Stormreach
Stormreach is a small frontier city nestled on the eastern coast of the Skyfall Peninsula in Xen'drik. Despite its small population, Stormreach is an important city because of its location, allowing easy docking access to travelers wishing to enter Xen'drik. The city also acts as a center for trade and commerce for all who visit the lost continent of Xen'drik. Stormreach is known by some as the "City of Dungeons" because it was built atop an ancient city from the long-lost Xen'drik civilization of giants.
Demographics
Stormreach is unlike any city in Khorvaire. Look along the harbor and consider what you see. A hill giant and a pair of House Tharashk orcs are loading dragonshards onto a House Lyrandar cargo ship. A goblin merchant haggles with a pair of elves from Aerenal. A dwarf dressed in the robes of the Sovereign Host and a human in the colors of the Silver Flame debate religion with a sahuagin priest draped in seaweed and bones. Adventurers, scholars, mystics—all can find their way to Stormreach.
The city is small, but many residents take pride in it. A visitor to Sharn is likely to get lost in the teeming masses. You’ll quickly get to know the people of Stormreach, and you’ll have a chance to meet even the most important people of the city. Wander the market for a day, and you’ll likely see Lord Lassite. Take a week and you might know half the artisans, all the innkeepers, and the city’s magistrates—hopefully because you’ve been drinking with them and not because they’re sending you to the Red Ring!
The city is growing rapidly. According to a Korranberg census, the city had about nine thousand residents in 996 YK. Estimates suggest that more than two thousand immigrants have joined them since then, and more are arriving every day. With the Last War at an end, there’s been a groundswell of interest in the city. Refugees who lost their homes in Khorvaire come in search of a fresh start. Academics seek answers to Xen’drik’s mysteries. The dragonmarked houses see untapped potential in the lands beyond the city’s walls. And so the population grows and the city expands. Moreover, transients steadily fl ow through—hundreds of merchants, sailors, explorers, and others who remain for a few days before passing on to the next port of call.
As a newcomer to Stormreach, you’ll notice a wild diversity in the citizens’ wealth. Although none of the oldest families are nobles in the traditional sense, they have turned the treasures of their pirate ancestors into vast fortunes. The city’s unique opportunities lure dragonmarked heirs, nobles from the Five Nations, and explorers who have recovered great wealth from the continent’s interior. Menial laborers mingle with them, along with war refugees, especially Cyrans. The Storm Lords are working to fi nd gainful employment for them and other unfortunates, but this will take time. For now, wealthy visitors are advised to take their evening entertainment in Respite, the Marketplace, or the Temple district. The Harbor district, Locksmith Square, and Dannel’s Pride are best avoided after sunset.
The city was established by people from across Khorvaire, from the Shadow Marches to the Lhazaar Principalities, so immigrants from the Five Nations have always made up a large part of the population. Even before the Last War, many settlers were patriots who sought a place out of Galifar’s reach to practice their traditions. Now that the old kingdom is broken, this patriotic spirit is even greater. Many of the city’s wards have been settled by people of a particular nationality, and travelers are warned to consider that when visiting; Thranes rarely receive a friendly welcome in the Karrn-dominated Grindstone ward.
Government
Despite ousting a large majority of the pirates and smugglers, a few powerful smugglers, called Coin Lords, took advantage of the reduction in competition and became the first leaders of Stormreach. Their descendants continue to govern over Stormreach to this day. Currently, Stormreach is governed by five hereditary nobles. A Harbor Lord oversees all harbor activities, while four Coin Lords maintain the rest of the city. Together, these five nobles are called the Storm Lords.
The Storm Lords hold sway over the city of Stormreach. In 800 YK, the Kingdom of Galifar made an agreement with five houses. The agreement was called the Stormreach Compact. In it power over the city was split between five families. The five families are the Amanatus, the Lassites, the Omarens, the Sel Shadras, and the Wylkeses .
Law and Order
The only justice in Stormreach is justice you make for yourself, or justice you pay for. On the city’s mean streets, skulduggery and foul play are legitimate means of making a living. Victims of violent crime are blamed for their own fate by some citizens and are a source of amusement for others.
