Stark is a place of little that’s black and white in spite of the name and whole elephant assload of gray. The vet who had your back in that brawl at the Lost Anchor last night might be working for the guy you owe a lot of money to tomorrow and be coming for you with sharpened blade and heavy hands tomorrow. Leaving the city you take your life in your hands but a man’s gotta eat and the food is all down at the fisheries at the mouth of the river and the communal farms in the flatlands. Someone’s gotta move it from where it is to where it needs to be and someone else has to make sure it gets there.
The goblins in the hills, bandits on the trails and pirates in the seas all make this travel exciting to say the least. But then if things weren’t exciting why would we even be here?
Up the river Danue from an otherwise unimportant bay on the coast of Karn in the territory of West Reach lies the city of Stark. Although if one was to be honest it would barely qualify as a town compared to a century ago.
Once upon a time it was a city famed for its craftsmen in metals, precious and common alike. Tiara’s that bore the crossed hammers of Stark have graced more than one king, dictator or despot. Many a hero has borne a blade forged on the fires of a Stark weaponsmith, enchanted beyond the mundane by a Stark magesmith and the fabled mercenary band, the Sable Crows’ one unflinching requirement on every contract was that their employer outfit them in new arms and armour from Stark where needed. Now those crowns and jewelry lay dusty in so many safes and strong rooms, swords lined in racks, covered in oil soaked cloth like so many soldiers waiting for war, for without trade there are none to bear them.
It nestles in what was once the sheltering arms of the Grimpeak mountain range but is now beset from those very same arms as goblinoids constantly harry from the shadows and lurk in the darkness. Where once multitudes of manned watchtowers and guard keeps for leagues around the city kept it safe now those lines of defense have been pulled further and further inward as the numbers to man them shrink.
Trade routes are all but gone with the exception of the occasional ship that braves the dangers of the seas to come up the river to dock. The tall anchor towers that were once rarely without at least one airship attached have had no need for the great mooring rings in over two decades.
Not a month goes by that another farm isn’t attacked or overrun, only those farmers that have banded together for protection into large communal farms have a survival rate other than grim and then only if they can hire away protectors that guard the very city itself. The fishing fleets that take refuge in the decaying docks and warehouse at the mouth of the river are under constant assault from pirates alongÂ
The city is a dark place where once it was light with an air of hopelessness that once was full of cheer and bustle. Tradesmen and laborers go about their tasks silently and despairingly. The stockpiles of silver and gold and steel from the mines has shrunk over the years with little replenishment as few indeed are those who will descend into the long winding tunnels that over the centuries of mining are so deep that some say they connect to the very center of the world, the domain of dark Karjear, god of the dead. Â But with no one to buy their craftsmanship it is said and with some truth that even the peasants can afford to wear gold in a city that worries more where the next loaf of bread is coming from than how to get the best price for a pair of silver earrings.
Large portions of the city have fallen into partial ruin, home to strays, the poorest of the poor and worse. Many a person has disappeared without a trace, with few to mourn and none to investigate.
The vast sewers below the city that once carried the wastes of tens of thousands and the output of hundreds of craft shops is now so dangerous that none venture below and during the rainy seasons disease runs rampant through the city as the sewers back up to dump fecund waste into the streets.
In this miasma of defeat, hopelessness and despair the populous gather in their sections and warrens and hives in a forced peace. Where once those of orcish blood would be shunned, their trade is welcome as are their strong arms. Elves now rub elbows with halflings and human and nod agreeably at those who still bare the scales of their ancestry for every one of them never know who might hold their lives in their hands in the future. The haters and those that run solo, purged from the world for it is a world without pity or mercy for those without others to care for them, to protect them and prop them up.
This then is the city of your birth or simply the place you currently call home as you travel your destiny in life. May somewhere a merciful god find the time to watch over you or you may find the end of your journey shorter than you’d wish for.
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