Port of Lauthor

The Port of Lauthor is where an offshoot of the Ethoc River meets the Neol Strait (before the landing of Mesle sailors in the Port of Lauthor, it was often simply known as “the Southern Shores”). The Port is very important for trade with the continent/nation to the south of Laerdt'nah, Mesle, and the strange people who live there. The Port was not always the capital city, but it has been for the past hundred or so eochs, aligning with when Mesle made contact with Endref.
The Port's importance from a trade perspective does not come from it's function as a major trade hub; rather, sailors from Mesle travel to The Way Between to complete much of their trading and to repair their ships (as needed) after travelling across the Neol Strait. The Port of Lauthor's importance comes from the fact that it houses the country's government and many of its influential figures; not only are the main houses of the Sandroggs, Whalefs, and Eltrains in the Merchants Row in the Port of Lauthor, but there are also several prominent embassy-type buildings that are used to host Mesle merchants (or those who serve minor diplomatic functions). As such, the Port of Lauthor was the main location where trade deals and other agreements were signed, and any trade that headed to The Way Between as a result of those discussions was a by-product of the work accomplished in the Port of Lauthor.
As the main location for much of Endref's upper elite, the city itself is quite garish and the overall aesthetics of the city match the taste of the different families, rather than any overall cohesive appearance. Though each major family has a house in the Merchant Row, they also each have large ownership stakes in other parts of the city, due to their control of multiple businesses and buildings. While the Merchant Counts have come together in the past to try and address these visual concerns and clashes in the past, the current group of Merchants Count have shown little interest in the aesthetics of the city and so the contrast between various sectors has only grown to near headache-inducing levels.  
The sections of the city that are controlled by the Sandrogg are largely muted, with dark woods and other earthen elements as the primary visual aesthetic. The Sandroggs are generally in control of three main areas: the military quarter, which houses a large barracks and some training areas for Sandrogg troops; the religious district, where many faith groups and other organizations had established buildings to promote their beliefs or their goals; and the farming communities that ranged outside the Port of Lauthor and provided much of the local produce and non-fish meat. 
By comparison, the areas of the city that were under the auspices of the Whalef family are often decorated with flags, banners, and other cloth materials (or nets) that pay homage to their history as a family who made their money out of the fishing trade, or they are decorated with jewels and other precious stones to point to the Whalef's power over major mining operations. The Whalef's largely centered their operations in: the docks and the fishing area (due to their overwhelming control of all seafaring work and trade in Endref that was not directly controlled by the Fiala the Lawyer's Walk, a stretch of road that housed multiple law and trade offices as well as the Ledgery office and several related businesses; and the Rock Market, a large region that was primarily established for those involved in the extraction and sale of ores and other earth-based materials (as well as other natural resources such as fresh water and a limited amount of crops).
The Eltrains are the wealthiest family in the Port of Lauthor (specifically) and their primary aesthetic is based on using paints and dyes to cover whatever surface with bright colours and bold patterns that make those buildings stand out from the rest of the city. As a family known for their tongue and their whit, it's not surprising that the Eltrain family controlled an ownership stake in the Coinpurse, a large market region in the Port of Lauthor that facilitated a wide variety of trade; the Evereve, the primary quarter that housed many of the inns, brothels, gambling establishments, and other such businesses; and they own most of the non-meat stables outside of the main city limits.
The only major areas that were not directly controlled by one of the three largest families was the Ruined Quarter and the Ashpile. The Ruined Quarter is the main slum in the Port of Lauthor, where many of the poorer families who help the city function were forced to live due to their lower status and poor access to money. The Ruined Quarter is also home to some of the less savoury businesses in the city, including the main manufacturing location for ink that is used by the Ledgery. The Ashpile, across the city from the Ruined Quarter, is the main manufacturing area in the city. Specifically, many of the smiths, craftsmen, masons, and other tradespeople operated their businesses out of the Ashpile. These two sections of the city were somewhat controlled by more minor merchant families, but there was a general lack of interest in owning these companies in the Port of Lauthor specifically to prevent one family or another from making the city inhospitable to one of the families that should be on the Merchants Row. 
The overall layout of the city itself involved a complicated nest of roads, dead-ends, and splitting/merging paths due to the fact that the city was forced to grow around the sprawling properties and estates of the Merchant Counts. In some cases, road pass over a portion of land owned by a Merchant Count and anyone hoping to use that road needs to pay a toll to the land owner. In many cases, convoluted paths have been created that steer clear of these situations, given that many poor folks in the Port of Lauthor are not able to pay the charges that a Merchant family might lay against them. The outside of the city is protected by a wall that does not span the full way around the city, and the height of the wall varies quite a bit as it moves around the city. This is largely because, when the wall was established, each of the Merchant Counts at the time was in charge of building one portion of the wall, but very few actually spoke to one another about what they were doing.
The Port of Lauthor itself is the starting point for the Dead End, a long road which snakes form the Port of Lauthor through and past Eleele on the way to the border with Leaait. Along the road, close to Leaait, there are a series of gem mines and other mineral locations that help ensure the Dead End remains decently well used nearly all eoch. 

Specific Locations

Merchants Row

The Merchants Row is an especially austere and auspicious part of Port Lauthor, with mansions covered in rich colours and draped with expensive fabrics. These homes are also very well guarded and very expensive to maintain, but the housed the functioning government (to an extent) – each merchant with a house on that street was, in essence, what we might call a City Councillor and they collectively ruled the city and country (at least so far as it furthered their own interests) under the Faila. The back-stabbing and buying off of individuals meant that this Council was not entirely stable, but old money begets old money so some families had been around since before Mesle made contact with Endref.