Though laws exist on record in Stormreach, few bother to enforce most of them. The true law of the land is simple: Don’t make trouble for the Storm Lords. You can often make all the trouble you want for someone else. As long as a crime does not impact the city’s economy or security too greatly, it is most likely to be ignored by the powers that be. That said, if you cross the wrong people, you can quickly find yourself on the business end of a guard’s sword or an Iron Watch armblade.
Crime and punishment is subjective in Stormreach. Whom you know determines what you can get away with, and whom you anger determines the ramifications of a crime. You can rob ten people in the morning and laugh about it with corrupt members of the Stormreach Guard in the afternoon. But knock out the tooth of Lord Jonas Wylkes’s cousin or kill the fence who’s working for Lady Kirris Sel Shadra, and those same guards will beat you to death in the middle of the street without even saying hello.
The most effective way to get away with crimes in Stormreach is not to rock the boat. Any act that disrupts the city’s lucrative trade, or stops the steady stream of gold from flowing into the Storm Lords’ coffers, brings the full weight of the city’s power down on the perpetrator.
Industry & Trade
The Art Scene
Stormreach is beyond boundaries. The Code of Galifar is a far-off murmur, and conventions of civility are often thrust aside here on the savage shore. It is a place where artists break out of tradition and frequently turn their backs on mass appeal. For good and for ill, the city has no aesthetic elite looking down its nose at unconventional artwork, and no royal decrees interfere with artistic vision.
Patronage of art can be a lightning rail to status in Stormreach. Many wealthy residents commission what they hope will be the latest masterpieces; others fund theatrical troupes whose performances would be considered licentious, or even treasonous, in a Khorvairian playhouse.
As a result, Stormreach’s art scene is more vibrant than is typical in a city of its size. Many artists, performers, and playwrights banished from Khorvaire choose to spend their exile in Stormreach, plying their craft far from their enemies. Also, the city’s remoteness from civilization inspires local artists to pursuits most of their Khorvairian counterparts would not imagine. The wealth of ancient sculpture, drow folksinging, and tribal dance offers the city’s artists a feast of inspiration. Today’s popular art is born of yesterday’s avant-garde, and for explorations into art’s outer limits, Stormreach is hard to beat.
The city is more than a haven for the avant-garde. Bawdy burlesques performed nightly in Forgelight pander to the district’s exhausted and companionship starved laborers. Meanwhile the classics of the Five Nations are brought to life in the extravagant Livewood Theater. Elegant galleries throughout the Temple district and Respite cater to those with a taste for fine art, offering up paintings and sculptures in classic styles.
From cathartic tragedies, sometimes played with real blood, to stunning landscape paintings of Xen’drik’s interior, the city has something for most artistic palates.
THE ONYX FOUNTAIN
House Phiarlan protects and patronizes artists in Stormreach based on their talent, not their political or ethical views. To this end, the house created the Onyx Fountain, a stronghold of studios, galleries, small recital halls, rehearsal spaces, and small theaters in the Temple district. The Onyx Fountain is named for the imposing fountain of glossy black stone at its entrance. The fountain’s waters flow into a dragon-shaped basin, and potent magic shapes the fl owing waters into wings and scales upon the dragon’s back.
The Onyx Fountain is a warren of corridors, niches, and chambers, each of which is unique. One chamber houses an elaborate illusion of frolicking fey, dancing wildflowers, and talking animals in the Faerie Court. Another contains sculptures from the Dhakaani Empire, complete with a towering relief of the Graywall Mountains’ Six Kings monument. Others are filled with swirling spheres of emerald light and illusions of otherworldly beings whose translucent forms slowly transform. Most of the building’s spaces are illuminated with multi-hued everbright lanterns.
The Fountain is not just a refuge for artists and performers, but also a hive of intrigue. Performance spaces double as training rooms for House Phiarlan agents honing the arts of stealth and infiltration. Acrobatic skill, a hypnotic voice, the ability to turn light and shadow into allies and weapons, and an imagination capable of ingenious solutions to split-second crises are what make Phiarlan spies some of the best in the world. The Fountain also hosts clandestine meetings masquerading as rehearsals or private performances.
