Sharn
Demographics
- Human 33%
- Dwarf 17%
- Halfling 10%
- Goblinoid 9%
- Gnome 8%
- Elf 6%
- Half-elf 5%
- Skinwalker 4%
- Lokumite 3%
- Orc 2%
Government
Bureaucracy mires Sharn’s political landscape. In addition to the massive amount of work involved in maintaining the city itself, Sharn also administers Brelish law to the surrounding region, collecting taxes and revenues on behalf of King Boranel.
The city is filled with ministers, beadles, bailiffs, and minor functionaries of all shapes and sizes. However, it is unlikely that a player character is going to become intimately involved in the repaving of roads or the system of agricultural tariffs collected by the ministers of Sharn. As a result, this section focuses on the pinnacle of Sharn’s government: the people at the top, who have the power to set adventures in motion.
The Council of Sharn
The Council Of Sharn is made up of a councilor from nearly each ward in the city, with a few exceptions, totalling 17 councilors. The council establishes laws, determines how to use resources (taxes), and also appoints high officers of the city.
- Ilyra Boromar- Lower Dura and Cliffside
- Doran Cantar- Middle Northedge
- Thurik Davandi- Upper Menthis
- Caskar Halavik- Middle Menthis
- Borian Haldorak- Upper Dura and Cliffside
- Hruit- Middle Dura and Cliffside
- Dalaina Ironhand- Middle Tavick's
- Sava Kharisa- Lower Central
- Kilk- Lower Tavick's
- Evix ir'Marasha- Skyway
- Savia Potellas- Lower Menthis
- Sorik Sensos- Middle Central
- Shassa Tarr- Lower Northedge
- Maza Thadian- Upper Northedge
- Javan Tomollan- Upper Central
- Bestan ir'Tonn- Upper Tavick's
- Nolan Toronak- The Cogs
THE CITY COUNCIL
Many make the mistake of assuming that the Lord Mayor of Sharn holds the greatest power within the city. In fact, the City Council appoints the Lord Mayor, and the commanders of the Sharn Watch report to the Council.
The Council of Sharn is comprised of 17 councilors: one from each of the wards of the city, with Cliffside merged into Dura and a single councilor representing both Ashblack and Blackbones. The precise method by which a councilor is appointed varies from ward to ward. In theory, it is a diplomatic selection made by the leaders of the ward, but what it takes to be a “leader” varies considerably. In some wards, anyone with a certain amount of income or property can participate in ward councils and elections. In others, ward elections are entirely in the hands of trade guilds, noble families, or other power groups. While in theory each councilor has an equal voice, in practice the influence of a councilor is derived from his backers. The local merchants of Lower Menthis support Savia Potellas, and she knows better than to openly oppose Caskar Halavik, who has the backing of the Boromar Clan. If she stirs up too much trouble, she might wind up at the bottom of the Dagger River. However, she fi nds other ways to deal with Caskar and pursue her own goals—including hiring adventurers to upset his plans.
Likewise, while each councilor is supposed to represent the interests of his or her ward, a councilor usually puts his backers first, his personal district second, and his ward third. Thus, the three councilors with ties to the Boromar Clan usually vote as a unit.
The City Council commands a variety of powers. The Council establishes the laws of the city, although if they wish to pass a law that completely contradicts the Code of Galifar or the traditions of Brelish Law, the crown or parliament might have something to say about it. Laws may vary per ward, allowing a councilor to shift the traditions of the city to benefit his backers.
The Council also determines how to use the resources of Sharn, from taxes to the power of the Sharn Watch. Finally, the Council appoints the high officers of the city, including the Lord Mayor. The councilors do not appoint the city’s representatives to the Breland Parliament; following the democratic traditions of the nation, the three legislators are elected by popular vote, with every legitimate resident of Sharn having the right to participate. However, the Council manages and administers the election, and councilors can usually exercise a considerable amount of influence over the voters in their districts, whether through charisma or graft. All major political appointments in Sharn occur on 9 Rhaan, Boldrei’s Feast. Members of the Breland Parliament serve two-year terms, city councilors serve for three years, and the Lord Mayor’s performance is usually reviewed every four years. There are no term limits, and quite often an election passes with no changes whatsoever.
