Tidefront

A city where anything is legal if you know the right people...

Government

Tidefront is a city where wealth and power flow like the tides, controlled not by kings or elected officials, but by crime families who operate like merchant-princes. The city’s government is an intricate web of shifting alliances, ruthless pragmatism, and unofficial rules enforced with coin and steel rather than parchment and ink.

Ruling Crime Families

The Veyne Consortium (Merchants & Smugglers) "The tide carries wealth to those who know where to cast their nets."
The Veyne Consortium is less of a "crime family" and more of a corrupt merchant dynasty that operates under a veil of legitimacy. They control the docks, trade contracts, and port taxes, making them the wealthiest faction in Tidefront. While they do not engage in overt violence, they control most smuggling operations, bribe officials, and manipulate trade routes to ensure they get the biggest cut.

• Leader: Matron Elissara Veyne – An elderly, shrewd woman who plays the long game, investing in political favors instead of open conflict.
• Power Base: The Grand Wharf, where they control tariffs, customs officers, and dock workers.
• Specialties: Smuggling, trade monopolies, money laundering, bribery.
• Allies: The Carrigan Syndicate (they need enforcers to protect their shipments).
• Rivals: The Ferris Blades, who extort merchants and disrupt trade routes.

The Consortium is rumored to have secret ties to foreign powers, ensuring they stay ahead in Tidefront’s trade wars.

The Ferris Blades (Street Gangs & Enforcers) "Loyalty is paid in blood, and we always collect."
The Ferris Blades are the most violent and unpredictable of the five families. They started as a collection of dockside gangs and mercenary bands, but have since grown into a ruthless network of enforcers, assassins, and extortionists. They control the Wretched Maze and have a presence in the lower docks, where they run extortion rackets, protection schemes, and high-profile assassinations.
Leader: Cairn Ferris – A brutal, scarred ex-mercenary who rose to power through sheer force and intimidation.

• Power Base: The Wretched Maze, where they rule through fear and force.
• Specialties: Extortion, assassinations, brute force intimidation, mercenary work.
• Allies: The Carrigan Syndicate, since they provide them with weapons.
• Rivals: The Veyne Consortium, who see them as disruptive thugs.

Ferris is rumored to have trained fighters among his ranks who once served as elite soldiers before deserting their posts.

The Carrigan Syndicate (Weapons & Black Market) "You need steel to survive in Tidefront. We decide who gets it."
The Carrigans control the flow of weapons, armor, and illicit goods into Tidefront. They operate the black market, supplying everything from blades and crossbows to alchemical explosives. Their people are craftsmen, smugglers, and traders, ensuring that even the city's guards have no choice but to buy from them.
Leader: Gregor Carrigan – A cold, calculating man who speaks little but ensures his every word carries weight.

• Power Base: The Black Market Bazaars, where they control the flow of illicit goods.
• Specialties: Weapons trade, black market dealing, mercenary outfitting, sabotage.
• Allies: The Ferris Blades, who buy weapons in bulk.
• Rivals: The Ravelle Family, who attempt to control the alchemical supply chain.

It is said Carrigans might have a hidden forge somewhere in the ruined districts, crafting advanced or experimental weapons.

The Ravelle Family (Alchemy & Espionage) "A blade can kill a man. A poison can kill an empire."
The Ravelles are masters of subtlety, dealing in alchemy, poisons, and espionage. They are known for controlling the city’s apothecaries, alchemists, and high-end courtesans, making them a vital but dangerous presence. They don’t engage in brute force tactics—they control information, blackmail nobles, and manufacture poisons that can kill without a trace.
Leader: Vasha Ravelle – A charismatic and dangerous woman with a network of spies at her disposal.

• Power Base: The Gilded Heights, where they operate high-end apothecaries and pleasure houses.
• Specialties: Alchemy, poison trade, espionage, blackmail.
• Allies: The Veyne Consortium, who use their information network.
• Rivals: The Carrigan Syndicate, who control many of the materials they need for their alchemy.

A recent rumor is that the Ravelles may have developed a slow-acting poison that mimics natural disease, allowing them to assassinate without suspicion.

The Umbraclaw Brotherhood (Smugglers & Shadow Dealers) "The shadows are patient. They remember everything."
The Umbraclaw Brotherhood is the most mysterious and secretive of the five families. They operate from Tidefront’s underground and flooded ruins, moving through tunnels and hidden passages to smuggle rare artifacts, stolen goods, and fugitives. They are experts in theft, burglary, and deception, and they have been around for longer than any other family, supposedly having roots in the city's earliest history.
Leader: "Mother Lise" – An old woman, rarely seen, rumored to be centuries old. Some think she’s just a myth.