THE LIVEWOOD THEATER
The Livewood Theater is House Phiarlan’s preeminent performance space in the city. Mostly offering up classics of Brelish, Aundairian, or Cyran playwrights, the Livewood spares no expense and attracts sellout crowds to its amphitheater four days a week, Wir through Sar. The shows are often nostalgia works beating patriotic drums and offering exiles and expatriates glimpses of their distant homelands.
Epics from Thrane and Karrnath were performed in the past, but no longer. A few years ago, a large group of Karrns crashed a performance of Rainbow Serpents Rising. Bedlam and bloodshed ensued. Thranes responded in kind two months later during the opening performance of Ride of the Rekkenmark. The Livewood’s manager, Zarzalia Shol d’Phiarlan, has since banned patriotic plays from both nations.
THE PLAYS OF KARKLOS IR’ILSIR
Karklos ir’Ilsir became an overnight sensation in Sharn when the production of his play Throne of Angels opened to rave reviews. His plays continued to astound audiences and draw standing-room-only crowds for two years following. Theater fanatics waited with bated breath for the release of each play and worshiped the playwright as if he were the son of the god Olladra herself.
The worship bolstered Karklos’s urge to do more than just satisfy his audiences, driving him to challenge them instead. By his third year as Sharn’s favorite playwright, his work took on a decidedly political tone. At first, King Boranel ir’Wynarn and the Brelish court turned a blind eye to treasonous underpinnings in his work, in recognition of the playwright’s obvious brilliance. However, when Who Mourns? opened at the Sharn Opera House and riots broke out in the streets, King Boranel exiled Karklos.
Karklos found a new home in Aundair under the patronage of Queen Aurala ir’Wynarn. However, when his play Wine, Magic, and Moonlight opened with descriptions of the debauchery of “Queen Arielana’s” exiled son “Jurianos,” Karklos found himself on the run again. The playwright eventually stumbled onto the docks of Stormreach.
No one patronizes his work now, and he toils in a cramped room in Respite, not far from the Drowning Sorrows Tavern. His plays see production on occasion but rarely draw a crowd.
In the past few months, a mysterious woman named Sarquala has taken an interest in Karklos. Her blazing red hair, cool emerald eyes, and elegance immediately captured his heart, and the two are nigh inseparable now. Sarquala whispers in the playwright’s ear as he works. As a result, he has written obscure plays about the wrongful imprisonment of a pantheon of immortal kings and their glorious return. Perhaps this is a harmless fancy of hers. Or perhaps she is an agent of the Lords of Dust or a devotee of the Dragon Below, and she is tailoring his works to glorify her fallen masters. Unfettered by mortal conceptions of time, rakshasa and illithid have both foreseen that Karklos’s works will someday be the most performed plays in human history.
BLOODBORNE PLAYERS
A small troupe of young elves known as the Bloodborne Players offers the darkest theatrical fare in Stormreach. Most of their performances lack any narrative but instead assail the audience with haunting illusionary images and morbid displays of lifelike brutality and violence. Even their more conventional plays culminate in a horrific blood sacrifice enacted with the aid of stunning illusionary magic . . . or so most spectators believe.
Although most of the sacrifices are fake, some are quite real. In these gruesome shows, usually before small audiences, the victim is eviscerated on a dais, and the heart and head are ripped and hewn from the body shortly thereafter. Mostly these victims are captured or duped bystanders, who believe it will all be an illusion. But on occasion the troupe holds secret performances for its most loyal fans, one of whom volunteers to be sacrificed, believing his or her soul will gain immortality and glory.
The leader of the Bloodborne Players, and always the actor wielding the sacrificial blade, is a rail-thin and black-haired elf named Vortras, who sports an aberrant dragonmark. The backstage master of visual effects is his cousin Dammerund, though the two could easily be twins. These twisted elves believe the act of blood sacrifice, fused with the emotional outpouring of the enraptured audience, grants them great power. If this belief is true, the elves might have stumbled onto a secret of the ancient Qabalrin elves. One thing is certain: Vortras seeks pages of the sanguineous tome and similar works on Qabalrin sacrificial rites. Many suspect the troupe is connected to the Blood of Vol or the Shrouds, yet the Bloodborne Players have recently clashed with both.
