Precinct Five
As the home of prestigious universities, ancient libraries, and hidden laboratories, Precinct Five is the hub of information and learning in the Tenth District. People of all ages flock to this precinct to spend time learning, whether by poring over texts and scrolls or finding a mentor who will guide a student. It’s also the place to find information brokers, who sell specialized or secret knowledge available nowhere else.
Multilevel buildings set next to each other with little regard for planning give way to an occasional square or open campus where socially minded residents congregate during daytime hours. At night, many continue their studies while others tinker with their latest creations or intellectual endeavors. Taverns and pubs tend to be more urbane than in other parts of the district and often feature poetry readings, storytelling, and musical performances.
People who live in Precinct Five have a zeal for learning and tend to be inquisitive. Getting into a heated debate or touting a recent success to your neighbors is part of showing your worth. Good neighbors keep their projects and research hidden until a result can be displayed; it is considered uncouth to allow others to view a work in progress.
Affiliated Guilds
Zonot Seven, the home of the Simic Combine’s guildhall, is located on the western edge of the precinct. The Izzet League maintains a network of laboratories and workshops close to Nivix (in Precinct Four). House Dimir agents are seen and unseen all around the district, and they secretly run the Ismeri Library. Some members of the Azorius Senate who prefer to study disciplines aside from the law make their homes here as well.
Neighborhoods and Landmarks
Life for residents in Precinct Five is spent mostly indoors, or in the case of the Simic, underwater. The precinct’s occupants—including significant populations of students, instructors, researchers, scribes, and university staff—are crowded into dormitories and apartments squeezed in among laboratories, libraries, and magical machinery.
Goods and Services
Specialty items that are commonly used by scribes, researchers, and inventors can be found in many small shops in the precinct, usually run by a tinker or academic. Precinct Five also has the best apothecaries, alchemists, and magic-mongers in the Tenth District. On the other hand, mundane adventuring gear, weapons, and armor are harder to find. Information is an especially valuable commodity in Precinct Five. In addition to holding booksellers, the precinct is home to a variety of people who make a living (or at least a sizable side income) selling information, including private investigators, rumormongers, and spies.
Meals and lodging of modest to wealthy quality are available here. Older and more experienced people—high-ranking Simic researchers or established scholars—tend to maintain lifestyles toward the more expensive end of that scale. The poor are pitied and the most affluent are envied, so adventurers who maintain an aristocratic, poor, squalid, or wretched lifestyle, at the DM’s discretion, could have disadvantage on Charisma checks when interacting with residents of Precinct Five.
Law and Crime
Much of the crime in Precinct Five is of a sort that is hard to detect: blackmail, espionage, identity theft (of the literal kind, perpetrated by shapechangers), and the like. Most of the precinct’s residents spend their time absorbed in study, unaware that such activities might be happening under their noses. Only rarely does violence break out, and Azorius arresters try hard to keep the incident quiet and maintain public calm. The typical response to a reported crime here is 1d12 minutes, and the force consists of two Azorius arresters (use the veteran stat block in the Monster Manual).
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