coffers, and into the pockets
+of those canny enough to lease their land here, rather than sell it.\\
+During the Fourth Yerasol War seven years ago, factories in Par-
+ity Lake mass-produced firearms, cannons, and other weapons, and
+a lumber mill transformed logs from the Cloudwood into components for shipyards in Bosum Strand. New factories sprang up to
+create armor for men and ships, and soon even steam engines were
+being churned out to retrofit Risur’s fleet.\\
+The war effort transformed Parity Lake from a booming collective of new businesses to a crowded, foul-smelling, soot-choked
+warren, over-crowded with the children of now second-generation
+factory workers, surrounding a pool that every day more resembles
+sludge than water. The police manage to keep crime down through
+heavy-handed measures; the district’s mayor Rosa Gohins has pub-
+licly stated that the safety and stability of the factories are more
+important than the moral of the factory workers.\\
+In the past few months a spate of fires have struck around the district, which authorities suspect to be arson, possibly tied to the fey
+terrorist known as Gale (see The Cloudwood, above). The fires have
+precisely targeted individual homes and businesses related to local
+industrialists, but despite their minimal collateral damage, people
+in the district fear an inferno if one goes out of control.\\
+More dreaded, however, is a killer known as the Ragman, who
+is said to stalk dark alleys near the canals and drag young men into
+the sewers. He has been tied to at least six disappearances in the
+past year, but so far law enforcement have taken few steps to catch
+him. Strange occult symbols scrawled on the undersides of bridges
+that cross the canal have provoked suspicions that the Ragman
+might be retribution from the long dead witches of Cauldron Hill.\\
+Those with more level heads tend to see the Ragman story as a
+cover for the murders committed by the local guild of thieves, led by
+strongman Lorcan Kell. Kell’s guild is best known for high-profile
+abductions and ransoms, while their more mundane crimes often
+go unreported since three journalists were found decapitated and
+holding their heads on the bridges over the Stanfield Canal. Many
+locals allege that the police know perfectly well where to find Kell
+himself, but are either too corrupt or too scared to go after him.
+==== Pine Island ====
+Though the ground of most of Flint’s coast is rocky and hilly, the
+western coast of the bay has a strange sprawling bayou surrounding
+dozens of short granite hill-islands. Pine Island takes its name from
+the aquatic pine trees that anchor the bits of dry land throughout
+the bayou, though the hills are mostly grassy ranchland. Not as well
+known or developed as the bustling east coast, this district nevertheless plays a significant role in the city’s business.\\
+While Bosum Strand handles industrial and textile trade, Pine
+Island services hundreds of plantations in its soggy lowlands and
+small ranches in its western hills. The main docks on Flint Bay
+are practically a floating city of wooden bridges and stone anchors,
+which has slowly grown away from the silt of the bayou to better
+serve deep-water merchant ships. Further inland, complicated
+streets, connected by ferries and bridges, weave between islands
+ranging from the size of a single house to a small neighborhood.\\
+Criminals ply the waters of the bayous in shallow boats, often
+parking ships of smuggled drugs, magic, or women just off shore,
+then taking circuitous routes through the flooded forests in order to
+bypass dock authorities. While most dock-side businesses are legitimate, deeper in the bayou you can find gambling houses, brothels,
+and fey pepper dens. Pacts with local fey who are angry with the
+spinning gears on the other side of the bay help these criminal establishments hide from law enforcement, all for the low price of just
+a few newborns a year.\\
+Farther west, where there are no longer even occasional hills,
+the Battalion academy trains elite soldiers and martial scientists in
+the ways of war, with an emphasis on wilderness survival and the
+best techniques of intimidation against an occupying force. The district’s mayor, Roger Pepper, is a graduate. Many of the Battalion’s
+teachers served in the Yerasol Wars and various skirmishes, and
+the common fishermen of Pine Island say some of them brought
+back strange spirits from those distant islands. Recent folk tales
+tell of pale fish-scaled men who steal fowl and livestock each month
+during the neap tide.
+==== Stray River ====
+The cluster of businesses and homes where Stray River empties into
+the bay is the closest thing to a typical Risuri city one can find
+in Flint. The Stray River district has well-tended streets, quaint
+two-story brick houses, and enjoys easy prosperity as the place most
+visitors to the city stay. The district is also home of some of the oldest mills in Risur, powered by small canals that loop off the main
+river to avoid disrupting water traffic.\\
+One strange attraction of the district is the Penny Pyre. Originally it was a small blackened pit, where a mage’s accident caused
+copper to burn as easily as wood, but last far longer. When the
+effect persisted, it became a fixture of the district’s festivals. Various copper sculptures are designed by the districts artisans and
+placed atop the pit to burn over the course of hours or days. On
+normal occasions, people will occasionally toss a spare copper coin
+into the pyre for good luck. The royal mint has tried to end the
+practice, but the district’s mayor, Chrystine Robinson, defends
+the tradition, saying more coins are simply lost in the dirt than
+tossed in the pyre.
+==== The Ayres ====
+North of the city lie a clear island chain and several satellite islands.
+Many of these are merely rocky sandbars with a few trees, but a
+few larger islands serve as remote villas for the city’s wealthiest.
+Nobles hold many family estates here, though one island is owned
+by a man new to his money: Guy Goodson, who swindled his initial
+wealth from a dozen naïve villages, and invested early in Flint’s industrial boom. Today he owns dozens of factories in Parity Lake,
+and regularly dines with his noble neighbors, who delight in the
+small steamboat he uses to visit them.\\
+Since technically The Ayres is considered part of North Shore, it
+does not have its own district mayor. In practice, law and govern-
+ment officials never bothers the nobles on their islands unless an
+equally wealthy or powerful individual lodges a complaint.
+===== The Military =====
+The Battalion school of war in the bayous of Pine Island trains
+hundreds of future officers every year, and works in connection
+with various district forts throughout the city, as well as naval bases
+on an island near the mouth of Flint Harbor. Flint still remembers
+a few naval skirmishes that threatened shipping eight years ago,
+and so the military maintains a constant watch for possible threats.
+Normally, though, they will not respond unless a district mayor or
+the city governor himself calls on them.\\
+While few individual soldiers have magical training, the military
+has acquired over the years a wide variety of enchanted weapons
+and defenses. Perhaps foremost among these, every soldier sta-
+tioned in The Nettles district fort is given an amulet to ward them
+against supernatural influence, should they be called upon to face
+a reawakening of the eldritch horrors that reigned over Cauldron
+Hill during the time of the witches.\\
+The local commander of Flint land forces is Colonel Greg Mas-
+terson, while the naval defenses are overseen by Rear Admiral
+Morris Dawkins.