• Power Base: The Flooded Catacombs, where they operate in the shadows.
• Specialties: Smuggling, theft, artifact trade, hidden knowledge.
• Allies: The Ravelle Family, who need their smuggling routes for rare alchemical ingredients.
• Rivals: The Gilded Fangs, who see them as a nuisance.

Some say the Brotherhood has access to hidden tunnels beneath Tidefront that even the ruling families don’t know about.

Taxation & Economy

• Port Taxes: Every shipment that comes through Tidefront is taxed, with a cut going directly to the ruling families.
• Protection Fees: Merchants, artisans, and even street performers pay for protection—either from the Gilded Fangs or one of the families directly. Failure to pay means "accidents" happen.
• Railway Tariffs: The newly constructed railway to Sanctuary is heavily controlled. The families have set high tariffs, making it a lucrative choke point for trade.

Unofficial Rule: “If you want to get ahead, you need friends.” Everything in Tidefront runs on connections, bribes, and knowing who to owe favors to. A clever merchant can become rich if they align with the right family, but crossing the wrong one can lead to a swift disappearance beneath the docks.

Industry & Trade

Tidefront’s economy is built on trade, smuggling, and vice, making it the most important port on the continent. While legitimate businesses exist, much of the city's wealth flows through criminal networks, black markets, and corrupt deals. The city's industries are driven by necessity and opportunity, with five dominant sectors shaping its economy.

Maritime Trade & Shipping

"Everything that enters the continent flows through Tidefront first."
As the continent’s primary trade port, Tidefront serves as the gateway for goods, people, and information. The port itself is massive, chaotic, and heavily taxed, with each crime family controlling different sections of the docks.
Key Exports

• Luxury Goods: Spices, silks, rare gems, and fine textiles.
• Crafted Goods: High-quality weapons, jewelry, and exotic trinkets.
• Mercenary Contracts: Tidefront supplies sellswords and privateers to conflicts across the continent.

Key Imports

• Raw Materials: Iron, timber, stone, and livestock from the inland territories.
• Exotic Wares: Spices, herbs, and alchemical ingredients from foreign lands.
• Labor: Indentured workers, some from questionable sources.

Controlled By: The Veyne Consortium, who dictate tariffs and trade agreements.
Smuggling Hotspots: The Sundered Quay & Flooded Catacombs, where illegal goods bypass taxation.

The Black Market & Illicit Trade

"You can buy anything in Tidefront—for the right price."
Tidefront’s underground economy is as large as its official one. Nearly every legal industry has an illegal counterpart, making smugglers, fences, and information brokers just as important as merchants.
Illicit Goods & Services

• Weapons & Armor: Including black-market siege weapons and experimental firearms.
• Poisons & Alchemy: Sold discreetly to assassins, spies, and nobles.
• Forbidden Books & Artifacts: Stolen relics, rare tomes, and magical oddities.
• Slave & Indenture Markets: Though technically outlawed (merely to avoid the ire of the other cities), contracts for "indentured labor" are common.
• Stolen & Counterfeit Goods: Jewelry, coinage, and faked noble documents.

Controlled By: The Carrigan Syndicate (weapons), Ravelle Family (alchemy & poison), and Umbraclaw Brotherhood (smuggling & stolen goods).
Most Notorious Black Market: The Veil Exchange, a secretive bazaar where high-profile deals are made.

Alchemy, Pharmaceuticals, & Espionage

"A well-placed vial is more powerful than a sword."
Tidefront is renowned for its alchemists, whose potions, poisons, and concoctions are in demand across the continent. From medicines to toxins, alchemy is both a legitimate industry and a deadly tool.
Notable Products

• Medicines & Tonic Brews: Essential for sailors and mercenaries.
• Poison & Toxins: Sold discreetly to assassins and nobles.
• Hallucinogens & Recreational Drugs: A booming industry in the city’s pleasure dens.
• Explosives & Alchemical Weapons: Sold to privateers and mercenary groups.

Controlled By: The Ravelle Family, who have exclusive control over most alchemical operations.
Research Hub: The Glassworks, a hidden alchemical laboratory developing new formulas.