MAZRATH THE MAKER
In a Harbor district alley, a filthy sign sways over a ramshackle storefront and proclaims the name of the proprietor within: Mazrath the Maker. Inside is an incongruously clean gallery filled with beautiful marble sculptures of such majesty that they could have been sculpted in Syrania, the realm of angels. The artist behind these works is Mazrath, a limping old elf with milk white eyes as blind as a grimlock’s. He coaxes wonders from blocks of marble, carving them entirely by feel, and creates gods and angels from clay pottery with the caress of his well-worn hands. Mazrath did not always spend his days creating.
There was a time when his skillful hands lent their talents to endings instead. Before the Shadow Schism within House Phiarlan in 972 YK, Mazrath was called Tyrellin Paelion d’Phiarlan and was the favorite uncle of Lord Tolar Paelion d’Phiarlan. Tyrellin maintained a spy network so vast it reached the upper echelons of every dragonmarked house and plumbed the deepest dungeons and darkest alleyways across Khorvaire. When a strike force of Thuranni assassins came for him in the night, Tyrellin slew them to the last, but not before a sword slash stole his sight.
Now the old elf toils in his gallery, but rumor has it that his ears still hear more than most eyes see. Little goes on in Stormreach that Mazrath does not know, and a shadowy network still reports the goings-on of the powers behind the Five Nations, as well as every move his enemies make in the Emerald Claw, House Phiarlan, and House Thuranni. No one knows if he plans vengeance, but for the time being, the blind elf is certainly a brilliant sculptor.
Guilds and Factions
Although the Storm Lords hold authority over Stormreach, other nations and the dragonmarked houses have consulates and enclaves there. The Five Nations acknowledge Stormreach, but none claim it as their own. Instead, they simply maintain business relationships with the Storm Lords hoping to turn a profit on all that Xen'drik has to offer.
The dragonmarked houses, particularly House Lyrandar, House Kundarak, House Deneith, and House Tharashk have great sway in the city, and the Storm Lords go to great lengths to make sure their presence remains.
History
Stormreach was initially used as a hideout for pirates and smugglers who attacked vessels traversing the Thunder Sea to the north. From Stormreach, pirates could easily recoup, as well as trade among other pirates. In 800 YK, as the continent of Xen'drik became an interest to scholars and the dragonmarked houses, the houses petitioned the King of Galifar to cleanse the area of pirates and by 802 YK the Galifar navy had done its job.
The Age of Demons
Little is known about the Age of Demons, although modern scholars lurk great interest toward this time. It is known that Rakshasa rajahs ruled domains in Xen'drik, being opposed by the Dragons, Couatls and Titans, the giants' ancestors.
Explorers frequently find relics of that far away history, such as rakshasa's magical blades or a brass spire of Ashtakala.
Rushemé storytellers believe a great curse was placed upon the land near the northern ocean, what might be connected to the terrible secret that lays deep beneath ancient ruins of the giants.
The Omaren Revolt
In 890YK, Castal Omarren, House Omaren's Stormlord, attempted to eliminate other stormlords, being the one and only ruler to the city. The coup failed, but family Omaren was allowed to maintain its lordship, not without heavy penalties.
The Fire Storm
In 946 YK, the city was attacked by the Battalion of the Basalt Towers, fire giants who controlled meteor swarms that almost destroyed the city. They were defeated by an alliance between the giants of Rushemé, the Stormreach Guard and the dragonmarked houses. The Basalt Towers were shattered, but some of the giants seem to have survived, and to be rebuilding their forces.
The Last War
Despite having sworn allegiance to Galifar, Stormreach and its multi-cultural inhabitants had no loyalty to the crown, remaining neutral throughout the Last War- at least in political affairs. Years after the Last war, its enmities still resonate in the city's militias and gangs, who have grown based on national themes.