Infrastructure
Guilds and Factions
Adventurer's Guilds
- The Clifftop Guild
- Deathsgate Guild
- The Circle of Song
Wizard's Circles
- The Esoteric Order of Aureon
- The Guild of Starlight and Shadows
Mercenary Services
- House Deneith
- Blademarks Guild
- Defenders Guild
- Sentinel Marshals
Organized Crime
- Boromar Clan
- Daask
- House Tarkanan
- The Tyrants
History
Tourism
Many adventurers come to Sharn solely to get someplace else, using the city as a launching point for an expedition to the ancient ruins and trackless jungles of Xen'drik. Morgrave University and the Wayfinder Foundation both send teams to Xen'drik on a regular basis, and Sharn hosts a thriving antiquities market that provides demand for items recovered from Xen'drik by both official and amateur expeditions.
The Cliffside ward is a good place to find ship captains experienced in the passage to Xen'drik, who have contacts with the sahuagin of Shargon's Teeth and can secure safe passage through those straits. The journey from Sharn to Stormreach is about 1,500 miles and takes a little over a month by sailing ship. The usual cost of passage is about 300 gp. It is sometimes possible to hire an elemental galleon for the journey, which takes only three or four days but costs 3,000 gp. A House Lyrandar sailing ship (without elemental power) can make the trip in 11 days and costs about 1,500 gp. Airships do not normally make the trip from Sharn to Xen'drik.
Stormreach, a rough-and-tumble frontier community where giants often trade in the marketplace, is an essential stopover for most expeditions before proceeding farther into the wilds of Xen'drik.
Expedition Arrangements
If a group of adventurers manages to secure employment on an expedition to Xen'drik, they can expect the following terms:
- The organizer of the expedition secures letters of marque for the characters.
- The organizer usually arranges for transportation to Xen'drik, though this is not always true.
- The organizer provides rations and mundane equipment, usually consisting of anything in the "Adventuring Gear" category of goods from Table 7-8 in the Player's Handbook.
- The organizer has the right to claim any treasures that the adventurers recover on their expedition, presumably for research purposes or for display in the Dezina Museum. The adventurers may keep or sell any items the organizer does not claim, and the organizer typically offers a guarantee of a minimum amount of gold.
- Sometimes an expedition organizer accompanies the characters on the expedition, while other organizers prefer to remain in the relative safety of Sharn. When the organizer accompanies the expedition, it is assumed that the adventurers give highest priority to protecting the organizer's life.
Guides
As the gateway to Xen'drik, Sharn has a number of residents who sell their services to adventurers and prospectors planning expeditions to that mysterious continent. As with investigators, House Tharashk dominates this field, making use of their magical dragonmark abilities (know direction and find the path) as well as their extensive, if more mundane, skills and experiences. The House's grand hall in Dragon Towers is its most prominent public face, but better deals and sometimes better guides can be found in their enclave in Clifftop (in Upper Dura).
Sometimes visitors to Sharn need guides within the city itself. City guides are easy to find: they usually cluster around arriving Orien lightning rail coaches, airships, and river vessels, hoping to solicit business from newly arrived visitors. These guides — often very young individuals — are inexpensive and tend to highlight the great tourist attractions of the city, which is sufficient for many visitors' purposes.
City guides of a different caliber can be found in Ambassador Towers. Most of the escort services in this district emphasize companions who are knowledgeable about the city and its attractions as well as being enjoyable company in other ways.
Architecture
TOWERS
The towers of Sharn range in height from about 100 feet to nearly a mile tall, but their basic construction resembles that of a traditional castle or other stone building. Extensive magic goes into their construction, from the spells used to lift blocks of stone to such enormous heights to the magic that strengthens and supports the towers, allowing them to stand despite all probability. Even with such magic in place, the towers are generally broad at the bottom and narrow at the top, many of them peaking in elegant spires or domes, while others are crowned with fl at platforms that hold parks, pools, or small estates.
The streets of the ancient city have been swallowed up as towers were built upward and lower walls thickened, to the point that now the towers tend to merge at ground level into a solid maze of walls, jumbled together with no discernable pattern.