The Vice Industry (Gambling, Brothels, & Taverns)

"Where there’s coin, there’s pleasure."
Tidefront’s pleasure industry is among the most profitable, catering to merchants, sailors, nobles, and mercenaries looking to indulge in gambling, drink, or more illicit entertainment.
Major Businesses

• Gambling Halls & Betting Rings: Dice games, cockfights, and underground tournaments.
• Pleasure Houses & Courtesan Guilds: High-end establishments for nobles, as well as cheaper dens for sailors and workers.
• Pidge & Dreamdust Parlors: Drugs and hallucinogens for those looking to escape reality.
• Underground Arenas: Illegal fighting pits, blood sports, and deathmatches.
  

Controlled By: The Ferris Blades, who enforce debts and run high-stakes gambling.
Most Infamous Establishment: The Red Mirage, a high-end pleasure house rumored to be a front for assassinations and espionage.

Rail Trade & Manufacturing

"The railway connects us to Sanctuary. We decide what rides the rails."
With the newly constructed railway linking Tidefront to Sanctuary, land-based trade has surged, creating a new industry of factories, forges, and logistics hubs. The railway is a choke point, and the families are heavily taxing and restricting what goes in and out.
Key Rail Industries

• Steel & Timber Production: Sourced from inland forests and mills.
• Weapon Manufacturing: Muskets, swords, and armor produced for the military and mercenary groups.
• Railway Tariffs & Toll Stations: The families take massive cuts from every shipment.

Controlled By: The Veyne Consortium, who own most of the railway investments.
Black Market Rail Hub: The Iron Vein, a hidden station where smuggled goods are offloaded before reaching Sanctuary.

Trade Relations Between Tidefront and the Other Cities

Sanctuary

• Primary Trade: Bureaucratic services, religious artifacts, confiscated magical items.
• Key Imports: Foodstuffs, weaponry, construction materials from Tidefront.
• Key Exports: Political influence, religious authority, and intelligence (spies/inquisitors).
• Tensions: Sanctuary’s anti-magic policies often put it at odds with Tidefront’s crime families, some of whom secretly trade in banned magical items. However, the two cities heavily rely on each other for trade and transportation via the railway.

Valoryant

• Primary Trade: Master-crafted weapons, enchanted jewelry, alchemical spices.
• Key Imports: Coal, textiles, luxury goods, and rare ores from Tidefront.
• Key Exports: High-quality armor, fine woodworking, domesticated tundra beasts.
• Tensions: The Inquisition’s strong presence in Valoryant makes some of Tidefront’s crime families nervous, especially those who deal in forbidden goods. However, the traditionalist Valoryans often trade with Tidefront independently, ignoring the Inquisition’s control.

Glith-Dardin

• Primary Trade: Precious gems, refined metals, experimental inventions.
• Key Imports: Food, textiles, alchemical supplies, trade goods from Tidefront.
• Key Exports: Gold, silver, rare minerals, crafted dwarven & Glithi tools.
• Tensions: Glith-Dardin’s merchant families are wary of Tidefront’s crime families, often hiring their own security for trade convoys. However, the demand for Tidefront’s black market wares ensures steady, if cautious, business.

Ashview

• Primary Trade: Sulfur (used for gunpowder & alchemy), treasure hunting expeditions, salvaged artifacts.
• Key Imports: Mining equipment, construction materials, weapons, foodstuffs from Tidefront.
• Key Exports: Raw sulfur, rare magical relics, lost technology from ruins.
• Tensions: Many relics found in Ashview’s ruins end up on Tidefront’s black market, much to the displeasure of historians, nobles, and the Inquisition. However, the need for trade keeps Ashview dependent on Tidefront’s port.

Tidefront’s Role in the Continent’s Economy

As the largest trade port, Tidefront serves as the distribution hub for all of these cities, ensuring that goods flow between the regions efficiently—at a price. The crime families tax, smuggle, or monopolize certain goods, ensuring they get a cut of every major transaction. The railway to Sanctuary makes Tidefront an even more strategic economic powerhouse as much of the emergent technology is finding its investors in the city.

Infrastructure

Public Services (or the Lack Thereof)

Tidefront is not built for the common people—it is built for profit. Basic infrastructure exists, but it is corrupt, unreliable, or controlled by the ruling families.

Water & Sanitation

• The wealthy have private aqueducts and wells.
• The poor rely on public wells, which are poorly maintained, often brackish, and sometimes outright lethal.
• Waste management is primitive—most refuse ends up in the sea or in the ruined parts of the city.