Tourism
- Marketplace
- Black Iron
- The Chapterhouse
- Circle of Visions
- Citadel of the Twelve
- Delera's Watch
- House Jorasco Enclave
- Molou's Distillery
- The Red Ring
- The Ship's Cat
- Stormreach Recruiters
- Surrinek Riverboats
- The Tents of Rusheme
- Underharbor
- Von Ruthvek's Splendors of the South
Architecture
Many of Stormreach’s buildings and monuments are ancient, but while many old cities are built upon the refinement and expansion of a style, Stormreach is built upon change, upon necessity, upon the mixture of many styles, both ancient and modern. The city’s districts have their own overall styles, defined by the inhabitants and their occupations, but the districts are still a mishmash of new buildings amid, and atop, the old. Even with the city’s chaos of architectural styles, its districts have common features, all arising from Stormreach’s unique character.
BROKEN PILLARS
Stormreach is full of broken pillars of various degrees of antiquity, though few remain standing. Those that do are significant landmarks. These snapped-off columns once supported the roofs of giants’ dwellings or decorated the outsides of their temples. Now they serve other purposes. Some have been turned into watchtowers, helpful in spotting fires and directing firefighting efforts. Others have become so encrusted with ropes and ramshackle dwellings that they resemble a rock covered in mussels. Most, however, have suffered the fate of being quarried for stone to pave roads, patch city walls, and build new dwellings.
CIRCLE OF VISIONS
Scattered around the city are twelve stone rings, each radiating an aura of moderate illusion magic. About once a month, a programmed image appears at night in the center of one of the circles. Sometimes the image is lovely, and sometimes a long-dead giant appears, whose name and history are no longer known. Other times these illusions are disturbing, showing images that people believe to be forewarnings or showing places deep in Xen’drik’s jungles that are believed to have been outposts of the giants or their enemies.
FLOATING RUINS
The magic of Xen’drik is legendary, and the faded glory of the past can still be seen in Stormreach today. The city had a number of f loating fortresses, mansions, and towers in past centuries. Time, war, and disaster broke them, but remnants float in place or drift in patterns above the city, and sometimes beyond.
Some of the ruins remain serviceable, albeit ramshackle, and a few wealthy citizens have claimed them for their own, patching and rebuilding them. Other floating chunks of masonry are treated like islands, built upon by enterprising people. Under a few of the larger chunks, wooden homes hang perilously and are reachable by knotted ropes and ladders, which can be drawn up, affording the inhabitants a secure, if precipitous, existence.
The most picturesque ruins collected seabird guano until a windblown seed or two germinated, creating islands of tangled plants. A riot of color, these islands’ roots fl utter in the wind.
PERMANENT IMPERMANENCE
Many of the homes in Stormreach look temporary: tents, huts, and shacks that seem as if they were thrown together on a whim. Visitors are surprised to discover that many of these driftwood huts and canvas tents have been handed down from generation to generation.
Especially in the poorer districts, the city has a culture of making do, patching up, and never throwing something useful away. This applies as much to buildings as it does to pots and pans, clothing, and other items. Old rowboats are built into roofs to keep the rain out, and tents are patched, stitched, and layered over and over until they are as thick as a wall. A building that was once a temple to a forgotten deity might be turned into a brewery and then a storehouse, and finally the brewing vats might be capped off with conical roofs and turned into houses, surrounded by the temple ruins.
Nothing is wasted: driftwood, canvas, hide, whalebone, flotsam, and stone. The people of Stormreach show endless ingenuity in their use of materials that would be rubbish in other cities.
THE NARROWS
The ancient city was laid out according to a plan devised by the giants, but few signs of that plan remain. Each occupying culture has complicated it, and each collapse has wrought new chaos upon what was once an ordered city.
The ancient city’s decline and the organic, unplanned development of its successors have turned the streets into a tangle, which changes with every wave of immigrants, every flood, and every fire. The city is further reconfigured by the occasional collapse of sewers, tunnels, and caves beneath it.