Most towers are roughly 800 to 2,500 feet in diameter at the bottom, narrowing to about 200 to 600 feet in diameter at the top. Some have narrower spires extending farther upward. Every tower is built of magically reinforced stone, with hardness 16 and AC 3. Climbing a tower wall requires a DC 22 Climb check. A typical Lower- City exterior wall is 15 feet thick, with 2,340 hp per 10-foot section. In the Middle-City, exterior walls are 10 feet thick, with 1,440 hp per 10-foot section. In the Upper-City, exterior walls are only 5 feet thick, with 900 hp per 10-foot section. Interior walls also consist of stone construction. Some serve important structural functions and are as thick as exterior walls, but most are only 1 foot thick, with 90 hp per 10-foot section. In general, a tower has one story per 10–12 feet of height. Ceilings tend to be lower (and stories packed more closely together) at lower levels and higher toward the top levels, but there are certainly exceptions (warehouse towers, for example, usually have high ceilings).
Stories might also be sub divided: a popular residential design features an open central plaza, 20 feet or more in height, surrounded by two-story homes built as if hanging off the wall of the tower. A minor variation on this design has even higher ceilings and three-story units surrounding the plaza, with the bottom story of each unit housing a business. Most towers are studded with balconies, riddled with windows, and connected to neighboring towers with bridges.
BALCONIES
Balconies range from simple ledges with protective railings where a homeowner can step outside to enjoy the sunset, to large platforms where skycars can land to discharge passengers. Most towers have at least one balcony per story; many towers have many more balconies, at least at certain levels. Since flying is so prevalent in the city, any balcony is a potential entry point to a tower. Balconies opening into businesses or residences can be secured by some means, ranging from a simple door or portcullis to magical means such as a wall of force or an alarm spell. A great number of balconies, particularly the larger ones, open into public space.
STREETS
Streets run through the towers of Sharn, allowing horses, mules, and wagons to travel in a fairly normal fashion within the city. Unlike the streets of a typical city, most of these streets are broad thoroughfares rather than twisting alleyways, either suspended high above the ground, arcing around towers, or constructed through the center of a tower or other building. As described in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, these streets are 25 feet wide with 5-foot-wide walkways on either side.
Because the streets of Sharn are almost entirely indoors, most are artificially lit with everbright lanterns or everburning torches. In general, the upper levels have the best lighting, while torches in the Cogs are spaced so far apart as to leave large spaces of darkness.
BRIDGES
Most bridges connect the streets running through the towers, allowing wagons and pedestrians to cross from one spire to the next. As such, they are generally as wide as the streets. Low walls along the edges of a bridge prevent people from falling accidentally. Major bridges can be as wide as 50 feet across, and actually have structures built along the edges, crowding the roadway down to a width of 10 feet or so. Such bridges are popular sites for street fairs and open markets. A great number of narrower bridges span the gulfs between towers as well, not designed for carrying wagons but for facilitating pedestrian traffic. These bridges are five to ten feet wide and almost always have low walls or railings.
LIFTS
One of the most important uses of magic in Sharn is in the creation of magic lifts to facilitate vertical travel between the levels of towers. Particularly at lower levels, ramps wind around the inside or outside of large towers to get wagons from level to level, but at higher levels special levitation devices carry passengers and even cargo up and down within the towers.
FALLING
Falling from potentially deadly heights presents a constant danger in the City of Towers. Whether a character is bull-rushed over the side of a bridge, knocked from a soarsled, or thrown off a balcony, the sudden stop far below can have deadly consequences. Fortunately, Sharn has precautions in place to reduce the number of deaths that result from falls. The city offers a standard reward of 25 gp to a spellcaster who casts feather fall on a falling person. The reward is large enough, and the risk of falling real enough, that spellcasters who can cast feather fall almost always keep one prepared on a daily basis. Watch patrols usually carry a wand of feather fall, but few members have sufficient ranks in Use Magic Device to activate it.
Bridges in the Upper-City and Middle-City are also warded with permanent feather fall effects to protect those using them from falling bodies and other large objects. Such wards are triggered automatically when an object approaches within 30 feet of the top or sides of a bridge. This is effectively a magic trap that resets automatically and immediately.
A popular magic item among those that can afford one, a feather fall talisman is a single-use item containing a feather fall spell. The trick to using this item is timing. Because it works only once and lasts for a single round, it must be activated within 60 feet of the ground in order to protect its wearer from falling damage. Since falls in Sharn can involve heights of a mile or more, this is not always easy to accomplish.
A DC 10 Wisdom check can be used to determine if a character successfully times activation.
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