Roads & Transportation

• Main roads in the upper city are well-maintained, allowing for easy travel.
• The lower city is a chaotic mess of broken streets, wooden walkways, and dirt paths.
• Boat taxis operate between different sections, but pirates and thieves make them risky.
• The railway is the only modern transit system, but it is strictly controlled by the crime families.

Defenses & Military

• Gilded Fangs act as the city’s main enforcers, but they only protect important assets.
• The harbor has some defenses, but after the siege, many cannons and fortifications were never rebuilt.
• The crime families have private armies, which are often better trained than the city’s actual defenders.

Overall Infrastructure Mood

Tidefront is a city held together by desperation and greed. The infrastructure is a patchwork of luxury and ruin—the wealthy have everything they need, while the poor fight over scraps. Trade and profit are the only things that matter, and if a street, building, or district is no longer profitable, it is left to rot.

Districts

Tidefront is roughly divided into three major zones:

The Gilded Heights (Continent-Facing, Upper City)

The wealthiest and most fortified section of the city, where the crime families and elite merchants reside. This district is elevated, giving it a natural defensive advantage, with walled estates, broad avenues, and carefully maintained public spaces.

• Strong Stone Foundations: The buildings here are made of imported stone and reinforced wood, unlike the rest of the city.
• Private Aqueducts & Wells: The wealthy have access to fresh, filtered water from private wells and imported sources.
• Magistrate’s Forum: The closest thing Tidefront has to an administrative center—more of a meeting hall for the families than a true government building.
• Railway Station: The only well-guarded and structured part of the railway is here, ensuring smooth trade with Sanctuary.
• Private Guard Towers: Gilded Fangs maintain strongholds at key locations to prevent unrest from spilling into the upper city.

Note: The wealthy rarely go to the lower districts unless they have business—or trouble—to deal with.

The Tideworn Docks (Sea-Facing, Lower City)

The heart of Tidefront’s economy and the most dangerous, vibrant, and unstable district. This area was badly damaged during the siege, and while some of it has been rebuilt, much of it remains half-ruined or repurposed into ramshackle structures.

• The Grand Wharf: The largest dockyard, filled with towering warehouses, cranes, and endless rows of ships. Controlled by multiple families, each with their own sections.
• The Sundered Quay: An area still partially in ruins from the siege. Some piers are half-sunken, but they are still used by smugglers who don’t want to go through the main docks.
• Stilt Town: Makeshift homes and markets built on stilts over shallow waters, often collapsing or sinking due to poor construction.
• The Flooded Catacombs: A series of old underground passages, partially collapsed and now flooded, used by criminals and rebels alike.

Note: The city does not bother to regulate the docks too much—so long as trade keeps moving, the families tolerate smuggling, bribery, and under-the-table deals.

The Wretched Maze (The Middle & Outskirts)

The bulk of Tidefront’s population lives here—a chaotic, twisting urban sprawl where the poor and working-class struggle to survive.

• Cobbled-Together Roads: Some paved streets still exist, but most roads are a maze of dirt paths, wooden planks, and uneven stones.
• Leaning Tenements: Buildings are stacked atop one another without planning, resulting in narrow alleyways and unstable structures.
• Public Wells (Often Contaminated): The poor rely on communal wells, which are often contaminated by runoff from the docks or poisoned by rival gangs.
• Black Market Bazaars: Everything is for sale here, from illegal weapons to stolen goods and counterfeit documents.
• The Rail Slums: Near the railway, a makeshift shantytown has sprung up, filled with displaced refugees and those hoping to work on the trains.

Note: Fires, disease, and collapses are common in this part of the city, but the families only care if it affects their businesses.

Guilds and Factions

The Guilded Fangs

The Gilded Fangs are the official "law enforcement," but in reality are a private militia paid for by the ruling families. They enforce contracts, protect major trade hubs, and eliminate threats to the status quo. However, they serve the city’s elite, not the common folk.

The Black Pact

A shadowy underworld agreement ensures that major disputes between crime families are settled behind closed doors. Open warfare in the streets is bad for business. Assassinations, blackmail, and bribery are preferred methods of conflict resolution.

The Dockside Tribunals

Minor disputes (brawls, debts, property claims) are settled on the spot by appointed “judges”—usually retired gangsters or merchants with strong family ties. Their rulings are swift and often brutal.

Founding Date

20 TL

Type

Large city

Population

400,000

Location under

Aislion