The upshot of this for visitors is that, aside from a few broad streets the Storm Lords keep clear by decree, the city is a mess of narrow and ever-changing streets. Getting lost is easy, especially in the residential districts where the layout is far more complicated than the city’s population would suggest.
THE OLDEST STONE
The ancient city’s visible ruins were once important buildings or monuments. Many were protected by magic and have therefore weathered the millennia better than their neighbors. The oldest ruins mark the places where Stormreach is most stable. The giants knew the land and built to last; although ancient structures might be hidden beneath newer ones, they endure.
In the caverns and tunnels beneath the city, the ruins are less worn and more intact. The undercity’s denizens build around and tunnel through these ruins, ever expanding the city below the city. In the harbor lie the ruins that have been reclaimed by the waves, infested by sahuagin and full of ancient artifacts. Where the old stone lies the leaders of Stormreach abide, their palaces and mansions built on the sturdiest foundations. They draw legitimacy as much from the ruins’ symbols as from might or riches.
THE RIGGING
Stormreach was not originally built for the people who live there now. For much of its history, it was occupied by giants, and its buildings recall that past, from its enormous drains to its high steps and towering columns. A human or elf, let alone a halfling or gnome, would have a difficult time climbing over and around these edifices were it not for “the rigging.”
When citizens mention the city’s rigging, they mean the steps that have been carved into some massive stones or the wooden ladders and staircases bolted into or leaned against others. Or they mean the nets and knotted ropes they use to scramble over the ruins or the rope bridges, high above the streets, that crisscross the city. Where the ropes and bridges are especially dense, shanties are suspended in the air, often from the underside of a floating ruin.
SCUPPERS
The city is named for the storms that batter Xen’drik’s coast and that often engulf the city in lightning flashes and torrential rain. This rain was merely an annoyance to the giants; a flood to the smaller races is but a puddle to them. Moreover, the ancient city’s enormous sewer system, along with its broad and open streets, allowed rainwater to drain away quickly.
Today, the city is cluttered and congested, its streets filled with tents, market stalls, and boarding houses. Many drains are blocked by rubbish, and others have been sealed by the monsters that lurk in the sewers. Despite the Storm Lords’ efforts to have the drains cleared, most are useless for much of the year.
The few working drains usually flow like rapids, and the rest of the city’s rainwater drains from the surface, down into the harbor. Somehow this haphazard drainage system works. First, many newer buildings are built on stilts, which lets rainwater flow beneath and keeps the buildings out of the reach of vermin. Second, when a neighborhood floods, the residents create channels to allow the water to drain onto nearby streets, and often into someone else’s neighborhood.
As rain falls, it follows a complex network of improvised channels, which run together onto broad streets that feed the water to the harbor. Stormreachers call these streets scuppers, after the drainage holes on ships. New settlers are sometimes washed away when the water flows rapidly, not knowing to keep clear of the scuppers during heavier storms.
STONE HEADS
In every district, carved stone heads lean against walls, lie in the street, and teeter on ledges. Once a part of long-lost statues, the heads resemble giants and have a variety of expressions and hairstyles. Most of them cluster in groups of three or more, though some have been towed away, built into walls, or simply piled up. Because of a folktale that they bear a deadly curse, very few have been quarried.
Some of the city’s older residents claim that the heads’ expressions have changed over time, reflecting the ancient giants’ opinions of the modern city and its people. Other residents occasionally lay offerings on the heads and reverently clear them of moss, lichen, and dirt.
UNSAFE FOOTING
Wealthy neighborhoods such as Stormhaven and Coasthold are built on solid ground and have relatively clear streets, but other neighborhoods are riddled with hazards. Tunnels and ancient sewers shift or subside, fl ash floods crash through during storms, persistent humidity rots rope and wood, and shacks, even those that have survived generations, suddenly collapse. The next plank in the bridge might break, the rope might snap, or the tarp might be more mold than tarp—as you discover when you put your weight on it.
Demographics
- Humans 43%
- Gnomes 9%
- Half-elves 9%
- Dwarves 8%
- Orcs/Half-Orcs 8%
- Halflings 7%
- Elves 6%
- Warforged 2%
- Skinwalkers 2% Lokumites 1%
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